Call of Duty: Dumbass Group Chat
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Welcome back to Pods Day of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Good to see you, my friend. You look like you're in a nice but new location. I'm in a non-secure place.

Undisclosed location on spring break, getting a little skiing. It's not a skiff? Yeah. Doing a little, oh, nice. Yeah, everything's been on signal out here from the mountain. I could launch airstrikes against the Houthis from the gondola. Apparently you could. Apparently that's not how they do things over at the White House, but we're going to get into all of this, as Ben is alluding. The first topic today is going to be the national security group chat heard around the world and

what it means for the Houthi rebels and operational security in the United States and, I don't know, just the clown show of people running our government. We will talk about Turkey, President Erdogan's democratic backsliding and crackdown on the opposition. I'm going to cover all the news about the various people Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is trying to fire.

Israel. We'll talk about fighting in Gaza, the latest on peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, conflicts in Sudan and Congo, some immigration news, and a speed round of updates. And Ben, a lot of this conversation today will be guided by one man, a man named Steve Witkoff. He did an hour and a half long interview with Tucker Carlson where he talked about a whole range of stuff. So throughout the interview, we're going to be clipping from that because it was illuminating.

It was troubling, but illuminating. Well, you mean Secretary Whitcoff, the boss of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Marco Rubio. So let's be very clear about that. Let's be clear about his status in the world. You're also going to hear my conversation with Jeremy Shapiro, who is the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

And we basically just hopped around all of Europe, Ben. We talked about the opposition in Turkey and what he makes of them. The latest about Romania's elections. We talked about your boy, Viktor Orban, Germany's major investment in its defense industry, Europe's efforts to wean itself off of American weapons, and what he makes of Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney. So very fun conversation. We covered a lot of ground pretty quickly. We could have a pod save Europe, Tommy.

I'm just saying. I think we could. And by the way, if you want more about UK politics, do not miss our conversation with Pod Save the UK host and comedian Nish Kumar. We recorded this last Friday. We dug into all things British politics, talked about the King's playlist,

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It's funny. It's funny.

But Jeff dropped this blockbuster story on us. Somehow, Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, looped Jeffrey Goldberg in on a group chat on Signal. For those who don't know, Signal is an encrypted communications app that is widely used by government people, reporters, activists, anyone who's concerned about security because it's open source and it's largely viewed as being the most secure. The group that Jeff got added to was called Houthi PC Small Group. The

The Houthis, even the name is so funny. The Houthis are referring to the Houthi rebels, an extremist group based in Yemen that the U.S. has been bombing for years because they were firing missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea. PC stands for Principals Committee, which is a meeting hosted by the National Security Advisor that includes literally the top national security officials in the U.S. government, the head of the

FBI, for example, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State. And small group is what you call a White House Situation Room meeting when the subject is sensitive and you want to limit the number of people involved and disinvite some people that you find annoying. So,

Jeff gets looped onto this group chat, and all of a sudden he's just seeing messages from Mike Waltz, J.D. Vance, Assistant Deputy Assistant Secretary Marco Rubio, actual Secretary of State Steve Witkoff, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, some undercover CIA officer is on this thread. And they are literally talking about whether or not the U.S. should bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen. They're making a policy decision.

Here's Jeff Goldberg describing for Jen Psaki what was discussed on this group chat. This comes after they made the policy decision and they were talking about execution of this bombing raid. The specific time of a future attack, specific targets, including human targets, meant to be killed in that attack time.

weapons systems, even weather reports that the government is... I don't know why HECSAC was sharing it with everybody. I mean, the precise detail. And then a long section on sequencing. This is going to happen, then that is going to happen. After that happens, this happens, then that happens. And then we go and find out if it worked. I mean...

You know, he can say that it wasn't a war plan, but it was a minute-by-minute accounting of what was about to happen. That sounds pretty classified to me, Ben. For what it's worth, and it's not worth much, here's Pete Hegseth denying the allegations and blaming it all on Jeff Goldberg during a brief press availability in Hawaii. So you're talking about a...

deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the I don't know the hoaxes of Russia Russia Russia or the fine people on both sides hoax or suckers and losers hope so this is the guy that pedals in garbage this is what he does I've heard I've heard I was characterized nobody

was texting war plans. And that's all I have to say about that. Thank you. He like literally is speaking an alternate right-wing language. So Ben, Trump's top intelligence officials also parroted a lot of these lines or played dumb at a congressional hearing today. Several reporters have since pointed out after Jeff's story posted that Steve Witkoff was in Moscow

as he was receiving many of these signal messages. So, Ben, we should just say for the record, PC meetings are always in the White House Situation Room because they're almost always highly classified. You can join remotely, but only via secure government video technology. There was clearly classified information discussed on this chain. Like any prospective military action is like de facto classified and pretending otherwise is nonsense.

And Witkoff yucking it up from Moscow is like jaw-toppingly stupid. The knives are now out for Mike Waltz, a person close to the White House told Politico, quote, everyone in the White House can agree on one thing. Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot. Ben, your reaction to this disaster? I,

I mean, it's such a wide-ranging disaster. It's hard to find one entry point. I was in probably hundreds of PCs and small groups. And just to give people a sense of how tight the security is, when I was traveling, I remember one time, for instance, I was traveling in Oregon. I was on like a family vacation and I had to join a PC group.

I had to drive an hour and a half to an FBI field office to be escorted in a room with a secure video connection into the Situation Room. And I didn't think twice about that. Like the idea that I'd just be on my phone is nuts. Crazy. So the first point is that this is not normal. Like this is not something that anybody else has ever done. This is fucking insane. That's the first point. The second point is,

Just adding Jeff Goldberg is one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard of in my life. And Mike Waltz should be fired. I mean, if there's not accountability for... Because what if he added... If he's just searching Gs, what if he added...

I don't know. It could be anybody, right? Like he doesn't know who he added. This happened to be... That guy wasn't an H name if he added an actual Houthi. Like a Houthi in there. I mean, the thing is, like Jeff is like a very like inside the, you know, beltway guy. Like he was going to be very cautious about this. And they're attacking him. He didn't do anything other than receive their signal texts. Like, so that's the second point is like the dumb fuckery of adding Jeff Goldberg to it. Then the fact that

And we can get into, Tom, we should get into kind of what we learned about the various characters and the role they're playing. I think that's a separate conversation. Especially J.D. Vance. Yeah, exactly. But the fact that Pete Hegseth

texted these war plans. And Jeff was very specific. He had, these are what are called, so for people who wanted to come to Patsy's World for Jargon, strike packages, right? This would only be on high side email, would never be on unclassified email. You had to be on a special computer to read it. And it would have things like what time we're going to hit, what military we're going to use to hit from this aircraft carrier or these cruise missiles or these planes or

uh, what targets we're hitting. It's, it's a war plan, whatever the fuck Pete Hex says, um, it lays it all out. Why he needed to text that on signal is insane to me. I mean, just send the thing on high side email. And by the way, even if you're going to be dumb enough to be on signal, just say like, I sent, I sent the information on high side. If he actually put any of this information in the signal chat, um,

To me, what that suggests is a degree of reckless incompetence. And that's, I think, why we have to keep repeating this is reckless incompetence. But even worse for Hegseth, I think it was probably him like showing off for his buddies. Like, hey, man, look at the strike package. Like, this is the time we're going to hit the Houthis.

I also have questions. Was he drunk? I'm actually serious about this. What do we know about... How did this information get on his phone? Did you think about this, Tommy? If it was on a high side email, did he have someone move it to unclassified email so he could cut and paste it? Did he take a picture of it and send it to his buddies? There are all kinds of questions about the Hegseth role in this.

Yeah, it's really interesting. As long as we're doing jargon, I wondered if they were talking about a con op, which is a military term for concept of operations, that it's kind of like a high-level planning document that outlines how a military mission is going to be executed. And again, like you said, this is something very classified that you would get from the joint staff. It does sound like John Ratcliffe today at the hearing was saying that when he got to the CIA that

you know, for the first day of the job, he had Signal installed on his unclassified computer. And just so folks know, I mean, when Ben and I were in the White House, we had three computers. We had an unclassified computer, and then there was a computer on the military's network, which was basically a secret level. And then there was a top secret computer.

