JD Vance’s Global Humiliation

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Welcome back to PodSay the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Then the vibes are high in Budapest right now. Immaculate. Immaculate. Check out this clip from Sunday. Amen. Yeah, the dude with the moves there is reportedly the leading candidate to become the new health minister of Hungary, uh, but he's one of just millions of Hungarians celebrating Viktor Orban's defeat in this past week's parliamentary election.

How much more would you like to hang with that guy than RFK Jr. for health secretary? Oh god, I didn't even thought of that. Got it. I may dance like that when RFK Jr.'s out. Yeah, instead you'd be drinking with just like raw milk. Yeah. Taking H D. H. or whatever the hell he's taking. Working out in jeans with Kid Rock. Yeah, none of that sounds very fun.

Uh we're gonna dig into those election results later in the show. Uh like just absolutely great news story this week that we're gonna have to cover out of Hungary. Good news. We're gonna start though with the latest from Iran, uh why the peace talks in Islamabad blew up on Saturday.

how Trump's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would work or more likely will not work. Uh we'll talk about the growing economic impact of the war on the global economy, the online propaganda wars that are being fought daily on the streets of Twitter. Being one daily and not by ourselves.

the Iranians and how the Legos became a prominent feature of them, uh, along with this associated crackdown on press freedom. Then we're gonna update you guys on the Israeli bombardment and partial oc occupation of Lebanon, along with the peace talks. such as they were in DC today. Um, then we'll talk about Orban's defeat, what it means for Hungary, what it means for the world. The latest uh election news out of Canada, our neighbors to the north are also having a good day.

And then uh what that tells us, Mark Carney's ongoing victories, Prime Minister Mark Carney, about how world leaders could or should react to Trump. There's some lessons. Uh and then Ben you did an interview this week. Yeah, I talked to uh Anand Gopal, who is a writer for the New Yorker and really just extraordinary journalist. Has a new book out called Days of Love and Rage, which is about uh the Syrian Civil War, uh and pretty extraordinary this.

uh city in Syria, Mambij that was under, you know, Assad, then a Revolutionary Council, then ISIS, then Kurds, and so like the whole civil war is in this uh one place.

So we we talk about you know what he learned from that uh experience of reporting that book about Not just the Syrian civil war but you know, how politics has functioned in the Arab world, how foreign and particularly US intervention has, you know, not worked uh in that part of the world, uh what he learned about democracy in writing that book, what we might

extrapolate from that experience, you know, vis what's happening in Iran right now. So incredibly fascinating book and discussion and also, you know, very relevant given uh we are currently in another war. ostensibly to help a protest movement that, you know, I don't think any of us believe we're helping, so check it out.

Yeah, that sounds really interesting. He also wrote that amazing piece about like the ISIS family prison, right? And like the nightmares in Syria. So one of those New Yorker writers, like Patrick Radenke, who writes something every like six to eight months, it's the best thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every now and then you're like Holy shit. You know, this is I I I forgot that a ten thousand word magazine piece can like completely

Just being grossing and just like riveting. Uh our friends of the pod subscribers will hear us answer some of their questions from the Discord community at the end of the show. So stick around for that. If you're a subscriber, Kirkka.com slash friends, if you want to learn more about how to become one.

Uh by the way, we're cranking out tons of bonus episodes on the Pod Save the World YouTube page. So please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube if you're not already. We did an episode last week about the tenuous ceasefire agreement. I think a lot of the concerns we talked about there kind of bore out. Feels like a ceasefire and name only. Yeah.

And uh well, th they're they're not shooting actively, but straight ain't open. Um, when you subscribe to Podsay of the World on YouTube, you help us get good information into the YouTube algorithm and displace all the right wing pro war garbage from Fox News. Ben Shapiro. Thirty one flavors of asshole. Who's listening who's left listening to Bench of His numbers are way down, I think. Yeah, yeah. Um I he he I mean

Yeah, there's just the the audience for kind of neocon, super pro Israel, pro wars, just it doesn't really exist anymore. Uh anyway, thanks for subscribing to Pod Save the World as a podcast and on YouTube and sharing it. It really does help out.

Um so let's turn to Iran, Ben. So I assume by now our listeners know that the Islamabad peace talks uh between the US and Iran failed. The US has now gone from uh relaxing sanctions on Iran to get more oil into the market, remember the jujitsu, uh, to now joining Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

So you make that one make sense. Yeah. Buddy. Uh the failed talks were just one example though of where Vice President J D Vance got his ass handed to him on a silver platter this past weekend. So that's the small silver lining. To take wins. Yeah. This dark, dark cloud. Um, here's Vance talking about the Iran Talks in various media appearances. Let's watch. I think it's going to be a good thing. Yeah. As the President of the United State said Negotiation.

in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand. One thing I'll say, Brett, is is Iranians are very different negotiators, at least those Iranians were very different negotiators than we are in the United States. We go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. If it doesn't happen, I'm blaming J.D. Vince. If it does happen, I'm taking full credit. That part at the like that is why Trump's a good politician, that part at the end there. Yeah.

I love uh I love JD Vance like talking about Iranian negotiators. Like he's genuinely learning this for the first time. So uh we're learning more every day. There's lots of news reports about why the talks failed, what was discussed.

I suspect that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz was actually Trump's top priority, even though he says it was the nuclear program. Uh that's because it's causing him the most near term political trouble. However, the Iranians have not figured out that closing the strait can basically replace Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok

You can imagine Iran thinking, like, why are we wasting all this money on ICE VMs and nukes and proxy groups when we can just threaten to close the Straight or Hamoos and create, you know, the bend the global economy to our will. So there's that. Uh on the nuclear front though, um the US as we suspected came in with maximalist positions. They said no enrichment ever for Iran.

Iran uh will shut down and dismantle its nuclear sites. Iran has to ship out its uranium stockpile out of the country. Those were positions Iran had already rejected. No surprise that they did so again. However, we've since learned That during the talks, the US proposed a deal where Iran would agree to a twenty year moratorium on uranium enrich enrichment, along with Iran shipping out its uranium stockpile.

Uh the I Iranians countered by offering a five year moratorium and they said they would dilute their uranium stockpile. The US said no dice, so after twenty one hours, JD Vance walked out in a huff, uh, even though the Iranians said they thought they were making progress.

Uh, and here we are. So, Ben, I didn't expect these guys to get a comprehensive deal done in less than a day. That's crazy. Um, but I did think there was a chance they would maybe get a ceasefire extension, given that the war is a political disaster for Donald Trump and MAGA and the Republicans.

Obviously that didn't happen. What did you make of the talks? And and boy, it was quite interesting to me that after a decade of hearing that the JCPOA was a terrible piece of shit agreement because some provisions sunset it after ten years. that they offered a deal that would have sunset it after twenty years. That seems notable.

approach of the Trump administration. I mean the first thing I'd point to is just the fact that they thought they were gonna do this in a day. I mean, I was a part of those JCPOA negotiations on the on the Washington and not at the the table, but you know, debriefing with the team after all these sessions. It took us, you know, Uh Two and a half years uh t I mean th th thereabouts, uh maybe more. Are you including like the very early like Oman, you know, secret talks all the way to the end?

If you do that, yeah, that's two and a half years. And because, you know, these are technical matters, you have to narrow differences. And frankly, the issues that they're seeking to negotiate are much broader than the JCPOA, which is just on the nuclear issue. You know, this They they're trying to bring support for proxies into the negotiations, you know, both missiles. The Iranians are bringing the straightforward moves, comprehensive sanctions relief.

And so the idea that JD Vance is gonna parachute into Pakistan and like, you know, end the war and resolve all these issues. And and you kind of saw this leaking out that the Americans You know, in those talks were just incredibly imperious. And what's so interesting about that is that that's fundamentally odd at odds with the actual dynamic in play, which is that

that their Trump administration are the ones that have a sense of urgency about reopening the Strait of Hormuz. And And the Iranians know that. Yeah, the Iranians time is on their side. I mean if you think about it, if if if the status quo just holds.

That overwhelmingly benefits the Iranians because under the status quo, and we'll get to the blockade in a second, you know, that you know is an effort to disrupt the status quo, but under the status quo, like they've survived, the regime is in place. Uh they've demonstrated their control over the strait. They're getting extra revenue from the sanctions really from jujitsu soybean farmer Scott Bessant, the Secretary of Treasury. Um they you know they're taxing fees on this.

Sabah Hamine came out of the closet. Historic. And meanwhile, what they can see is that Trump is you know, you know, his poll numbers are dropping, oil prices, gas prices are rising. So what's so weird about this is Like you don't have to be a genius to see that time is is playing on the Iranian side and yet they show up, make a bunch of demands. The Iranians are like, Well, those we can't do, but here's some counter proposals and they're like

Fuck you, we're out of here. And it's like, okay, and then what? The Iranians benefit. And so the the I just the the the amateurism and incompetence is really catching up with us. And I should just add to this, like again. You can dislike, you can loathe the Iranian regime. These are really sophisticated people, right? Let's just take the foreign minister Arachi. Like that guy was in all the negotiations over the JCPOA.

