Pod Save the World - Zelensky’s Secret War Plan

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

On today’s episode, Max Fisher and Tommy discuss reports that a close Putin ally betrayed the Russian military and that President Zelensky secretly proposed bombing Russia, why elections in Turkey and Thailand could be the most important of this year, the United States’ war of words with South Africa, Senator Tommy Tuberville’s bizarre defense of white nationalists, updates on immigration, Gaza, US-China relations, and five stories that will make you feel hopeful. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.Join Friends of the Pod for bonus content, exclusive access and more: crooked.com/friends

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Max Fisher. Ben is off this week. So Max is jumping in as co-host. It's great to see you. Before joining Cricket Media, Max covered foreign affairs for some obscure niche outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vox, the Atlantic. Anywhere missing? Snore. Snore. This is some of the biggest names in all of media. You also wrote a great book called The Chaos Machine, which details all social media, rewired our brains and, frankly, societies all around the world. This is an amazing introduction. I feel like I should be giving. you're a lot better credentialed than I am. I saw underwear. You know, that's what we do here. But what underwear it is? You know, it has evolved over time. Listeners have noticed it has evolved over time. It is really funny to think back. The most scandalous thing in politics was Bill Clinton being asked. Boxers are briefs at one point. I had forgotten about that. And then he was like, I'll show you scandals. The 90s are just, I know we're going to talk with it was like the incredible prudishness of the 90s, but it's always coming back to.

Yeah. Like we were going to talk about like the Tommy Tuberville stuff. It's like 90s throwback. That guy. Bad guy. Pretty good coach, let's be honest. Okay, so we've got a lot of news today. Updates on the war in Ukraine, the latest in the seemingly endless series of stories based on these classified Pentagon documents that were leaked to the social media site, Discord.

By the way, how pissed do you think all the other outlets are that the Washington Post seems to have gotten all these documents and nobody else has? So I have friends who on both the Post and the New York Times teams. And they, every time one of them has a story. the people on the other paper are like, oh, we had that. Or they have some excuse for like, oh, actually, we have this other story that was better. Like, they cheated to get that one. I was going to say, I guess that's better than your editor coming to you every day being like, can we match that? Can we match that?

Oh, there's a lot of that, too. That's probably happening anyway. But I think they're having a great time. I think they both love it. It's a good-natured rivalry. Okay. It's nice to hear. So there's also election results in Turkey and Thailand, why the U.S. is in a war of words with South Africa.

The aforementioned Senator Tommy Tuberville. Is it Tuberville or Tuberville? Who cares? He's an asshole. Some shorter updates on Sudan, Gaza, China, Title 42. And then Max, you are our in-house optimist. Yes. And you promise to make us feel hopeful. So I'm excited for that. I have five good news things to make you feel the warm and fuzzies. And also, frankly, the Turkey and Thailand stuff I'm really excited to get into because it's some like some pretty encouraging stuff happening. Yeah, it's big news. And we're going to go guest list today so that Max and I can really spread our wings and flourish here. It's time to be free. It's time to be free. But before we get to the internet. international news, Max. We have some big, crooked media news. We have launched our own subscription community, the Friends of the Pod. We really stretched ourselves to get that name. If you join today, you'll get more news and politics content. You get access to weekly bonus content, like the subscription only show terminally online, which is very fun and very stupid. A community of

friends of the Pod on Discord. I've been on the Discord a bunch. It's a very fun, like really good group people, frankly. And then lots of dumb behind the scenes moments, much more. Through Friends of the Pod, you can also have the option of donating part of your monthly subscription directly to Votesave America so you could help organize voters for 2024 and beyond. So go to crooked.com slash friends to learn more and get a 10% discount for a limited time only. Have I sold you, Max? It's nice to be able to subscribe to something that is also doing something good in the world. It's like, you know, it's something that's unique about this place. They think is really special.

The Votes of America volunteers are like some of the best people ever. I remember during the pandemic we did. several trainings in a row, and I did the first one, and we were expecting a few thousand. It was like 30,000 people, and I was like crying like a baby. And this Zoom was very pathetic. It was pandemic era, so we were all very emotional. Anyway, speaking of emotional, scary night last night for people in Ukraine, Max, because Russia launched a huge barrage of missiles at Ukrainian cities.

The good news is that Ukraine's missile defense systems, presumably the new American-made Patriot missile batteries were able to intercept all of them, including the most advanced hypersonic version of the Russian missiles. President Zelensky, meanwhile, has been on the road. He went to Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. During those visits, he was promised billions in military aid, including a $3 billion commitment from the Germans and air defense systems, drones, and long-range missiles from the UK. Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, promised to start training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 fighter jets. Now Ukraine just needs to get some of those jets from someone, but the U.S. is not offering yet. You don't think being on the flight simulator is enough?

You're fighting the Russians on PlayStation. Like Sega Genesis or whatever. So last December over in the U.S., Congress passed a $48 billion aid package for Ukraine. All but $6 billion of that money has been spent, and many people are worried about getting more out of the Republican House of Representatives. So passing the hat in Europe will be key for Ukraine's ability to keep fighting. Zelensky also met with Pope Francis while in Italy. The Pope has been pushing for peace talks. Interesting to see how that develops.

So Max, two questions. First, how much do you think it killed Boris Johnson, the disgraced former prime minister, to see Rishi Sunak getting the cool photo op with Zelensky at Chekers, the prime minister's country house? I think it did kill him. But Boris was still one of the first in Kiev, which is I don't like to hand it to the guy, but you kind of have to hand it the guy. That was pretty good. Yeah, true.

Two, do we think Zelensky is essentially like waiting to get these commitments before they begin this long promise spring offensive so that Ukraine knows like literally how much ammunition they can expend? Right. It's about figuring out what Ukraine can do with their spring offensive, which is their answer to the big Russian offensive over the winter. But it's also, it's much bigger than that. It's about figuring out what is the rest of the war going to look like because there is, I gather, a sense in Kiev that, well, they were still getting an enormous amount of Western support and things like the training on the F-16s, that they probably hit the high water mark. This winter was probably about the pinnacle of Western support.

And now it's going to be this struggle for getting each incremental piece and keeping it going, because this war is really more than it's even a war of front lines or troop movements. It's a war of attrition. And that is in terms of, you know, artillery shells and tubes, but it's also. about money. And that's both sides, I think, are hitting a point where they're not running out, but it's running lower. And that's going to affect how they can fight this war in how long. It really is like a grinding World War I style, like war of attrition at times of just sort of how much artillery can you launch per week. And political attrition, an economic attrition, an industrial

attrition. And it's like, like, so much of the war is going to come down to, I think, just like factories and munitions and industrial policy and sanctions on Russia. But of course, behind all of and I'm sure coming up in all of his meetings in Europe are murmurs over whether it's time to start pushing for a peace deal, which is also interlinked with this question of how much supported for how long. Yeah, that's true. And listeners can't see this, but we're both wearing kind of a Zelensky green shirts today, so in solidarity. Joe Biden goes to the G7 on Wednesday when this show comes out. I'm sure this will be a huge topic of conversation. Ukraine that is President Trump was asked about the war in Ukraine during his CNN town hall. Here's a clip. Do you want Ukraine to win this one? I don't think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop

killing all these people and breaking out this country. Now, you said you don't think in terms of winning and losing, you have to get the, you have to get Europe. Can I just follow up on that because that's a really important statement that you just follow up. Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war? I want everybody to stop dying. They're dying. Russians and Ukraine. I wanted to stop dying. And I'll have that done. I'll have that done. I'll have that done. So it is objectively weird that he won't say that he wants the country that was invaded to win the war. Right.