Now, I have no idea what the tech and the infrastructure looks like these days. And I know that the CIA, even back then, had its own kind of internal mail system. So I guess you can imagine a scenario where like top leaders at the Pentagon have some kind of unclassed system that has signal on it. But again, to your point, like clearly they were transferring stuff from the classified side

to this unclassified system and then sending it on signal, which is a massive no-no. It was very funny, but do you notice how Hexeth kept saying in the chat itself, things like, we are currently clean on OPSEC, meaning operational security, as these texts are just rolling into Jeff Goldberg's laptop and into Steve Witkoff's phone over in Moscow. It's like, what are you talking about, Pete? Well, that's the thing is the US taxpayer pays a

a lot of money to make sure that we have encrypted communication systems. So you don't need to use Signal. The only reason you use Signal is so that you can go out and be out of the office. These are guys that just don't want to actually be at fucking work to do their jobs. To your point about moving from the Hegseth of it all, if Steve Witkoff was on this text thread from Moscow,

That's mind blowing to me because if you traveled even back in the relatively peaceful Obama years to a place like Russia or China, you weren't even supposed to bring your phone. Like we had to leave our phones on Air Force One in China.

Like, because it was just, they could hack anything. We had to leave them on the plane in France. Yeah, they'd give you burner phones. Like, this is, this is like, so if Steve Wyckoff carried this phone around Russia with him and was on this thread, it's like,

it doesn't matter the signal encryption. They're in his phone anyway. They can see what's on his phone. They have cameras everywhere. Like the idea that this was not compromised in Moscow is hard for me to believe. And we know that the Russians are allies with Iran. Like I,

It's far-fetched, but they could have chosen to alert the Houthis to this in ways that could have endangered the operation, endangered our U.S. troops. They clearly didn't do that. But the fact that this didn't run through Steve Witkos' head, maybe I shouldn't be on a sensitive text thread about a military operation while I'm in Moscow. These people are so reckless and incompetent. And by the way,

again, you don't need DIY encryption. Like even when we were in the, in the government, which is like more than a decade ago, the senior military leadership would join secure video conferences with the president of the United States from their airplanes. Yeah. Like,

We have amazing technology. We have secure comms. You don't have to use your phone in a signal chat. And Ben, the other thing that was interesting was J.D. Vance's view on all this, where he both suggested that Trump didn't really understand what he was doing, but also J.D.'s opposition to bombing the Houthis was all framed as being mad at Europe, which was just bizarre to me. But I wonder what you made of that piece of it. Yeah. So we learned a few things. So J.D. Vance trash talks Europe and says, we're only doing this to help the Europeans, which...

I don't remember the Europeans asking us to bomb the Houthis. It's the Israelis that actually have been going after the Houthis. So he tries to play smart guy. Like J.D. Vance on this Signal thread sounds like he's auditioning for a guest role on the All In podcast or something. He doesn't know what he's talking about, but any opportunity this guy gets to take a whack at Europe, he takes.

That jumped out to me. Marco Rubio, absent. Like, we don't really hear from that guy on the text thread. Stephen Miller. No big ideas. Stephen Miller is the domestic policy guy.

We never had the domestic policy person in a conversation about military strikes. He got the last word. He comes in SM and he's like, you know, I heard the president say he wants to do X, Y, and Z. Why is the domestic policy advisor in this conversation to begin with? And then another thing that jumped out to me, Tommy, is that

Where was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the CENTCOM commander? Senior military advisor to the president. Where is the actual military officers? They were totally absent from this conversation. So everything about this, the Trump people are like, this is reassuring. This is like, these are smart people wrestling with hard things. I wasn't reassured by that.

No, these are morons who, some of them a couple months ago, were literal drunk Fox News weekend anchors. Yeah, you know, you and I were laughing about how we... Look, we've been in meetings and in conversations like this where you kind of roll your eyes at a bunch of kind of DC suits giving each other high fives and taking credit for really...

daring, brave US military operations overseas. And it's like, hey, congrats guy in the meeting. You wrote a memo about it. These guys were even worse. They were fucking sending emojis to each other. These are grown ass men.

Sending emojis to each other. It does seem like this is really penetrated, unlike most other scandals, Ben. I mean, Trump finally tweeted, Michael Waltz has learned a lesson and he's a good man. He kind of got Waltz's back today at this White House event, but really he's focusing his rage on Jeffrey Goldberg and just attacking the media. It is also just worth reminding folks, Ben, that last week,

The New York Times reported that Elon Musk was planning to go over to the Pentagon to get briefed on the Pentagon's plan for war with China. Now, they kind of, I think they walked that back after this report came out, but what

why do you need to brief the doge guy, the government efficiency guy on the war plan with China? That makes no sense in any context. You're not going to doge your way through like war with Xi Jinping, but it is even crazier when you understand all of Elon Musk's

conflicts with China. Like he's trying to sell Tesla's to Chinese consumers. Half of Tesla's produced in the last couple of years were made in China. His factory in China was financed with loans from Chinese banks. Republican members of Congress have even called out Musk's ties with China and demanded briefings. So like everything about that was weird and kind of outside of regular order. And then we learned about this group chat. Well,

Well, yeah, to connect the dots here, and I hope people keep pounding on this, they should want to see the full text thread. They should demand accountability. And part of the reason why is it's not an isolated incident. It's how these people are dealing with the most sensitive responsibilities of government. If they had a group chat about this incident,

I'm sure they have 20 other group chats. You know, I'm sure there's like a Canada invasion plan, you know, signal threat or, or whatever the thing is. And, and the idea that they would brief Elon Musk on anything related to China, again, it's part of a pattern of them, um,

bypassing any protocols that exist for a reason. These aren't just like Namby Pamby norms things. The idea is that there's very sensitive information that if China and Russia get access to that information, they will use it to really screw... I've been using a lot of profanity, so I'm trying to find another word, but let's just say to screw the United States.

And Elon Musk has these massive conflicts of interest given his scale of his business interest in China, given the scale of his business interest with the Pentagon, right? And so giving this, you know,

Pretty much private citizens. No sense. Access to anything at the Pentagon is insane, but it's the same mentality that would lead you to dismantle the US government, that would lead you to have a signal group thread. The connective tissue here is that these people don't give a shit about Americans or American interests or American security. They're just in it to either have a good time, to enrich themselves, to aggrandize themselves. That's the common thread between all these things.

It was rather reckless. I heard the original group chat name was Houthis in the Blown Ship. No? Can get some tomatoes thrown at me. One other weird administration thing, Ben. So the second lady, Usha Vance, is apparently going to Greenland. She initially announced this trip in one of the more uncomfortable and awkward Instagram videos I've ever seen. And I'm not trying to be mean to her. It was just a tough watch. I guess now JD Vance, yeah, it

I guess that J.D. Vance is tagging along. He released his own video where he said there was just so much excitement about her visit that he had to come. It does not quite seem credible. In fact, people in Greenland were not thrilled about her trip because, you know, Trump keeps threatening to invade them. I think Mike Waltz is going to Greenland in June.

in the coming days too. So fire up your signal app. Also just unrelated last week, Trump provoked the security clearances from a bunch of former Biden officials and assorted enemies and includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan. I think actually everyone in the Biden family. So that's, you know, a petty and stupid, it is just like, it's worth noting that

Mike Waltz or anyone on the national security team might want to talk to Jake Sullivan or Tony Blinken about something they had worked on over the last four years, and now they can't in a classified setting because they stripped away their security clearance. So it seems like a bit of a cell phone here. Yeah, there's clearly things that they don't know. Conversations that went on with the Ukrainians or conversations that went on in the Middle East, you'd want to maybe call your predecessor and have that conversation. They clearly didn't understand that. This visit to Greenland is...

There's no reason on earth for Usha Vance and I guess JD Vance to attend a dog sledding race in Greenland. It's like your first thing. This is your inaugural trip. Yeah. You're running advance on the Greenland invasion. And this is backfiring. Greenland, which has had some anti-Denmark attitudes, some independence movements, they seem to be pretty united in the fact that they don't want

you know, Usha Vance coming there to advance the takeover of their country via dog sledding tourism. Right. And so this, this is kind of stuff that like people are again, look, imagine what this looks like from outside the United States. We, we look completely out of control, like completely. It's a combination of amateur hour and scary fascistic behavior. And that's not like a particularly heartening combination. Yeah.