He knows the intricacies of nuclear programs and nuclear fuel. JD Vance doesn't know anything about that. He doesn't know anything about Iran. Steve Whitkopf, Jared Kushner don't know anything about anything except like real estate and and shaking down foreign governments for qu crypto investments or investments in their funds. They don't even know what they're talking about.

And they're sitting th there's a and I'm just gonna say there's a racism too. There's uh they must just be idiots or we can roll these people or like again, like Just because you don't like them doesn't mean that they're not quite skillful and sophisticated, you know? Yeah. And and so I I just left feeling like I don't I g I guess the only positive thing I take is that

To your point, they understand they're not going to get everything they want. Like the fact that they've already moved to uh something on the nuclear side that sunsets, you know, th th they they know that they don't have all these cards. But the problem is You have to get creative in finding solutions. And, you know, thus far they've not demonstrated it. Maybe they will. Yeah. Trump.

While J.D. Vance was en route to Islamabad, Trump posted this the following on Truth Social, the Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards other than a short term extortion of the world by using international waterways. Pretty big card. Mm. One could play that one. Uh yeah, J.D. Vance he told Fox News that he didn't think the Iranian negotiators were actually empowered to make a deal. However, there's a very interesting article. I think that's true.

I so this Iranian magazine, you know, you and I were talking about this earlier, they published this forty two minute discussion about the talks. It featured a member of the Iranian media who was with the delegation who offered that perspective. Now look again, take it with a grain of salt, but um

In this in this clip, in this conversation, the Iranians thought that the delegation lacked the technical expertise, the US side, uh, to understand the issues that checks out. They thought that in past talk Witkoff and Kushner didn't understand the stuff well enough to communicate it back to Trump. We've heard that before. Yeah. Um they said J D didn't seem empowered to make decisions.

Which seems to be backed up by Vance saying like he kept having to call call daddy, calling Trump back home. Um, they felt that J D was just like a scent to assess them, offer some maximalist positions, see how they reacted. And then meanwhile, as you said, I mean Iran's delegation included two previous heads of negotiating teams uh and that they felt they had a stronger hand given the Strait of Hormuz closure, which again is clear for all I all to see.

So they also feel like Trump does not want to go back to fighting and they also are smart and they know that eighty percent of Iran's oil goes to China. And if China is suddenly cut off for from the Iranian oil they purchased, That is going to create massive complications for Donald Trump, who has a trip to where? Beijing coming up.

So uh it seems like that's another pretty big card. The other card they have to play that we can get into is whether the Iranians talk to the Houthis and they say, Hey, now it's time to to choke off uh shipping traffic in the Red Sea. Uh that would be catastrophic. So they got a lot of cards, it turns out.

Yeah. And and and it's not like they don't know that. It's not like the rest of the world doesn't know that, you know, uh all because the rest of the world just wants to straight open and doesn't, you know

care whether like Donald Trump like gets a win of some sort. I mean th this whole thing is so insane.'Cause even the ceasefire itself, it the pac the fact that Pakistan hosted the talk That's Trump's favorite country because they nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and they invested in you know I mean literally the reason is because they invested in Whitcoff and Eric Trump's crypto business.

And yeah, and you know, you can work with some corrupt general who's, you know, been credibly accused of human rights abuses who'll just do what you say. But I mean I'm not you know, I don't mean for the Pakistanis to catch strays here, but what do they know about mediating?

Like they they the the Yamanis have mediated a lot of talks, the Qadris have mediated a lot of talks, the Pakistanis ha you know can't mediate between the United States and Iran. The the whole thing i was kind of thrown together because Trump needed to get out of the box he's in, but why would the Iranians do him a favor? Right. I mean that's what's so crazy. He's just bombed them. He's j the Iranian delegation flew to the talk

on a plane with like, you know, seats for every one of the kids killed in Minab in that school. Like, that didn't seem like they were in the mood to capitulate and give Donald Trump No, they did not seem like it. So while these talks were happening in Islamabad, Trump was uh taking things very seriously by attending an ultimate fighting event in Miami with Marco Rubio.

America's top diplomat and the White House national security advisor. So again, good to see them focused. Um on Monday, Trump delivered some impromptu remarks about the talks and about the blockade uh with the DoorDash grandma. Just weird. Let's watch. It's weird. You marking it down? Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And we agreed to a lot of things, but they didn't agree to that.

And I think they will agree to it. I'm almost sure of it. Um in fact I am sure of it. If they don't agree there's no deal. There'll never be a deal. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and we're gonna get the dust back. We'll get it back either we'll get it back from them or we'll take it. Mr. President. What's the end game? Is it the force? Iran back to the negotiating table is it to open up the straits so that gas prices ultimately

Maybe everything. I mean, you know. Both of those things certainly and more. Uh we can't let a country blackmail or extort uh the world.'Cause that's what they're doing. They're really blackmailing the world. We're not gonna let that happen. Do you think that men should play in women's sports? I really don't have an opinion on that. You don't, I'll bet you do. No, I'm I'm here about No tax on tips. I bet you do. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. Yeah. It's not good. Okay. So

to take this, you know, blockade idea seriously. The idea is to choke off oil and gas revenue to Iran to see if we can make them blink and, you know, an economic game of chicken. Um, the way this would reportedly work is the US

will prevent any ships from entering or leaving Iranian ports. There's fifteen big US warships in the region. They're tasked with running the blockade. The actual operations will span from, you know, intimidating Iranian-linked ships out of trying to get to Iran to possibly boarding and seizing ships.

Uh the boarding operations, you'd have to attempt those as far away from Iran as possible because, you know, that would maybe minimize the very high risk of for missiles and drones, but there will still be significant risk. And these you you know, the huge like navy ships there, the destroyers, they'll conduct missile defense operations.

Uh, the other ships will do interdictions, helicopters would help with that too. But it's like this is incredibly risky. It it's complicated and risky on a normal day, but that risk goes up exponentially if the conflict resumes and Iran and the US are just like trading shots.

And there's also a lot of diplomatic risk, as we mentioned before, like eighty percent of the oil goes to China from Iran. Um the Chinese have said, We have contracts with these guys, we intend to fulfill them, like stay the fuck away from our boats. We'll see what Trump does uh when push comes to shove. Fire on Chinese boats? Yeah.

I mean interdict them, seize them. It's crazy. And then like we mentioned before, like I Iran has another card it could play, which would be calling on the Houthi rebels at Yemen to close the Bob El Mandeb straight. which is a narrow passage between Djibouti and Yemen that ships have to pass through to get to the Red Sea. And if that's closed, this is a g it's a global catastrophe. It's like a one quarter of the world shipping goes through the Red Stre uh Red Sea.

It's how you gain access to the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean. It would essentially cut off Saudi Arabia's or s severely curtail Saudi Arabia's ability to get the oil out that it's been shipping west via a pipeline. So, Ben, I mean D does this have any plan of working? What do you what do you think about this blockade idea? By the way, Ram Emanuel was pitching this as his idea too when he was in here a couple days ago.

Pledge to not develop one in the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. Like if Trump gets them to commit to not building a nuclear weapon, I just want to set the predicate that that's fucking nothing. Yeah. And that's something that they've said a million times before. So p part of what he may be doing is lowering the

Uh another thing that is related to the blockade, the Rubio thing is not unrelated to the blockade because People need to understand that the normal process is you have a negotiating team and then the national security advisor's got a team of experts around the table in Washington and you're going back and forth and you're seriously considering proposals and counter options.

What process are they running? How are they making the decision to blockade? How are they how are they giving guidance to negoti it just feels like we're all on a plane and there's like no pilot. I think that's unfair. You have J D Vance calling a note to Joe Rogan who walks it over to Trump at the UFC fight and he says, Go or no go.

Yeah, yeah, I mean this is what's so crazy. But I mean on the blockade in particular, like I I just It seems like Trump Fundamentally doesn't understand an obvious thing, which is the Iranians, because he launched a regime change war, no matter what he says. It's existential to them. So if they lose billions of dollars in revenue from some US blockade, if it works, this is if it works. This is the best case scenario where we actually do make it so that the Chinese can't get the Iranian oil.

Well, they don't care. They they they they will sit there for two months and and yeah, it could be calamitous for the Iranian people that we were supposedly helping, but the regime doesn't give a shit because they're playing for eternity here. They're playing Yeah, for their their their survival as a regime. And they have a hundred million barrels or so of oil floating in storage off the coast of Malaysia and China that they can sell to kind of like keep themselves afloat.

So I d uh I saw some commentators and and you know, again I hate to you know have Rom catch some strays here, but I there are people that are acting like this is a normal administration. Like engaging in normal coercive diplomacy with a blockade. No, these are people who fundamentally don't understand what they started and who they started it with. And the fact that all of the leverage in terms of the damage to the global economy redounds to the United States.

Because Iran has already been sanctioned into hell by the United States for ten years. They know what it's like to live under incredible course of economic pressure. So all you're doing is like adding to the misery of not just China but our allies in Asia and Europe who are suffering the consequences and people they're paying for like six dollar plus gas here in California.

And like obviously the IRGC, they the they and their families will be the first ones fed. You know, so it'll be the regular. Further hurt the Iranian people who will know that it's the US blockading. And this is the other thing. Trump can pretend like he was forced to do this and they were gonna attack us or they have nuclear weapons.