When the other, when the Russians are committing war crimes, I do wonder if that answer would be popular among a broad swath of the electorate, unfortunately. It sounds reasonable. I'm not, I'm not a like Putin is controlling Trump, like conspiracy guy. I'm not like a p-taid conspiracy guy. But he's repeated just rushing to embrace whatever Putin's position is. Whatever is driving that is really striking, clearly part of this. And also, we know he has a grudge against Zelensky because Zelensky would not dig up the, you know, quote unquote dirt that Trump wanted to, you know, try to defeat Biden. Yeah.

So, I mean, I don't know. We went through this in 2015, 2016, where Trump would say things that sounded kind of dovish and sounded about like we're going to make peace. And then he would get in and he wouldn't do anything. He wasn't interested. And his only involvement would be to turn the screws on allies to try to extract resources and commitments from them. Yeah. And meanwhile, there's all this, speaking of turning the screws, there's a lot of pressure on Joe Biden to skip the G7 to stay home and deal with the debt ceiling. I don't think there's any chance he's going to do that.

But, you know, it's nice of Kevin McCarthy to manufacture a controversy in advance of a global summit to try to embarrass the president. We love the congressional Republicans just helping out with him. You know how much they care about American greatness and American standing in the world. So they're always willing to pitch in for that. America first, Max. So in public, President Zelensky has shown a lot of restraint. I think we're talking about the war. He talks about repelling invaders, liberating Ukrainian villages.

He has promised repeatedly not to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia because of escalation concerns. But a document in the Discord leak of classified Pentagon documents paints a very different picture behind closed doors. It says Zelensky has proposed occupying cities on the Russian side of the border to gain leverage in future negotiations, bombing a Russian oil pipeline to Hungary and hitting targets inside Russia. Previously, the Post had reported on Ukraine considering attacking Russian-linked forces in Syria. We've also seen all these mysterious drone attacks and things within Russia and Crimea. This intelligence certainly seems to help explain why the U.S. has been so resistant to provide longer-range missiles and fighter jets. So, you know, reading this piece, I can't say I'm surprised by Zelensky's frustration or desire to kind of go on offense. I was a little surprised to read about it in the newspaper.

It is one of the first times I've wondered about the ethics of publication of this document. I'm not criticizing the reporters who did. So I just maybe think about it. Zelensky, you know, he may have been considering occupying a Russian village, but he didn't do it, right? And now the Russians could maybe use this to paint him as some sort of aggressor. you have covered foreign affairs for years. You've been in conversations and newsrooms about when or when not to publish a story, what to withhold. What do you make of the post decision to go ahead with this one? And what are those conversations like? So I initially like you, I saw this and I was like, huh, that's kind of a lot to put in the newspaper because this will have or could have some kind of real ramifications because these are really drastic steps that he's talking about. So I talked to some people at these papers about what they were thinking. and kind of thought back to my own experience of this stuff. And I started to talk myself into being a little bit more comfortable with it.

But to answer your question, like what are the considerations? The first one is always, will publishing this put someone in harm's way? And you'll notice that in the Discord leaks that have been published so far, you're not seeing things like tank movements or, you know, prospective tank movements, even though those are probably in the document. So it stands to reason that there is somewhere aligned and things are being held back. But you also have to consider, of course, whether there are other negative real world ramifications. And that gets a little tricky because then you have to guess at the impact, which means you have to guess what do other people know. And if you think this information would be a surprise to Moscow, I think that's one of the scenarios that would be potentially really dangerous because they could get freaked out by that and maybe they feel like they have to respond or maybe just the fact that it's now public, they feel like they have to respond. I think it's probably unlikely that Moscow would be shocked by this,

partly because if these files are on a Discord server and the Post has them, probably Russia has them too. That does seem like a big open question, right? I mean, I bet that is the presumption. Yeah. But it was like kind of a couple niche Discord sites. I mean, you know, Russian intelligence was no more destined to be there than U.S. intelligence was. Right.

So I can't tell. It's true. And we can't, you know, they can't call up the Kremlin and say, hey, did you know that Kalenski? So you have to do when, and I've been in situations. where you have stuff like this, you have to do like projecting out a few steps and what do we think people know. And I think the thing that a lot of people are upset about that I think actually should

not be a consideration here. It was whether this would like hurt Zelensky publicly or in Washington because like Russia could use it against him or as critics he'd use it against him. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a case for publishing because if Zelensky is pushing for attacking Russia, that's really significant. And this is the U.S. intelligence who knows it. Right. Yeah. The U.S. intelligence already knows it. I think there's a case for pulling the public into it rather than saying, oh, you know, this could hurt him publicly. And I kind of came around to thinking it's on the edge, but the people who this might lead to react in a negative way

that would hurt people probably already knew about it. And we're talking about like, well, and there might be a public backlash against Zelensky. It's like, well, then maybe he shouldn't be suggesting attacking within Russia if he thinks the American public isn't going to like that. Yeah. Or maybe it'll come. continue to encourage him not to do it. By the way, Zelensky must be furious about this. I mean, he said that the White House hasn't called him about these leaks. I don't, maybe that means the CIA did or somebody else, but boy, rough a rough couple of weeks for this guy. That's what I have heard that he is pretty unhappy with the post. Yeah. Yeah. So the other eye-popping Discord leak was about

everyone's favorite caterer turned private mercenary group founder Yvgeny Prygosen. Our guy. Our guy. Progoshin founded and runs the Wagner Group, which is a private army in Russia that has done a ton of fighting in Ukraine and parts of Africa, especially in Bakhmut lately in Ukraine, where the fighting has been the worst. Progoshin has been very vocal about his frustration with Russian military leaders. He says they won't provide them with, you know, ammunition, weapons, equipment, et cetera. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Progosian has had ongoing secret communications with Ukraine's military intelligence service and that at one point, progozian offered to give Ukraine information about Russian troop positions if the Ukrainian military

would agree to withdraw troops from the Bakhmut region where the Wagner guys were fighting. So wild. It was really wild. So Ukraine apparently didn't take Progoyan up on the offer because they didn't trust him. I wonder why. But that has not stopped Ukrainian intelligence from taking Progoshan's calls and even meeting with him in Africa, something that Progogian himself confirmed on telegram. Progoshin also reportedly encouraged Ukrainian forces to attack Crimea. and talked about Russian troop morale being low in certain places.

The documents seem to suggest that the Kremlin might know Progoshin's having these talks, but it's not totally clear. Max, when I saw this headline, I thought, start the countdown clock until Proggeon falls out of a very tall window. Right. But maybe it's more muddled. Like, what do you think? Is he in deep shit here?

So we, he has often been written about, and Wagner's often been written about as this like shadowy private army run by Vladimir Putin. And it's never really been quite the case. It's always been this kind of like mercenary rogue actor who happens to align with the Russian state and to serve things that they need. Because they have real capacity problems, real state capacity problems in Africa and Ukraine, which is I think why he's going to stick around. But I think they have known for a long time that he is a total loose cannon who is out for himself because he's been fighting with the Russian defense ministry for like a year. And they're like really working to undermine them.

