← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Can democracy survive political violence and extremism?
00:38:37
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- [00:03]
Jamie Rubin
This is a global player original podcast.
- [00:07]
Christiane Amanpour
Elon Musk. He's already been interfering in UK politics and this weekend he said, you better prepare to fight or die. There is a fear about what might the administration do to crack down even further on opponents.
- [00:23]
Jamie Rubin
We are always waiting for the moment when President Trump crosses the line into action, actually placing pressure on Vladimir Putin. There's a real risk of conflict and of conflict with NATO. He's playing with fire.
- [00:36]
Christiane Amanpour
Jeffrey Epstein is not just a problem for Donald Trump now. He's a problem for the British government. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of the X Files with me, Christiane Amanpour.
- [00:51]
Jamie Rubin
And I'm Jamie Rubin, a two time State Department official under President Clinton and President Biden.
- [00:56]
Christiane Amanpour
And I've been a long, long time correspondent for CNN covering the world. Now I have my own show for the last several years where I try to hold world leaders accountable and generally do, you know, an investigation of what's going on around the world. Now we also, of course, were married for a long, long time. We've been divorced, hence the ex biles.
- [01:15]
Jamie Rubin
Ex husband, ex wife.
- [01:17]
Christiane Amanpour
There you go. The three questions that we want to tackle today are really pertinent and relevant. 1, 1, Charlie Kirk and the assassination and the reverberations and the rise in political violence, what can be done to stop that? Then? The International Criminal Court and Jamie is at a war crimes tribunal right now. Is it still relevant today? And finally, as President Trump prepares to land here in the United Kingdom for a second state visit, what can Keir Starmer reasonably expect from him? So, Jamie, explain where are you?
- [01:55]
Jamie Rubin
Well, I'm in a room, an anonymous room in a big building in the Hague, the home of international criminal trials and tribunals. I'm actually testifying in a trial. I'm the lead defense witness for the former president of Kosovo, Hashim Taji. The judge has told me just a few minutes ago because I'm on my lunch break and they may come in and tell me things while we're doing the PODC to specifically not discuss my testimony.
- [02:25]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. And of course, in the next segment, we're going to talk more about war crimes tribunals, as I said, and whether they are still fit for purpose. Today. The other thing we're going to do, just like we started last week, is give you our recommendations. You seem to have enjoyed that and sent back some of your own recommendations. So stay tuned to the end of the program for that. But look, let us start with the horrendous act of violence, political violence, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the youth activists for the conservative movement in the United States, Turning Point usa, with chapters abroad as well, and who was instrumental, obviously, in getting, at the very least, the young vote for President Trump in the 2024 elections. And Trump and the whole administration has reacted incredibly personally to this because he was so close to them as an administration and to Trump, to J.D. vance and to others in the current government there. I will say, Jamie, it was quite shocking this week because here in the UK there was a massive police say 150,000 people turned out for a protest called by the extreme right wing. And at that protest was Tommy Robinson, who is the main activist leader of Britain's extreme right. It's a racist nationalist extremist party. But guess who else beamed in? Elon Musk. He's already been interfering in UK politics. And this weekend he said, you better prepare to fight or die. So setting a pretty violent stage.
- [04:04]
Jamie Rubin
Yeah, this is the horror of all this is. You know, America's had periods of violence before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Martin Luther King was assassinated. But remember, the most powerful moment after the Martin Luther King assassination was Robert Kennedy, the President's brother, who had seen his president, his brother murdered, who spoke off the cuff to a crowd of African Americans, telling them they had a choice to make in how they responded to the murder of Martin Luther King. Were they going to just lash out at their political opponents in violence and anger, or were they going to try to show that they understood they had to overcome? And Martin Luther King's famous phrase is we shall overcome.
- [04:54]
Christiane Amanpour
We've all been struggling. I think the whole ecosystem has been struggling in how to report this. And it happened last week, but it's still a very live story. And, you know, some people wanted to make Charlie Kirk into a martyr of free speech and conservative ideals. Others said that, you know, he and others in that. In that space had sown a lot of provocative, and some people called it hate speech, others were online celebrating it. I mean, it's been a horrendous reaction to the assassination. But I had Martin Luther King III on my program, couldn't figure out who should we get? Who should we get? And we got him, for obvious reasons, the son of Dr. King. And he reminded us of what you're saying. He basically said after his. And he kept saying, when dad was killed, when this happened to Dad, I mean, it was quite moving and really sort of spelt out how this is personal as well to those who are left behind. But Anyway, he said 100 or more American towns And cities were in the depths of rioting, protesting and burning. Except, as you said, Jamie, that city that Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning in, remember, he was campaigning for president, it happened to be Indianapolis. Of all those cities that saw riots, that was one that didn't because he went in and showed leadership. And, Jamie, that's what it's going to take. It's going to take real reason, responsible leadership to calm this down. And as yet, that is not happening.