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All right, let's turn to our ally in Turkey. So we covered, again, some of the basics of this on our YouTube exclusive with Nish. We focused a lot of our time on all the ways Elon Musk is trying to screw up British politics and prop up right-wing fringe characters and attack their democracy. So fun story, but we also talked about the fact that last week,

Ekrem Imamoglu, who's the mayor of Istanbul, who is widely viewed as President Erdogan's most formidable political opponent, was arrested. He was accused of a bunch of stuff, of leading a criminal organization. He was charged with corruption. He was also accused of supporting terrorism, specifically a group called the PKK, which is a particular Erdogan boogeyman. Istanbul University also annulled

Imamoglu's college degree from 30 years ago. And that sounds petty and stupid because it is, but it also really matters in Turkey because the constitution says you have to have a college degree to run for president. And so all of this happened right before Imamoglu's political party, the Republican People's Party or CHP selected him or was set to select him as their candidate to run against Erdogan in the next presidential election, which is set for 2028, but it could get moved up. So this

you know, arrest led to, it was actually a bunch of arrests. I think they arrested like a hundred people. It led to massive protests, the largest in Turkey in a decade. There are reports as of today of over, uh, 1100 people getting arrested. Everyone called the protesters evil. Um,

And we can, I'll get into the protests themselves and the stakes for Europe more in our interview with Jeremy Shapiro, Ben. But I think the key takeaway for listeners is that Erdogan is very rapidly pushing Turkey from a democracy to an autocracy.

government is arresting political opponents. They're trying to ban protests. They're demanding that social media sites block or take down posts from protesters. Politico had reported over the weekend that free speech absolutist Elon Musk had suspended some accounts on X. His team denies it, but I don't know. I don't

believe anything he says these days. Since 2011 or so, we have seen some successful protest movements that lead to governmental change, but we've seen many more that get crushed by who I was often referred to as the guys with the guns, like the regime. What are you watching here to see if what's happening in Turkey can lead to more democratization? And what do you think the stakes are for the region in your opinion?

I think the challenge is that Turkey is pretty far down the authoritarian road, right? Like Erdogan's been going in this direction for over a decade now. And he's kind of allowed the semblance of an occasional election while he's kind of taken over all the other institutions and intimidated and sometimes detained opponents. What this shows me, though, that's been clear is that I think if there was a free and fair election in Turkey, he would lose. And he'd probably lose by a lot.

And I know he won the last one, but I mean, do we, I don't trust that result. Like I, like this guy clearly, if you cannot allow for any public airing of dissent, if you're so afraid of your political opponent that you're going back and making Istanbul university revoke his degree from 30 years ago. So he's disqualified from running against you. That is not someone who's confident that they'd actually win a free and fair election.

And so I do think it is useful that what people are showing us in the streets in Turkey is just that Erdogan wants the perception that he's this beloved strongman and he's not. And so at minimum, it's accomplished that. Now, in terms of whether it takes hold, the question is,

Can they perpetuate this movement? Can it sustain? Can people stay in the streets? Does Erdogan have to make some kind of concession here in releasing the Istanbul mayor? Are there other institutions inside Turkey that kind of start to break in the direction of the opposition?

Those things are probably unlikely, but I still think it's important that it's just kind of registered once, because this is not the first protest movement we've seen in Turkey, that the Turkish people like are not on board with where Erdogan's going. And it's a message for us too, by the way, like let's not wait until it's too late to have our own protest movement. Let's get ourselves out in the streets like right now. In terms of the region, what's complicated about it is at this moment,

Erdogan holds all these cards. He's a key player in Syria because the group that he backed took over Syria. He's a key player in the Russia-Ukraine talks because he's been this kind of guy who can shuttle back and forth between the Russians and the Ukrainians. The Europeans desperately need Erdogan for a variety of reasons. There are millions of Syrian migrants in Turkey that he could kind of

let go into Europe. In this kind of gross way, Turkey's this buffer between more migration into Europe and not. If there's a European security initiative, the Europeans will want Turkey to be a part of it because they have actually a pretty capable military. So part of what I'm also worried about is that you're not going to see any external... Trump and Musk, they love everyone. Yeah, there's nothing so far. Nothing coming from the US. And the Europeans are probably scared to antagonize them too. And so...

He'll probably weather this, but I mean, we're all seeing before our eyes that the emperor has no clothes here. Yeah. Now, Ben, I do have some good news for you. As I mentioned at the top, Steve Witkoff did this long interview with Tucker Carlson. It came out three days ago, so Sunday, which means obviously they recorded it a few days before. Now, in this interview, though, Witkoff says that Donald Trump recently called

President Erdogan. And it all sounds pretty hopeful. So here's a clip of Witkoff talking about that call. The president had a great conversation with Erdogan a couple of days ago. Really transformational, I would describe it. There's some good coming. There's some just a lot of good positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation. So I think you'll see that in the reporting in the coming days. So maybe the good positive news was a brutal crackdown on all protesters?

We gave this guy his due on the Gaza ceasefire, which probably- We did. We had some walking back to do. Well, no, I mean, it probably had more to do with the fact that Bibi wanted to humiliate Biden and give Trump this win. And now he's resumed his war, right? But this guy is, he literally was on the golf course in Florida like five months ago. And now he somehow thinks, I mean, the one thing I'd say about Eric, I was in by the

Very savvy guy. There's a reason he's kind of navigated the last 30 years of geopolitics. The idea that Steve Witkoff,

Some Florida real estate developer who joined the geopolitical fray like three months ago has taken the measure of, of Erdogan and, and Putin and, and so is moving these people around like chess pieces. It's so embarrassing and laughable. And, you know, just, he's got to boast to it, to Tucker Carlson about it. Yeah. It's, it's, I leave, like, I don't even know that he's boasting. I just think he's, well, they're all boasting. They're all just spouting the line for Trump and saying what Trump wants to hear, but it's

so unbelievably credulous. There are times where he kind of says things that normal foreign policy thinkers aren't allowed to say. I mean, Tucker Carlson loses his mind. You'll hear some of that. But there's the credulousness is incredible. And, you know, Jake Sullivan got a lot of shit for putting in writing right before October 7th that, you know, the Middle East had never been...

quieter. Steve Witkoff saying, you're about to hear some great news out of Turkey because the president's amazing call right before the place explodes in this brutal crackdown is right up there. And I think what happens, because Erdogan used to do this with Obama too. I'm sure he says, oh, President Trump, you're so great. This is just transformational leadership. And oh, by the way, President Trump,

Your envoy, Steve Woodcuff, is the greatest envoy. And these people just believe it. They're so narcissistic that if Putin or Erdogan just drop a little flattery and they're like, this is the greatest call. I'm sure everyone could have said, this is the greatest phone call in the history of phone calls. And they believe that that's true. It's pretty embarrassing.

Okay, let's move over to Israel because last week we talked about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's attempt to fire Ronan Barr, the head of the Shin Bet, which is Israel's domestic intelligence service. On Friday, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction and blocked him. They ordered a hearing on the situation in the coming weeks. So as we talked about, Barr has led the Shin Bet since 2021. If he is forced out, he would be the first Shin Bet leader in Israel's history to get fired.

It has been widely reported that the Shin Bet is investigating ties between Netanyahu's aides and Qatar, the country. There is in the coverage, Ben, that there's a suggestion that the wrongdoing could range from illegal lobbying or taking payments to possibly even being paid spies for the Qatari government. It's kind of...

Hard to suss it out, but there's a lot of reading between the lines happening in the coverage. Netanyahu's office denies that Ronan Barr's firing is connected to that investigation and to his aides, but everyone should doubt that. Netanyahu was also now trying to fire Israel's attorney general. She had been trying to slow, if not outright prevent, Ronan Barr from getting fired. Now, the good news here is that

Netanyahu's cabinet may have unanimously voted against her in a no confidence vote. The actual process to remove the attorney general is far more onerous and will take some time. But these moves together have once again led to massive protests across Israel. I've heard reports of up to 100,000 people on the streets, which is enormous given Israel's total population. And there's warnings from the chief justice of Israel's Supreme Court that there would be a constitutional crisis of sorts

If Netanyahu ignores the Supreme Court, they don't have a constitution. But you get what I mean. So Netanyahu's coalition unfortunately got stronger last week when this right-wing lunatic we've talked about many times, Itamar Ben-Gavir, and his Jewish power party rejoined the government coalition. He had quit back in January after the ceasefire. And when the ceasefire ended, he got back in. So, Ben, you know, there's obvious parallels there.

when we talk about this stuff between the political situation in Israel and what we're now experiencing here in the U.S. I do have to say the notable difference so far is Israelis, to their great credit, are back out in the streets and protesting and doing it weekly even. And we are not yet. And that seems like a real problem. It is a real problem. I mean, 100,000 Israelis is comparable to, I don't know,

I'm not good at math, but like well over 10 million Americans. And it's pretty obvious what's happening here. I mean, the notion that

They, at a minimum, Netanyahu and his kind of cohort facilitated payments to Hamas as part of this strategy of keeping them in power and keeping the Palestinian leadership divided and having Hamas as a boogeyman. That is so well documented, you know? And these guys will do- And there's a question of whether that policy emerged from these Qataris and was sort of like

given to the Israeli side or whether... It certainly sounds like that policy came from Netanyahu's political aides and not the security establishment. And it's... Yes. I can't... I mean, I don't know... And I'll get to this in a second, but I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine the IDF or Shin Bet being like, hey, we've got a good idea, and let's fund Hamas. And...