And they've been worrying to undermine him. And I mean, this is a like, in some ways, a problem dates back to medieval Europe, where when you have these private mercenary armies, they act for themselves. Yeah, that's very true. Just the last thing on the Discord leaks. Previous reporting is alluded to this. But the Washington Post wrote a long profile of the Discord leaker, this 21-year-old member of the Air National Guard named Jack Tashara.

We learned in this that Tashira believed he was preparing for a war against Black People, liberals, Jews, and the LGBT community, and that he was amassing an arsenal of guns and other gear for said war. He had all kinds of conspiratorial beliefs. He voiced his support for a number of mass shooters, including the gunmen from the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand because the victims were Muslim.

The story, once again, raises serious questions about how this kid got a security clearance, especially since he was suspended from high school for making violent racist threats. And we also learned that he posted more of these documents, the classified documents, on another even larger Discord server. So the universe of stuff that could be out there still seems vast.

It does make me wonder why was this stuff so widely available to so many people? Although maybe the better question is why are people this, like I'm sorry, but psychotic, filling out these roles in the military. And I assume the answer is just because, you know, force exhaustion from 20 years of war and it's hard to get people to go for these because they're tough jobs. Yeah, I don't know. This guy, this should not pass a bet. It's really shocking.

Yeah. Truly. Plus he's a video gamer, which is that's the, you know. Big time gamer. It does sound like, you know, I think you joined the military in 2019 during the pandemic. These Discord groups got really close, maybe got more conspiratorial. Maybe everyone went into them. I mean, I was on group chats during the pandemic.

Things got a little dark in there. Yeah, things got dark. I mean, there was that period of time where it was fun and you were like, zooming with all your high school friends and stuff. And then by like six months in, I was like, I can't do another Zoom. Yeah, once at like nine months, once we started becoming white nationalist insurgents, the group chat was just other. Also, I should say, I was kidding about he's a video gamer, so therefore he's bad. The gamers don't come after me.

I'm pro gamers. We're all pro gamers here. Okay. So enough about this guy, or at least until we get to the Tommy Tuberville section. So the eyes, the world o eyes of the world, it doesn't quite work. We're on Turkey this weekend where President Ayip Erdogan faced his most difficult election in years against an opposition leader named Kamal, Kilich Terulu. Erdogan got about 49% of the vote on Sunday. Kielich de Rulu got about 45%.

Neither of them got 50% so they go to a runoff on May 28th. Erdogan will likely benefit from the fact that this is now a head-to-head matchup, whereas before there was, in particular, another far-right nationalist candidate who got about 5%. Presumably those voters would go to Erdogan. Erdogan is seen as politically vulnerable or was seen as politically vulnerable because of the government's botched response to the recent earthquake that killed at least 50,000 people in Turkey and because Erdogan's economic mismanagement led to record inflation, many people around the world

are also, I think, understandably quite worried about Erdogan's increasingly dictator-light kind of tendencies. Yeah, dictator-medium, I think you could say, yeah. The vote itself seems to have been free, but not necessarily fair because Erdogan, to your point, has so much control over the media. So, Max, Turkey is a NATO member. They're part of the G20. The U.S. and Turkey have worked together closely on a lot of issues. I remember going to Turkey with Obama in 09, for example.

It was surprising to me to see news report about how the United States was openly cheering for Air to 1 to lose, given Erdogan's likely reaction if he won. Can you help listeners understand why people are so eager to see Erdog and I guess why the average listener should care about who the hell is running Turkey? So this is, I would argue that this is, regardless how the second round turns out, the most important election this year. Is that crazy, do you think? No, tell me what. So the Erdogan story is, I think, such a fascinating one. And it tells us how we got here. And I think it also tells us a lot about how the world has changed over the last 20 years

and how we went from this era of optimism to one of a little bit more pessimism. Because when he first came into office in 2003, he'd been the mayor of Istanbul, he was widely seen as a good guy, as this like force for democracy and progress. And Turkey was coming out of this long period of repression and on and off military rule. And Erdogan was seen as representing this like new order of elections and popular legitimacy. And he expanded social services. He lifted a bunch of the country out of poverty. He expanded some personal freedoms.

He tripled GDP per capita, which is wild. Think about how much you would like Joe Biden if he tripled your like net worth and your banking. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. Yeah. And he, especially he modernized Turkey and these cities with these like huge, huge construction boom and construction projects. And he was pro-EU.

He was pro-Arab Spring when he was involved in. And he was kind of remaking Turkey into this new regional power in the Middle East. And like you probably remember the like era when we were like all kind of excited about Erdogan. Yeah. I mean, we certainly, I mean, you know, I think it was Obama's first trip or one of his earliest trips included a stop in Turkey. My, my main memory from that trip was the plane breaking and us getting stuck there overnight. So we actually got to do cool tour stuff. And also.

Oh, cool. walking around the then-Turkish president's home, President Gould, with my colleague at the time, Mike Hammer, who was another NSEs spokesman, who's now the special envoy for the horn of Africa. So he went on to bigger and better things. But he wishes he was potting. Come on. Yeah. But that's an interesting point because at the time, the president was a ceremonial position. And Erdogan was the prime minister. And Erdogan changed the rules or changed the constitution to get president power.

And now he's the president. Right. And the like, yeah, so the 2008 is kind of a fascinating. I think that's kind of the high watermark of like Erdogan as this like democratic reformer and this modernizer and everybody loves him. And things started to really turn 10 years in in 2013. You probably remember like the big Gezi Park protest, this like park in Istanbul. Yes. It started at this environmentalist rally against overdevelopment in the big cities but became eventually this wider backlash among the urban middle class, which has always been kind of Erdogan skeptical.

over what they saw as him creeping towards rolling back some of the freedoms that he had once championed. And Erdogan cracks down really violently on these protests. It's actually kind of a little bit like echoes of Moscow 2011, 2012. Some of the protesters get hit with these bogus sedition charges and like 20-year prison sentences. And this is kind of like the start of Erdogan slide into this like elected strongman model that we now see so many of in the world. and Turkish society starts polarizing, but then a big step comes in 2016 when a bunch of rogue military officers attempt a coup. It fails, but Erdogan out of like opportunism or paranoia or probably both launches these like purges. Just 77,000 people are arrested, mostly on these like vague

charges of political disloyalty. He expels hundreds of thousands of civil servants from the government. So guts his own government, announces these emergency laws, it takes off of the courts, he purges universities and civil society. And he starts to become like a little wacky. Yeah. Remember these like neo-imperial ceremonies he would hold, like dressed up like a 19th century like Ottoman imperial? And he would like ranty, we would start with like conspiracy theories. People would meet with them and say there's something off about this guy. And Turkey starts to like feel like a police state, start backsliding really hard in the opposite direction.

