Happy "Liberation Day" to All Who Celebrate
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Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. How was spring break? So far, so good. Were you doing jello shots and...

Yeah, yeah. Kind of senior frogs. Yeah, we were down in Cancun and Cabo. With the kids, you know. It's a little different with kids. Yeah. Got some skiing in there. That was good. Do you want to disclose your location? I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Which is funny because I was there a couple weeks ago, and it is one of the more beautiful places I've ever been. It's absolutely spectacular. It really is. There's an Earth 2 where right after college, all my friends...

went to Jackson Hole to be like whitewater river rafting guys or really the van driver that picks up the people. And I went to DC and I was a little sad that I missed out on that trip because it was so fun. Yeah, whenever I go to a place like that, which is not that often, I always think that

that brief fantasy that I entertained after college of doing a year just living in a ski town. Not doing that was one of the dumber things in my life. Absolutely was. Yeah, if you are in your early 20s or late teens listening to this show and you have a chance to do something stupid and frivolous for a year between school or after school or before work, do it.

And by the way, you know. Or between jobs. Yeah, you can, you know, there's all kinds. I talk to all kinds of people. I love talking to people, you know, Tom Friedman-esque. And, you know, there's people, there's ski instructors, there's all this hospitality, you know. Could have been fun. Could have been amazing. I think my dad did that. He got, um.

uh asked to leave school for a semester by the administration and he went out and worked on a mountain somewhere that you can follow but it's also good for you because i think you have a real job and you realize how good you have it at school yeah he got back to college and he was like all right now i'm treating this like a nine-to-five yeah ace my way through college anyway uh we got a great show for you guys today we're going to leave the show talking about the verdict against a far-right french leader named marine le pen in fear that it might help

Her party win the French presidency in 2027. There's the international reaction to Trump's Liberation Day tariffs. Can't wait to see those spend the package here. The latest on Signalgate and the administration's reckless sharing of classified information. I'm going to talk about Elise Stefanik, who just got the rug pulled out from under her as she was hoping to get confirmed to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.,

It's going to be my favorite story of the day. It's going to be fun. This is our light segment. Yes, our light segment. We'll also talk about who may come next in that gig. The latest in the Trump administration, deporting innocent people with tattoos and rounding up people who protest policies they don't like on college campuses because free speech.

We'll talk about a major turn in the corruption case against Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, his aides, I mean, and then the latest on peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and this Trump mineral deal extortion bill with Ukraine that never seems to go away or get signed. And then, Ben, you just did our interview. Who did you talk to? I talked to David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee. We talked about the overall impact on the humanitarian sector from the dismantling of USAID by Iran

Kind of mean adult billionaire. My words, not David's. Then we talked about the earthquake in Myanmar, where they're responding, what the needs are there, what it's like to operate, given that there's a conflict zone, given that USAID is not there. We talked about the enormous needs in Sudan, where we've had obviously political and military developments, but the humanitarian concerns are only growing more acute, especially because of the withdrawal of USAID. A bit about the spread of disease and the risk of

vaccinations going away that are supported by the United States. I mean, in general, we're just kind of

Wanted to give people a snapshot of what it's like to be one of the largest humanitarian NGOs in the world that relies a lot on USAID funding infrastructure in this new reality with these individual issues obviously illustrative of that. So people should check it out and people should consider supporting groups like IRC in the new world that we're in. Yeah. I mean, look, IRC is an amazing group. They're doing great.

the Lord's work in a lot of places and their job just got exponentially harder because of Elon Musk and the doge bags. And like a lot of the problems you're talking about, Ben, I mean, very few of them are trending better. I mean, we're not going to get to it this week. I think we'll get to it next week, but there's a lot of concern that in addition to the civil war in Sudan, which has been raging for two years, basically there might be a conflict brewing in South Sudan. And of course those tensions don't remain within borders. Um,

they cross them and it'll probably make things worse. And, and yeah, David mentioned that. And you know, the one number I just previewed for people is that there are 8 million people in Sudan who are on the precipice of famine. And that doesn't go away because Doge would like to pretend it doesn't exist. It gets worse. No. Or Elon's feelings are hurt. Because some people are, you know, being mean to Tesla. Yeah. Cause, cause you don't want to buy Teslas anymore.

Okay, we'll definitely stick around for that. Please don't buy Teslas. Yeah, they're lame. Please boycott all Elon Musk's businesses. We're just going to say that as much as we can. Yeah, don't launch anything into space either. All right, let's start with this major news out of France, Ben, because on Monday, a far right-wing leader named Marine Le Pen was found guilty of embezzling European Union funds, and she was banned from running for political office for five years, which will keep her out of France's 2027 presidential campaign. Le Pen and her National Rally Party campaign

The law is going to have to pay fines. I think she was sentenced to two years under house arrest. But the political impact of this ruling is by far the most consequential part, as she was the clear front runner in this upcoming presidential election. Trump got asked about the verdict, I think, on Monday. He, of course, made it about himself, saying the conviction was, quote, a very big deal and that the case, quote, sounds like this country, meaning the U.S. Jordan Bardella, Le Pen's protege and the National Rally Party leader.

is trying to use the verdict to drum up support for national morality while also claiming that French democracy, quote, is being executed. Now, that sounds a bit hyperbolic to me, but we've also seen officials in Emmanuel Macron's party and from the French far left voice concern about this verdict going too far by banning Le Pen from running for office. Le Pen says she will appeal, but legal analysts think the odds of the case being resolved in time for her to run are quite low. So,

Ben, there's a lot of anxiety about this verdict, which was sort of the harshest verdict available, I think, to this judge. I've heard analysts and journalists argue that there's actually many members of the European Parliament who use EU funds for domestic political work like Le Pen did, but only she is being prosecuted because of her political views. So it seems like she's being singled out.

Others are pointing to Romania annulling its recent election, and they're arguing this is part of a broader anti-democratic trend in Europe. You could also point to Germany, where the main political parties there have refused to work with the far right AFD party to keep them out of power, even when they get like 20% in some of these elections.

So there's a broader set of questions, right, about how to deal with far right populism. And there's concern now that national rally will run solely on judicial bias, elites trying to stop them from gaining power, and that this verdict might ultimately help the party get more support than they otherwise would have. Of course, the flip side, as we've discussed here in the Trump context, is that no one is above the law.

And how do you sort of marry up those two things? So what's your level of anxiety about this verdict potentially helping Le Pen and National Rally? I think that there's a possibility they'll certainly try to stir that up. At the same time, you know, there's no perfect formula for how you deal with the far right. And I do think it's not

wrong for Europeans to, particularly in this case, right, if the law was broken, you know, you hold people accountable. But also just the idea of taking this seriously as kind of a threat to the body politic, to democracies. I think there's, that's okay. But the challenge is,

you also have to beat these people in the court of public opinion. And so what you don't want to see is this idea that a bunch of, well, this flipped a switch and it sidelined her. She's got this guy, this protege, Jordan Bardella, who's

29 years old. He's pretty young. Yeah, just a little young. And look, the challenge that the national front has always faced in the presidency is the French system actually makes it harder for them to win because you have two rounds, right? And so in the first round, a bunch of people run and the top two people then head to a runoff. And so it really becomes a kind of 50% election. And it's been hard. And even I think with the momentum they have, it was going to be hard for them to get over that 50% mark.

I think part of what we've seen, though, what worries me generally in France is that there have been a number of cases in which it felt like

a kind of mushy centrist elite was trying to keep not just the right, but the left out too, right? And so people may remember that after the national rally did very well in European parliamentary elections, there was this kind of big tent coalition really helped by the left merging with the center to kind of keep them out of power and parliament, but then the left got sidelined. And so there's this pattern in France of, you know, particularly Macron and, you know, people like that,

just kind of pushing down both the far right but also the left. And I think that whoever wants to make the case that they can beat the national rally, make the case that they should be the successor to Emmanuel Macron in a couple years,

is going to have to counteract that impression. They're going to have to show that it's not just a bunch of French elites trying to hold on to the power that they have, but there's a different kind of politics that, ironically, Macron tried to model the first time around when he built a movement, but that's missing. And so I don't necessarily... I'm not an expert on this law, so I can't necessarily evaluate...