Everybody else in the world who doesn't watch Fox News or listen to Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin or whatever that guy's name is, like knows that Donald Trump started this. It's his fault. It's his mess. They're pissed as hell. Are they pissed at the Iranians? Of course they are for like bombing the Gulf and stuff. But they know at cord that this is something that Trump fucking started. Yeah. And and and the Iranian people know that too, by the way. He does not have all the cards.

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One other interesting thing with respect to China, Ben, the New York Times reported that China might be helping uh Iran by shipping them shoulder fired missiles or w otherwise known as man pads. Um, this intel is described as not definitive, but given that Iran just shot down a US fighter jet with a shoulder fired missile, uh, it would be a very big deal. Also, our ability

to punish the Chinese if they don't listen to what we're saying and, you know, go abide by this blockade is pretty limited, given that the Chinese just won a trade war with the US by cutting off our access to rare earth elements. And guess what we'll need those rare earths for? Rebuilding the stockpile of missiles that we just expended that we would need in a war with China. Not exactly uh risk. And and this is why what Trump is doing is he's just

shining a gigantic spotlight on the United States as like a declining empire. Because we exist in this world where we think we can command other countries to do things and not do things. Of course the Chinese are giving them shoulder fired missiles. Of course the Russians are giving them targeting intelligence.

I don't like the Chinese government or the Russian government, but why wouldn't they do that? They see that the United States just did something incredibly stupid. They see that we're bogged down there and we're getting weakened by what's happening. Uh it's their ally, Iran, that's under attack. They've seen us arm all kinds of proxies, you know, uh, from I mean, obviously we've been arming the Ukrainians. The Chinese think that us arming the Taiwanese endangers their security.

We saw weapons have to be able to do that. So you can say to me, Oh, Ben, that's not the same. Of course it's not the same. I like the Taiwanese better than I like the Iranians, but that doesn't mean that they're not gonna do it. And and like Trump seems to live in a world where he thinks he can snap fingers. And again, unfortunately he has learned lessons from European leaders, from American law firms, university, like all the people that capitulated to Trump.

Like led him to think that he could do the same thing to Iran or China or whomever. And and once you bump up against these adversaries, th they they're literally been handed a geopolitical gift of a lifetime with this war, if you're the Chinese.

Yeah, they have. Uh we're also getting a lot more data about the economic impact of the war so far. So just some data points. Uh the United Nations has warned that over thirty-two million people around the globe might be forced into poverty, even if a ceasefire uh and peace is achieved just'cause the price of oil has gone up so much. The IMF says global the global economy is at risk of growing at its slowest pace since the COVID nineteen pandemic.

If oil stays at$100 per barrel for the rest of the year, inflation could hit 5.4%. Uh the Philippines declared a state of emergency. They're limiting air conditioning in public buildings and made public transportation free. People are also striking to protest. gas and diesel prices. Uh there's been gas station employees in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan that were killed in robberies or like rage-based assaults because no one can get gas at the pump.

The EU was warning that it's going to struggle with low growth and high inflation. Um, and there's this looming jet fuel crisis. In the in Europe that could lead to just like mass cancellation of flights. Like they literally cannot get jet fuel to power their planes. Uh the Saudis, their oil production fell by seven hundred thousand barrels a day last week because of attacks on oil fields and their pipeline. Uh that capacity is now back online, but that's a huge dip.

And then an underdiscussed part of this Ben is uh a lot of these countries have all these migrant workers. Like the Emirates has something like eight point seven million migrant workers, according to the New York Times. That's like eighty percent of the population. Um Those people are being hurt the most as economic activity falls off a cliff.

And so uh tourism, for example, to the UAE was fifteen percent of GDP in the country before the war. That's like seventy nine billion dollars in twenty twenty five. That is down to zero. Right. And all these people who work in hotels. or, you know, coffee shops or whatever have nothing. Taxi.

And they're not able to sell send any money back home and they're just getting crushed. So of course, like the poorest people in poor countries are getting hurt the most the fastest while Trump, you know, laughs about how whatever will be fine. Yeah, I mean that's what's so kind of grotesque and offensive about this is you know, and I I you know kind of been Okay.

perturbed today, but it's'cause of this, right? It's it's because like Trump seems to think that this is just like another show and another thing he's managing through and He'll muddle through and and he'll kind of lose but claim he won and but there are a lot of real people that are losing, you know, th that that are dying or that are suffering or that are suffering massive economic hardship. You mentioned the Gulf.

I th we still haven't really seen what's gone on there. Like there's such censorship of any imagery coming out. We don't know what Dubai looks like. You know, we don't know the extent of the damage to uh Gulf energy facilities. We keep hearing it's worse than we've heard. And we keep hearing, by the way, to your point about the damage.

that uh i there are estimates that it could take up to if if the war stopped now, if if no more damage is done, it would still take two years for them to kind of crank this machine of energy production up to where it was. So there will be a tail all these things you said, and it was a great laydown, there will also be a massive tail to this. Like we're gonna be living with the the ramifications of this war for years to come, even if it stops now.

Yeah, and that is the best case scenario. So along with the actual war between the US and Iran, there is a hot propaganda war getting fought online. Um, I'm sure many listeners have by now seen like the disgusting videos that came out of the White House initially that were coming together real footage of US airstrikes.

on Iran with clips from movies and video games. Um, I don't know if those have stopped or not, if I've just stopped seeing them, but they were they're pretty widely condemned. Um Iran's rejoinder though has come in the form of Legos. Uh here are a couple examples. Let's watch. Holy old flat. Flip it for cash. You know what? Only call you screen. But why though? So your rich friend should be. Your whole game. Yeah. Exactly.

Bangers. Left and right. Um, for those listening, not watching, again, subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. But the first video featured Melania Trump. It was a reference to her bizarre press conference last week where she was like I did not know Geoffrey Epstein. Like ran away. Um, but the videos writ large kind of span a a fascinating range of of messages.

The most common themes are Jeffrey Epstein, that Trump is controlled by Israel, but some are focused on history. Uh, there were Lego missiles bearing messages like. for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or in memory of the American Indians or uh more recently for the children of Gaza. But the majority of the videos are fully rooted in the super online internet zeitgeist of today. the Epstein files as we just saw, uh online betting markets and war profiteering.

Pete Hegzeth being a drunk idiot with stupid tattoos. Um, we should note that we cut out some extremely anti Semitic stuff to make this more watchable. Uh there's lots of images of like BB Netanyahu kind of pulling the strings or controlling Trump in some way kind of. Old tropes. We don't know who for sure who was making these. The first ones originated from an account called Explosive News.

That account has been banned uh from YouTube and Instagram, but the videos are all over Twitter and have been amplified by accounts linked to the Iranian government and then Russian state run outlets and plenty of Americans. It's not exactly clear who runs the account. Uh, New York magazine interviewed someone over there via email. They claim they're independent, but who knows? That's what they'd say.

Uh, but that according to that article, basically these movies would launch on an official or semi official account, then move into channels aligned with like Hezbollah or the Houthis, then to the Russian link channels, then to the kind of anti imperialist left channels, then they'd be everywhere. Um but then once the kind of Lego format was established.

I think Iran's supporters treated it like a meme and you started seeing uh copycat videos from God knows where. I think those ones we just played you were most likely copycat videos. And all of it is enabled by AI, obviously. Like you use AI to make the videos th themselves. But I would imagine that These Iranian filmmakers are probably using AI to write the scripts themselves.

to like make them feel as American as possible and plugged into the zeitgeist as possible. Um, so Ben, I'm like I'm quite confident that the world would oppose this war no matter what, for all the reasons we discussed in the first thirty minutes of the show. What do you think the impact of these videos has been on shaping world opinion?

I think that's probably far more significant than we can imagine because let's face it, they're pretty fucking good. And um and look the You mentioned the snuff videos. Like the the White House version of this was to show snuff videos of US planes bombing things. Who does that appeal to around the world? Literally. Precisely nobody outside of Israel in the United States. Like nobody else looks at that and feels good. Right? And so our propaganda is literally only designed

to reach the most bloodthirsty Fox News viewer in this country or, you know, in Israel. Um their videos are on offense. Their videos It's n you know, first of all, it it shows a striking level of connectivity to At least the online discourse in the United States around everything from Epstein to Israel to insider trading to betting markets, et cetera. But also what it does is Yeah.

If Iran already you know, i if basically I think the status quo ante around the world among global opinion was this is Trump's fault. We don't like the Iranian regime. They're bad guys, they massacrate their own people. But Trump's the idiot who started this war. What these videos are probably doing, particularly with younger audiences, who they are seem very designed for, right? There's a reason no doubt it's hip hop. There's a reason, you know, it's kinda Legos, it's clever. Is

No, Iran is standing in for all of you. Everybody who's pissed at Trump, everybody who's pissed at inequality, everybody who's pissed at Israel, all the things that people around the world are pissed about. Iran is the vanguard of your resistance. Right. And they're giving them a why, right? Which is Trump is doing this to distract from Epstein because he was friends with a pedophile and because the Israelis are making him do it. Now we're not saying we're. Nothing that's right.