And then he, like you said, he blows up the economy because he's fired all the technocrats from his government. And he's doing all this cronyism with these guys and construction. He's fantastically corrupt, which is a big part of why when Turkey is hit by this big earthquake in February, all of this construction that he'd overseen turns out to be just insanely substandard because it was all through corruption and bribes. It collapses, kills 50,000 people, maybe a lot more. But like Erdogan is also, he's terrible. for Turkey, which matters because 85 million people live there. And it's also one of these most beautiful countries in the world, I think. Yeah, truly. But it's also, it's bad for Europe in the Middle East, because Turkey is really involved in both. And he's turned himself into this kind of like geopolitical

spoiler. He's getting close with Putin. But I think more than anything else for me, what matters about this guy losing and why it is so important that he lose is that he really embodies this new global trend of the like elected leader who hardened into the strong man in office, which is like arguably one of the biggest threats we face in the world. And like he's a leading case of it, Orban and Hungary, the Philippines and India and like Trump in the United States. Like these guys are like all of one piece. And I think that's why all basically all of the democratic world is lined up in wanting to see Erdogan and what he represents defeated, which voters got really close to. So close. Man, that 2016 coup attempt, I'll never forget.

watching that because I think you had fighter jets flying around the capital. I think Erdogan was facetiming into the state TV network from his plane delivering a message like go to the streets, you know, fight them. But yeah, I mean, he did slide into autocracy and you've watched the U.S. and really all Western countries kind of try to recalibrate in real time. I mean, the U.S. recently agreed to sell Turkey F-16 upgrades, but they're also blocking Sweden from joining. NATO Turkey is, right? So there's push and pull constantly with this guy. He's, he's, he's, he's not great. And he's, if he gets another four or five years, he's just going to get worse. Yeah, he'll probably die in office at this point. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's kind of at this point where, like,

I think it's easy to look at a strongman like this and say, well, oh, he's a dictator. So, of course, he's going to win the election. But the new, like, way that this electoral strongman works is there's usually a period of like 10 or 20 years where they're slowly consolidating power, where they still need elections. And like you said, the vote itself looks like it was probably fair. Like the opposition party was watching the polls. They were watching the ballots come in. They say it's fair. But it's the other 364 days a year when, you know, the state media is only covering him and ignoring the opposition. You don't hear about the opposition because civil society has been gutted and there's this like climate of fear. Speaking of frenemies, Max, the U.S. is now in this war of wars of South Africa.

The back story is recently the U.S. ambassador to South Africa did a press conference in Pretoria in the capital and accused the South African government of providing weapons and ammunition to Russia for use in Ukraine. The evidence was there was this cargo ship that was linked to a sanctioned company that secretly docked at a naval base near Cape Town in December and got loaded up with something. South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, denied the allegations but also said he would investigate them. what was happening in his own naval base. So that didn't inspire confidence. But then sort of as this shitstorm is fully kicked up, the Russian government this morning, I believe, or whatever time zone it was on,

announced that the head of South Africa's army was in Moscow for meetings. Conspicuous timing. Yeah, the South African government said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this meeting was planned in advance of, you guys releasing these allegations, which I would argue was kind of the whole problem and the point. Right.

So Ramaphosa also suggested that, Vladimir Putin might visit South Africa in August for the BRICS meeting. So, you know, the official South African position on the war in Ukraine is neutrality. It doesn't feel so neutrality, doesn't it? It feels less neutral, right? I mean, what do you think is going on here? Is this, look, is this the U.S. reaping what it's owed and no one trusts us on our intelligence after Iraq 20 years later? Is, you know, or is South Africa playing some dirty games?

Like, where do you land? So I think that this is something that is really specific to South Africa and more specific than like you're saying, the kind of generalized distrust of the U.S. or the West, or they like, we've talked about a lot on the show, the generalized global South skepticism of the Ukrainian side and the war. You were in the White House in 2011. Do you remember the weird role that South Africa played in the Libyan Civil War and the diplomacy around the Civil War? Barely. So even after everyone in the entire world had lined up against Muammar Gaddafi's government because he was fighting this Arab Spring rebellion, like everyone in the African Union had lined up against him, all of the other Arab states had lined up against him.

It was not just a Western thing. South Africa was the one holdout where they were still siding with him publicly. Even after he fell, they were blocking at the UN recognition for the new rebel government. And when you talk to people in South Africa, people knew South Africa, they would say this is all about the anti-apartheid movement because Gaddafi had been, and this will come back to Russia, had been a huge backer of the anti-apartheid struggle personally and financially. And I think about the South African government, it is still full of people who personally fought at that. Right. Yeah. So it's not even just like, oh, we owe like a national debt. It's like these are

people who personally benefited from that and personally think that the entire South African nation as they know it owes a debt to Gaddafi. And that is really true of South Africa's relationship with Moscow too. The Soviet Union was in the 70s and 80s, a really big backer of the anti-apartite movement. Now, it was all geopolitics, of course, much as the U.S. played cynical geopolitics. Yeah, right, right, right. But they were training. They would bring anti-apartheid leaders, including Tabo and Becky, who later became a South African president, to Moscow for training.

They got really involved in this proxy war in Angola that humiliated the South African government. So my sense is that this is a continuation. of this belief that like we, South Africa as a nation and what we believe in really owes a debt to Russia. And those are, you know, they came for us or they helped us out when no one else would. Well, that is fascinating context. I mean, I wonder what this investigation will find about the ship at the port and what was loaded up into it. I mean, it does seem likely that, you know, if this was a sanctioned, you know, Russian entities ship that the U.S. is probably watching it for a long time. And that was where it came from and knows where it went and maybe has a good sense of what

I was loaded up on it. I was shocked. Yeah. Did you see that South Africa is leading a bunch of a pan-African diplomatic peace initiative to Europe? I did see that. It's kind of funny. Yeah,

I hope it works. Let's see. Oh, no, it's great. I'm all for it. It's just, you have to appreciate the irony of a pan-African diplomatic initiative to the war-torn European continent to help the, like, Europeans get it together, which they

need, which, you know. Look, yes. I know exactly what you're saying. So, Max, big news in Thailand. Huge news in Thailand. We don't talk about Thailand enough here. Thailand is fascinating. It's a fascinating place. It's much more developed, middle class, democratic than people know. And this election is huge. I'm really jazzed about it. Okay. So we got this progressive move forward party. They trounced two military-aligned parties currently running the government, the coalition running the government. I think the coalition in charge got like 15% of the vote or something like that. Did not do so well. Move forward. This new party is promised to reform the military, reform the economy, and even to reform laws against criticizing Thailand's royal family, which is a big deal. The move forward party grew out of these pro-democracy protests that started in 2020.

In 2014, a military coup ousted the elected government at the time, and this is only the second elections since then. The other opposition party took second place in the most recent elections. Neither has enough seats in parliament to form a government outright, so they got to cut a deal and form a coalition. Next, help us understand why you think this is such a big deal and why you are more optimistic than I am that the civilian leaders won't get. that pushed aside or imprisoned like, you know, democratically elected governments in Myanmar, for example.

So let me give you the like 90-second history of Thailand and how we got, because I just think it's a fascinating story. So Thailand has always stood out from the rest of Southeast Asia. It's wealthier per capita. It has a big middle class. It has these highly developed democratic politics. But it also has more military coups in the modern era than any other country in the world. And it's like not even close. They have depending on you count it 13 or 14 coups in the last, yeah, which is that's a lot. That's a huge number. And the military sees itself as playing this very unusual role in Thai society. And I'm not endorsing this as safeguarding Thai democracy, which weirdly they actually helped to bring about in the first place.