Clearly, there are no Merrick Garland issues in France. They just kind of went for it. But I do think that this – yes, take that seriously. Yes, don't be afraid to prosecute people. But also don't think that that's enough. You need to show that there's a new kind of politics that can beat the far right, not just using legal mechanisms or canceling elections like in Romania.

Yeah.

the judge gave Le Pen this sort of maximum sentence. And the corruption unit that charged this case and the charges, I think go back to like the Francois Hollande era, socialist president was like 2011. Memorable because he left office with the lowest approval rating I can ever imagine. It was like 8% or something. But yeah, you mentioned Ben Jordan Bardella. Marine Le Pen

She has these historic ties to the founding of the party, which was founded by her father. She is well known. He is very young. He's green. He's good on social media. And we've seen a lot of like little tick tock fascists. But I think it's a big question about whether he can really fill her shoes. I also noted the international reaction. Victor Orban, your friend over in Hungary, tweeted, just sweet Marine.

The Kremlin said the conviction showed Europe was, quote, trampling on democratic norms. Far-right leaders in places like Italy also weighed in supporting her. So the usual suspects are getting Marine Le Pen's back. But I do worry that, you know, this really harsh verdict that includes the political element kind of feeds into their narrative. I mean, obviously it does. Well, yeah. I mean, Bardell is kind of like a, you know, if Charlie Kirk was regenerated as like a French...

But, you know, watching all these, you know, various Vichy type politicians circle the wagons around each other. I mean, Viktor Orbron with the Je suis Marine. Do you think he was trying to do a Charlie Hebdo comparison? I think he is, but like it kind of counteracts his gender, you know, discriminatory policies for him to now be claiming a different gender. But I just think it's this constant victimhood, you know, at a certain point.

call bullshit on it through a different popular mobilization, a populism that is not of the right. These people are kind of full of shit. You know, like Victor Orban is corrupt. Like he like he he's he's, you know, violated all kinds of laws and norms under the EU. And so for him to kind of be playing this victim card.

you know, in solidarity with like Marine Le Pen. I mean, it's hard to take that seriously, but I know we've seen in this country there's a political effectiveness to it. You just have to kind of get out and make your case and not just kind of sit back and think you can pull the norm machine, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's hard for us broken-brained Americans in the Trump era not to apply our political context to France.

But then I was reading a New York Times story where they were quoting some random guy in a bar in her district who said, "She must defend herself and go right into the end. If they want us to take the Capitol like they did in Washington, I will go to the Elysee," referring to the presidential palace like shit. - There's this globalization of it's a hoax or this is kind of the full consolidation of this right-wing trend, this far-right trend.

Look, the reality here is there's nothing inevitable about these people winning. In fact...

We know that who the government's going to be probably in Germany, in the UK, even in Italy where they have Maloney, she's not gone as far right. She's not the farthest right, yeah. And so France is like the one big European country that you would like to see kind of hold the line. And if they do in that election, obviously that gets you through the Trump administration with, unless something strange happens- The five-year term, yeah. The big European governments not being far right. Yeah.

Let's hope that that's the case because France would be a huge...

dominated a fall in the direction of the Trump-Orban authoritarian party. With a really strong presidency. And just a little history. I mean, the National Rally Party was founded in 1972. It was called National Front until 2018. It was founded by Marine Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is a truly vile person. He's best known for being an anti-Semite and publicly minimizing the Holocaust. In 2009, he referred to the Nazi gas chambers as, quote, a detail of the history of the Second World War.

pretty important detail, buddy. So Marine Le Pen's, her project has been trying to moderate the party's public image, distance herself from her father, but she has also done things like minimize France's role in the Holocaust and the Vichy government's collaborations with the Germans and rounding up Jews and sending them to die. She also has extreme views on immigration, for example. So Le Pen, you know, she's a perennial person

She ran in 2012, 2017, 2022 when she got nearly 40% of the vote in a runoff. She was leading in the most recent poll. There was a poll I think out on Sunday that showed her at 37%, which is not victory, like you said, in the runoff system, but it's pretty high. It's pretty high, but I think it can be overcome, but not with complacency.

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All right, Ben, so we're recording this on Tuesday, April 1st, which is April Fool's Day and a good time to remind everyone that their April Fool's gags are lame. Yeah.

I saw some pretty bad ones. Some bad tweets. Tiger Woods saying he was going to play in the Masters or something. Oh, I saw that. You know, I'm just so gullible. I just take people at face value. That guy, you know, I was really excited about him. Trump ex-wife? Yeah, he's marrying a Trump and-

I don't think Tiger's the guy we thought he was. I mean, we've been learning that for about 15 years. I was going to say, yeah. The New York Post taught us that a while ago. Anyway, so tomorrow's April 2nd. On that day, on Wednesday, we're going to see if Trump is joking about his plan to upend the global economy with all these tariffs. The White House has been calling this Liberation Day. I assume because Independence Day was taken and Will Smith will slap the shit out of you if you step on his IP. Yeah.

But here's how White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt teased the announcement. Looking ahead to tomorrow, April 2nd, 2025, will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history.

Why? Expectations management is not their thing. I mean, why? I mean, nobody even knows what he's going to do and why he's going to do it. Yeah. And so the suspense is, is Trump going to impose a 20% tariff across the board or is it going to be more targeted country by country with like reciprocal tariffs that allow for negotiations bilaterally with, you know, either the EU or individual countries?

Regardless, we just want to take a look at how these tariff threats are being perceived internationally. So let's start in Canada, Ben, where Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has basically said that the old U.S.-Canada relationship is dead. Here's a clip from a speech Carney delivered last week. I reject any attempts to weaken Canada, to wear us down, to break us so that America can own us.

That will never happen. The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.

I mean, that's intense. So that's Mark Carney in Canada. Across the Atlantic, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that Europe had a strong plan to retaliate against tariffs from the US. In Asia, we got China, South Korea, and Japan getting together for their first economic dialogue in five years. Following that meeting, the Chinese state media said that the three countries will work together to respond jointly to US tariffs. I should note that the Japanese and South Korea spokespeople kind of disputed that characterization

saying it was either exaggerated or not really what was discussed, but the meeting still happened. And then finally, Ben, China and Brazil cut a deal to trade in their own currencies and no longer use the US dollar, which is not an insignificant hit to the dollar's role as a world's reserve currency. I mean, Brazil is the biggest economy in the region. So just to add this all up, like the Canadians hate us, Europe is ready to punch us in the face, South Korea and Japan are coordinating with the Chinese-

And this terror threat seems to have pushed the Chinese and the Brazilians even closer. Like, wasn't China the big threat that Trump ran on? Like, what are we doing here?

Nobody can articulate what is happening and why it's happening. Even when they say this is going to be the historic liberation day, they don't say why. They don't say what this is achieving. Is it to somehow bring back manufacturing in the United States? Nobody credible thinks that's going to happen. Is it to compel some action? Well, you could say...

see it kind of with like the fentanyl from Mexico, but you can't see it in all these other countries. What are the demands that are even in play? I think what's important, Tommy, is there's what has already happened and what is likely to happen. In terms of what's already happened, a lot of the Trump stuff in the first term, or even in the campaign against Trump the last time around, it was like forecasting all these bad things that might happen if he does X and Y follows.

This is already happening. This is not like a hypothetical exercise. Like the stock market has already taken a hit. Like futures are taking a hit. The dollar, you know, is facing these challenges. Prices are going up. Like these are things that are happening now. This is not some warning from Democrats or elites about what might happen in the future. It's already impacting Americans and Americans understand that.

I think the more important thing, though, is that if you look at what countries are already doing, it's not like that hypothetical to say you're going to see a total reordering of the global economy away from the United States as being at the center of that global economy.

Everything from the functioning of the dollar as a reserve currency, transactions being made in the dollar, to this kind of deeper integration of economies between the U.S. and our allies in particular, shared approaches to regulation and trying to expand cross-border trade. Not only is that unraveling, but you're beginning to see what the different economic and trade order might look like.

you're going to have developing countries, resource-rich developing countries. You mentioned Brazil, but this could spread to other parts of South America, it could spread to Southeast Asia, where countries that tried to diversify and essentially balance between the US and China and Europe and other trading partners will be much more likely to just kind of put their eggs in the Chinese basket because that's predictable. They know what they're getting. They may not love the terms that they get from China, but they don't involve crazy announcements of tariffs going up and down. So you're going to see that kind of reorientation.