But wouldn't you like to know? I mean, that's my key point here is like, if you were Israeli, or by the way, a US taxpayer that just keeps shoveling billions of dollars in bombs at Israel, wouldn't you like to know whether or not this was a scheme thrust upon the Israelis by somebody else, or whether there were a couple of bad apples, or whether the prime minister himself had approved this? This is exactly what you would want

to investigate, you know? And it's very clear that Netanyahu, I mean, kind of a tell that he doesn't want this person to keep investigating, you know? And in a system in which the Shin Bet, even more so than the FBI in the United States, is supposed to be this kind of sacrosanct independent security service. And

And now, you know, what we're seeing is the kind of copycat of Trump. Like, you know, BB wants his own Kash Patel in charge of the shin bag. You know, that's what's happening here and everybody can see it. And, um,

Let me just say, all the enablers of Netanyahu in this country, in the United States, all the AIPAC crowd, they're a part of this. Call this out. Why are we running interference of this fucking guy? The Israelis are in the streets in huge numbers, and yet people watch what they say about this in the United States. Why is this not a bigger story in the United States? This is a huge deal. I know. And it barely registers. People are afraid to talk about it. At the exact moment,

Well, at the exact moment when the Trump administration is telling kids at Columbia University what they can and cannot say about the Israeli government and Israeli government policies, you've got Israelis saying far more harsh things about Netanyahu and this anti-government crackdown that's happening than anyone here ever will. We're talking about some kid at Columbia, you know, chanting a slogan you don't like and it's too friendly to Hamas. And so we're going to deport that person. We're talking about Israeli leaders potentially fondling

Handling millions of dollars to Hamas, you know, like, isn't that more of a source? Isn't that more providing support? What's worse in terms of supporting Hamas? Like facilitating all this money getting to them? Or like chaining a slogan at the Columbia University Quad? Like what planet are we on?

Yeah, it's crazy. So we mentioned that, unfortunately, the war in Gaza has restarted. The Israelis started bombing again. The Gaza Health Ministry now says that more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war started, 700 of them since the end of the ceasefire. A third of those, they say, were children. So that's just...

another horrifying statistic. Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, says pretty overtly they're ramping the war back up. Here's a quote. I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza while evacuating the population and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers. The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel. Several news outlets- Kind of giving away the game there, you know?

Yeah, a bunch of news outlets reported the IDF is considering a huge ground operation and offensive into Gaza with the goal of fully occupying the Gaza Strip and establishing military rule there. Ominously, Israel is also setting up an agency to supervise the, quote, voluntary departure of Gazans from the Gaza Strip, which is a move that echoes Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

But again, Ben, our buddy Steve Witkoff had to weigh in. Two quotes we want to play for you guys. The first is this one of Steve talking about Hamas. What they want is unacceptable.

What's acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit, right? Be involved politically. But they can't be involved. We can't have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won't be acceptable to Israel. Then we'll just have the same exact experiences. Every 5, 10, 15 years, we're going to have an October 27th. Yes. October 7th, pardon me. So that's what Hamas wants.

That's not possible. So we'll get to the second clip in a couple minutes. But that clip to me was kind of the duality of Wyckoff, Ben, because he's... I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that Hamas might play some role in the future governance of Gaza. But you sure as hell better believe that Netanyahu is never going to let that happen. He's probably furious that Wyckoff would let that slip. It was just interesting to hear him say it. Yeah, and I don't really get their...

What's missing here is a theory of – because you're right. You could listen to that and be like, okay, that's reasonable. Hamas needs to abandon its kind of military wing, demilitarize, and then be a part of some political structure in Gaza. But there's no vision for how –

any of that happens. There's not a horizon for Palestinian reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority or the generation of new Palestinian leadership. There's certainly no discussion of when Gaza will be self-governing again. There's no discussion, obviously, of a Palestinian state. And so there are these kind of demands made in interviews with Tucker Carlson or wherever. And then all that we see in practice is

Israel bombing Gaza again. They're killing journalists and children. We send more weapons. And we send more weapons. And then the defense minister is literally talking about annexation of parts of Gaza. And so it's hard for me to take seriously that Wyckoff is trying to

solve some problem. It just feels like a different flavor of talking while Israel's creating facts on the ground that look increasingly like a plan for annexation and ethnic cleansing. I mean, and you say that and people get bent out of shape. It's like they're saying that, like the Israeli minister of defense said the word annexation. It's clear as day. And just to add to what you said, I mean,

We also want to play for you a quote of Steve Witkoff talking about Gaza reconstruction that I think gets at the utter absurdity of whatever plan they might have, or I guess just a lack of plan. Here's more from Steve Witkoff on Tucker Carlson. We're going to attempt to, you know, to ascertain different development plans for Gaza.

Could involve the word two-state? Could not involve the word two-state? What about that? You don't hear that anymore. I mean, for my whole life, the stated aspiration was a Palestinian state. But man, I haven't in the past five or six, 10 years heard anybody in authority say

even mention it because when you use those words yeah it's like it's like a flashpoint right so i use the word i could be attacked for it to me it's just a word right what what two-state to me means is how do we have a better living prescription for palestinians who are living in gaza let's get let's get to that place but it's not just about housing maybe it's about ai coming there

Maybe it's about hyperscale data centers being seeded into that area because we need to have that. And these people can now take advantage and we can create jobs for them there. Maybe it's about blockchain and robotics coming there. Maybe it's about pharmaceutical manufacturing coming there.

So interesting that we're walking away completely from the two-state solution while also suggesting, Ben, that Gaza's power grid, which even pre-October 7th was sometimes only able to supply two to four hours worth of electricity to residents per day, is primed and ready for AI and blockchain? Is that what we're talking about here? That's our plan?

I don't even know what to say about that. And I'd heard it before, but doesn't he sound like someone having a conversation with Trump on the golf course?

You know, like, first of all, is two-state one, like you keep saying it, like the word two-state. It's like such a Trumpian formulation, like I'm going to say the word two-state, which might be two words or hyphenated at least. But anyway, put that aside. Yeah, hyphenated. Yeah, I don't, this is like a version of Trump saying about like, we're going to depopulate and create a Riviera. And now we're going to bring all the things that they like.

that they don't fully understand. AI, blockchain, data centers, pharmaceuticals making a cameo appearance. These things are going to come to Gaza? It sounded like a bullshit tech company's earnings call. It's like they're going to sprinkle in some buzzwords for a fucking algorithm that makes stock prices go up. What are you talking about? It sounds like an Aussie media pitch. Sorry, there's still two inside, but like-

No, that's a good joke. We've got a PowerPoint where the first deck, the first slide is like Gaza rubble and the second is like a data center and AI. These are human beings. And the other thing that actually is truly notable about this though is that he doesn't even mention the West Bank.

Um, cause like, actually, I think that's probably just going to be annexed, you know, uh, gradually by Israel, you know, like the, the, the heart of the two state solution is actually in the West bank, you know? Um, so I dunno, man, I do, I do not leave that with a great deal of confidence that there's going to be a flowering of data centers in the,

independent Palestinian state of Gaza anytime soon. We are going to blockchain our way to peace. Two other quick things on this. It's worth noting that there have been some flare-ups between Israel and Lebanon that the BBC describes as the worst violence between the two countries since

The ceasefire in Lebanon came into effect last November, so that's troubling. It's something we're watching. And then also there was a horrible incident yesterday in the West Bank that we wanted to highlight, which was Hamdan Balal, who is the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. He was attacked...

by violent Israeli settlers. We were able to connect with a witness, a woman named Jenna, who was there as a volunteer for the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. She and some other volunteers received a call from Bilal saying he was being attacked. And here's how she described what happened next. We drove to Hamdan's house. Already there, there was a ton of police and soldier cars, army vehicles,

So we thought we had seen soldiers on the top of the hill where Hamdan lived. So we started, three of us got out of the car and started walking towards the house. In reality, it turns out that it was actually the settlers who were attacking. One of them came towards us. He was masked. He started screaming at us. I was screaming in English at him, you know, don't do this. He shoved me pretty hard. And then he punched my friend in the stomach and in the neck and

And so we tried to run back to the car. They were hitting us with sticks. I was basically safe because of a sunscreen aerosol can in my back. Took the brunt force. Very, very dented, but still works. Thank you, banana boat. And as we were getting to the car, they were throwing stones, broke the windows, slashed the tire,

The driver was honking the horn to get the army's attention and they eventually showed up and the settlers ran back to continue the attack on Hamdan and the other two Palestinians' houses. We were telling the soldiers, like, they attacked us, they attacked us, like, help us, go get them. And the soldiers stood there and did nothing.