Their first coup in the 30s was to replace the absolute monarchy with a constitutional monarchy. And what happens is the military ever since steps in basically any time it thinks political turmoil is getting out of control. So mass protests, military coup, political deadlock, military coup. And typically it hands power back to an elected government within a year or so. But this system, which was never great, started to, yeah, hot take. Don't love regular military coups, started to kind of spiral out of control. And the coups got way more common, starting about 20 years ago. And there are two reasons for this. One is that the Thai monarchy, which in theory is supposed to act as this kind of problem-solving

mediator in politics, became much, much weaker. The king was getting really old and probably senile. Then he died in 2016. His son took over, who is super unpopular, which I can say because Crooked does not have an office in Thailand. But if we did, I would have to be really careful about saying that. You get like 15 years. You could actually go to jail. How do you say it? Le majesté, is that how do you say this last? Less megest. I know, something like that. Yeah. Something French. I mean. I got pretty close to seas in all of my French classes. So between the two of us, we'll nail this one.

Anyway, don't go to Thailand and insult the king. Until these reforms get instituted. So the second reason that Thai politics started to spiral out of control 20 years ago is they became super, super polarized. For a long time, the country's urban middle class, who are mostly in the south of the country, pro-establishment, pro-monarchy, had dominated politics. But then 2001, this guy who was really,

really important in Thailand named Thaksin Shinawatra comes along and he starts organizing the rural poor who are mostly in the north and who are actually a slight majority of the population to get involved in politics. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm calling Shinawatra like a hero of the people. He's this like billionaire businessman. He's kind of an opportunist. And he is a little bit of a flavor of the like electoral strongman populist like we were talking about. And when he becomes prime minister in 2001, he starts amassing power for himself, freaks out the political establishment who fight him in every turn. And this sets off this cycle of unrest, protests, counter protest. There'd be a coup, then Shinnawatra, or like one of his many family members,

would win power again in the next election. And then there'd be more unrest. And then another coup society gets more and more polarized. And that leads the military to this coup that you mentioned, the most recent one in 2014, to hold on to power longer than usual. And it directly rules until 2019 when it hands over power to. a civilian government under this new constitution that makes it much easier for the military-backed party to win, although the party did also get a plurality of votes in the 2019 election because Thai society is still really polarized and there's still a lot of skepticism about like straight democracy. So it looked like this election, this most reason won on Sunday, was going to be a repeat of 2019 with the military back party doing well.

Thai voters don't trust each other, really polarized. But that's not what happens. This progressive party move forward kind of comes out of nowhere and wins this huge like you mentioned 36% of the vote which is huge when you have like 10 15 parties running way more than any other party and the party that comes in second is actually fax in sinuatra's party which is futi and the military part back party is a really distant third and this is huge I think for two reasons both of which I think if you're an American you should actually like be really excited about encouraged about the first is the progressive party is this new third force that breaks the polarization into high politics and it gives Thai voters after 20 years of this like demographic division really sharp division and distrust a way to

come together and the second is the thing that it brings them together under that they're coming together for is is democracy yeah is to say whatever you know whatever economic whatever religious divides we have we have this national consensus for we want to fight the military In the United States, it might be something else who we're fighting in order to put democracy first and to protect democracy through this vehicle of the move forward party. And I think these are both just amazing developments that are worth cheering and worth getting excited about if you live in a country, say, the United States, where polarization and rising sympathy for authoritarianism, like in Thailand in recent years, is getting higher.

Yeah, and feels scary. I mean, so we should say it is, you know, the Constitution is still kind of rigged in favor of the military. So they have an unelected 250 seat Senate that is chosen entirely by the military. You have to get a combined number of seats to form a government so that sort of stacks the deck against you. But hopefully it's possible here. But to your point, I mean, if we're, you know, don't compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative as Joe Biden would say in neighboring Cambodia, prime minister Hunson once again disqualified the country's main opposition party from running in the next election over ridiculous paperwork issues. Basically, they said, where is your founding documents?

And the opposition party doesn't have the founding documents because when the government raided their office, they probably burned them up or took them or something back in the day. So the progressive party in Thailand actually got disqualified under similar nonsense made up stuff in 2019. So I think the fact that the military, you hate to give the Thai military credit for allowing elections to go forward because, of course, they should. So I'm not saying they did it because they're good guys, but I think they felt pressure and felt like they had to allow elections. to go forward. And the sense among analysts is that they will probably extract some concessions from the political parties before they give them the rubber stamp to say, okay, you can form a government. Probably they won't change the less majest laws or the laissez majeste laws or whatever we're calling them. But it seems like the Thai military is so allergic to unrest and protests and to being seen as a partisan actor.

I think it's very likely they'll let it go forward. And then we'll probably see a change in the Constitution. The big question is whether this new coalition of the progressive, pro-democracy party and the populist Shinawatra party can create a kind of new coalition in favor of democracy to avoid this cycle that Thailand has fallen into so many times for. But I know you are a little bit maybe less sonly optimistic than I am. So what are you thinking? Listen, I just worry about the role that the guys with the guns play in all of these cases, whether it's Thailand, Sudan, which we'll talk about in a little bit, you know, Myanmar, Burma, whatever you want to call it. So fingers crossed. Yeah. I will, I'm going to stay hopeful here.

Yeah. I will say that the Thai military does not have the record of the Sudanese and the Myanmar military of, you know, mass violence and, you know, shooting up huge numbers of people. And I don't think they want to rule in the way the Sudanese military and the Myanmar military. I think they want to have it. They're like, it's kind of like when Egypt's military took over in 2011, they wanted to get rid of Mubarak. They didn't actually want to run the country. And they threw away that hot potato pretty much as quickly as they could. And then took it back again. That is a good point. Look, we'll see. We'll see.

Hope Springs a Turtle. Back to the U.S., Max, because, you know, look, democracy is the best system we got, but it's imperfect. And one of the reasons is there is, in Washington, at least, there's a constant brutal battle to be named the dumbest United States Central. And Wisconsin's Ron Johnson. It's a tight race. A tight race. You've got Wisconsin's Ron Johnson. He's usually out in the lead.

Yep. But Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has been coming for the crown lately. Let's let him explain why in this clip. You mentioned the Biden administration trying to prevent white nationalist from being in the military. Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military? Well, they call them that. I call them Americans. So we a little while ago talked about Jack Tashara, who seemingly was a sort of Christian white nationalist preparing for a race war while in the Air Force leaking tons of documents.

So it seems like it is a problem that... It is a problem. Senator Tuberville should know about. Yeah. The exchange itself came in response to questions about why Senator Tuberville is holding up the confirmation of literally all military nominations over the Pentagon's abortion policy. So the Pentagon provides support for service members and their dependents who need abortion services but live in states like Alabama where abortion is illegal.

Even Mitch McConnell is on the record saying that this blanket military obstruction is a bad idea, so are a number of his colleagues. And speaking of which, President Biden is reportedly considering reversing the Trump administration's proposal or plan to move the U.S. Space Force Command from Colorado to a base in Alabama, in part because of Alabama's total abortion ban. So great work, Senator. You are holding up the entire U.S. military. You are preventing your state from getting jobs and a influx of money because you are an idiot. Well done. I mean, it's something that I feel like we have seen from Republican culture warriors since the 90s, where it's there, they're presenting it as it's like, oh, we have to protect the sanctity of the military and are fighting boys from the woke liberal Democrats. But in fact, what they are doing is, first of all, nothing that they are calling a threat to the military is actually a threat to it. I mean, we found that over and over again. They say, oh, no, if you allow gays in the military, then we won't be able to fight.