The Japan, South Korea, China thing, even if it's still nascent, is extraordinary. These countries hate each other. We've talked about it was hard to get the Japanese and South Koreans in the same room because of the World War II legacy. The Chinese have built a whole...

industry in their politics and media around demagoguing Japan in the history of World War II. The fact that Trump is driven in just less than three months, even the dialogue among those three countries is a sign of rapidly diminishing US influence. What strategy is going to work if our main quote unquote adversary in the global economic space is China? How is that strategy going to work if all you're doing is pushing all these countries, including traditional US allies, closer to China?

And then the other thing to watch is when you see Mark Carney saying that about this friendship is essentially over as it was.

Not only is that going to impact trade and travel and tourism, but does Canada stay in the Five Eyes cooperation on intelligence? That's the US- Which has been, apparently Peter Navarro has floated kicking him out. A trade advisor. What are we accomplishing? I don't know. This is not just sitting around, wringing our hands because we like allies, although we do. It's also just like, I don't understand what interest is served by this. And again, it just ratchets up tension and creates conflict that could lead to other conflict. It spirals.

Yeah, nothing about it makes sense. And like, I think, ultimately, if you got like 100 CEOs in a room, and you ask them, what is the thing they wanted more than anything else, it would just be certainty. And this like hemming and hawing is on again, off again, tariff war and reciprocal tariffs and announcing huge numbers and then walking it back like it's just driving everyone crazy.

And what we're seeing is the danger of the short-term profit-driven mindset of American capitalism today, not to get into that space too much. But essentially, these companies are so hot for deregulation and tax cuts that they look the other way at Trump. Some of them supported him outright. And then now they're so afraid of Trump that they capitulate in everything he says and does.

They're watching the legal sector get dismantled or intimidated and cowed in this country. But this sucks for them. These tariffs are bad for American business. It's bad for the American private sector. At a certain point, these companies need to speak up. I mean, in the Obama years, Tommy, you remember well, like if Obama did one thing that they didn't like-

Wall Street CEOs. Yeah, the Chamber of Commerce would freak out or if he said one thing in an interview about fat cats on Wall Street, they'd all go wring their hands together at some investment conference. Cry on CNBC. This guy's fucking trashing their margins, trashing their stock prices.

over these insane tariff things, and we barely hear a peep out of the private sector in this country. Morgan Stanley thinks tariffs could raise car prices by up to 12%. There are, according to, I think, the Council on Foreign Relations, 14 million Americans are employed in jobs tied to trade with the United States' North American trading partners. The impacts of these tariffs

tariffs or the fights we're picking will be massive and not just on them. Like we might send the Canadian economy into a depression that will impact our economy too in a meaningful way. Yeah. It's just, I I'm with you in that. Like I,

I can't make sense of this other than Trump trying to execute some sort of madman theory approach where he thinks he can intimidate all these countries into cutting advantageous deals with him. But that seems to have already failed because they're already announcing their reciprocal tariffs and punching back. And I think unlike the U.S. legal community, the U.S. academic community, the U.S. private sector, these other countries are onto this. They know that Trump is...

operating global trade like a protection racket. You know, you pay me

a pound of flesh and maybe I'll leave you alone for a little bit. But then what they know is he'll come back for more. And so they're beginning to form alliances against the United States. We are only two and a half months in and that's already happening. And the other thing is if he comes out and says he won't do some of the tariffs and then the market recovers a little bit and he acts like he did something great. No, this is all like a self-created crisis that

doesn't need to be happening. Yeah, and prices are just going to go up for everybody. It's nuts. But part of this might be that the best and the brightest are not working in the U.S. government, Ben, and I mean that in the literal sense, not in the book sense. So last week we talked in some detail about the Signalgate scandal in case folks missed it.

That was when Trump's national security staff talked about their plans to bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen on Signal. Signal is a commercially available communications app that is not an appropriate place to discuss this kind of material. The conversation that these guys had on Signal absolutely included classified information, even though Pete Hegseth and others are lying about it since. So after we discussed this scandal last week, Ben, Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, who seems very dumb, just

Stone Cold stupid, by the way. Not the smartest guy, yeah. Yeah, he went on Fox News to suggest that Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor-in-chief who Waltz looped in on this signal chat about bombing the Houthi rebels, might have actually hacked his phone. Here's a clip.

Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else's number there? Oh, I never make those mistakes. Right? You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So of course I didn't see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out. How's the number on your phone? Well, if you have somebody else's contact and then somehow it gets sucked in. Oh, someone sent you that contact. It gets sucked in.

- That was Laura Ingraham interviewing Mike Waltz there, who was like one of the more, you know, she's as MAGA as MAGA gets. Even she was like, do I have to go along with this bullshit? Like, you're really going with this line? You know Jeffrey Goldberg, is he the most tech savvy guy? Does he look like he was a real hacker? - No, no. - No. - No, he's still like an emailer, you know, like he's probably a relative newcomer to signal. - I bet he types with like two fingers. - Yeah, look, there's so much about this it's dumb. Let's start with the media part.

There is this, you know, in the authoritarian playbook watch, right, that we are living through, and we've talked about, obviously, the intimidation of these different sectors of society, but the state media part of it is getting really creepy. Like, during the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there was, like, this habit in the U.S. sometimes to show some crazy Russian talk show where a bunch of people are yelling at each other. It's always that same guy. Yeah, it's always that guy, and they're talking about, like, how smart Putin is, and they're bending reality. That

We're there. - Totally there. - Fox News is not some independent news source. This guy's going on and talking about phone numbers being sucked into his contacts. - Sucked into his contacts. - He's trying to show Trump, who is his audience mainly, that he's tough by calling Jeff Goldberg a loser. What does that mean or achieve?

Obviously, they want to get off the story of not just why was Jeff Goldberg in this chat, but why were they having these incredibly sensitive conversations on Signal to begin with? Right. And so to me, of all the many questions that should continue to be asked about this, I

One is just the focus is on Waltz. I think the focus should be on Hegseth more. He clearly shared classified information. Yeah, because Waltz is the idiot who said the Signal chat. Hegseth is the idiot who is trying to impress his friends by sharing the most classified information possible, which is upcoming strikes on Signal. But don't let Waltz off that easy because he talks about having, quote, positive ID of a Houthi leader walking into his girlfriend's apartment, which according to a bunch of reporting since is a reference to Israeli surveillance capabilities that are

highly, highly classified that he just blew into the public domain by discussing it with Jeffrey Goldberg on Signal. Jeffrey Goldberg, who clearly hacked his phone. And again, the people whose phones are more likely to be hacked are... Well, first of all, by the way,

possible Jeffrey Goldberg's phone is hacked, right? He's certainly an intelligence target for people because people know he talks to powerful people. But again, as I think some people may have heard, but it's worth repeating, it's not that signal is not secure. It's that if your phone is hacked, it doesn't matter if signal is secure. Like if they're in your phone and can watch what's happening in your phone, they can see this kind of activity. And that can be incredibly dangerous. But the other thing I want to note, Tommy, is like I refuse to believe that

that the only signal chat that they had about a sensitive matter was this Houthi strike. Oh, no. This is probably how they're doing business. Yeah. So a little more on that. I mean, just real quick on this Fox News clip from Mike Waltz. So, like, if we take him literally there, he is suggesting that Jeffrey Goldberg, like...

conducted espionage on him. I don't like, so huge deal, right? Like take him literally. Is there going to be an investigation? Are we going to prosecute some people? They were talking about getting Elon Musk involved because he's their tech guy. He's their IT dude, I guess, to do some research. And so Ben, I just wanted to update you that after this extensive investigation into the hacking by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Mike Waltz phone, here is Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, announcing what they found. As you said last week, Caroline, you said there would be an investigation or a review of

into how Jeffrey Goldberg's number got on that group chat. What's the status of that review? And what is the status of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz? As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team. And this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned. There have been steps made to ensure that

Something like that can obviously never happen again, and we're moving forward. And the President and Mike Walz and his entire national security team have been working together very well if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team.