We told them that there's families in these houses. They needed to go protect them. They just stood there and did nothing. Shout out to Jenna in the Center for Jewish Nonviolence for literally putting their bodies on the line in the wake of this horrific violence. And she's frankly describing something that happens frequently.

far too often, which is that the IDF soldiers who are in the West Bank are more there to protect violent settlers than any of the residents there, including any peaceful protesters who often get brutalized. So the good news is that Hamda Bala was released Tuesday after being held overnight at a military base. The Guardian reported that he had bruises on his face, blood on his clothes, but thank God was alive. And there's initial, someone initially tweeted that he'd been lynched

And it was not clear if this person was speaking kind of metaphorically or literally. It was very scary for a minute. But, you know, Ben, we've focused so much on Gaza over the last year and a half, two years. But this incident is just a reminder that settler violence is a huge and growing problem. And like you said a minute ago, it feels like the plan for the West Bank is Israeli annexation. Yeah, and it's a constant. So what happens is settlers attack Palestinians.

And then the IDF comes and arrests the Palestinians, you know, and the settlers have impunity. And that is what is happening right now in Israel and the West Bank and has been for years.

And in this particular case, he wins an Academy Award. That's why they're attacking him. It's because they know that for a variety of reasons, Americans will not speak up in defense of this person. And our silence is a permission slip for them to do what they did. And the last thing I'd say is, Tommy, every now and then, something like this will happen.

And I'm sure you, you know, you and I have talked about this before on the podcast, but like we have people in our lives, you know, why are you hard on Israel? And we get emails from people. I just want, how do you defend this? Like, like I want to ask all of those people, how do you defend a group of settled? This guy did nothing. He made a movie that won an Academy award. He was in his house and some people showed up and beat the shit out of him. And then the authorities came and arrested him.

How do you defend that? This has nothing to do with Hamas. This isn't Gaza October 7th. How do you defend that? Like, I'm at a loss for words to understand. I just don't understand the mentality of people that can see that and think it's okay. Yeah. And it's maybe not state-sponsored, but it's state-supported violence. State-enabled. These IDFs. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. I mean, these IDF soldiers, they're solely there to protect the settlers. And you've got people like Itmar Ben-Gavir, who is now a part of the government again, who is helping arm these violent settlers. So it's very scary stuff, Ben. ♪

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Here at Assembly Required, we will continue to face each executive order, legislative policy, and news cycle, no matter how terrifying or absurd, by asking, what can we do to learn more about what's happening? What can we do to solve problems, however small? And how can we find the kind of hope that can sustain our work in difficult times? Listen to new episodes of Assembly Required every Thursday on Amazon Music.

Okay, we are going to switch gears entirely, though, and talk about Russia, because on Tuesday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to stop fighting in the Black Sea and also agreed to continue trying to work out details for a ceasefire between the two sides on energy infrastructure. Remember, Trump had announced this, I think, last week. This all happened during these U.S.-mediated talks that are going on in Saudi Arabia. Now, it's worth pointing out, really,

Russia is demanding even more concessions before they'll agree to even this very limited ceasefire in the Black Sea. Specifically, they want to restore their agricultural banks access to the international payment system, and they want to get the West to lift restrictions on, quote, trade finance operations. Basically, they're demanding that the U.S. walk back even more sanctions, even more penalties that were imposed on Russia after the full scale invasion in 2022.

Now, not surprisingly, the White House okayed this additional giveaway to the Russians in their statement about these talks. And again, a ceasefire deal that is just focused on the Black Sea is already tilted toward the Russians because that's...

that's the one place where the Ukrainians, because of these interesting like boat drones they created, have been able to cause a lot of damage and really target the Russian Navy in an impactful way and kind of shut down whole areas of operations that they're shipping. But again, we wanted to play like one last clip of our boy Steve Wyckoff talking with Tucker Carlson, this time about Putin and, you know, U.S. relations with Russia. Here's Steve again. President Putin had commissioned a beautiful video

of President Trump from the leading Russian artist and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump, which I brought home and delivered to him. It's been reported in the paper, but it was such a gracious moment and told me a story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church

and met with his priest and prayed for the president, not because he was the president of the United, he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend. Someone, I was talking to someone in the administration and they said, "Well, you gotta watch it 'cause he's an ex-KGB guy." So I said, "Okay, what's the inference?"

Well, he's an ex-KGB guy. He could be looking to manipulate you. He's a super smart guy, okay? You don't want to give him the credit for it. That's okay. I give him the credit for it. They must hate you for saying stuff like that. But he is. I know. I'm very aware. I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions. Donbass, Crimea, you know, the names. Lugansk, yeah.

- First of all, I'm used to Tucker Carlson's laugh, but it's still just so jarring. It's like he's being chased around by Jack Nicholson in "The Shining." It's like so hysterical. But you hear that and it's so credulous and he's clearly being manipulated, then mocks the people warning him about being manipulated. And like, of course, Zelensky is apoplectic about these peace talks and Witkoff having this major role in these things. - Even like Putin's friends,

would not be as credulous of Putin as Steve Witkoff. Like, oh, he had a painting of Trump done. He lit a candle in the church. Like you, you believe that like, I'm, it's amazing. Steve Witkoff is walking around and like, he's probably like, like wait till, wait, wait till someone sends him one of those like Nigerian Prince emails and like, he's going to give away his fortune. Like this is the guy in charge of the ending the war. Like, like,

there's nobody on earth as credulous of Putin as that, you know, like Xi Jinping doesn't trust Putin like, like in that way. And the, the fact that, and then Tucker, by the way, coming in with like the four provinces, those are part of Ukraine. Right. And like Tucker's jumping in, he knows them. Like he's got the, I mean, these guys are a little too familiar with the Russian narrative for you to be comfortable about it. They're,

They're not disputed provinces. They're not familiar enough to name the fucking territory that he's trying to negotiate away from the Ukrainians. I love that the envoy doesn't know it, but the kind of Russia, you know, the super pro-Russian talk show host is like, I'll jump in there. It's Luhansk or whatever, you know. But these are not disputed provinces. These are parts of Ukraine that Russia invaded and is trying to annex.

And they're talking about them like- And these guys keep- No, Ben, I'm glad you said that because these guys, the MAGA types keep talking about, Tucker in particular, keep talking about how they're- Oh, there were a referendum in these Russian-speaking eastern provinces. But first of all, a lot of people in these areas speak both Russian and Ukrainian. But-

to the extent that there were referendums, they were done under occupation, under duress. There is literal visual evidence of ballot boxes where the results were not to the liking of the Russian side that were lit on fire and burned. This is very well established. And like, I'm fine with, you know, if Tucker's like big point is like, okay, we should hear the Russian perspective, understand, um,

their threats, you know, like where you sit is where you stand. That's part of diplomacy. Sure. But you don't have to be fucking credulous. You don't have to believe everything they say. Yeah, they're not even talking about NATO enlargement anymore. Now they're fully inhabiting the Russian narrative about provinces and Putin. You know, I'm going to make a Gen X reference, like the painting. Please. If all goes to shit for Trump, it's going to be like Vince Vaughn walking out at wedding crashers.

Like the painting was a gift, Todd. Like I'm keeping the, like Trump's last possession. Painting was a gift, Vlad. Yeah, yeah. The last possession that he will carry out of the White House is that painting that Vladimir Putin gifted him. I'm sure he will.

I mean, like the Moscow Times reported the Kremlin's purposely slow walking the talks. Thank you for reporting it out, but no shit. Again, Putin's aims are pretty maximalist. Like he won't even agree to a 30 day ceasefire, which remember is what Trump actually wanted, not these limited ceasefires. But the Russian position is that to get there would require a halt to Western military aid to Ukraine and to their country's mobilization efforts of their own troops, which was just non starters. But again, there's just no pressure applied to the Russian side. None, zero. None. None.

All right, Ben, two conflicts. There's two major conflicts in Africa that we've talked about a lot that we want to touch on again today. The first is the civil war in Sudan. That war is coming up on its two year anniversary of the fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and its former ally, this militia group called the RSF. So the results of this war have been

utterly catastrophic. Tens of thousands of people have been killed. 12 million people have been displaced. An estimated 30 million people need food assistance. And of course, all of this is happening as Elon Musk and Deputy Assistant Deputy of State Rubio destroy USAID. United Nations is trying to kind of fill the gap here, and they are not even able to raise 50% of their assistance goal.