You know what? You can fight just fine. doing just fine. Before that women, before that African Americans. Exactly. Right. Right. And then that he is at the same time, in fact, kneecapping the actual military that he claims to be serving. It actually like, I don't want to get hyperbolic with this, but this is something that was pretty common in like mid-century fascist European politics. I'm not saying that he is a European-style fascist, but it was this common culture war thing to present the cultural sanctity of the military as this thing that had to protected because the armed forces were the embodiment of the soul of the nation.

And they had to be the like most traditionalist version of citizens that we could possibly imagine. So they would fight these crazy culture wars over who could be in the military and what they could be because it's a way to advance this like right wing nationalist politics. Yeah. And look, I remember it was not long ago, maybe a year, a year and a half. We're like people like Ted Cruz were retweeting these Russian propaganda videos for military recruitment for their military and being like, oh, no, if the woke U.S. military ever goes up against

these guys were cooked and then, you know, the Ukrainian military delivers, you know, 100,000 casualties to just do them. Right. It is, it's amazing to see how readily they will bind to the Russian propaganda that because Russia is a ultra-conservative dictatorship, therefore the military is real manly men and that that is, I guess, what matters to them in terms of having an effective fighting force is whether they have like the right cultural cues. It's just the dumbest thing in the world.

It's quite dumb. A couple quicker things before we get to the optimism. So last week, Ben and I talked about concerns that there would be this drastic increase in the number of migrants attempting to cross the southern border after the expiration of Title 42, which is a Trump era policy that allowed the U.S. government to use public health concerns to expel basically everyone trying to enter the country. But instead, Max, the exact opposite has happened. The U.S. Border Patrol agents have seen a 50% reduction in attempted crossings. The Secretary of Homeland Security says the reduction is likely because under Title 42, migrants knew they would get expelled, yes, but then they could just try again and again and again and again until they got in. Now you face much harsher penalties, including a five-year ban potentially on reentry and maybe even criminal penalties.

So, you know, Max, I assume the border crossing numbers will fluctuate over time. They always have. They always will. They'll probably increase for a variety of reasons. But it is kind of remarkable how wrong the conventional wisdom was here, including from Joe Biden himself. She's like us blaming the media. I'm curious what you think happened. Like, was this just brilliant expectations management, something else? I mean, there's also been, there's been a few changes in Central America itself, which of course, that's where things actually happen that lead people to flee for the United States or not to flee for the United States. El Salvador has arrested basically all of the male population of certain adult ages and there's like a really extreme effort to crack down on gangs, which has been effective at reducing violence, but is not so great if you were one of the many, many people arrested.

Mexico, of course, is at the United States behest doing a lot to stop migrants from reaching the border in the first place. I mean, to me, all of this, you know, the numbers go up, the numbers go down, we change out one policy for another. To me, it feels like it's all basically the same policy, which is extinguishing the right of asylum in the United States. And they're like, it's taking place in a way now that is a little bit more palatable and I think leads to fewer ugly incidents. But we've still basically killed the right to asylum. Yeah, I mean, asylum laws were designed to comply with international laws and standards. Sure. In U.S. law.

In U.S. law. I think the system has gotten overwhelmed and it's not working. And Trump and now President Biden have moved away from it and instead are creating these country-by-country humanitarian parole numbers where they'll allow people in under certain conditions and they'll expel others. And I totally understand those who think it's wrong. and believe that, you know, we're basically shredding up asylum law and rights in real time, but also the frustration for people in government who feel like, well, the status quo isn't working for anyone, so we need to do something else. I also talking to some people in the administration, one of the things they point out is that we talk all the time about, like, you know,

what Congress is doing, Title 42 administration messaging, but they say that the biggest problem they have is disinformation in, like, Telegram and WhatsApp groups from, smugglers. Yeah, who are just constantly, there's an industry of trying to bring people up and bait them across and get paid. Oh, I see. And create this, you know, incredibly dangerous conditions. So, yeah, I don't know, we'll keep an eye on this one, but it is kind of amazing that it just, you know, you had hundreds of cameras down on the border waiting for this. The crisis. Crisis. Right. And in fact, right wing outlets were using old photos from other countries to sort of present the image they wanted. I do. You're absolutely right that the status quo was not working. But I think it is, I don't know, it kind of underscores where we are that the thing that we are thinking about is the crisis at the border or the absence of a crisis of a border rather than, you know, why we have these international legal obligations to asylum.

Because it's not just to be nice, although it is also like good to use your giant super wealthy country to help people who need it. But it's also for the stability of the international system. The U.S. has been tearing up this right since the early 1990s, along with a lot of help from the Europeans and the Australians. and that has an effect worldwide because then other countries follow. And when you see asylum breaking down worldwide as it is under American leadership, that affects huge numbers of people and it affects many conflict zones around the world that become more unstable as a result. Yeah, you're right.

I mean, and viewing it as a crisis that's always this immediate thing that is happening now and not the result of long-term systemic changes or in many cases wars that the United States started or was a part of in places like Afghanistan or the Arab Spring or the climate crisis. it has to be a global and systemic effort to figure out the next thing. Right. I don't want to lay it all on Biden's feet. I mean, I kind of think our guy, Obama, was basically the only one who had any years in office where he was not actively eroding the right to asylum.

I don't know, probably. I mean, there was a lot of deportation happening. There was an effort, you know, that kind of died in 2013 to get a comprehensive immigration reform package done. Right. And then it just turned into Republican demands for border security. Yeah. And the American people's opinions turned pretty harshly against welcoming people. Right. It is true. There's not a popular consensus in favor of asylum whatsoever.

No, it's probably the worst polling issue for Democrats, I think, out there. Awful. We'll keep talking about it, though. In Israel, the Israeli government and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group reached a ceasefire after five days of fighting. It killed 33 Palestinians and two people in Israel. This round of fighting started when Israel bombed three P.I.J commanders in Gaza. killing them along with 10 civilians. The PIJ responded with rocket fire and the fighting continued until the Egyptian government stepped in to help broker a ceasefire. The good news, you know, for the millions of people in Gaza, for hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been terrified for the last week is that there's this pause. But, you know, big swaths of Gaza are once again leveled. They probably won't be rebuilt as they weren't the last time.