So she, Waltz accuses Jeff of hacking the phone and they just pretend to conduct an investigation. It's all over. But Ben, I mean, like according to a bunch of reports, Waltz was almost fired, not because of the security lapse. It was because of what you referenced, which was that Trump is mad that he's friends with Jeff Goldberg. The Wall Street Journal reported that this was not the only signal group chat created by Waltz. So I'm sure the Russians and the Chinese are enjoying that content.

and their encrypted chat apps. And just before we started recording, the Washington Post reported that Waltz and his team have been conducting government business on their Gmail accounts. You see this story? According to the Washington Post, quote, a senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict, according to emails reviewed by the Post.

And the Wall Street Journal reported that Pete Hegseth, your favorite in this story, who shared classified information with the group, has been bringing his wife to his meetings with his, like...

Secretary of Defense counterparts. So we got Pete bringing a plus one to the highly technical defense policy meeting with the NATO guy. What is happening here? Well, again, first of all, these are not hypothetical exercises. We know that the Chinese hacked JD Vance's phone, for instance, who was on the signal thread. If you think that somehow you can

have Gmail and commercial messaging apps as a venue to talk about military operations or sensitive foreign policy and it not end up in the hands of the Chinese or Russians, like you are not paying any attention to how things work today, right? That's the first thing. The Pete Hegseth thing, I can't get my mind around the fact that he's bringing his brother and some job. This is the guy who said he was restoring meritocracy to the Department of Defense. I've been in these meetings before.

there are not like friends, relatives, and spouses. No. Like occasionally there'll be like a dinner, right? That's a social event, but they're talking about like by definition, military matters, sensitive matters, classified matters. And how do you think the people on the other side of the table look at that? They don't take us seriously. Like amateurs. We're forced in this country to take

Pete Hegg says seriously because he runs the Pentagon. And even though you listen to the press, there's this kind of veneer of how you talk to them. If I'm the minister of defense for some other country and I'm showing up and this guy's got his wife or his brother hanging out with him, I'm going to act differently in that meeting. I'm not going to share certain things. That's just the reality of this thing because other countries can't afford to pretend like

gravity doesn't apply to them. You're trying to talk about where to put some missile defense radar in Poland. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meet Jenny. It's great to be here. Also, I don't know if you saw this, Ben. Marco Rubio, like,

threw all these guys under the butts and was talking about like how he only contributed to the signal chat twice. And he identified his point of contact and then said, congratulations. It's like, Hey Marco, you don't get to like tattletale on everybody else. You were the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. Your, your role here should have been saying, Hey guys, let's take this to the high side. Let's not talk about this here. Let's talk about this in our classified email, which is also on, on, at a computer at our desks.

readily available to us. And, you know, Americans spend a lot of money paying for these encrypted systems. I'm sure it tallies up to billions of dollars to have the degree of encryption we need to conduct foreign policy and national security conversations. And these people just clearly don't give a shit who it puts at risk, you know?

the worst. We're going to take a quick break, but if you're enjoying the show and you want to support everything we're doing here at Crooked Media, subscribe to the Friends of the Pod. We just made the subscription better than ever, Ben. You can now enjoy offline and love it or leave it ad-free. And for the month of April, we're offering a 30-day free trial with no commitment, just

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All right, let's talk about another piece of national security staffing here. So it's been a rough couple of days for Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Ben, whose nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations was pulled last week because Republicans are scared that they will not be able to hold her seat in a special election to replace her. Just to be petty for a little bit, Ben, this story made me so happy because there were these reports that she had already sat through like

of probably mind-numbing briefings about how the UN works. I'm sure she did like logistical garbage, you know, moving, hired movers, like did whatever to prepare to go to New York. And now she goes back to Congress where...

She's given up her leadership position. They might make up a new one for her in Congress, but she's basically just one of many Trump stooges. So Politico took a stab at figuring out who might replace her. And what they found is that lots of people are saying no thanks to the job. So that list includes David Friedman, Trump's ambassador to Israel in the first term. That guy's a real gem. He's tough. There's someone I'd never heard of named Elmer.

named Ellie Cohen him, who was the deputy special envoy for fighting anti-Semitism in the first term. Like both of those give you a pretty good window into we know it's how they view this job, a friend of the pod and human Twitter troll, Rick Grinnell told news max that he's a hard, no, uh, getting a little big for your britches there, Rick. And then former state department spokeswoman Morgan Ortega said no to the job as well. So Ben, I'm sure they will end up picking someone who's like exponentially worse than Stefanik. And we will

you know, look back on this conversation and have regrets. But I guess I can kind of get saying no to this. Like you are going to be sent to the UN to try to destroy the UN from within or run interference for the Israeli government. Like it doesn't seem like the best gig, but I don't know. It's still a big deal. You're in the cabinet. I mean, there's the question of

why these people want these jobs though, because Waltz friends, I don't think Waltz is long for this world here in terms of his role. You know, Trump went through what, four national security advisors first time? Mike Flynn, John Bolton, HR McMaster, Robert O'Brien.

And so clearly they don't like Waltz. You see people putting out that he's a dumbass or something. They hate Jeffrey Goldberg. And so they'll wait. They don't want to make it look like he got dumped overboard because of Signal. But I would be willing to wager that that guy is not around in six months. Yeah, by June or something. Yeah, yeah.

And same thing with like Stefanik, like these people sell their souls, right? So Waltz gave up a comfy congressional seat, could have sat there for 20 years. And now he'll just be some out of work guy on like the right wing speaking circuit in like six months.

Have we heard from Mike Pompeo other than his security clearance getting yanked? These people- Yeah, good question. These people just disappear. And Stefanik too, she gave up this rising leadership job to be in this UN role and she gets fucked. I mean, the message to all these Republicans who go along and enable all this is you're going to get thrown off the bus- You're disposable. ... at the first sign of trouble.

The purpose of this role should be, it's actually an important job. You're both a diplomat representing the United States at the United Nations, where in normal times, you might try to build coalitions. You might try to pass resolutions. You might try to mobilize resources to do something. Respond to a crisis. We responded to Ebola there. We did all the Iran sanctions there.

on and on and on. - North Korea sanctions. - You're also importantly at the principal's committee table, right? So you're in the cabinet, you're sitting in the situation. - You're on the signal chat. - You're on the signal chat, you're in these debates. What a normal UN rep is supposed to do is kind of bring the perspective of the world into those conversations.

in some ways even more so than the Secretary of State, who is episodically engaging different governments. You're just sitting there at the General Assembly, the Security Council, with your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the international system. And that perspective is totally absent in the Trump administration right now. But it's absent because they don't give a shit. They don't want someone to be a diplomat to represent the U.S. They don't want someone who can be like an early warning system about what's happening in the world. They want someone, and the David Friedman and all these other names have been floated, suggest that

All they see this job as is someone standing there and running interference for Bibi Netanyahu and telling the rest of the world that if you criticize Israel, you're anti-Semites. It's an extension of deporting kids who wrote op-eds that are critical of Israel. It's an extension of the kind of show that Elise Stefanik put on when they had Ivy League presidents testify before a committee in the House. It is so fundamentally unserious and narrow of a conception of what

is an iconic job. I mean, Adlai Stevenson like revealed nuclear missiles going to Cuba as the permanent representative of the UN. I mean, how far we have fallen from, you know, dealing with the biggest crises imaginable with very prominent, prestigious Americans to this

Crazy fucking, you know, Grinnell's giving up the job because he is more important business of doing real estate deals in the Balkans and making sure like Kid Rock gets the next Kennedy Center. He's making money in Serbia. He's running the Kennedy Center too. Oh yeah. From Stevenson to Stefanik.

Is that your next book on the UN, the history of the destruction of the UN? It sounds like a good title for a foreign affairs article. There we go. Yeah, we'll call your editor. Well, you mentioned these protesters. So there has been this ongoing assault on,

on people with visas or even legal residency because they protested the war in Gaza. So a few weeks ago, we talked about Mahmoud Khalil, this Columbia student who is a green card holder who was picked up and sent to Louisiana. Since then, there have been a bunch more cases of people with legal status getting detained. There was a Russian scientist who was working at Harvard's medical school that was put in detention for some reason. She originally fled Russia because of her anti-war stance.

but there's concerns if she gets sent back, she will be put in prison or tortured. Last week, there was this awful video of a Turkish PhD student who was here on a student visa and got snatched up on the street by like,

a bunch of masked ICE officers. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that they've revoked at least 300 student visas at this point. And what is so scary about this, Ben, is you're just seeing school after school after school cave. And there's some schools like Columbia that caved

because the Trump administration threatened to take away hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for them. But then there's stories like this one from the Guardian that reported that NYU canceled a speech by the former head of Doctors Without Borders because their presentation included mentions of casualties in Gaza and the impact of cuts to USAID.