But that's what the argument is in the video. I I I mean if you are if you are a twenty three year old in America, Europe, or Asia, or certainly the Middle East. You're probably gonna be very open to this message. And again, it's positioning the Iranians as the stand-in for global public.

And men that is potent, uh, and they're running circles around Donald Trump and I should just say as an aside, it is a little depressing that the IRG C and their cutouts have been better at trolling Donald Trump than the Democratic Party's been for the last ten years. I know. D did you see there's also a fake movie trailer called uh Straight Outta Hormuz? Um it was not Lego, it was like AI actors, but it was like Jake Gyllenhaal, uh as Mushtaba Khamenei, Liam Neeson as Trump, Zal Zach Alvinakis.

It's a very hilarious scare, JD Vans. It's a little better than the Kamala Harris like six seven uh rapid response account. Uh sorry.

The other part of the PR war that Trump is losing Is he decided to pick a fight with a Pope, with Pope Leo. And, you know, that was in part verbal and like getting mad at Pope Leo for saying, you know, we shouldn't genocide Iran. Like that's how this kicked off. He was asked to respond to Trump. saying he was gonna destroy the entire civilization of Iran and shocker, the Pope, didn't think that was a good idea. Um, then Trump posted this image of himself as Jesus Christ.

I don't know if you saw this, you know, uh Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney responded. She said, Trump's words toward the Holy Father are unacceptable. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church and it is right and normal for him to call out for call for peace and condemn all forms of war. So while the Lego videos are like exploding, you know, in the online discourse here in the global south, I'm sure, in the Gulf, like he's also pissing off

All the Catholics, not only twenty percent of the U US citizens, but also people in Italy, people in Latin America, right? Who are we not picking a fight with? Yeah. Well that's the thing is I d I think P he is he is losing altitude very rapidly. I mean, first of all, the Pope, guess who's going to be in office after Trump? The Pope.

Right. Um, guess what Catholics care about more than, you know, Donald Trump's politics, like being Catholic, you know? And so he's he's picking he he Uh other p I think we are so psychologically broken in this country. that we've allowed Donald Trump to kind of assume a sense that he's like permanent. But he's not. He's gonna be the clock is ticking, the sand is running through the hourglass, he's rapid losing power, and the Pope's not afraid of him. And

I and if he forces Catholics to choose between like their faith and their faith leader and Donald Trump's truth social fights, like he's gonna lose most Catholics. The Maloney thing is even more interesting because he clapped back at her. Did he call an Italian outlet or something? And he said he said, you know, she wants Iran to get a nuclear weapon or something a and and she said No one believes that then she came back and said

There are only nine countries in the world nuclear weapons and the only one to use it is United States. So basically fuck off. And Man, i this is someone who's a right wing populist who attended Trump's inauguration, who's his like favorite European. I mean, she's throwing haymakers at him now. I mean, I I think it's hard for Mary he is so weak internationally right now.

Um, he's losing his allies. Orban has been toppled. Maloney's breaking with him. The Catholic Church is breaking with him. They got Lego videos trolling him, like Uh I I I it's it's you know, he's it's actually this war is the thing that he's jumped into of some quicksand and he can't swim out of it by like truth social Yeah.

Yeah, and and when your kind of like veneer of invincibility gets popped, that's when everyone starts taking shots at you and he just seems weakened. And you know, back to the propaganda though. I think one thing that's making, as you mentioned earlier, making all this propaganda about the war travel even further.

Is how little real information is being allowed out of the Gulf. Yeah. You know, you mentioned the Pentagon is clearly covering up the scope of the damage to US bases in the region, also to casualties. Yeah. Uh the State Department has covered up the damage to embassies and consulates. We talked about some of that, like the Saudi

uh embassy or consulate building that got hit by two drone strikes and like would have killed hundreds of people if it had been during the day. Um the US has pressured commercial satellite imagery providers to restrict access to images from the Gulf. And then there's been a crackdown on news reports and social media posts of images on Iranian airstrikes within these Gulf countries themselves.

Um and then today, Ben, uh uh on Tuesday, news broke that a journalist named Ahmed Shihab El Din, this prominent American Kuwaiti journalist, was arrested in Kuwait on March third. after he published an image of a US Air Force jet crashing, this was that friendly fire incident early on in the war, uh that CENTCOM acknowledged the pilot ejected, the pilot was safe, but

uh Shihab al Din has been in detention since that time with limited access to a lawyer. He's allegedly being charged with these new security laws that have been put in place to define terrorism as quote, Spreading terror among the people, end quote, and then another law that punishes the publication or spreading of false rumors in relation to military entities with the intent to weaken confidence in these entities. Uh Semaphore had a kind of related piece.

this week about a similar crackdown in the UAE, including the arrest of a photojournalist on March seventeenth. This is obviously bad news for press freedom generally. Um and is also just wildly hypocritical of these Gulf countries, given how many of them have used social media to self promote, like pay influence. Very bad. We should say this dress of i is outrageous and this is an American and an Equity American, right? Uh uh last I checked like

Kuwait's not a country that usually arrests American journalists. Um What is Rubia doing to get this guy? What's yeah, what what do we care about that? Um so first it's like we should be trying to get his release uh ASAP. But then I I would say look more broadly, what is so stupid about this is it is so obvious what is happening. You don't need to be some expert. When when they did the rescue of the pilot. We got like a crazy two hour briefing from Raisin Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

with every single secret detail of the minutia of how they got this guy. And we can't even get a fucking damage assessment uh of US embassies and bases across the region. Right. It's so obvious that they only are putting out good it's like Vietnam the height of like the Vietnam dishonesty i makes this look uh that makes that that look transparent by comparison. We have no idea.

What are the American casualties are? We don't have no idea how injured those people are. We have no idea what has the damage to our facilities or Gulf energy infrastructure. And what's also so stupid about this is that d like I know people in some of these Gulf countries. Guess what? I can text with them. Photos sent to me of the of the destroyed AWAX plane that costs like six hundred million dollars.

I've had people you know just be like, Hey, here's what's going on. You I I can't go outside. I went outside the other day and like like a drone fell. Like like it's not like we don't know right that shit is getting real in places like Dubai. It's crazy. So the idea okay, we won't have pictures Like b but d do you think that means that we're all gonna plan vacations to Dubai? Right. What are you even covering up, people?

I know it's so it's so self defeating. It really hurts them more than it helps. By the way, if you want to support a media organization that will never cover up for Donald Trump or Pete Hag Zeth or for you know broken Pentagon assets, please consider joining Crooked Media subscription community. You get exclusive access to bonus content like Pod Save America Only Friends. You get a deep dive every week into the latest polling from Dan Pfeiffer.

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Go to Cricket.com slash friends to learn more, or you can become a subscriber on YouTube by pressing the join button. So thank you for doing that. Uh meanwhile, Ben, so uh there's another war happening in Lebanon. Israel just continues to level huge swaths of Lebanon. They're ostensibly going after Hezbollah, the Iranian backed, you know, heavily armed state within a state in Lebanon.

The IDF is hitting major urban areas. There have been huge numbers of civilian casualties, and the images and videos are horrifying. In addition to bombing Beirut, The IDF has established this like six mile wide that it's you know the the they're calling it a buffer zone, but it's an invasion of occupation of of South Lebanon, and they've leveled all these villages there. So far, 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced.

over two thousand have been killed and attacks from both sides have continued it through the ceasefire. between the US and Iran. Uh last week I think we talked about the idea of hitting a hundred targets in Beirut in this ten minute window, which killed over three hundred people. A lot of the strikes were I think in broad daylight. Uh one horrific story among many, there was a two year old girl

who survived a strike on her home last week, only to be killed over the weekend when the IDF struck her father's funeral. So really grim stuff. Uh twelve IDF soldiers and two Israeli civilians have also been killed. So on Tuesday,

Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met in DC for these working level peace talks under the uh regime change loving eye of Marco Rubio and what the Times of Israel called the most senior in-person engagement ever between the two countries uh and their first bilateral talk since nineteen ninety three.

The Lebanese government wants a ceasefire. Um Israel wants Hezbollah disarmed. The problem is that the Lebanese government can't deliver on either of those things, and Hezbollah was not at the table. Ahead of the talks, the US S Netanyahu for a pause in the fighting.

Uh Netanyahu obliged by pausing strikes on Beirut, but operations in southern Lebanon have continued. Uh the idea have reportedly hit a Red Cross Center on Monday. Uh a day earlier at the Red Cross at a Lebanese volunteer was killed after being directly targeted by an Israeli drone. So Ben, I I like I'm obviously for diplomacy, but it it's hard not to feel like these talks weren't just for show given that the Lebanese government doesn't control Hezbollah.

And given that I don't trust Israel's claim that they're fighting Hezbollah. I'm just gonna say it. Like I uh have you seen the casualties? Like they they're th they sound like they're kids. There's medical workers there. you know, killing um one Hezbollah fighter and a bunch of people around them, which is a war crime, you know, uh,'cause there's clearly no proportionality in what they're doing.

Or they have s designs on like territory in southern Lebanon. I mean I don't doubt that Hezbollah is a problem for Israel. It is, but like uh th this is just this is I mean, if you look at Southern Lebanon for instance.