So there is a massive need and even less resources to deal with it. But there was a pretty big military and symbolic breakthrough in the war last week when the Sudanese armed forces captured the presidential palace in Khartoum. There's not like a

Look, good guys, bad guys is a reductive way to talk about this. The Sudanese armed forces were part of a coup that toppled a democratically elected group of peaceful protesters. They're not good guys, but in this case, I think they're better than the RSF. And hopefully the SAF, the Sudanese armed forces, will be able to drive the RSF troops out of the capital so people can go home and the government can try to resume function to some extent, restore basic services.

maybe create some sort of technocratic government that can get people like power, water, food aid, etc. But even if they capture all of Khartoum, that doesn't do much for people in the Darfur region because many of the same Islamist rebel groups that conducted the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s are now part of the RSF and they're once again doing

evil shit, killing civilians, using rape as a tool of war, laying siege to entire cities full of like a million plus displaced people. So again, USAID has been decimated. There's not even nearly enough food and medical support. But Ben, what are you watching in this conflict after this kind of turning point in Khartoum? It just does feel like this is decisively shifted. It makes you wonder what was the point of all this? What was the point of this civil war? Why did the...

governments like the UAE back the RSF for two years for what purpose? And so one is to watch whether there's any continued foreign assistance flowing into the RSF from places like the UAE or whether they just kind of go back to being a pariah. And I think that will probably happen. To your point, I assume that the military will consolidate control over Khartoum.

Watch what happens in Darfur, though, because these guys, the RSF, they were the John Dewey before they were the RSF. They could go back there, kind of take it out on the people there. But the main thing to watch is what happens when there's no USAID, because this would be a place where the USAID would be not only on the ground, but it'd be a force multiplier bringing in other assistance.

And so I think we have to watch how much philanthropies can get basic needs met, how much other Europeans and other governments can come in. And I worry that that's not going to happen and that you're going to have a lingering humanitarian crisis. Yeah, me too. It is really, really bad and really dark. The USAID piece is...

Horrific. I noticed that Marco Rubio in his, I think, confirmation hearing talked about the need to pressure the UAE to stop funneling arms to the RSF, though I think he just recently went to the UAE. That topic was not part of his public readout. Maybe it came up privately, but he was far more focused on the UAE.

you know, pumping money into the U S economy or whatever Trump wanted to talk about. So yeah, I'm not sure we're getting the leadership we need there. And then the second conflict that we've been wanting to talk about was in the Congo. So the quick backstory is in recent months, the M 23 rebel group,

with explicit support from the Rwandan military, has invaded big parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This fighting is believed to have killed at least 7,000 people and displaced more than 7 million people. And then last week, the M23's troops attacked even further west into a city called Walikale that is both a mining hub and also an important strategic location because it's got a road there that connects four provinces in eastern Congo.

Officials in Rwanda and Congo met in Qatar last week. They talked about a possible ceasefire, but an M23 leader poured cold water on it and said basically they would refuse to honor any agreement that's cut without them.

Now, this gets weirder when you learn about this offer from the president of Congo, Felix Chesikade, who is clearly concerned that things are getting worse, not better. So he offered the Trump administration a deal that would allow the U.S. access to Congo's

estimated $24 trillion worth of mineral resources in exchange for some sort of military support to expel the M23. Ben, there's also reports that a soulless private mercenary named Eric Prince, who once ran an organization called Blackwater, this private militia group, has been in talks with the officials in Congo about providing security for their mining operations and to the government, especially the government's tax collectors who are trying to get money from these miners.

It's just hard to think of a setup more rife for abuse and human rights violations than Eric Prince in the Congo. But I don't know, what are you watching when it comes to this M23 assault into the DRC? I think we just learned a few things. One is that Rwanda and the M23 always deny that they're

focused on minerals. They always claim some need to create a buffer or secure Tutsis or their ethnic group. But everything they're doing suggests that they're trying to seize minerals in Eastern Congo that are of immense value. That's clear. And so I'd watch whether they just push further, whether in this kind of new world order where everybody's, you know, Trump's going to grab minerals in Greenland, you know, that they just feel like it's legitimized for them to do that.

and how much human cost goes along with that. And then I would really, really watch this Eric Prince thing. And if not them, some iteration of the Wagner group, because the Congolese army cannot stand up to M23. There's tons of money down there. If you're Eric Prince and you can get a stake of the mineral resources for providing security, the Russians have been deep in the DRC themselves.

And so I think this could kind of become a playground for the worst kinds of people in the world, these private mercenaries. And I would watch that very closely because this feels like it could get a lot worse and kind of all the worst people in the world could descend on this place.

Which has happened to the Congolese before, you know? No, I look, I read that Wall Street Journal story about Eric Prince making this pitch to do whatever in the Congo and it sent a shiver down my spine because private mercenaries trying to extract rare earth minerals in the Congo. Cobalt and lithium. Jesus Christ.

It's like a bad horror movie. There was a great piece in Foreign Affairs about this conflict and kind of the history there. It's just worth pointing out, Ben, the Western response so far has been pretty pathetic. Like there was some joint statements between the U.S. and Europe. Obviously, that's not worth anything. The U.N. Security Council called for a ceasefire and withdrawal of M23 troops, but they're not doing anything about it. The U.S. has put some sanctions in place.

the EU is reviewing a joint minerals extraction deal it has with Rwanda, but apparently Luxembourg is blocking any EU sanctions on Rwanda because they want to develop some sort of financial center in Rwanda. And interestingly, I mean, I think as you were saying, initially this conflict was viewed as having more parochial origins

Like there was some talk that Rwandan President Paul Kagame was mad about getting cut out of a deal to create some sort of regional road and rail infrastructure. But as M23 has taken more territory, people are taking a harder look at some of his past statements, especially a speech he gave in 2023 where he suggested that Rwanda's pre-colonial borders

include parts of the Congo and also Uganda and Burundi. So there's real concern that this is more of like a Vladimir Putin, let's return the Rwandan imperial empire approach- Greater Rwanda. ... more than something else. Yeah, greater Rwanda, exactly. Feels that way. Yeah, it feels pretty scary. So quick immigration update. Over the weekend, Venezuela agreed to begin accepting deportation flights from the US.

with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro saying it was an opportunity to, quote, rescue and free migrants from prisons in the U.S. That original patriation deal, I think we talked about on the show, had been worked out by a friend of the pod, Rick Grinnell, back in January before falling apart after Trump revoked Chevron's oil license in Venezuela. Also on Monday, Ben, Trump announced that the U.S. is going to place

25% tariffs on any country that buys Venezuelan oil or gas. And late last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would revoke temporary protected status for over 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. So that means now hundreds of thousands of people who are all here legally can either deport themselves or

ICE or even the IRS has been reported some places will try to find them and deport them by this April 24th deadline, which is less than a month from now. So this is just unbelievably grim stuff, Ben, because Haiti, as we've covered, is experiencing gang violence at levels that you would normally only see in an active war zone. And Trump is at the same time

actively trying to destroy what's left of Venezuela's economy with more sanctions while telling people who are here legally that their options are go home to a dictator that you have fled or worse, end up in a gulag down in El Salvador. It is the most unbelievably cruel thing you can imagine.

to hundreds of thousands of people. You know, this is not a small number of people that, like, the U.S. is, you get to be in a gulag, you get to go back to a war zone, or you get to get hunted down by ICE. I mean, this is having a horrific human cost to populations that are not, you know,

these are here legally. TPS, they didn't storm the border. These are people that have a legal status. The only other thing I want to add to this, Tommy, is that Marco Rubio, assistant trash collector at the State Department, is now the Secretary of State who has presided over the canceling of all USAID democracy funding for Cuba, the termination of Radio Marti,

the mass deportation and prohibition on Cubans entering the United States. Some friend of the Cuban people, this guy turned out to be, you know, who's been posing as a champion. I mean, it's comical. It's absolutely comical. Hello, South Florida hardliners. Here is your hero. Here's your God, Marco Rubio, throwing your people out of the country and

terminating any lifeline to them. Like what a joke, you know, can you like, it boggles anybody who follows it. I know this is kind of niche, but anybody who's followed the Cuba issue for, for decades, this, this is unbelievable that this guy's literally implementing the worst nightmare for himself, like two years ago as secretary of state.

This guy's a walking Greek tragedy. It is just so fitting that the cost for him to ascend to the heights of government power that he thinks he deserves is to literally overturn everything he's ever believed in and actively harm the things he's worked on over the course of his career. And he could have been invited into the group chat just by being an Atlantic reporter. He didn't need to sell his soul like this. Yeah. Buddy, you could have gotten CC'd no matter what. It's real easy.