- [06:28]
Jamie Rubin
Well, that's what's so horrible. What Elon Musk is doing is he's doing the opposite. He's spinning people up, calling for responses that are violent or saying they have to get ready for violence. You know, Bill Clinton was president during, after the Oklahoma bombings. And I remember one of his most powerful speeches after the Oklahoma bombings was about this very phenomenon of how do you respond at a time of anger for suffering. And we've seen, let's face it, after 9 11, when 3,000 people were murdered in New York City, America overreacted. Some of what it did was fully justified. Throwing out the Taliban, killing Osama bin Laden, those were fully justified. But the Iraq war turned out not only to be unjustified, but to be badly done because of the anger that we overreached. And that's what this is all about. Do you let your emotions rule you, or do you say that we want to be able to disagree agreeably, we want to have a debate in a democracy. We want to differ with each other over the facts and then come to some conclusions, but not hate each other, not try to kill each other. And I fear that the people in power and in all Donald Trump with his aggressive rhetoric, JD Vance with his aggressive rhetoric, the leaders who followed the lines of Trump and JD Vance are not doing their job to help the American people deal with this without getting more angry and causing more violence.
- [08:08]
Christiane Amanpour
You know, this is such an important thing to focus on. I mean, to be fair, Elon Musk didn't call for violence. But the word fight is taken however anybody wants to take it. And you know, in that protest over this weekend in London, a lot of police were injured. I mean, they were. Some suffered concussion by some of those violent mob makers. Some had their teeth punched out. We understand it was bad, but that combat language. And I think it's really a moment to ask how the president is going to behave. So far, he's been blaming the radical left, and that is he sees the narrative. So the President of the United States has seized the narrative, and it's going to be very Difficult to move it towards where others in the Republican Party, not to mention the Democrat Party, are calling, as President George W. Bush said, to not treat our political opponents as enemies, but just as political opponents. And he said in his statement, you know, may God bless the Kirk family, America, but may God also guide America towards civility. I just thought that was really an important message for the moment. But now, Jamie, apparently Democratic political and elected leaders are worried for their safety, canceling certain events. J.D. vance is going to host the Charlie Kirk podcast in lieu of the departed Charlie Kirk for the first time. And, and there's a fear, there is a fear also about what might the administration do to crack down even further on opponents deploying the National Guard. There's a fear in the US and overseas as well.
- [09:45]
Jamie Rubin
Well, let's. We can get to overseas in a minute. But President Trump has used militaristic language and has activated his own so called militia through ice, his own use of the National Guard in ways no president has ever done before. So through these actions and through his failure to call for the kind of language that Robert Kennedy pursued, he's not yet meeting his responsibility as president of all Americans. You know, in our system, the president gets elected by some, but he's the president of all Americans and he's supposed to act like the president of all Americans. And I hope President Trump gets there. He's certainly not there yet. And I worry that the Democratic officials who have already been assassinated, remember there was a woman politician in Minnesota who was assassinated. There was Nancy Pelosi's husband who was attacked. You know, these things have happened to both sides. I'm not saying it's one side committing it, but neither side who has different views are responsible and they shouldn't be blamed. I'm at a war crimes tribunal. You know what the principle of a war crimes tribunal is? Assign individual guilt, expunge collective responsibility. That's the job of the rule of law. So that individuals who are irresponsible get blamed, but a group isn't blamed collectively and unfairly.
- [11:20]
Christiane Amanpour
And you know what, it's really important to point that out because, you know, you can point to wherever in terms of where's the beginning of political violence in the United. Where did it start? Well, we talked about the assassinations of the 60s, the attempted assassination of Reagan in the 80s, the attempted, I mean, it seemed like he was being bashed up almost to a pulp. Nancy Pelosi's husband, the two Minnesotans who were killed and their spouses were involved in that as well. The house of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, was set to blame January 6th. Well, I was getting to that because this is now on a big scale, January 6th. And we know what happened, but we also know that none of them were properly. Well, some of them were, but President Trump has not been held accountable for it. And the Supreme Court did actually, you know, rule in his favor on that. And he has been pardoning and more to those who were convicted after he left office the first time for January 6th compared to what just happened in Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro, previous president, accused of trying to launch a coup against Lula. He also refused to accept the results of the elections in Brazil after he lost a couple of years ago. There was a riot. It didn't last that long, and he was held accountable. So people are saying Brazil did it, right? Brazil showed the world how you assign individual responsibility and how you punish it. And he's been sentenced to 27 years. Of course, he's appealing.