Because they can't bring in concrete. Yeah, there's no, yeah, there's still a blockade. There's no process in place to resolve all the underlying tensions that feed this tension in the fighting. Hamas didn't get involved in this round. That is seen as a good thing. It probably helps shorten the timeline of the war itself. But, you know, it's just a reprieve, really. Yeah. I am reminded of an Israeli expression that is sometimes used for their policy towards Gaza, which I once got into a long conversation with an editor over whether we could even put it in the paper because it's so horrible. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Mowing the lawn. Awful. It's really, right. And that that is the

policy and the policy is that you just you don't like you're saying you don't fix the underlying issues because you don't want to and you don't have to if you're Israel you build up a wall to insulate yourself from the consequences so all those consequences fall on people in Gaza occasionally conflict springs up and then the mowing the lawn is you go in and or you don't go and you know launch missiles whatever drone strikes and kill what you think is the appropriate number of people to stop the violence and expend their munitions right and expend their munitions yeah not good not good for the some little good news. For those who were worried about tensions between the U.S. and China,

he was a sliver of good news, Max. Oh, yeah. Jake Sullivan, President Biden's national security advisor, had two days of meetings with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna, Austria. They met for about eight hours. No one's suggesting this was like a big breakthrough, but hopefully this, you know, relieved a bit of pressure that's been building up since the spy balloon incident and other things. Still no plan phone call or meeting between Biden and President Xi Jinping of China yet. I'm really glad that you brought this up because this is.

this is the like maybe the most important thing that is happening in the entire world or the escalating tensions between the U.S. and China. There's not like other than the balloon or some stuff. There's not like a single moment to draw attention to it. But if you talk to like people who are involved in foreign governments or people who are, you know, policy analysts around the world, they are freaked out about this. And U.S. allies in Europe and especially in Asia have been screaming for months that they are really, really worried about how bad it's getting.

about how zero summit is, how black and white, and about where it's going to go because no one seems to have an off ramp for it. Like, people will go to China and they'll talk to policy people there and they'll say it's getting much worse, much faster than we think. And so even if this is just a like Jake Sullivan dipping his toe in the water, maybe we have a conversation about having a conversation about potentially easing things back, that's great. Yeah, I'll take it too. Yeah. I'm there too. Anything to just chill out, especially when the consents to Washington is just hawkishness. Right.

Bipartisan and everybody. Yeah. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of good news from Sudan. The civil war there has been going on for about a month now. The Sudanese military is fighting a paramilitary group called the RSF. They used to be allies and friends. And now they are at war. I've seen reports now that over 1,000 people have been killed.

I'm sure that's an undercount. The UN says 200,000 Sudanese have left the country. Another 700,000 have been internally displaced by the fighting. So we just wanted to update folks on that because we were leading with it for several weeks, but it's just sort of status quo awful at the moment. Yeah. So, okay, that's bad news. Max, you're our in-house optimist here.

You said you had some good stories. I do. I wanted to use our time together, both you and me and the listeners, to come up with five, which is not even hard to find, five really good things happening in the world that can make you feel good about being on planet Earth right now. So I'm going to run through them. Okay. Number one, the Greek economy, remember when that used to be a punchline or the most horrifying thing

you've ever heard for many, many years? thriving. Thriving. I didn't know that. I didn't either. Well, until I read about it. 6% GDP growth last year has been consistently outpacing the Eurozone average and even double at some points.

Had a big rise in trade, big rise in tourism. It's had a ton of foreign direct investment from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Pfizer. Educated Greeks who left during the financial crisis are returning in big numbers. And remember, it was like the. Greek financial crisis 13 years ago, it wasn't just bad. It was like catastrophic. Like the country was cratering. For people who are listening thinking, why do I give a shit about Greece? I can't tell you how many meetings I sat in with Barack Obama where people were, his economic advisors and national security staff were talking to him about the Greek debt crisis and the risk of default.

It was going to pull down the entire EU. We thought it could crater the global economy again, right after the financial crisis. You were the Germans and the French demanding that they cut their out of the problem. Meanwhile, the Greeks owed a lot of money to French and German banks, but it didn't really get talked about. So, yeah, the fact that Greece is on its feet is a huge deal. Right. And the Greek far right that had been profiting from that so long is not doing so well anymore. And they're having elections next week. And it's either probably going to be the incumbent government or left-wing Sarisa is going to win. There we go. Show Italy how to do it. Okay. Here's good news in a place you might not be expecting it. Iraq. Okay. Every year,

since 2003, there has been a big wave of militant attacks during Ramadan. This year was the first year. In 20 years, it did not happen. There was no mass violence by militants. Is there a sense of why? Let me give you a quote from a military blogger named Joel Wing. The insurgency, which he refers to the Islamic States and all the other insurgent groups that have been operating there for so long, the insurgency is a shell of its former self, and it is isolated in the rural mountain and desert regions of Iraq where it has become irrelevant. Even though like sort of Iranian-linked Shia militias that are kind of close to the government?

I mean, a lot of them probably when it fought and died in Syria. That's true. Yeah. There no, things are, I mean, I'm not going to say things are amazing there, but the just wrenching security crisis that Iraqis have lived with for, you know, for many of them their entire life. I'm not saying it's over, but what was this marker of how horrible it was is looking a lot better. And, you know, I will be crossing my fingers that the country will consolidate that and turn that into some political progress too. That's great.

Here's one from India, another place that usually makes me incredibly depressed to read about. A really big defeat for Narendra Modi's party, the BJP in the state of Karnataka. If you were not familiar with Karnataka, it's because it is a very, very small Indian state. Only 60 million people, only two Texas. Only. It's India, baby. BJP lost power in the state legislature in the most recent elections and now controls no state governments in the South. And it is widely seen as specifically a repudiation of Modi, who personally held 20 rallies there to try to win the election.

And especially of his brand of hardline authoritarian Hindu nationalism, which he and his party have been pushing really, really hard in advance of the elections because usually it works really well for them in elections. doing things like banning Muslim girls from wearing head coverings in schools, which in the past has been very effective, unfortunately for the BJP, in winning support from Hindus by whipping up some tarientections. So probably this is not representative of all of India. Southern India is kind of its own thing in a lot of ways. It's still very popular in the north. But it is a really good sign that at least this big part of India and this big state looked at this model of Hindutva, of extremists. that has been gathering so much momentum in India and said, no, we don't want any more of this. That's great, especially since not long ago, an Indian court decided to throw in prison

or offer a jail sentence to the leading Congress party opposition leader. Right. Yeah. At a time when so many trends are unfortunately pushing in the wrong direction, it is nice to see Indians pushing back. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. This is working. Yeah. This is working on me. I love it on a little happiness. Yeah. Okay, number four, this one is going to be a little controversial. So I will I will couch well. what I mean when I say that this is good news. The United Nation had its first official commemoration of what Palestinians refer to as the Nakbao or the catastrophe, which refers to the 1948, that's 75 years ago, 1948 mass expulsion

and departure of 700,000 Palestinians from the territory that is now controlled by Israel. The event itself, I would say I'm not endorsing in its totality. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader. had some things to say that were not so great. But I think it is good, not just for the Palestinians, but frankly also for Israelis, to have recognition of Palestinians' trauma as well as traumas like the Holocaust

that led to the creation of Israel, not just because I want to see the Palestinians get recognition in itself, although I do, but also because I think that is just important for peace and for moving things forward so that these two two peoples can try to understand each other. You know, I really, I don't get why Israeli officials lobby so hard against events like this. Like, for example, the Israel's UN ambassador said,

attending this despicable event means destroying any chance of peace by adopting the Palestinian narrative calling the establishment of the state of Israel a disaster. And I feel like we're kind of getting stuck on an adjective, a description of an event that for, if you have a little empathy for the individuals involved, if you got pushed out of your home, you would probably feel very badly about that event. The interpretation that's happening here is the suggestion that it's anti-Semitic because it's denying that the state of Israel should exist itself. But what I would argue. Yeah, I think this is commemorating history. Right. And that you're destroying any chance of peace by not having peace negotiations. I mean, this event isn't going to

change any facts on the ground. And I will say with you, I thought, you know, Abbas compared some of the Israeli government's rhetoric to Nazis, and that's obviously an insane thing to say and totally offensive. And he should stop, he's done that before, and it doesn't help him, it doesn't help the Palestinian people. He hurts his own cause by doing this. But at the same time, I don't think any of us should be in the business of denying historical events. Well, I mean, I think the Israeli, and it's not blanket Israeli opposition, but the Israeli government's opposition to recognizing this is about right of return. Oh, absolutely. And as if, if you, if you, you acknowledge that it's that it was bad, that 700,000 Palestinians who now have millions of descendants,

many of them living in refugee camps and neighboring countries, is bad. Then you might have to talk about whether they can come back and they don't want to have that conversation because they want to maintain a clear Jewish majority in the country. For sure, it's just such a logical leap to suggest that saying, you know, for an individual who lost their home that it's bad means we have to acknowledge the right of return. It's going to be part of a final status negotiation no matter what, these sort of questions. And then the U.S., you know, if the negotiation happens. If it ever happened.