Two just super quick things. First, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, called for snap elections. So Canada is now going to have elections on April 28th. Clearly, Carney wants the focus to be on who can best fight the Trump administration, both the tariffs and these not at all funny jokes that are still going about making Canada the 51st state. Canadians get to vote to elect members of the House of Commons in each of Canada's 343 electoral districts.

then they'll work to form a majority government. You'll need 172 seats for a majority government. Of course, two parties can work together for a minority government. The party will then pick its leader and that person becomes prime minister. Another election news, Ben, retired ultimate fighting champion, fighter Conor McGregor says he's going to run for president of Ireland. So, yeah,

That's interesting. A lot of blows to the head, a lot of allegations of nonstop drug and alcohol abuse. So maybe he'll probably win. Given that setup, he'll probably win. My only two quick comments on these are a friend of the pod, Mike O'Deal, should run for president of Ireland against Conor McGregor. Agreed. I'd work on that campaign. And then Mark Carney, just message to Canadians, I know you already know this,

But when Trump said he was endorsing Mark Carney, that's called trolling. He does not actually want Mark Carney to win. He wants him to lose. No. That's why he said that. We at Potsday of the World are endorsing Mark Carney sincerely and hope he wins. Yes, we absolutely are. Because Pierre Polyvar is a fucking joke. Pierre Polyvar, yeah, he's a great wing. I just pronounced his name wrong and I don't even feel bad about that. He's a MAGA-like guy. Give me a break. Take that, Pierre. Yeah.

Okay. We are a long show from us. God, there's a lot to cover. We could have done much more stuff, but we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Jeremy Shapiro from the European Council on Foreign Relations. We take a tour of the region in Europe. We talk about Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Germany, lots of interesting stuff that's worth your time. So stick around for that. Positive of the World is brought to you by Vaya. Is it ever?

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Jeremy Shapiro is the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Jeremy, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for having me.

There is a lot going on in Europe, so I was very excited to talk with you, an expert on a whole range of things. Ben and I talked earlier in the show about the scary crackdown and democratic backsliding in Turkey after President Erdogan arrested his chief political rival, the mayor of Istanbul.

There is this massive protest movement happening as we speak, trying to force Erdogan to backtrack and undo this crackdown. But if he stays the course, I mean, what do you think this says about Turkey's future as a democracy and also as part of Europe? Yeah, not good things. Fundamentally, Turkey has for a while been what political scientists like to call sort of competitive authoritarian state.

which means that it's governed in a pretty authoritarian way, but they do have reasonably competitive elections. This arrest sort of demonstrates that the government now is not even really willing to put up with those competitive elections, which means it's sort of floating toward a Russia-like pure autocracy, which certainly isn't good for the people of Turkey. And it's not, frankly, a good precedent for other countries, other democracies, frankly, including our own.

But in terms of its acceptance into Europe, it's a pretty good moment for Turkey to do this because the Europeans really feel like they need Turkey's help in dealing with Russia and Ukraine, given that the United States seems to be a lot less reliable.

And of course, the United States under Donald Trump doesn't really seem to care about democratic backsliding in countries like Turkey. Donald Trump is talking about letting Turkey back into the F-35 program, the fighter program. And Erdogan, the president of Turkey, might visit the White House next month. And I don't think any of this is really affecting that calculation.

I did not know he was going to visit. Yeah, I was reading something the other day that I believe said that Turkey has the second largest military in NATO and also has one of the most advanced defense industry sectors of any country. And I mean, I know I've read a lot recently about, is it Bektar, like their drone company? But it does sound like that a lot of countries have been increasingly reliant on Turkey's defense industry. Is that right?

Yeah, to a degree. I mean, the drones that Turkey produces were very effective and important in the early part of the Ukraine war. And the provision of those to Ukraine was a big deal for the Ukrainians and the Russians were pretty pissed off about it. And as the war has evolved, it's evolved past those drones and most of the drones are now made

uh, indigenously in Ukraine and Russia is getting its own source of drones. But yeah, the, the industry remains very important. The Turkish army is fairly battle tested in Syria and in Northern Iraq and is a very, is a large army, uh, after the United States. It may be the most effective army in, in NATO. Uh,

And so it's quite important from the European standpoint with the Americans in question to be able to make sure that Turkey doesn't become too close to Russia and that Turkey's support can be counted on at least to balance against Russia in places like Syria and Ukraine. And that would probably be in question if they took on Turkey's domestic democracy questions at the moment.

What do you think we should know about Ekrem Imamoglu and the CHP party? What do they stand for? What's their political worldview? Well, the CHP party is a longtime Turkish party. It ruled for quite some time. It's probably, you would probably consider it a sort of slightly center-left party, like a social democratic party. Imamoglu has been a very interesting politician the last several years. He

He's survived a lot of struggles with Erdogan. He's been threatened with jail many times. The first time he won the election for mayor of Istanbul, I think it was in 2016, the election was invalidated and he had to run again on completely false pretenses. And he then won by an even greater margin the second time. So he's a real survivor. He's a very impressive politician, a lot of charisma.

And he's finally someone you feel like could beat Erdogan in a presidential election. He's been able to reach out to the nationalists, to the Kurds.

He's he's sufficient. He's seen as sufficiently pious to appeal to some of the people in Erdogan's base. And, you know, he runs this the city of Istanbul, which is a city of 16 million people. And importantly, the base that Erdogan used as mayor of Istanbul back in the 1990s to become prime minister and then president. So he's very dangerous politician from Erdogan's standpoint.

Yeah. Okay. As I promised, I'm going to hop around the continent a bit here. So Romania has been going through it the last several months. The Romanian constitutional court annulled the presidential election after the first round of voting back in December. There were two candidates. There was a center-right politician and a far-right independent named Colleen Georgescu, who rose from the top.

from seemingly from obscurity quite quickly to win the first round. The court then decided that Russian interference in the election was so egregious that they had to annul the results of the first round and postpone the election. They've rescheduled the election for May, I believe,

but it barred Georgescu from running. And I guess the similar question, which is, you know, how do you think Romania is balancing efforts to combat foreign interference in their elections, specifically Russian interference, while remaining a democracy that allows free and fair elections if they're going to just bar candidates?

Yeah, not well. I mean, I'm a little bit loathe to agree with J.D. Vance on this or almost anything. But I think that there's a certain point here that, you know, Romania, for all of its pro-Americanism and for all of its commitment to the Western camp, you know, isn't a very mature democracy and isn't and has big problems with corruption and with

with democracy and what you're seeing here, this idea that Russian interference was the cause of this rather obscure, frankly, quite nutty politician.

getting 23% of the vote in the first round of the election, it's a little bit difficult to stomach. Of course, the Russians, they interfere everywhere, but they're not actually that good at it. And it's not really clear that it makes that much of a difference. The idea here was that somehow their amplification on TikTok made the difference in the election when most of Jojescu's voters were older people who probably couldn't even find TikTok on their phone.

Interesting. So I don't exactly believe it. I think that what we're seeing here is a real challenge to democracy is this idea that people are really pissed off about the system, whatever the hell that is. They feel like there's an elite that is sort of is somewhat corrupt and is holding on to power through these elections and is rigging the system against them. And they're not totally wrong.

particularly in a place like Romania, but you can see symptoms of this, elements of this, even in the United States. So

So I think people are pretty pissed off about that. And the Romanian attempt to sort of say, well, this is the Russians, you know, we have to get our candidate in and the courts are going to take care of it for us, can't be improving people's moods. I mean, I would note that he got 23 percent in the first round.

of the election in December, but when he was excluded from the new election last week, he was polling at over 50%.

which does give you some sense that maybe it's his very exclusion. It's the very way in which they're telling people that this guy who really is, you know, a lunatic. I mean, he is not somebody you would ever want to be president. And in my view, might have been a better idea to let him run and expose that than to make him into a sort of political martyr, which is what they've done.

I think there are some lessons there for everybody else. A lot of countries are struggling with this and it's very tempting to sort of say, well, this is outside the pale. This is a foreign government interfering. We can't let these people run. We can't let these people in front of the people. If you think about it, that betrays a certain lack of confidence in democracy, which might be justified, but it's quite sad and it's not really clear that it can persist.

Yeah, and it certainly seems like it had a bit of a political Streisand effect and helped boost him in ways that maybe running would not have. I like the idea of a political Streisand effect. Yeah, you know, well, Barbara's in politics, you know, over here as well. So maybe she would get in on this. Let's talk about my buddy, our buddy, Viktor Orban. We talk often about Hungary on the show and how the American right wing is

views Orban as a model for how to crush dissent, essentially. In Trump's second term, there is now some interesting reporting about how Orban seems to be cracking down even harder. You know, he feels like the kind of boot is off his neck from the Americans. In particular, he's going after the LGBT community. He's going after pride events. What are you seeing in Hungary? And how do you think it's impacted by Trump's election?