That's it. And apparently she offered to edit the slides and clean it up for them or whatever they wanted. And they still said no, they canceled on her when she'd already traveled to New York. So it's just it's remarkable how fast we went from Republicans complaining about free speech, whining about cancel culture to like whatever this is. I mean, it's not surprising because they were always being cynical, but it is infuriating.

It's infuriating and everything about it, there are these layers to it that are infuriating. First of all, it is uncomfortable for some people, as we've talked about before, to acknowledge that the complete and utter pile on and delegitimization of Gaza protesters plowed some ground for Trump to do this. The reason they're starting with this issue is because...

Everybody from Joe Biden on down, you know, cast every college protester who didn't like the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza as anti-Semitic or as contributing to like an unsafe atmosphere for Jewish students. And now that that has led to them just picking up and disappearing people on the street. And I would ask, number one, is that making things safer on campuses? That doesn't look that, you know, like the idea that plainclothes people are just...

basically rendering people in the middle of the street. That's pretty terrifying. That would not make me feel safe. And it certainly is not conducive to free speech. But the other thing that the NYU example is so important is it shows if you believe, let's say you disagree with me and you were like, you know what? Fuck these people. I want to support Israel and I don't want to see people with signs that say things I don't like, river to sea.

If you think they're going to stop with this, like what planet have you been living on for a decade? The head of Doctors Without Borders can't give a speech? They will start with Gaza because that's the lowest hanging fruit.

in our political media environment. And now it's already creeping into like, oh, wait, we don't want to be critical of closing USAID. And the next thing will start to be like criticisms of the U.S. government policy, not just the Israeli government policy. They're starting here. We're two and a half months in. And think about what's already happening. Six months from now, what kind of people are they going to...

be kicking out of the country. Or importantly, Tommy, and you and I were talking about this before, I know so many people who won't come here. They're afraid. Maybe they posted something on social media critical of the United States or critical of the Israeli government.

That's a loss to this country. Like we're accomplished people like that of Doctors Without Borders or younger people or scientists. The drying up of the intellectual capital and human capital of people just coming here, whether it's to participate in conferences or to do work or to work here temporarily, like people are – there's going to have a chilling effect here and it's going to –

all that brain power is going to go out of their places. And it's green card holders or people legally in the US who are scared to leave the country or travel or any way bump up against law enforcement or the system because they're seeing these stories about innocent people getting swept into this Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy that you just can't get out of. And it's an unrelated issue, Ben, but

There's also all these reports about Canadians canceling trips to the United States, especially to states like Maine that rely on those visits, those tourism dollars for the local economies. The entirety of this is doing so much harm to us as a country, both economically, to our values, to everything we stand for. The ripple effects of this are going to be so enormous. I mean, for decades, one of the most...

powerful instruments the United States had was higher education. We had lots of prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, CEOs from countries around the world were educated in American universities.

far, far fewer of those people are gonna come here. 'Cause why would anyone who's a foreign student wanna come here? If you say the wrong thing, you'd end up in fucking El Salvador. - With no way out. - Yeah, with no way out. And I don't think we can get our heads around that this is gonna have an immediate impact on universities, it has an immediate chilling effect on free speech,

It immediately makes this country feel less safe, but it's going to have real medium and long-term effects in terms of tourism dollars, in terms of research that can happen here, in terms of the human capital that's required to power the tech industry, which requires legal immigration from these places. Universities make a lot of money off of foreign students who play full ride. This is going to have so many other impacts. Yes, absolutely. Well, let's talk about some of these deportations because-

There have been all these awful stories of the Trump administration is rounding people up and sending them to like a transnational gulag in El Salvador because they have tattoos. I mean, that seems to be the through line here is just tattoos. So last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, she did this photo op from this mega prison in El Salvador. Listeners might have seen this video she recorded standing in front of a cell to

filled with human beings who I think were forced to take their shirts off so that you could see their tattoos and just like stand there as human props. And I think she did it while wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch. Perfect. Might've been $60,000, depending on which Twitter source you believe. Here's what Kristi Noem said to Bret Baier on Fox News on Monday about why she took this trip to El Salvador.

The image alone was that sending a message. Yes, people need to see that image. They need to see that the United States is going to use every tool that we have to make our communities safer. That that is a consequence of someone who is a terrorist. The president has declared

Trende Aragua and MS-13 as terrorist organizations and the president of El Salvador has as well. The only people allowed in that prison are terrorists and to tour that and to look at that was giving the American people the transparency that they want out of their government. They were able to see exactly where we're sending these people who have

murdered and raped Americans that have decimated communities and there's going to be consequences for individuals who continue to do that. My conversation with that president was, will you take more of these terrorists? And he said, absolutely we will. We will take the worst of the worst and make sure that they're facing consequences for what they've done to your country.

Bullshit. Yeah, that's a lie. The image you should think of is the gay makeup artist who was deported because he had tattoos that said mom and dad over crowns on his wrist. The guy with the autism awareness tattoo. And then finally, the administration has admitted that it made a mistake when it deported a Maryland man because of some administrative error.

and now the White House, the lawyers for the government are saying they have no way to get this guy back. Like, Rubio could make one phone call. Kristi Noem could make one phone call to Naya Bukele and say, like, hey, do me a solid, get this guy out, put him on a plane, and it would be done, Ben. But, like, these guys, they just don't care that innocent people are rotting in hell. And I think that's part of the point. I mean, part of the point is...

yes, to look kind of tough and fascist for your, you know, Brett Baer's viewing audience. Talk about a guy who's become the mouthpiece of state media. But, you know, it's hard to watch a video and not feel the racialized component, you know? Oh, yeah. Here you've got this white lady with a Rolex standing in front of a bunch of brown people who look like they're

almost starving in this prison in El Salvador. Yeah, they do look like they're starving. Yeah, let's just be very clear like what that looked like. And it's, again, I just want to keep coming back to the fact that we're two and a half months in here. You know, where is this going? Because they have no interest in getting innocent people out of that prison, you know? Nor do they necessarily have the ability to. I mean, like, look,

If a judge says you have to get them back, Bukele will say, pound sand. I'm not going to do it. And the Trump administration will not help with any kind of diplomacy unless they decide to. Yeah. And how much do you think we're paying Bukele to operate that gulag? A lot of money. So the only silver lining I've seen just in the news is that

a judge blocked the Trump administration's move to end temporary protected status for about 600,000 Venezuelan migrants who are already in the US. The judge said what you just said, which is that it smacked of racism. And then I did notice, Ben, that the details of one of these cases made it to Joe Rogan, who talked about it on his show. And like,

Some people might laugh at that, but I don't know. He's not a guy who always gets good information. And he's also a guy who kind of speaks to the young Trump male zeitgeist. And if he's worried about the lack of due process here, I don't know, maybe people in the White House will listen and view this as a political risk and do something. I thought so. I mean, there is a true...

faction of Trump voters who are kind of extreme libertarian or anti-government or anti-cancel culture or get off my back. And the combination of people getting snatched off the street by Planko's officers, people getting sent mistakenly to gulags in El Salvador, the wait a second, you really can't say what you want on campus. I do think that there's an argument that Democrats or just anti-Trump people need to mount that these people are literally

the threat you've been worried about. It turns out that it wasn't like liberals shaming people on online platforms that was the risk to free speech and just freedom in this country. This is an assault on freedom in this country. Yeah. All right. Well, a couple more things before we get to the interview. So last week we talked about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's efforts to fire Ronan Barr, the head of the Shin Bet, which is Israel's domestic intelligence service.