Yeah, one thing is they're not just destroying kind of structures, they're rendering it uninhabitable. So I saw a statistic that they've destroyed something like sixty thousand olive trees, um, in southern Lebanon, right? They're destroying agricul the capacity to to live there. Um I is i is that the world we're in now? That's okay. Like uh so I I just I I I'm sorry. I I I don't see how this is some like credible strategy to like degrade and disarm Hezbollah.

They're bombing Beirut in broad daylight because they thought that you know they're apparently I was reading one report on this, they were like the the target list got to like Hezbollah hideouts and they figure there are better odds of the Hezbollah individuals who are mostly like low level, I think, being in those hideouts during the day. So they bombed during the day, but that obviously meant people were walking to work.

They were taking their kids to school. Like there were tons of civilian casualties with killed and wounded. And here's the thing, because I want to say to the like anticipate some of the pro-Israel arguments, even if we probably don't have that many pro-Israel listeners left. Um, they'll say, Well, what are you supposed to do? You know, have you considered? The blowback from what you're doing.

And if you think that I'm, you know, how long that's gonna last? And if you think that's like, you know, a hyperbolic statement, his blood didn't exist. In nineteen eighty two, the last time Israel or not the last time'cause they've done a bunch of times, but when Israel, you know, invaded and occupied and killed a bunch of people in Lebanon, that gave birth to Hezbollah. And here we are forty plus years later, and Israel's fighting the militia that was created in reaction to Israel bombing

Lebanon. Yep. They're gonna be there forty years from now. Like uh like this fighting the next militia that was created because people were pissed about what Israel's doing right now. So don't tell me this is some genius Israeli military strategy where they're wrecking Hamas and Hezbollah. They're they're assuring that there are gonna be resistance movements. Forever. And boy, it tried it seems probably um beneficial to Netanyahu that the longer the war drags on, he can't

testify in court. You know, he keeps seeking these like two week extensions for national security reasons to not testify. Yeah. And he pushes out the election. Yeah. And especially at a time when voters are increasingly uh in Israel are starting to be dissatisfied with his handling of the war. It's an interesting coin, isn't it?

Yeah, and that and and so people say to me, Well, what's he supposed to do about the people in northern Israel who've had to deal with intermittent uh Hezbollah rocket fire? Not this. This isn't working. Like this just bombarding a country i is is th this breeds resistance, right? Um and and and so I'm glad they're negotiating, but the negotiations are these kind of unrealistic like

w you have to eliminate any vestige of Hezbollah and disarm uh with a government that doesn't have the capability to do that, like you said. Uh I it just I it feels like Netanyahu once there there's gonna be election in Israel next few months And he needs there to be a a feeling of war um in in order to get reelected. And and so he makes unrealistic demands that can't be met and then bombs the country at when those demands aren't met. And that's not a negotiation.

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Alright, let's switch to the good news section of our show. As we mentioned at the top, there was a truly historic election this past weekend in Hungary. Viktor Orban, the right-wing populist, wannabe dictator, kleptocratic prick. who's been running hungry for sixteen years, got absolutely smoked in Sunday's parliamentary elections. He was defeated by a guy named Peter Magyar, this conservative former member of Orban's party,

who made the race a referendum on Orban's corruption, his failure to address the cost of living crisis, his ties with Russia, and just general failed leadership. There was record participation, seventy seven percent, uh the highest turnout ever in a Hungarian election.

And Magyar's TISA party will now have a two thirds majority in the parliament, which is absolutely essential for fixing what is broken in the country because it means he'll be able to roll back changes Orban made to Hungary's constitution and political system.

That have entrenched his party's power. Um, then I saw a lot of people online start to kind of yuck our yum by saying, like, actually, you know, Magyar is pretty right wing. Uh he won't be different. And to them I just want to say, Take the win for like two fucking seconds.

Well, yeah. celebrate this for a bit because Orban was the poster child for how you strangle a democracy nearly to death. Uh he made life awful for the Hungarian people. He was a spoiler in the European Union who helped block efforts to constrain the worst leaders in the world, Putin, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, uh he's buddies with Trump. Uh also this was another example.

of JD Vance making a fool of himself. As we discussed last week, Vance visited Hungary just before the election to stump for Orban, where he whined about election interference from Brussels while doing a little s election interference of his own. Um that I'm sure you've seen the chart of how JD's visit Corresponds with when the betting markets flipped from everyone thinking Orban would win to lose. It's delicious. So here is Vance trying to spin away his loserdom on Fox News Monday. Let's watch.

We didn't go because we expected Victor to cruise to an election victory. We went because it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time. wasn't about Russia and fundamentally it wasn't about Europe. It was about the United States and the fact that he's been a good partner to both me and the President personally, but also to the United States. I'm sad that he lost. We'll work very well, I'm sure, with the next Prime Minister of Hungary.

But It wasn't a bad trip at all because it's worth standing by people even if you don't win every race.

For what it's worth, I like if you got a guy somewhere and you wanna help him win election, like by all means go campaign for him. It wasn't a bad trip'cause they lost, it was a bad trip'cause they were stumping for Victor Orban. Or something for anyone. It's you know. Yeah. But Ben, you've been uh you've hated Victor Orban for a long time. Go off. Go off, King.

Well look I'cause I I I will say f first of all on Victor Orban and then on the Hungarian opposition for a second. Um th I I heard this thing too. Well Mag Yar he's conservative like It fundamentally misunderstands it fundamentally misunderstands. What's the The danger is that Victor represent. Victor Orban was at the nexus of the far right international. This is a guy that came to power cultivating ties with Putin and drawing from Putin's playbook and westernizing Putin's playbook.

You know, which we've talked about a lot. Consolidating control of the media, uh tr packing the courts with far right judges so that they can find in favor of power grabs, enriching a bunch of cronies who finance your politics. You know, intimidating and harassing civil society and NGOs, redrawing parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power, wrapping up in an us versus them nationalist message. Uh

Building a fucking wall. Like Victor Orban was building the wall before Donald Trump ran for president, right? So this guy was at the vanguard and he was. part of a connective tissue to Bibi Netanyahu, very close to BB Netanyahu, benefited from some of those former Mossad guys in the Black Cube doing campaigns for him. Very close to Putin, very close to Trump.

And and so d th Peter Magyar is against all that. He's going to stop all that. Like even if I don't necessarily agree with all of his policies on like taxes and immigration, like he's that's over now. The Hungary is not this kind of connective tissue. It's the center of Europe, the heart of Europe.

for all these autocratic leaders to fuck around in European politics and Western politics. He's not you know, this guy was at the vanguard of the playbook that Trump Trump's, you know, the more intellectual people on the far right, including J JD Vance, have utilized. That's why they cared so much.

Like like let's just look at it from their perspective. If Peter Magyar was such a conservative, then JD Vance wouldn't have been over there desperately trying to help his friend Victor. Exactly. Right? And and and secondly, on the Hungarian opposition, listen to them. They are fucking thrilled.

And I just wanna give a shout out to these people. They weathered sixteen years of absolute bullshit, especially the people that were activists. Some of them were harassed, some of them were doxxed, some of them faced criminal charges and like they kept it up.

And and they went from one election loss to another, they kept reporting on corruption. And by the corruption is the thing that really brought Orban down more than authoritarianism. Right. There's a lesson in that for us, you know? Yep. Um and and so It is a huge deal. It shows that someone who's an entrenched autocrat with his tentacles and all aspects of politics and society can be literally uprooted, like root and brand.

And now there's an opportunity to change the constitution and to fundamentally transform Hungary, not into the a progressive paradise. Like this is where the people online need to change. Better is better. Better is okay. It's better. Yeah, it's better. Yeah, I mean Magyar said the country was essentially taken over by an organized crime syndicate. That's how we described warp on it. It's not like he doesn't get it, dude.

He gets it. And since the election, uh, Maggiear said he's gonna go after uh what he called the ill gotten gains of high ranking Fidesz members. He called for the country's president, the prosecutor general, the president of the constitutional court to immediately resign. He wants to amend the constitution to limit prime ministers to two terms, two terms. Uh Orbion was Orban was going for his fifth, I believe.

Um he said one of his first trips as Prime Minister is gonna be to Brussels, where he hopes to get them to unlock about twenty billion in aid that have been withheld because of Orbán. Um the one place I think th there is a pretty big difference on policy is Magyar does not back fast tracking Ukraine's membership into the EU. Uh he didn't endorse like an EU fan financial aid package to Ukraine that had been blocked by Orban. Who knows if he'll evolve on this position over time.

positions over time. But again on corruption, here's a clip from a guy named Shondor Letterer, uh, the director of K Monitor, a Hungarian anti corruption initiative, who spoke about Magyar's promises in Roblox he's gonna phase in tackling corruption. Let's listen. He pledged to establish an asset recovery office to pursue oligarchs who enrich themselves during the Orban system, including the Prime Minister, friends and family members.