Yeah, I think that that's right. You definitely see an uptick in Orban's rhetoric and an attempt to move sort of further down the authoritarian ladder. And it's not just the American boot that's been removed. It's his sense that because he has support in Washington, he will be less constrained by Brussels.

And I think a very important and frightening relationship has formed between the Trump administration and Viktor Orban's regime in which they really can help each other with their respective problems. So, you know, the rumor in Brussels is that Orban, is that the Trump people called up Orban and are telling him how to vote on Trump.

on, for example, EU sanctions against Russia. And they wanted them in this case to continue. But if next, if they have to vote on that every six months, if six months from now, the Americans decide that they don't want EU sanctions to continue, they can just call their buddy Victor and he can get it done for them, regardless of what the other 26 countries decide.

Meanwhile, the Americans are quite helpful in protecting Orban from pushback by the European Union or by anybody else. And just the sense in Hungarian or European politics that you have support from the White House means that you can be freer. And so he's now calling his opponents insects. And he's really upped the rhetoric in a way which...

Hungarian democracy was already in trouble. I think it's in significantly more trouble now. It's a sort of familiar story across the three. They each have their particularities, but across the three countries we've talked about, we're seeing some backsliding in all of them. - Yeah, I mean, you are hearing some European leaders say, well, we gotta just kick Orban out. We gotta kick Hungary out of the EU. Is there any momentum there? - No, I don't think so. There's also no mechanism for that. - Right.

And it would be a real admission of defeat. One of the things that they're doing right now is they're calling for sort of decisions at 26. There are 27 members of the EU. And it's true that particularly on issues like Ukraine, they do have the power.

Hungary stands out. It's an outlier, particularly on Ukraine, but on a bunch of European Union issues. And they've kind of come up with a procedure where they issue conclusions at 26, and they sort of ignore the raving lunatic in the corner of the room. And they can do that for more things than you would think, because the European Union does operate by some norms. But on the key votes that require unanimity, such as the sanctions vote I mentioned earlier, they can't.

do that. And I think that they're, in particular because of Trump taking power, they're losing leverage over Orban rather than gaining it.

Yeah. Speaking of the impact of Trump, I mean, the Germans recently made some changes in terms of how they manage their debt. This will allow them to spend domestically to stimulate the economy, but also invest a lot in their own defense capabilities. Can you just give us like the quick and dirty on the, I think it's a so-called debt break change and how meaningful you think it will be for NATO and European defense capabilities generally to have this reinvigorated German military? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, it has the possibility to be a really big, a really big deal. The Germans are interesting. I mean, they are they're the country with that has a tremendous amount of what they call fiscal space.

Because they've been very German over the years, very prudent in their spending. They have a debt to GDP ratio of roughly 30, 35%, which is, you know, the American one is 90%.

The European Union guideline is 60 and most countries exceed it. And they have a spectacular credit rating. So basically, they can borrow practically unlimited funds at very low interest rates. And they haven't taken advantage of that in recent years because they've become arguably too German-minded.

So I think the fear of American abandonment and the increasing sense of threat from Russia, as well as, frankly, fears of loss of German competitiveness because they haven't really been mobilizing much public investment in the last decade. And I just came back from living in Germany for a little over two years. And it's not dissimilar from the United States, but you can feel a lot of stuff sort of falling apart.

So they have finally decided, they had what was called a debt break, as you mentioned, which was a constitutional provision, which limited their ability to run deficits. They threw a very complicated parliamentary maneuver, mostly got rid of that debt break and pushed what appears to be about 500 billion euros

at least in the initial phase, to both defense spending and investment. And then they had to bribe the Green Party with $100 billion in spending on climate change issues. So this is an enormous amount of money by any standard. If they really spend it, and if they spend it wisely on infrastructure and wisely on good defense investments, it could completely change things.

German power. But that wisely adverb is a difficult one for them to meet. They did a sort of mini one of these right after the Russian invasion where they said they were going to spend 100 billion euros. I think they by and large did spend it, but they didn't spend it very well and it didn't make much difference. So the

The issue is not over, but this is an impressive move, and particularly from a leader who hasn't even taken office yet, and we should be watching it very carefully. Yeah, it was quite impressive politics. I mean, I guess there's also the question of where they're going to spend this money. There's been a bunch of reporting on how Europe wants to wean itself off of American weapons and weapons systems. My understanding is that, you know, I think it's a little easier said than done,

Because you're often talking about complicated interoperable systems like radar and missile defense or systems that need constant maintenance like the F-35 that you mentioned earlier. How realistic do you think it is for Europe to wean itself off of the U.S. military industrial complex?

Yeah, well, wean is the right term. I mean, there are lots of alternatives. There's a lot of possibility to build up defense industrial base in Germany and in other European countries. There are lots of other even buyers to buy from. I think it's very important for them to make that choice. You're right that it won't be something you do overnight.

It's the work of 10 years, probably. But it's certainly doable. It's just that the big thing is you have to decide to do it. And right now, the Germans are still debating amongst themselves whether this spending is to replace the Americans or to entice the Americans to stay. And that because actually, in theory, both things require money. Right. Trump is saying. Right. Trump is saying we need you to spend more or we're not going to defend you.

And so the idea there is, well, let's spend more and then he'll stay. Or alternatively, he could be leaving and then you'd have to say, well, we need to spend money because there's nobody there. But both of those things require this type of spending program, but they dictate very different ways that you spend it. And that's, I think, the key thing to be looking at. If the Germans make...

concerted efforts again slow gradual weaning efforts to start to reinvigorate there and the european defense industrial base and to move away from american weapons then you'll understand that they are trying to uh substitute for the americans but if they just keep buying f-35s and you know frankly if you have 500 billion to waste there's no better way to waste it than on the f-35

then we'll know that what they're trying to do basically is bribe America to keep defending them. And I think that would be a very bad idea for both sides.

Yeah, somewhere a generation of acquisition folks at the Pentagon is nodding along with you there. Final question for you. Giorgia Maloney, the prime minister of Italy, has been an interesting character to watch. When she was elected, you know, there was all these ties about kind of being, like, ties to Mussolini or being a Mussolini fan. She seemed like a traditional far-right populist who would demagogue migration and go along that sort of well-worn path.

But she's also been very pro-Ukraine. She's kind of given the finger to the Trump administration or to Elon Musk a couple times. She's just sort of like played an interesting, done an interesting political dance. And I wonder what you make of her and the position she's sort of taken on the world stage.

yeah look i agree that she's fascinating and you know to be honest with you i think she is more or less a traditional populist um certainly when it comes to her immigration stance and when it comes to her anti-elite message and when it comes to her basic nationalism

What she is above all is a very, very impressive politician. And I think when you're prime minister of Italy, you have to balance a whole bunch of different considerations. And I think what we're seeing in Giorgia Maloney is not that someone who seemed to be a populist wasn't, but that power socializes you.

And that actually, and this is, you know, maybe a lesson for the Romanians or somebody else is that, you know, middle sized European countries can't do anything, everything they want. They have to deal with the European Union. They have to deal with the United States. They have to deal with a population that doesn't.

That, you know, once you're in power isn't just interested in whether you like Russia or not. They're interested in you delivering the goods. And, you know, liking Russia is not a way of delivering the goods economically. For that, if you're an Italian politician, you have to be – you have to have a good relationship with the European Union. You have to have a good relationship with the United States. And so she has, I think, been quite deft in being able to stay true –

in a basic way to her populist roots, but also govern the country in a way that can conceivably deliver the goods. And that's moderated her from the standpoint of liberals in Europe and in the United States. I don't think she's exactly any different than she ever was, but I think she is finding that it's very easy to run

as a populist, it's a lot harder to govern as a populist. And we're seeing this everywhere across the world, right? Populists don't really have governing programs. They have opposition programs. What she has done is demonstrate how you can change from an oppositional populist to a governing populist. And that does, that's a little bit comforting, actually, amongst all the bad news stories we've been talking about.

And there are a lot of them, including here domestically. A lot of bad news. Jeremy, thank you so much for just hopping around the continent with me. This has been fascinating. Sure, it was a nice trip. Maybe next time we'll go to some nicer spots. Maybe we can just park in Paris with Macron. Maybe we build an international peacekeeping force in London. Yeah, I feel like if we'd done this from a cafe in Rome, it would have been better. Listen, I don't know where you're located currently, but tell me when and where and I'll be there. Excellent. Thanks for doing this. It was fun.

Thanks again to Jeremy Shapiro for doing the show and talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben. Hi. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

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