There's allegations that Netanyahu's vendetta against Ronan Barr is tied to a Shin Bet investigation into connections between two Netanyahu aides and the government of Qatar. Things escalated very dramatically on this front on Monday after two of Netanyahu's aides were arrested. So the details of the case are

are under a court gag order. But the Washington Post reported that one aide, Eli Feldstein, is suspected of doing public relations for Qatar while he was working in Netanyahu's office, which is crazy. And then last year, Feldstein was charged for leaking classified intelligence to a German news outlet. Haaretz reported that the charges against these two include suspicion of contact with a foreign agent, bribery, fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering. So

Seems pretty bad. Netanyahu obviously said this was a witch hunt, blah, blah, blah. But he got he was forced to testify as a witness in the case on Monday. So it's pretty significant. The bigger question is, what was the Netanyahu government's role in facilitating payments from Qatar to Hamas?

The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, noted on Twitter that Netanyahu's office has not denied the specific allegations of somehow facilitating these transfers of money to Qatar. So there's a lot we're going to learn here. A Qatari spokesman called the charges a smear campaign. So Netanyahu is also trying to push out the Israeli attorney general for slowing down his efforts to fire Ronan Barr. Ben, you read all this stuff and you feel like, wow, man, the walls are finally closing in on Bibi Netanyahu.

And then you wonder, does he live in a house with infinite walls? Because like we've been in this place for a decade, but I don't know. What's your read on this latest round?

I had the same reaction you did, which is, you know, we've been here before, like many, many times with Nanyal, where he kind of wiggles out of things. He manages to kind of push the blame down on other people. But he's clearly sitting atop of a increasingly corrupted structure. I mean, I think that's how you have to think about this. Like, there's been this creeping level of corruption over the last decade, essentially. Allegations mounting.

Investigation spreading and all of it kind of seems to revolve around the sense that Netanyahu thinks he can operate with impunity. He can get his way out of anything. If he keeps the far right on side, he has enough votes to survive in his coalition.

but like this, at a minimum, at least this is kind of getting, I don't think there's anybody that doesn't believe this Cutter thing. Oh yeah. Like you don't really hear people, you know, yeah, they deny it. I thought it was just a known fact. Yeah, this has been out there a lot and I think it's important to establish like the,

When you're living through such a fucked up time as we are, I do think it's like a huge amount of value in just like establishing the record of what happened here. This is what happened. Like they were like literally funneling money to prop up Hamas in Gaza because it's served their interest to keep the Palestinians divided and have Hamas be a reason that there can't be a Palestinian state. And there were guys that were enabling that for Netanyahu. There's all this cynicism involved. Like they attack Qatar out of one side of their mouth as these kind of –

Islamist zealots at the same time that they're like taking money. I mean, part of what this shows you is just how corrupt everything is. Like this money washing around politics where like not a ton of money like can buy you a lot, you know? And that's kind of that pervasive corruption is what jumps out. Yeah, hopefully some of these corruption cases will stick. I mean, Netanyahu is currently at

in trial for various corruption charges. So we'll see. And then finally, Ben, let's do a quick update on Russia and Ukraine, because there was lots of coverage of Trump saying he was, quote, pissed off and, quote, angry at Putin and then threatening to put secondary tariffs on Russian oil. This all came after Putin called for a transitional government in Ukraine run by the U.N. But like I saw that and I was like, yeah, sure. Sure you will, buddy. Also, like I don't know that Putin's all that worried about sanctions at this point.

But moreover, I found these comments Trump made Sunday about Zelensky to be far more relevant and consequential. So this came from Trump's gaggle on Air Force One. Let's hear a clip. Zelensky, by the way, I see he's trying to back out of the rare earth deal. And if he does that, he's got some problems. Big, big problem. We made a deal on rare earth.

And now he's saying, well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal. He wants to be a member of NATO. Well, he was never going to be a member of NATO. He understands that. So if he's looking to renegotiate the deal, he's got big problems. Go ahead. So the context here for that

very overt threat is that last Friday, the U.S. sent over a new draft to this minerals deal that we've been talking about for months with Ukraine, which according to Financial Times goes way beyond the agreement that was agreed to by the U.S. and Ukrainians last month. The FT says the new deal would apply to quote all mineral resources, including oil and gas, and that Trump wants to set up a joint investment fund to split the income from Ukraine's oil, gas and mineral industries.

And they would create a board to oversee it. And the U.S. would get to appoint three out of five board members. So we have a veto over everything. And previous U.S. assistance to Ukraine would get counted as our contribution to the fund. So they would just be paying us for hundreds of billions of dollars before they could get anything out. So, Ben, it's been weird talking about this minerals deal because it went from

Like the early versions we read about were like outrageous and exploitative. Then it was sort of meaningless around the Zelensky visit to Washington. Now it's back to even more exploitative. And Zelensky has also complained that the US keeps changing the terms of this ceasefire proposal that's been on the table.

And Zelensky says he's trying to hold off the deal. I think he's saying he wants to ensure that it doesn't prevent them from getting into the EU, which I think in that clip, Trump confuses with him wanting NATO membership, although obviously he's talked about both in the past. But it just seems like we're back to extorting these guys. We are. And it's pretty dark because, I mean, first of all,

it's a protection racket without any protection, right? So it's essentially saying the Ukrainians, like you have to give us all of your resources and we won't protect you. You don't get to be NATO. We don't get a veto over the EU, but now maybe we're gonna do that. And we're gonna probably sign on to like Putin's desires for some minimal Ukrainian military. And we're gonna probably not backstop the European force that might be put there.

And so it's demanding all these things to the Ukrainians and we're not providing them with anything in return. At a certain point, I don't know why the Ukrainians would do this. - I don't either. - I think an underappreciated part of this story, Tommy, like just to find a new angle to it. - Yeah. - Can you imagine the potential scale of corruption from Trump cronies? - Oh my God, I know, I know. - 'Cause you know that this board and these deals

It'll be people like Jared Kushner or Eric Prince or, you know, maybe Steve Witkoff leaves his envoy role to do this or Paul Manafort, who's been involved in Ukrainian politics. For all their complaints about, you know, they called the Ukrainians corrupt. They're clearly trying to set up something that will probably be like the most corrupt enterprise. It'll make big.

Hunter Biden's work for charisma look like fucking pro bono work for kids. You know, like, oh, you're hitting on something that's driving me crazy, too. Like, I obviously think that the way Hunter Biden used his last name and connections was gross and offensive and it shouldn't have happened. There is no evidence ever provided that Joe Biden personally benefited. However, the Trump kids are.

as long with Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudis. We've talked about that a lot. But Don Jr. just went to some venture capitalism firm that is essentially investing in anti-woke whatever products. And he's getting glossy spreads in Bloomberg Businessweek for doing exactly the same influence peddling. Now, obviously, Hunter Biden had an associated...

addiction challenges that were very tawdry and the photos are bad and that led to a bunch of stories. But like the corruption piece on the Trump end is exponentially worse. And we haven't even talked about the crypto piece. And it is like fundamental to kind of US interest, right? So in the sense that like Hunter Biden may have leveraged his name

And the only thing, remember, they ever tried to find on what that might have led to is like some prosecutor was fired in Ukraine, which never made sense because that prosecutor was actually corrupt. Right. But this is like...

This isn't just influence peddling. This is taking the most important geopolitical issues in the world, like the war in Ukraine, and setting up like a profit mechanism that you can get out of it. You know, this isn't like just like Trump crime family stuff. This is like crime country. Yeah, this is Putin stuff. Yeah, this is Putin stuff. This is making the state the instrument of your own corrupt interest. And that's what's happening. You know, like we just have to

Keep calling this out. They are monetizing the power of the United States on top of everything else they're doing. Yeah.

Well, another light fun show from us here. Well, good luck, everybody. We'll get some Ukrainian minerals out of you. Yeah, I'm excited for some lithium. I'm sure the profits from those minerals will reach your pockets and not just Trump cronies. Splitsies on some cobalt. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear Ben's conversation with David Miliband about his work trying to fill the gap everywhere around the world that has been left by the destruction of USAID. So stick around for that.

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Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome back David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee. David, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, Ben, good to be with you.

Okay, I wanted to begin with a story that, with everything going on in the world, has not gotten a ton of attention, which is the enormous 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar with effects felt in Thailand last Friday. And after talking about that, we can discuss how the USAID dismantling interacts with crises like this. But just to begin with,

What is your sense, given IRC's work on the ground, of what the impact is of the earthquake in Myanmar and what the humanitarian needs are right now? Yeah, the world hasn't stopped because of tariffs and all the other things going on in Washington, D.C. And the...

