The Chaser Report - War Result Buffering... | Sami Shah

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Back from a brief break, Dom is joined by his fellow scholar Sami Shah, who gives him the full rundown of every major story we missed while we were gone. Charles who?Listen to Sami Shah's podcast doco here: https://shows.acast.com/news-weakly/episodes/news-weakly-196-not-talking-bout-the-revoluion---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report, returning after the school holidays. Dom Knight here, not with Charles Firth, who's gallivanting around the UK again with his wankanomics thing that's bafflingly successful, but instead we've upgraded things. With an expert, with an academic, a comedian, a broadcaster, a narrowcaster. soon to be, I think, doctor, Sammy Shah, or are you actually a doctor now, Sammy?

No, still waiting on the judges to get back. I've done my final presentation. They asked for two months because they were very busy. I don't know why they're busy. They're academics. I know for a fact academics aren't really doing anything at all. And so, yeah, I don't know what they're doing. I'm still waiting.

I'm so glad, though, that we've upgraded the sculley reputation of this podcast. At some point soon on the feed, we're going to share a documentary you made about whether there's any point to satirical podcast. If they changed the world or countless journalism or anything like that. How meta can be guess? I worry that this is going to lead to mass unsubscribing from the Chaser report. But we'll get to that another time.

Having spent a couple of weeks out of the news cycle and with kids and all that kind of stuff, I haven't really been paying attention to what's been going on. Would you please bring me and our listeners up to speed right after these, I'm sure, very subtle and appropriate ads? Right. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm assuming, to begin with, Sammy, I'm assuming the Iran war is his old news at this point. And the Straits of Portmoos are not only just open, but they've sort of been welded permanently open in some sort of nautical sense. Is that what's happened? Absolutely. It's a thoroughfare at this point. I mean, you and I could just take a boat through there if we felt like it. Can we do a tour? One of those podcast tours on a cruise ship through the Straits of Formos, that would be great. Imagine if we booked a comedy podcast tour. So it was Chaser, it's my podcast tour. It's my podcast. podcast, we get Dan Elish involved, we get Alice Fasier involved, we call up a few of the others, because of advocate guys, Andy Zaltzman. If he's available, John Oliver, I'm sure, can zoom in.

Yeah, he's got nothing going on. And we go through the street of Hormuz. I mean, I think that's just got, that's just got money printed all over. I think, also, what a great way to bring the warring parties together, if they're still warring with one boat that they all want to see. If Pakistan can do it, then I think we can do it as well. Well, haven't Pakistan had an involvement in all this? Talk with where we're at, as we were record on Wednesday at about lunchtime. Well, so what we know currently is that negotiations are still ongoing. However, they're ongoing in the same way as, for example, if you go to a market to do some

shopping and the shopkeeper never turned up, the market was closed and you stood outside it with an empty basket in your hand and you came back home and said, yep, I just went shopping. That's kind of how the negotiations are going, basically. J.D. Vance has flown to Pakistan, so he's in Islamabad right now. And the other side, which is Iran's negotiating team, is in Iran. Just sitting in Tehran still. Just feasting on kubis and chelukababs, while J.D. Vance is possibly most likely suffering extreme diarrhea because he drank some of the water from Pakistani taps while brushing his teeth this morning. Now, you're allowed to comment on that. Oh, yeah, I'm not. You know all about the gastric consequences of potable.

or non-potable water in Pakistan. I mean, Pakistan being the honest broker in these negotiations, this is a relatively new, isn't it normally the Qataris who do this sort of thing? Yeah, and I think part of it is basically the Qataris were a bit soured on the whole relationship with Iran on accounts of Iran shooting missiles at Qatar. So that, you know, kind of pissed them off a little bit. Pakistan actually does make sense. No, look, on a completely non-patriotic Pakistani level, which I've never in my life been

accused of being. But let's say someone was saying... Set aside your deep love for Pakistan that has led you to move to Melbourne. I left it because it was so great I felt I wasn't worthy. But let's say, putting all that aside, Pakistan shares a border with Iran. It also has very strong relationships

with both Trump, as well as China and Russia and many of the Saudi Arabia, many of the players in this conflict. The only people that Pakistan doesn't have relationship with quite aggressively is Israel. So the Pakistan Passport, for example, says that this passport is valid in every country the world, except for Israel.