As that's a creep key promise, as rampant corruption under Orban was one of the most important topics uh in the opposition's campaign. It united conservative, liberal and left wing voters behind Peter Major and had become increasingly uncomfortable even for Orban supporters in the recent years. Especially as high inflation, rising housing costs, deteriorating health care system and economic stagnation left millions frustrated by the luxurious lifestyle.

of Orban's elite and the impunity they also enjoyed. However, the tasks ahead of Peter Majar's government are enormous. And he will have to deliver first results in a couple of months by likely experiencing resistance from Orban's allies and state institutions. And also a significant water base behind Viktor Orban, who already announced that they are going to protect their achievement.

So Shondor was like the one of the main characters in my last book. He's just an incredible guy. I mean, he's literally been reporting on this corruption for like over a decade. Um, I think what's what's like so important there, the the lessons that we can draw. That point you made about corruption. Like that can unite people left to right. You know, just disgust. I mean, with it it it's you know

Look at Eric Trump, Don Jr., day trading on wars, gilded oval office, ballrooms, like that stuff actually travels and can unite people across an ideological spectrum. Like that's Real popular. That's that's real populism. That there's a real lesson for us in that. Also importantly, like look, Maggie R is gonna run into Roblox. Fidesz Orban's party is kind of embedded. They own a bunch of the media. It's gonna be tough.

Um and and and we have to accept that, you know, better is gonna be good. He may not be able to deliver everything. We're gonna have to watch just in the same way that Orban was at the vanguard of building this kind of infrastructure, we should learn lessons as Democrats. about how successful or not they are in kind of uprooting this these systems of corruption.

Uh I'm just gonna go on a limb, Tommy, and say that like the Merrick Garland, you know, uh did not do that as Justice uh as attorney general. Um But but because uh a again, we have an investment in them. And the last thing I want to say is uh look, what does this say about the future of the far right, right, in Europe? Look, it doesn't mean it's all over for them. The French election looms in the national rally that It's German too. But I think you see

First of all, what we can say with certainty is that Trump is an albatross on them, right? Which was not the case a year ago when J D Vance was lecturing people in Germany and felt like he had the momentum. Now you got Georgia Maloney like literally distancing herself and taking a wax at Trump'cause she's a good politician and she sees what happened to Victor Orban, you know. And so at a minimum, Trump has made it harder for the far right. So in a weird way America's helping.

the battle against democracy by having such a fucking incompetent fascist running our country that it's discrediting the global far right. And again, I think what what Democrats, small D Democrats have to do in Europe is learn what worked in Hungary, you know, what what can we take away from that by waging these campaigns? And by the way, hang these far right parties on Trump.

I'd be running against Trump if I was a French politician. Oh god, me too.'Cause you gotta th there's nothing you can do at this point to fix the cost of living crisis in the short term or like the spike in energy prices, all you can do is message it. And I would be making crystal clear every day that this is Donald Trump's fault. That's what I don't understand what like Keir Starmer is doing. It's like enough of this like offering, you know

Defensive support. I we'll get to that in a second, but it's like hammer this guy. So finally, Ben, let's check in with our neighbors uh to the north in Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney is riding high after winning three out of three special elections this weekend. And Justin Trudeau was looking high at Coachella this weekend, having a good ass time. Carney now is in majority government. Uh so remember

The Liberal Party under Trudeau, uh, was really struggling. It looked dead in the water like the conservatives were gonna win. That was until uh Trudeau dropped out. Donald Trump started threatening to annex Canada last year, and then Mark Carney came in. And rode those threats from Trump and an anti Trump message to electoral victory, but only to a minority government. So we had trouble What was it? Elbows up or

That's right. Yeah, the hockey fight. So now Kearney will better able to govern and he won't have to face reelection until twenty twenty nine. Which makes this a very, very sad day for Canada's conservatives led by uh Pierre Polyev.

So back in January, uh Kearney threw some punches at Trump during this like a much heralded speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Um he expanded upon those themes over the weekend at this Liberal Party's convention. Here's a clip of what he had to say. Let's watch. Is not a plan and nostalgic is not a strategy. Canadians are demonstrating just how strong. We are. You know, it started quietly. Hey Paul. Choosing a wine from the Okanagan over one from California. Thank you. Anyone?

Anyone had any bourbon recently? No. The days of our military sending 70 cents of every dollars to the United States are over. We have struck 20 new economic and security partnerships on four continents in just a year. We are on track to Double. on US exports over the next decade. That is three hundred billion dollars. We are defending Canada and Canadian values with reliable Yeah.

So it sucks to hear people like whooping at an attack on California lines from a liberal leader from our closest ally in Canada. But like that's obviously the way to run right now if you're dealing with Trump. I I I talked to uh I went on Uh pods of the UK, I was talking with Nish and Coco.

earlier today about all this. By the way, if you're not subscribed to that show, not listening to the show, you are only hurting yourself. It is hilarious and funny and it's hilarious and funny mean the same thing. With hilarious and smart and great. So subscribe to Pod Save the UK. But for the life of us,

We just could not understand why uh British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wouldn't adopt that same approach, especially when his approval rating is fifty points underwater. Like what do you have to lose, dude? I I honestly at this point don't know what planet, you know, Kirstumer is I mean'cause he and here's the thing. Do I like watching like a Canadian banker just like whale the shit out? Altyazı M.K. It doesn't feel good. But actually it does feel good because here's why.

It is ultimately in our interest as Americans that Donald Trump in his incompetent brand of narcissistic fascism is stopped. It really is. And so the best way to stop it is if everybody People in this country, institutions in this country. you know, uh foreign leaders of allies stand up to him and kick him around and cut him down to size because that that's ultimately good for us, you know, like

I I would have liked if Mark Carney picked on a state other than California, but that's fine. That's fine. I get it.

Like a whack at a red state here, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but no, seriously, like I I'm I'm glad. But what it shows again is time and again we've seen like If you stand up to Trump, like from the first election the Kearney won, to Albanese in Australia, to you know, to what like everywhere we look, you are rewarded for standing up to Donald Trump.

And everywhere we see people kissing his ass and like pathetic, you know, Mark Ruta going on Jake Tapper and you know, I mean, that just doesn't I don't know What timeline are you people in? Um i i i you they want strength and they they want to be proud of something, you know, and and and good for Canada, like good for the Liberals, good for Mark Carney, good for Justin Trudeau. Coachella looked like fun this year.

Speaking of things we can be proud of, how about Justin Bieber's uh kind of polarizing low tech laptop set at Coachella? It's also very funny that he was getting attacked in Canada for using a a plastic cup when he tried to b ban like single use cups. Also he's tweeting about Victor Orb Orban from Coachella. I my advice, you know, I said this on PSA, I I would say go to Courcella or tweet about Victor Orban. Doing both is probably gonna He's gonna confuse everybody.

I mean well usually if you go to a place of Coachella, you you're you're let's just say ingesting substances that make you think that I'm gonna be in a social media blackout. I'm just saying. You're probably not gonna wanna treat tweet to like, you know, however many millions of people he has about some foreign policy issue. He's got well Katie Perry's got a lot more. Yeah, she's got a chip.

Maybe they could blend they could merge social media accounts and you know. Do they have a nickname? Like a You know what I mean? Yeah. Nickname? I don't know. Sound off in the Discord. Yeah let's no bad ideas in the brainstorm here. Let us know. We'll talk about it next week. Yeah. Anyway, uh, congrats, uh, Canadian progressive. It's kinda funny because Justin was kind of um The right Canadian leader for Trump won. That's true.

Like we need we had like a woke Canadian, you know, he could be like that's what Trudeau was, right? And now we've got this kind of like hard ass banker. Trolling California wines. Yeah. And uh, you know, Justin Trudeau's dad hooked up with Barbara Streisand, now he's with Katy Perry. So here we are. And I guess they're drinking Canadian Club up there, you know. Or Seagrims or whatever it is. Yeah, whatever they drink up there. Send us some Canadian World Oceans, send us some.

I do like bourbon. Anyway, all right, that's it for me and Ben blabbing about stuff. Uh stick around though for Ben's conversation with Anand Gopal about his new book about Syria. Uh it's an incredible book, incredible conversation. Check it out. Podsave the world is brought to you by Helix. Uh sleep is the most important thing in my life. When I sleep well, I feel great. I'm in a good mood. I'm happy. I'm better able to work and work out and do all the things. When I got a bad night's sleep,

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Uh all right, I'm very pleased uh to be joined by Anand Gopal. He is a writer for the New Yorker. He's won a national magazine award for his writing on the Middle East. He's twice been a Pulitzer finalist for his reporting. He's the author of No Good Men Among the Living, America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes. His new book uh that we're gonna talk about is Days of Love and Rage, a story of ordinary people forging a revolution. Um Anand, uh thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. So the book is Days of Love and Rage, a story of ordinary people forging a revolution. Um, and really what this book does is it traces the lives of a number of people that became involved on the f beginning of the Syrian Revolution in this uh city, Manbij, in inside of Syria, that experienced both

the drama of confronting uh and ultimately, you know, kind of shaking off the rule of the Assad regime, but then experienced both a form of direct democracy under a revolutionary council, then a rule of ISIS. uh then a rule of uh the s uh Syrian Kurds that the United States and others were backing and then ultimately obviously uh currently living under Ahmed al-Shar. So it's a tells the story of the entire Syrian civil war.

kind of through the prism of uh people and manbage. I wanna start by asking about your process by which you wrote this because I was really struck in reading this that we live in a time when, you know, journalism is kind of under siege and and this kind of true long form in depth reporting is you know, kind of disappearing uh, not entirely but too much around us and people are getting news on social media and and here you are completely immersed in the lies

Of these characters who went through this extraordinary ordeal uh over the course of more than a decade. How did you because you basically recreate? you know, people's what's happening in their heads in dramatic events, what's happening in rooms that, you know, people like me, you know, have never been in. Um, how how did you go about reporting this?