The terrible earthquake in Myanmar, what used to be Burma, exposes not just the financial gaps, but the organizational and operational gaps that are left when America is not on the field in the way that it used to be. I mean, I spoke to someone who's overseeing our response. We were one of the larger health providers in Myanmar until January the 20th.

It's a monumental scale of damage. I mean, the pictures, I hope people have seen some of them that show, I mean, 80% of one of the mostly affected cities, 80% of the buildings are down. And it's as if it's been through a pulverizing war. Obviously, the numbers dead is in the single digit thousands. It's still two, 3000, which is enough.

but the numbers affected is millions, not just thousands. And there's real risk at precisely this moment. I mean, the earthquake happened on Friday. We're now day four, day five. It's precisely this moment when the breakdown of water and sanitation systems leads to a public health emergency. It's precisely at this moment when injuries that are not treated are

turn septic and become life-threatening dangerous. Precisely at this moment, then people who've generally had access to medicines, when that's interrupted, after four or five days, you get into trouble. It's also when food can become a problem. And we're seeing that on the ground. We're focusing our work on mobile health at the moment, some cash distribution. We've deployed some of our own resources. We're appealing for resources from the public. But it is undoubtedly a

a grade one emergency piled upon, and this is a critical point, piled upon a conflict in which the majority of the country isn't in the hands of the government.

So it's a civil war situation where we know from other contexts that there's enormous vulnerability. Well, yeah, it feels like a perfect storm between the fact that there's already a civil war that was on top of a government that couldn't meet a lot of basic needs at a time when, you know, USAID has been shuttered. And so it's not like the U.S. is going to have teams on the ground. I saw China pledged $13 million, which is a lot more than the U.S. has pledged, but

It's not exactly going to fill this hole. I mean, how do you even begin to think about being able to get

in to make choices about what assistance to prioritize when you have such a perfect storm of both natural and political disasters in one place? Well, the good thing is that we've got people on the ground. We're not just – we are actually flying some people in, some expert support, but we've got people on the ground. We've got teams on the ground. And one part of our model is to train local people, whether they're working in finance or education, to be ready for an emergency and to become emergency managers

emergency workers. I mean, there's two aspects to our response, and that's what I can speak to. One is our own staff who are mobilizing to do mobile health care and also to do cash assistance so that people can buy food. There's then in the non-governmental held areas, there's work through partners. And so there's stories about where there's access, where isn't there access, but the

partners that we've got. These are local organizations who we work with and who are trusted by us and by the local population. So it's a two-headed response. Just to give you a sense of the scale, though, and the link back to the US, we were supporting 100 healthcare centers in Myanmar through support from USAID. That's been lost. So it wasn't considered, quote unquote, life-saving because it was just more generic support.

The kind of gap that's left is very, very substantial, especially in a situation where only about 5% of the UN-assessed funding needs were being met before this earthquake. As you say, there's Chinese money, there's suggestions that Russians are there, and you'll know this as well, that one of the things that the American government did very well through USAID was these disaster assistance response teams, DART teams. You must have done a lot of this. Yeah.

Not only are they first on the ground 24-hour response, but they had really good organizational and assessment capacities that would make sure that resources were being channeled in the right way. So I just want to start to pull back the lens here a little bit on the USAID piece of this. And one question I have, when you mentioned something like 100 healthcare facilities, what

that are supported with USAID funding that goes through a partner organization like IRC. And I think this is something that people don't often understand is that it's both what USAID is doing directly on the ground, but also the kind of grants and support they provide to organizations like the IRC. What happens to those healthcare centers? Like, do they close? Like, are people still going to work there and there's just not money coming in? Like, what is the impact in a place like Myanmar when that money is pulled?

Well, unless the government takes them on, they get closed. I mean, it's pretty simple. In Thailand, we've come to an agreement. The Thai government has picked up some of the health centers that we've been operating on the Thai side of the border. You'll know that many people from Myanmar crossed the border as refugees. We were running nine...

healthcare centers on the Thai side of the border, they've been handed over to the Thai government. But in the Myanmar case, it's still very unclear, obviously. And you've got this division between government-held areas and non-government-held areas. But if there's no funding for the medicines, for the doctors, for the nurses, you can't run the center. And so literally, there are around the world what are considered to be non-essential US-funded facilities being closed. That might be in health, it might be in education, it might be in climate resilience and livelihoods.

So it's a dramatic and pretty instantaneous impact beyond what are called the life-saving areas or life-saving interventions, which have been given a waiver from the suspension of US foreign aid.

And so when you look at the macro picture for people that have followed what's happened to USAID, followed some of these different crises around the world, and we'll get to a couple of them. But just pulling back and looking at the whole picture, you know, you, IRC is active in all these different areas, you know, from famine relief and nutritional assistance to health assistance to refugee resettlement. What is your initial perspective?

assessment of the impact of the US essentially withdrawal from the humanitarian space globally on your operations and on collective efforts to deal with these problems? I think the way to think about it, let me use a metaphor. I mean, the US was the anchor of the global system. In the humanitarian sector, it provided more or less four in $10. European countries plus the European Union, also more or less four in $10 in the humanitarian space. There's a whole argument

Shouldn't newly wealthy countries in the Gulf and elsewhere be paying more? Probably the answer to that is yes. But the anchor of the global system was the US because it was everywhere and because it was, relatively speaking, generous on the humanitarian front. Now, I'm not a sailing person, but when you pull up the anchor on a boat and the seas are choppy, then the boat starts rocking and the passengers get seasick. I mean, that's essentially what's happening today.

at the moment. The anchor of the system is no longer there. And so you've got a lot more instability. You've got a lot more need not being met. Some of that is short-term harm, but others of it, it takes time for it to play through. So for non-communicable diseases, it's a longer-term hit to health and to livelihoods. But it's very, very serious. Obviously, there's a government review taking place

The new administration announced a review on January 20th. That's not January 24th. That's not unusual. But we don't know where that review is going to take things. What is unusual is to close services while a review is going on. Yeah. And that's what's happening at the moment. And...

When you look at a specific crisis, let's talk about Sudan, where I know you've been very active. We've talked about this in the past. There have been some changes in the conflict there. The Sudanese armed forces have the upper hand in Khartoum. But we also know there's enormous humanitarian needs, displacement, famine risks there.

And usually USAID would kind of fill a lot of that space in a conflict zone like Sudan. That's where a lot of the support can go. What is the humanitarian situation in Sudan and what kinds of needs are going unmet that would normally compel resources from USAID? Well, I think that the word I would use about Sudan is it's just crushing. It's crushing for the people in that country.

It's crushing for the neighbors. And remember, there's very worrying suggestions of instability spreading south to South Sudan. We always say untended humanitarian crisis is a source of political instability. And we're seeing that spreading from Sudan beyond. The conflict lines are shifting. So that's crushing for people who thought they were safe. Now they're in a different area.

We don't know where, I mean, Khartoum has been retaken significantly by the Sudan armed forces. What we do know is that malnutrition, famine, which is the apex of the humanitarian pyramid, when you've got a famine situation, you can guarantee everything else is wrong. The economy is not working. The health service is not working. Violence against women is out of control. I've got the figures here, actually. In the latest report, 8 million people, 17% of the population, population around Sudan,

45 million, are in phase four out of five. That means emergency classification. The only thing north of phase four is famine, which is phase five in the emergency classification index. And this is a very small C conservative index.

set of indices. It takes a lot of proof to get to level four or level five. This independent assessment found famine in five areas, predicted famine in five additional localities in North Darfur, highlighted the risk of famine in 17 other areas. This is not because there isn't enough food, but it's because the conflict is blocking

passage of food, the passage of aid workers, the delivery of humanitarian aid. So it's a fundamental issue of politics as well as of humanitarian need. And sorry, you asked me also, I should have mentioned this, where does the US fit into this? It's an interesting case study of the four in 10 and the loss of the anchor. The US was nearly 50%

of total support for humanitarian work in Sudan, actually 46%. So you can see how significant the US is. Now, even with the waiver that Secretary Rubio has given for life-saving activity, remember, life-saving activity means that we can carry on doing an emergency operating theater, but we can't run the primary health care center in which it's located. So there's a bit of artificiality in there.