Yes, so that's something that's written on the passport. And the Pakistani Foreign Minister, the day after negotiations were announced, went on a Twitter rant against Israel as well. So they're not going to be able to sort out the Netanyahu end of this. No, but I don't even think anyone, I mean, I don't think Netanyahu could sort out the Netanyahu end of this at this point. I think that's a whole other schmozzal-guffel. I don't know, other Yiddish words. And basically right now what's happening is that for Pakistan, this does make sense because they've positioned themselves really well with Trump. Better with Donald Trump has gone on the record and said that Asim Munir, who is the current field marshal of Pakistan and the first field marshal of Pakistan in something like 60 years, that he is my favorite field marshal.

Wow. Which is, I didn't know you had favorites. How many of them are around? He does love a military office. Oh, he loves an appellate. He loves just someone being saluted somewhere. And so, yeah, he's, I think what it is is also that Pakistan's played it very well because Trump and India initially were making friends. But Modi and Trump cannot be in the same room together.

You can't have two egos that large cohabiting the same space. Whereas Pakistan realized that's the opening. If they are just, you know, a little bit more kissy-upy to Trump, then they're in the good books. That's about a technical term used from international relations studies. As an academic, I can say kissy-up. But also, can I just say something, how wonderfully incisive that was and how much knowledge you brought in? I mean, Charles is never one to, the confidence is always there. It's just that it's often not backed up by fact.

But also, if you don't mind, this might seem a little patronising, but I'm just glad that we've managed to increase the diversity of the Chaser report by having you on instead of Charles. Because, look, it's not often we get a Victorian on the show. Absolutely. Your perspective hasn't been a platformed and having people from Melbourne. That representation has been sorely lacking. to have Melbourneians on the show. Yeah, yeah, people who know what a tram is like beyond just one stretch of road.

Hey, we've got two. We've got two tram lines now in Sydney. We're killing it. No, sorry, three. What am I to? There's three, Sammy. Yeah, in Parramatta. I know.

I talk shit about Sydney all the time, but that has Parramatta recently. I was like, it's really good here. Like, I don't know about the rest of Sydney, but this is nice. I work there some of the time. No, it's good. Paramatta's great.

Yeah. Anyway, look, they should really have the talks in Parameda. That's what I'd be pushing for. Yeah, there's great cuisine. Excellent food. There's a tram that goes from one end of the street to the other end of the street. That's always useful. And no field marshals, however.

Yeah, you do need those. They do shooge up the place. Okay, so we haven't resolved the war yet, but pending. Is it like one of those things on the old internet where it says buffering? Are we just waiting on the result here? Yes, it is buffering. The circle is spinning. If you do accept the fact that once a circle stops spinning, the browser will crash, the computer will catch fire,

and maybe even your house will burn down. Not at all right. So, you know, maybe it's better to give the circle spinning sometimes. I also haven't managed to catch up on Anthony Albanesey, last scene with a very successful overall office meeting with Donald Trump. Everything seemed to go really, really well, including the sort of defenestration of Kevin Rudd, which happened shortly thereafter. No, sorry, I mean, Kevin Rudd went for a really important new job that was much he really

couldn't say no to. Sorry, I've got the line different on that. I presume Sam he did in the past two and a half weeks or so, we're all sweet with Trump again and he's forgiven us for not jumping into the war? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. He never brings it up, unprompted. It's not something that's on his mind.

He certainly hasn't said, you know, very publicly that he's very angry with Australia because we didn't help them with the Strait of Hormuz, which, again, I'm still not sure what we were supposed to do. I think the submarines that we would have sent to help America with the Street of Hamos are currently under construction. That's not our fault. That most of you could have sent an IOU, right? Yeah, exactly.

Dear America, we are happy to second to you the American submarines that you have not yet seconded to us, or the ones that are going to get built in about 10 years or so. Have either of those hypothetical submarines have at them? I mean, we've given them, you know, we've given them the Hemsworth brothers. Like what more can we as a nation provide at this point to show our field? I think we should have sent along the old hydrofoil from Sydney that's been decommissioned. I think that could have been. Because they're pretty quick.

If you had a quick enough boat going through the Straits of Hormuz, they might not have been able to shut it down. So across the entire Pacific all the way straight to the Indian Ocean, all the way there straight to Iran. With hydrofoil. Yeah, also, maybe one of those ferries that goes down to Tazzi, the spirit of Tasmania. Wasn't that out of action for a while there?

I mean, they charge enough for the spirit of Tasmania that they could probably afford to just use that ferry oil. You can bring your cars on. We could have filled up the cars with the oil and then drain it at the other end. You've already shown more strategic thinking. than both Iran, America and Israel, all three Iran, America and Israel have in this.