The U.S., you know, I think opposed the NACPA then and lobbies against these sorts of events at the UN. Right. There was a fight about this in the U.S. Congress. But I'm with you, I think, like, a little more open and less. We should be able to have these conversations about historical events. Let me actually read a quote to you by, that was from the afterward from a book called The Holocaust and the Nakhba by two Israeli scholars named Bashir Bashar-Ber-Namost Skulberg. Unless we can hold these. two moments in our hearts and minds as part of the same story, they can be no moving forward

in the seemingly unmovable conflict that is Israel-Palestine. So there is really voices calling too for saying like, let's recognize history. Yeah, let's talk about it. Okay. Number five in our great, great news list. So the winner of the Thai elections, the leader of that party, the move forward party that is very likely to become the next Thai prime minister, a guy named Pita Limgeronrat, is, I'm just going to say it, certified hottie. How old is he? He's born in 1980. Okay.

Which is that the same year, you're born, right? Yeah. So what do you think? He's millennial, right? Yeah, we listen. I am not Gen X. I refuse to be called that. But certainly on the later cusp of millennials, some would argue it's well after.

the cuss. But yeah, I think you know, you know, Gen X on the streets, millennial on the sheets, something like that, I don't know. But I'm glad he's hot. That's great. I am too. And I should say we did have a discussion with the head of HR for crooked media. It was about whether it was

okay to say that the next time prime minister is hot. And she said that it was. And I'll say, I think this is also good news because I think we could use more hotties international politics, especially Sondamara lost office. Although, if you would like a bonus six piece of good news speaking of son of maran newly single well available listen i'm going to brush right past all this but it's absolutely true that uh image and appearance

matters and politics i mean you know no one's talking about macmuda bas so am i sullying your podcast absolutely not absolutely not you're i've always said that pod save the world could be a little hornier listen i uh i uh broc obama certainly benefited uh for being seen as young and cool and attractive. Oh, the beach picture. That didn't hurt him. Didn't hurt him on the campaign trail. Dad jeans, too.

Well, nobody's perfect. No, nobody's perfect. Okay, those were five very hope-filled stories. What was your favorite? What was my favorite? I like the Indian elections. I like millions of people coming together to renounce racism and hate. I like that.

Yeah, I think that's really good. Yeah. I think that's good. I think the whole Thailand story is really great. Yeah. Exciting. Yeah. Before we end, we did want to encourage listeners to pour one out for the people of Italy,

where the government had to call an emergency meeting to address a jump in the price of pasta, which is up 17.5% year over year in March, which is double the average inflation in Italy right now. Washington Post story about this crisis noted that 60% of Italians eat pasta daily to take that paleo diet. How do they all look so good? I don't know. I think it's a proportion. I mean, French people too. They eat lots of butter and, you know, heavy things. So you're saying I should cut it off at three pounds of pasta per meal. I do think pasta is one of those dishes that at some point people like kind of maybe wrongly bucketed into an unhealthy basket.

I mean, it's all carbs. It's not. You remember when Italy lost in the earthquake, they lost their like national parmesan reserves? It's rough. Giant cheese wheels. They could use some love here. They need a break. They need a break.

And they did just elect a far right prime minister. Yeah, maybe you don't do that, Italy. Finally, this is a little bit of a spoiler for those who haven't watched this season of succession. So turn the podcast off now. But there is a scene where Conoroy is asked to drop out of the presidential race in exchange for an ambassadorship. What's he offered? First, Mogadishu. And then he's offered the slows.

He says no on the slows. And he goes on this riff. And I have to tell you, I'm kind of impressed with Conor Roy's level of geopolitical and geographic knowledge. He's like making a case for the Koreas, talking about Oman. Like, Connor Roy, maybe a world, though. Yeah. What do you say, Obama is a poor man, Saudi Arabia or rich man's Yemen?

Yeah, the Pearl of Arabia, yeah. The show is just, it's genius. And then what does he say in the most recent episode? Oh, and he's asking for an ambassador. could I get a sniff of a little guy? Organize a little coup down in old Peru. Put me in a van down to Tajikistan, be our fun guy in Uruguay. Tommy, if you had to suspend your $100 million vanity presidential run to accept an ambassadorship,

what do you think? Would you be our fun guy down in Uruguay? What country would you ask for? Peru would be very cool. Peru would be cool. It's a little messed up these days. Yeah, it's a little tough. Chile, I think, would be my preference if we were going for regional.

Yeah. Chile's been having a rough go of it lately, too. Yeah, but you know, you got great wine, get great food, you get a beautiful place. Yeah, yeah. Where else? I don't know, Brazil will be great. I mean, post-Bossanaro. Man, you're really going for the, you really want to work.

Well, I'm thinking sort of South America, you know, if you want to just be cushy, you could go sort of Caribbean area or, you know, like donor spot in a European capital. Oh, right, like, like San Marino. Yeah, or, you know, even sort of any of the big ones, you know, France, Italy. Brazil is a good truth. I think actually the U.S. has been playing a more active role in Brazil where they really helped with the coup proofing with the most recent election. I think they're getting tighter with Lula. You're kind of selling me on Brazil. It's also easily one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Truly. Yeah, I would love to live in. Shout out to Brazil. Shout out to Brazil and to Connor Roy. And to everyone listening. Shout out to Ben, who is probably traveling back right now and maybe listening to this. I think that's all we got for today. It's a great show. Tommy Tuber. You're an idiot. Can you on behalf of the Tommy community renounce the extremism among the Tommy's? Gladly. Gladly.

He's got to be one of our worst Tommy's. As a moderate Tommy, don't you, do you feel like you're kind of responsible? Yeah. It's annoying that he was a pretty good football coach. This is why I'm glad there are no Max's in politics. Just people's dogs. There was that guy in New York, Max Rose. I got nothing.

There you go. The Montana Senator of Max? Bacchus. Bacus, that's right. He held up Obamacare for months and months and not so great. Okay. We need a good max. I think we made him ambassador to China.

Really? Yeah. I don't know. Check out weird in the second term. All right, that's how we got for today. Talk to you next week. All right. POTSave World is a cricket media production.

Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Segglin, Charlotte Landis, and Deceles Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week

and check out the POD Save the World YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.