But even with that, there's a desperate need for others to step up. Otherwise, this crushing burden is going to expand. Well, and just on that point about the emergency operations center piece of it, you might have a waiver where literally someone at a, you know, what we would call like a soup kitchen might be authorized to hand food out. But if there's not

is the case that the absence of distribution centers, the absence of logistics chains. I remember a lot of USAID's comparative advantage in the development space when I was in government was that logistics chains

Right. The ability to move large amounts of aid someplace, set up a staging ground and get it out. Is it the sense that even with the lifesaving waiver, maybe at the far end of that chain, that the whole system will kind of break down if you don't have the...

not short-term emergency response reactive, but one of the things about these DART teams, these disaster assistance response teams, is that they were very good at then accessing, once they'd done an assessment, pre-positioned US goods. So there was real speed. Now,

you know, 305 million people in humanitarian need around the world, 84% of them in just 20 countries that are on our emergency watch list. We know where a lot of the crisis is. So it's not short term response. The earthquake that's going on that went on on Friday in, uh,

in Myanmar demands emergency reaction. But as you intimated earlier, direct delivery was not what USAID or the PRM Bureau, Populations, Refugees and Migration Bureau of the State Department did. They were about assessment, organization, and then support for other organizations to deliver. And then they use the technical and logistical capacity of organizations like IRC to then reach people in the greatest need because it wasn't US foreign service officers

delivering healthcare, it was done through governments and where governments don't exist through independent NGOs like ours. So it's another part of the anchor of the system being lost. So Chinese and Russians can arrive, but they don't have the same sort of protocols. They don't have the same sort of legitimacy. You have got the UN there, but obviously there's a 180-day review of the UN as well, whose outcome we don't know.

And just we've talked about Myanmar and Sudan, two places that are kind of urgent. One is a natural disaster on top of a conflict. One is a conflict. Then there are these kind of longer term needs that, you know, you also interact with like health. And let's just take, you know, where the U.S. is a huge player in.

When you look at things like immunization, you know, getting vaccines around the world, trying to stop the spread of potentially epidemic disease, what are you seeing as the impact of the U.S. withdrawal from that space?

Does this mean that we could see a regeneration of certain diseases that can be managed with vaccines? Does it pose a threat from the spread of particularly dangerous diseases like Ebola, for instance? How are you assessing that space?

Well, I wish we could vaccinate against Ebola, but we can't. But you raise a really important point because you and I would, I'm sure, agree there's a moral case for humanitarian aid. But if you want to make the strategic case that America is safer, stronger and more prosperous, the best place to do it is actually around immunization.

Because it's precisely disease spread that is the most tangible way, I think, of explaining to people why in a connected world, you're better off sponsoring immunization across the world, not just in parts of the world, because part immunization doesn't do the trick for you. We've got a very interesting example of this, which you and I have discussed previously.

in person when we were together. In four countries in East Africa, we've delivered 10 million doses of vaccine to zero-dose kids, kids who had no immunization at all, 2 million kids, 10 million doses in total, in war-torn areas where government systems weren't reaching. The government immunization drives around the world have reached about 85%, not because of vaccine hesitancy, by the way, but because

people weren't being reached. We've reached those people. And there's no doubt that that is a benefit direct to those people and the rest of their lives, they're immunized. But also, there's some sort of protection against the spread of disease more generally. Now, people are often unsure about, well, how do those connections go? Are you sure that people move? But actually,

There's enough movement around the world into capital cities, from capital cities on planes, that it can move...

pretty fast. And so the immunization drive, I think, is a very interesting one. There was a report last week that the US was going to pull out of a global alliance, the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunizations. It's not clear if that's going to take place because there's this review happening. The CEO of Gavi rightly said that she wanted to try and persuade the US that this was really in the US interest, not separate from it. And I think it makes the strategic case for foreign aid very, very tangible.

Do you see anybody filling the space? I mean, if this anchor is pulled up and potentially four out of 10 development dollars, humanitarian assistance dollars might go away, including the kind of fortifying presence and sustaining presence of U.S. assistance, do you see China, Russia, Gulf countries, philanthropies filling any of that space in a meaningful way?

Well, short term, we've had a good response. We can't fill all the gaps that are left by any withdrawal of US funding. It's just too big. But we've had a good response from people saying, hang on, while this review is going on, we want you to help you get over the hump. You've got to be able to...

stabilize and protect the most vulnerable. We're trying to, we've set out one, our most vulnerable clients will protect, two, we'll optimize our use of resources, three, we'll continue to re-envision an aid system of the future, which is where we've been offering some thought leadership, both in terms of the products and the processes.

But the short answer to your question is no, the system's still in shock. The anchor's been pulled up. Some passengers are getting seasick. But the other people on the boat are trying to figure out, well, how do we live in this new situation? What kind of buoys can we put out there to try to stabilise? The EU's got a seven-year budget. The good side of that is it's not going to be cutting until 2027. The bad side is it's not yet in a position to step up. You know that France...

aid budget going down. Germany, coalition negotiations. UK, sadly, has announced that in a year's time it's going to start reducing its aid budget. We don't know about the Gulf countries. Although the Chinese have reportedly responded to this earthquake, we don't know. We've seen no signal that they want to get into the humanitarian aid space. The truth is we need a much bigger conversation about the balance of responsibility for humanitarian aid and development aid.

Because in the last 30 years, it's increasingly evident that development takes place through indigenous, stable government markets that work. That's how people have been brought out of poverty. In extreme cases where you've got conflict, humanitarian aid is much more essential and it's grant-based. And we've got a situation where there's about $200 billion of so-called overseas assistance. Only a quarter of that goes on humanitarian aid at the moment.

And the big conversation that needs to happen is what's the balance of responsibility between international aid and domestic resource mobilization in countries that are lower middle income or even poor but not consumed by conflict? And that's a very difficult, big political, geopolitical conversation that needs to happen. And one last thing I wanted to ask you, which is in addition to your leadership in the humanitarian space,

You know, you were foreign secretary for the United Kingdom. It's early days, but what is a potential geopolitical shift? I mean, obviously, the main focus is humanitarian, is kind of human and moral in making the case for this type of assistance. But

What geopolitical shifts do you see from the kind of U.S. withdrawal from this space? Who might gain influence? Who might lose influence? How might that impact geopolitics? And that's a big question, but what's your initial impression? Well, I'm glad you're devoting the next 45 minutes to my answer to your question. Look, I think that the best thing for me to do is to use the words that you've seen reported elsewhere. Every country in the world has to ask itself, well, what do we do if the Americans aren't there?

That's the question on everybody's lips. And it's a question that's being asked in stark terms in countries that depend on USAID. But it's also being asked in powerful countries who are thinking, well, where do we position ourselves? And it's not just China and India, the emerging billion person plus countries.

powers of the new world order. It's also the middling powers. It's also Turkey. It's also Indonesia. It's also United Arab Emirates. They're all asking themselves, well, the Americans might not be there. What responsibility, what opportunity, what dependency does that create? And I'm very taken with the idea that this isn't a stable multipolar world. It's a much more unstable world

multi-aligned world with a set of different coalitions on different issues. Sometimes those coalitions can put out fires. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're actually part of the story. So I think it's a very much more unstable environment, whether you're a donee, whether you receive USAID, or whether you're thinking, do I move in because USAID is in retreat?

Well, we are definitely in rocky waters. If people wanted to donate to IRC or to specifically support IRC's efforts in a place like Myanmar or Sudan, where can we direct them? Yeah, please go to www.rescue.org. They can find a lot about what we're doing. They'll see the stories of our clients because we're very focused on don't believe the idea that foreign aid doesn't work. That excuse is not an excuse for inaction.

And what they'll find on our website is not just how to donate, but actually how their donation makes a difference because there are solutions out there. Great. Well, people should remember you do have some agency and we hope that you make up some of the support. I know you can't make up all of it that you're losing from USAID. David, thanks so much for joining us. Ben, thank you so much. Thanks again to David Miliband for doing the show. And we'll talk to you guys next week.

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