That's why we love having to give on the podcast. Slow down, slow down. Soon to be Dr. Sammy Scha. Okay, so let's talk about after these ads. I want to catch up on the Trump administration because things seemed a bit rough. He's had a few rough weeks there before I went on leave. I assume everyone in the Trump administration is all sweet now,

and it's all running very efficiently. As you would expect with the man behind the art of the deal, we'll find out in a sec what's happened. The Chaser Report, news a few days. days after it happens. Okay, so I don't recall anyone else being fired recently. I would have got a notification on my phone if he dumped anybody, wouldn't he? Yeah, I think maybe one or two people like the Attorney General, like Pam Bondi.

Oh yeah, that was before we went on leave. That's fine. Yeah, so that doesn't count. I mean, most likely by the time this goes to air, Cash Patel would either be fired or have gone on a shooting spree through the FBI headquarters. you know, one of those two is a very likely outcome. Talk me through Cash Patel, because this is the guy, if I recall, charged with proving that the 2020 election was stolen. Isn't that he's deliverable?

Yes. So Cash Patel is, he's an Indian American who looks permanently as if his life is flashing before his eyes. And what a lie. I mean, if you had that life, they probably wouldn't flash before your eyes all the time. I mean, most of it. To be honest, he's probably catching up on a lot of his life because we know from a story published by The Atlantic that he's a blackout drunk most weekends,

often in Vegas where the door has had to be bashed down by SWAT teams just to check him. So you mean his own SWAT? Like for FBI SWAT teams are now tasked with their main job is investigating the director of the FBI. That would have been good enjoyed to give Hover's time though. Well, he was also a known cross-addressor. So maybe the SWAT teams had to avert their gaze sometimes

when they came in. With cashmettile, they're probably more just worried about finding him in a pool of his own vomit and feces. Maybe that's why they're bashing the door down because I don't want to give him a chance to clean himself up. And also, like, to be fair to him, the reason why he's a blackout drunk is because he's worried that he would probably get fired from the FBI job that he has because he's drinking all the time. Wow. So it's a vicious cycle, basically, where, you know, he knows Trump hates alcoholics. He does not like people drinking. Trump famously is a teetotaler. His brother. a diet of alcoholism. And so he's very, apparently he's also told Cash Patel off more than once on the record

for drinking alcohol too much. So that freaks Cash Patel out. And how do you calm the nerves? Oh, there's only one way. Right. Yeah. We know off. Only Cash Patel had access to a long cultural ancestral history of things that involve

meditation and calming breathing and, you know, bending your body in various ways to relieve stress. He doesn't have any of that. So all he, no, you go straight for whiskey. Straight to whiskey. Absolutely. Look, that is a fascinating mental image, isn't it? Of the FBI breaking down the door of a Vegas hotel.

Look, that said, I can't, how can I pass any judgment on that, Sammy? When I, as a loyal Australian citizen, a member of my own royal family of Australia, Prince Harry has been known to get blackout. I mean, at least haven't been photos of Cash Patel pissed in the tabloids. Do I have there? Can you, could you tell? Harry's trip to Vegas was, I think, his genuine rock bottom. I think his great camouflage has been that he has permanent drunk face.

Oh, okay. And so you're never quite sure. Is he, when he, after the death of, you know, the assassination murder, you know, whatever, of Charlie Kirk, when Cash Patel's first major statement as the director of the FBI was, I'll see you in Valhalla, brother. Is that the words of a man who is seven bottles of gin into a, afternoon press briefing? It's very, very Viking though

to just have a sweet. You don't know much about the influence of Norse mythology on Indian American society and culture Dom. It's not your fault. It's true. It is incredibly ecumenical, isn't it? To bring in Valhalla into that scenario. Okay, so Kash Patel

could be out at any point in time. I should also point out by the one small detail during the two weeks that you're away that the Iranian hacking groups were able to hack into Cash Patel's Gmail account and leak photos of him Bollywood dancing from back in the day.

Wow. So that's the worst thing they could find. I'm actually a bit disappointed. Was the password? Was the password Valhalla? Come on. Look. Yeah, it definitely was.

It was, wasn't it? With a 8 for... Valhalla 666 or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, finally, Sammy, the one article that I have managed to see for the New York Times, and this could be relevant,

if as you tell me, matching me up. Anthony Albanese has yet to actually resolve things with Donald Trump. There is something that we could do here in Australia to try and win back Donald Trump. I don't know whether you've seen this. But Ukraine, who are quite clever, I've learned so much about how clever Ukraine are. They have considered renaming a region of Ukraine as Donnyland. I mean, I nominate all of the Gold Coast right now. It can't be worse than Gold Coast.