Yeah. Well, I started with uh just interviewing as many people as I can and eventually settled on the six people who become the principal protagonists of the story in the book. Uh but in doing so I very quickly realized that uh when asking about people's memories from events that happened ten, fifteen years ago, often they're traumatic memories that

people will misremember or they will selectively remember. Um of course I was also interviewing people in the context of the civil war, so there's contrasting interpretations of events. So pretty quickly I realized that um Um you know. By myself, I I simply wasn't able to access the level of detail I wanted to be able to tell the story. Um and so I started recruiting.

Syrians, uh other uh individuals who were uh to took part in some many of the events described in the book. So people who took part in the revolution against the dictator and uh hired them as as research assistants and so they ended up interviewing their own friends and families, their own comrades who they shared time on the barricades with. And so that was it, that opened up people. Uh they were more willing to talk about more intimate moments to their friends and families.

Um in addition to doing that, I was also able to make use of this a really voluminous archive of of newspapers and social media documentation that took place throughout almost all the events described in the book. Syria was probably the first social media war. Uh so people were going out and filming things on their cell phones and uh country was under dictatorship for forty years in which there were essentially two state run newspapers.

The dictatorship is overthrown in the city that I describe in the book. And all of a sudden overnight all these newspapers appear uh from left wing to conservative papers and People are going out into street corners with mimeographed newspapers and handing it out and reading it, et cetera. So I was able to kind of get like a almost day, daily blow-by-blow account of what was happening. So with all of this, both the you know, the social media archive, the the print.

media and then the we the interviews we conducted almost two thousand interviews for the book. I was able to triangulate. people's experiences. And so uh was always able to get any in any scene I was always able to get like multiple witnesses to it so I could be confident to put it down on on the page.

So I I want to ask you about revolution itself and in particular one of the things that I think is really uh useful about your method is that we meet a number of your characters kind of before the revolution. Uh we kind of go back into their lives. Uh and they're really, you know

I don't want to use the word ordinary'cause part of the point of the book is everybody is extraordinary in some fashion. But um in the sense that these are people that, you know, they're they're they're vendors running stalls or they're students or you know, they're they're not you know, the elite, or they're not uh people that you would think of as revolutionary leaders. And what I want to ask about is

What what sense you got? There's a character, uh Oday, for instance, who's one of your pr main protagonists, who You know, seemingly you would not think this person is, you know, going to be a leading revolutionary, and yet he finds himself repeatedly in circumstances early in the revolution where

There's a crowd, they're quiet, they don't know what to do, or they're literally even standing in front of, you know, military police that they know are going to to beat them, potentially detain and torture them. And he finds himself shouting, you know, revolutionary slogans down with the regime, or or, you know. Um, and

I I why do you think it is that some people do that and others don't? Like why why why did Oday find it in him to do that? Because I you know to me, you always wonder about who who has the ability to be at the Vanguard. Um did you learn anything about What's why him and not other people in the crowd and manbijge, you know, who were willing to do that.

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think um one of the things we tend not to think about often is the nature of character.

meaning uh one's character traits, uh the virtues one might have, uh whether they're tend to be courageous or loyal, etcetera. And uh somebody like O'Day, who I would think when we meet him in the book, he's he starts as a sort of apolitical uh layabout, uh smoking hash on rooftops, et cetera etcetera, and slowly gets inducted into the uprising and d finds himself becoming a revolutionary leader.

You would have never predicted, I think, beforehand that that's where he would have ended up. But there was always a kind of brashness to him that if one really studied his character prior to the revolution, it may have shown itself in different ways. The way he he um rejected the tyrannical rule of his father, for instance. Um

And uh when those p personal characteristics um are given the right context, sometimes they can uh become uh politically meaningful. Uh, we have another character in the book, Abdul Hadi, who somebody who comes from very poor background uh always had a chip on his shoulder, um, somebody who f uh felt festering resentment toward some of the more wealthier uh citizens of of his city.

Which is a fairly common feeling, but all of a sudden put into the maelstrom of revolution, that character trait of being resentful. ends up manifesting in a kind of dark politics, uh as we go on. So I think it's one of those things you can never know in advance what you're looking for. But once ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances, sometimes These kinds of character traits really shine.

Yeah, I mean uh the other the arc of these characters, let's just take those two. Um and again you don't have to read the book to even uh uh kind of get why th these threads are interesting, but uh but you should read the book. Um But one of the things you described that is remarkable and I think not fully understood is that a place like Manbidge um after

the civil war really started and the Assad regime lost control of some territory. It was kind of well, it was it was effectively self-governing with this kind of revolutionary council that uh your main characters, a number of them participated in. And

You could understand the similar impulses to er or the different impulses that could lead those two characters, Ode and Abdulhadi, to uh to participate in revolution, but then they become quite different um in their orientation when it comes time to govern.

And And you describe what began as a very idealistic exercise, you know, something that uh all of us, you know, even uh who have not, you know, been to Syria, could could see ourselves and the impulses to, you know, we're gonna self govern and we're gonna set up these different councils and it's gonna be great and we're gonna uh have freedom.

But quickly disputes emerge, you know. And um Oday's the kind of guy who ends up frustrated and disgusted with the whole thing. And Abdulhadi's the kind of guy who ends up literally like making uh his own peace with ISIS. Um and we'll get into that as they come in. I mean, what what did you learn about democracy itself and how individuals who've never experienced it um act when you know, the revolution transfers to to governance.

So when when people went out initially to protest against the regime, everybody was marching and risking their lives for this idea of of freedom. Uh there was no question in their minds what freedom meant. It was just freedom meant being free from the dictator.

as soon as they did free themselves from the dictator, now a new question of what what does freedom actually mean in the context of governing oneself arises. Um and there were some in the city Um, especially those from middle class and upper middle class backgrounds who who articulated a vision of freedom which was something like we want freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of markets, freedom meant kind of being left alone by by the government.

And on the other hand, you had people who tended to be more on the poor and working class um side of the community, who said, Well, freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly, that's great, but at the same time we're facing an affordability crisis in our city. Um the uh bread, which is a basic uh staple, price of bread was going sky high.

lots of people were fleeing from other parts of Syria to Members and so therefore rents were uh increasing. And so for them they were uh arguing for some f form of price control. So freedom was not just to be left alone, but freedom was To be given the resources to live your best life. And um one of the lessons I drew from reporting this out was the way in which democracy really depends.

on the maybe the latter conception of freedom, which is one in which people have have a sense of an equal say, which they can only have if they have enough to eat to have uh they can make their rent every every month. And if they don't

then people will very quickly tend to grow disillusioned with a kind of very l limited democracy while not uh having a more substantive uh form of self-governance. And that that un tragically ends in this case with a dictatorial movement, ISIS taking over the city.

Yeah, and I I I what i it's also interesting is you you meet these people, they're they're familiar to us even if they're you know, the circumstances of their lives might be foreign to us. They want the same things. They want to fall in love, they want to raise a family, they want to make a good living, they'd like to be free in in terms of being able to say what they want. And we see them living under

You know, a Bathist Arab nationalist regime of Bashar al-Assad. We see them living briefly under this revolutionary council that kind of dissolves into factions fighting each other. We see them live under ISIS. Um and then, you know, kind of coda is into the Syrian defense forces or democra democratic forces come in and and and then we'll get to the the very end of of a Assad regime. But but really, you know, we see Arab nationalism, Isla Islamist chaos.

And yet they're the same people, you know, underneath that. I mean w i it felt like in miniature what's happened to the region, you know, all these different ideologies imposed on people and them trying to figure it out. I mean, what did you learn about And how did you see the experience of these people in Mambidge as representative of kind of the how these ideologies fail to deliver what people want. And how do you do you compare them to each other?

So, you know, most of the region for thirty, forty years lived under some version of Arab nationalism, um, which on the one hand was secular. Uh on the other hand, there was a a kind of agreement or a social contract that underpinned a lot of these Arab regimes, which is that Um we will give citizens a modicum of economic opportunities. Usually that meant um some kind of minimum welfare state, essentially.

uh in which people could uh have some social mobility. Maybe your children could have a slightly better life than you had. Lots millions of farmers moved from the countryside uh to the cities and you had the growth of the middle class. All of this happened from the sixties to the nineties.

Um but in exchange for that basic uh economic opportunity, um you had to surrender all political rights whatsoever. So this is the kind of the the Faustian pact that was at the heart of all of the Arab regimes. What happens beginning of the nineteen nineties is one by one that that pact gets undone because of uh widespread privatization of the economies in a lot of these countries.