The entire thing. We'll get on to the Gold Coast, but it's part of the, this is the genius of it, it's part of the Donbass. So it's already got the Don. It's already got the Don. But it's also, of course, part of the territory that Putin wants. Right. What can we offer? Double becomes Dono?

I don't know. Look, as we know, for example, if your history, not, you know, Alexander the Great, you know, took over lots of land. Name most of it Alexander or Alexandria or Alexandersville or Alexander Town and things like that. clearly the way to a megalomaniac's heart is by giving large stretches of land named after him. Back in the day when I did the Rum Rebels and Ratbags

podcast with David Hunt, we did a whole episode on Lachlan Macquarie, the former East of Wales governor, his love of naming everything after himself. And then that bank came along and just kept it going. This is what you do. So, Donnyland, it's a depopulated, decimated bit of uranium, this is in New York Times,

of Ukrainian coal and steel country. It's not a pleasant place. And yet, 50 miles long and 40 miles wide, hey, why not? Why try everything? Right. I mean, okay, so here's my question to you then. Which one do you think? Gold Coast was a jest, right? Because we know it's building a tower there, blah, blah, blah. But if I really had to come down to it, I can't decide between naming Donnyland all of Tasmania or all of Western Australia. Has to one or the other. Yes, that is interesting, isn't it? Western Australia, I can see the appeal of that. There's just so much empty space there too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just feel like there's a

real Christian conservative element there with the rise of the brethren. There's the oil and gas stuff happening over there. Gina Reinhardt, who's a member of Mara Lago, is over there. Exactly. Yeah, lives over there. There's everyone and everything in Western Australia that is just deserving of such an insult. And then there's Tasmania, because who cares, right? We're just giving us a stretch of land that no one lives on, that's barren, that's dead, that's irrelevant. to the rest of the country. I think Tasmania suffered enough, really. Okay, fair. Plus, I've got good whiskey down there. They do. On the base of the whiskey, I think that's the one thing that's so, no.

Gash Patel needs to head down to the Armenia. That's the way here. Get him on the long flight down there and sack him on the way. He could really help out Sullivan's Cove. When he gets on one end of the spirit of Tasmania, but he gets off the other end, he's been fired. That's what's going to happen. All right. Look, that's good. I don't know which bit of W.A. You have any ideas. Please email a podcast at chaser.com. That sounds very, very good.

Now, Sammy, at some point soon, possibly tomorrow, we will post your documentary. I must say, apart from the fact that it seems like a lot of work, which I always question, because my approach to podcasting is to turn on the microphone. But really, you talk to so many people. Yeah, it was fun. I basically, part of my PhD research

was to create a documentary about news satire. Like Australian news satire podcasting, it's placed in the news ecosystem, and whether or not it actually has an impact on the world, or at least an Australian listeners. And mostly, though, that entire exercise was an excuse to just chat with friends. So I got to talk to you. I got to Charles. I talked to Mark Humphreys. I talk to Alice Frazier, Dan Illich, a bunch of people. I talk to so many people that not everyone even made it into the podcast, which I'm really kind of disappointed that I couldn't fit them in. But then I say,

some of them for my PhD thesis as well. So, you know, made sure I used all the meat from the bones eventually. But yeah, it's just, it's a podcast looking at new satire in its place. It's not very funny, unfortunately. No, it's like one of those writers festival panels where they get lots of comedians to come around and get a little bit self-important about what they do. I was there for it, though, not least because I'm in it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, exactly. There's a, there's a phrase, the saying by satirist L.B. White, and the saying I've always loved was talking about comedy is a bit like dissecting the frog. No one enjoys it and the frog dies of it.

And I always thought that was very apt. So yeah, so I hope you enjoy my podcast about dissecting frogs. Yes, the frog doesn't survive, but it's for a good cause. Sammy, thank you very much. It's been lovely catching up on the news with you. And if people want to check that out, look for Sammy's documentary on the Chase Report feed soon, but also episode 196 of Newsweekly from January.

It's called Not Talking About the Revolution. And yeah, and you can listen to Newsweekly every week as well. That comes out every Saturday morning. Yes, without me, irritatingly talking in the middle of semi-jokes. We'll catch you next time. We're part of the Iconiclast network. See you. Bye.