Um and so now by twenty eleven people uh lost a lot of the economic uh sort of social safety net and yet they still didn't have any political rights. And that's what was the basis of the uprising in twenty eleven across the region. Um and then so Membage then goes through this period of I would say like experimentary experimental democracy for eighteen months in which they're trying out different versions of democracy. I think a kind of more quintessentially liberal democracies, one version

uh other kinds of participatory democracies. And indeed there are there are examples of this throughout the region, but one of the things that the the liberal democracy f um failed to deliver to people, not just in Membersh but in the early period of the Arab Spring in Egypt and in other places was Um the way in which it didn't always uh address the needs of more working class people in those communities. So there was a lot of it is about political rights.

but not enough about economic opportunities for for the poor. And this o opened the door for what I would consider more right wing forces to to make a plan. And in this case, the right wing forces were more Islamist groups who Did promise. uh more economic opportunities for people. And so in that way, Members kind of tracks the trajectory of the region over And you know, in the backdrop, I mean, you you don't focus on the United States that much. Um

But even just listening to your description, i it it feels in a way like every single thing we exported or imposed failed. You know, like like the the Arab nationalism was kind of some of it was an extension of Cold War politics. uh from the West. The privatization certainly was the kind of in vogue idea after the Cold War. Um the kind of secular freedom and democracy liberalism that appealed maybe to certain middle class didn't deliver

um for, you know, people's pocketbooks as you're saying. Uh in the war itself, you know, uh the administration I was a part of uh it it felt like w everything we did was wrong, you know. Um If we were not arming the opposition, we were not supporting them and then when we were arming them it was not coherent or is the wrong people.

I come away with a sense from my own experience and from reading this of of like we tend to make things worse, you know, um, even if our intentions are good, um, or even maybe if they're they're not good, obviously. Um I mean, how do you evaluate policy in this region, you know, Syria in particular, but I mean really the whole region, um, i in terms of

What would actually be helpful to people? Is it just to butt out? Um, or is there some something we haven't tried? Like how how do you come away from all your journalism and writing this, thinking about that?

Well, I I think the when people in the region in Syria in particular think about uh the US and U and y uh American power, uh there's probably three main features that kind that loom heavily in their imagination. The first is, as I mentioned briefly, is the American mode of capitalism, privatization, uh kind of uh real very pro market policies to the detriment of s um living standards of many people in these areas.

The second is the Iraq War. Um the shadow of the Iraq War looms very large on uh what happened in Syria for a number of reasons. One of which is that it was out of the chaos and the maelstrom of the Iraq War that ISIS first appears and asserts itself across the border in Syria. And the third is US support of Israel. And so uh what that meant was there was a period early on in the uprising in which people and I described some of this in the book were debating

Like what should the foreign role be? Um and some people wanted uh arms to protect against uh uh the bombings from the aircraft. Um nobody really wanted a uh boots on the ground, right? But there was a lot of suspicion in these ranks because they said, Well, how could it be that the US is supporting Israel, the US causes chaos in in the Iraq war? Uh they're not really here to support our interests. Whatever whatever US administration was actually doing, that was perception

on the ground. And it's hard for me to imagine sort of turning around sort of decades of distrust just from one particular policy at that moment. So Uh the what was much more important was that on the ground there was a brief period where maybe these rebel groups could have been armed, but very quickly these groups turned to banditry because they didn't have.

outside support. And this created the grounds for Islamist groups to come in. Gulf states started to pour in their support and weapons and fragmented uh the the politics in the country. So um, you know, the And that but at the same time the it's important to remind uh remind ourselves that the Assad regime w would not have been able to do what it could have done if it didn't have its own form of external foreign support from Russia and Iraq.

From the outside, right, uh it seemed like a happy ending when uh Ahmed al Shah, um, you know, and his forces marched into Damascus and Assad was forced to flee. Uh I'm curious, and you know, you hinted at the end, you take us all the way up through that, but um w for the people that your characters

Was that a happy ending? Um I'm curious, uh did you have you been to Manbidge since the fall of Assad and and and and and if so, or if you've even just been in touch. Like what what is the are people hopeful about the future? Do they feel like The revolution in some way succeeded or they just feel like, okay, this is the new reality we're dealing with.

Uh I did go to Membaj uh shortly after Assad fell and I was able to talk to some of the characters in the book about their experience. Um the first thing is nobody expected this to happen. Um everyone had assumed that the revolution was completely lost.

And it had been dormant for years at that point. Um it was a kind of perfect storm of events that led led the regime to collapse. And I think the regime fell more than the rebels succeeded, if that makes sense. And so you have this new rebel group that is in power um and they are I would describe them as would be authoritarians, um, who perhaps lack the capacity of the previous regime, the Alsa regime, to really control the country in in the way that the Baths did.

But the experience that tens of thousands of Syrians have of of um getting a voice through protesting, through building alternative structures of governance. That experience has not been easily effaced. Um so that while the the the new authorities have committed massacres and they've attempted to delay elections. Today uh there is still freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in in Syria. Um it's embattled, but those freedoms are there and that is a direct legacy

of the revolution. And um I think for some Syrians who are more f uh looking in a more generational sense, I think this is not um the struggle for democracy in Syria is not something that happen for two years in twenty eleven to twenty thirteen. It's something that's gonna take a generation or two. And there may be several uprisings, several forms of social mobilization that'll ultimately lead to what with some Syrians hope would be a a more just democracy.

And so these people we meet as young people who are now middle aged, i it's a lifetime's work, not just that moment on the barricade. Exactly. It's a lifetime's work and they if they themselves perhaps are now tending to their families. They're also um

conveying the the the the memories of what they went through and there's new generations of activists. When I was in Members last, just a month or two after the fall of Assad, I saw and I described this in the book, I saw a new protest. Uh yeah. And these are most of the people in that protest had never before s uh protested, but maybe their parents had or their uncles had or their friends had. And so you can see them bequeathing this uh legacy of resistance to a new generation.

So uh just a couple more things. I mean the we're obviously speaking in the midst of the Iran War or the s pause in the Iran War. Um what what do you take from your long experience reporting this about Uh you know, the the one of the pretenses, I mean I don't believe it, um uh but of of this war was that we were somehow coming to the aid of these protesters and gonna end this regime. Um

What w uh how do you evaluate what's happening in Iran now? And how do you evaluate what would actually be most helpful? to the people that we've seen in various movements for change in in inside of Iran.

Well i it's interesting there are several parallels between what's happened in Iran and Syria, um,'cause Iranians have risen up repeatedly again and again since two thousand nine, uh, against a very repressive regime. And I think If the reports we can trust the reports out of Iran, um initially in the very, very early stages, there was widespread support for regime change.

Um, but very quickly people realized exactly what you said that the the current war was a pretext, uh and it's not a war of liberation. And um more recent reports saying that a lot of people in Iran now um after seeing the devastation that um the US is causing in that country have um reconsidered because Uh and you saw this often in Syria too, that while people are opposed to the dictator, the one thing that's possibly worse than dictatorship is is civil war and the chaos of civil war and

Um, the US intervening in the country without a real plan for what to do on on day two, um, is a recipe for chaos and disaster. And I think a lot of Iranians s uh see that today.

And the last thing I wanted to ask you is is just how did your own views about, let's say, democracy or freedom change in in in reporting this book.

Well, I think in the beginning I had uh uh what I would think is a fairly standard view of democracies. Democracy is something that happens when you get to choose your leader or choose your representatives every two or four years. Um, it happens for five minutes and Um what I saw on the ground is a different kind of democracy in which um uh there was all these uh formations we called assemblies and clubs that appeared overnight and took part in the sort of democratic life.

of the city. And it was it was clear uh in in a kind of um microcosm how important the question of who gets the rule is. And if you go back to the original idea of democracy, ancient Greeks, uh demos means

uh non-elites actually. Uh and so democracy is the rule of non-elites, and that means the rule of ordinary people. And you can I think one of the experiences of reporting this book is it led me to reassess our democracies around the world in terms of to what extent do ordinary people have power over their own lives and to what extent is it uh vested instead in billionaires and judges and uh consultants and others. And I think that's a a a way to assess the health of a democracy.

Yeah. Actually and one other thing I want to ask'cause it it's kinda always sticks with you when you read a book like this. And I know I think y you use pseudonyms, right, for uh some of the characters at least, right? Uh Just for for a couple. For a couple. How do they feel about have they read it? I mean, um I you know, I'm'cause it's so personal, you know, I mean I um

I'm just curious. I I always sometimes wonder like w w when you have subjects where you go this in into their lives and the events are so dramatic, I'm curious what the reaction is of of your subjects to the book. Well, uh none of them are read at start to finish yet, um partly because it's only in English. Um but I have read out parts, large parts of it to them after the book came out. Um

And I think several people were quite moved because uh they talked to me years ago at this point. Yeah. It's'cause it took a long time for the book to come together. And so it was it brought back a lot of the most intimate memories uh in in listening to these stories. Yeah. Well I think you honor them by you know, showing such co complete portraits of them. Uh the book is Days of Love and Rage. Uh I I truly, you know, can't recommend it enough. Um uh Anand, thanks so much for for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks again to Unango Paul for joining the show. We'll talk to you guys next week. Podsave the world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed, and edited by Jordan Cantor.

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