- [13:02]
Jamie Rubin
Well, look, I think this is a great example, and I know that our politics are very divided right now. But I want to point out that in 2017, when he became president, Donald Trump went to the United nations and tried to establish an important principle. He and some Republicans criticized Democrats for trying to make all countries in the world act the same, give up their own individual values, adopt what he called liberal values. So he supported the idea of the sovereignty of states to make their own decisions about their own countries and not be subject to pressure from other countries to have their own values and their own rule of law, pressured by outside. Well, that's what Donald Trump and the Trump administration is doing to Brazil. Brazil is a sovereign country, a great, great large power. They're making their own decisions pursuant to the structure of the world that President Trump argues he believes in, of nation states and their sovereignty. So he and his administration have no business telling the Brazilians how to run their legal system, as long as it's a fair legal system, which it is, or their democracy. And it is a democracy, and it does have the rule of law. And if he believes in the sovereignty of states, as he said he did in 2017 when he spoke to the United nations, he should be letting the Brazilians handle their own matters and stop.
- [14:41]
Christiane Amanpour
Being a Butinski Butinski, including 50% tariffs on Lula and sanctioning the Supreme Court justice who brought the case against Bolsonaro. So you're right. It's, you know, what's good for the gander, good for the goose, et cetera, hypocrisy.
- [14:59]
Jamie Rubin
This is a classic case of hypocrisy. He makes the case for sovereignty, then when he doesn't like the result, he throws sovereignty out the window and says he should be able to have an impact on the Brazilian judicial system. No.
- [15:14]
Christiane Amanpour
In the meantime, there are a lot of observers who are watching Donald Trump exert his authority and the limits of his presidential authority, not just in the US but to allies and adversaries alike. And a lot of people are holding Brazil up and particularly President Lula and the democratic system there as sort of a case study in how actually to stand up for yourself and defend your own sovereignty, your own rights, your own democracy and your own economy as well. Jamie, of course, we can't sort of just say this happens in America, the political violence. And we are worried about a potential increase unless real leadership emerges to tamp this down. But we've seen the former prime minister of Japan recently assassinated. We saw the incoming prime minister of.
- [16:06]
Jamie Rubin
Slovakia.
- [16:07]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah, Slovakia, sorry. Robert Fitzo was badly wounded in an attempted assassination in Nepal with this so called Gen Z riots against the old sclerotic institution of Nepal and its institutions. You know, the prime minister's wife was burnt alive. It was, I mean, I don't know whether that was intentional, but when they set fire to the, you know, residence there, the palace, that's what happened. So this is a phenomenon that is not limited to the US but has, you know, is much more prevalent, frankly, in US in terms of a democratic countries. Next, though, Jamie, we're going to take a break, talk about the icc, talk about how war crimes tribunals were set up in the latter part of the 20th century. Your administration, the Clinton administration was part of it during the war in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. And you're there. So we're going to talk about that and we're going to give you our recommendations. That's when we come back.
- [17:09]
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- [17:43]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, we're back. Jamie is in the Hague which is the home of the International Criminal Court. And you're testifying there today on behalf of the former Kosovo president, who you knew very well since the war.
- [17:57]
Jamie Rubin
Yes, it's called the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. I should start by saying the judge has told me three or four times that I'm not to talk about my specific substantive elements of my testimony. The fact that I'm here is, of course, fine. Everyone knows I'm here. I'm testifying as the lead defense witness for the former president of Kosovo. And what's interesting for me, and we can get on to this, because it brings back our history together. Madeleine Albright, who I worked for for, you know, seven and a half years, is considered the mother of the war crimes tribunal process here in the Hague, because after Nuremberg, there were no real tribunals. But in the 1993 period, because of the war in the former Yugoslavia and later because of the slaughter in Rwanda, a new tribunal was created for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. And Madeleine Albright, as UN Ambassador, enabled it, started it and created it, frankly, with her team, to pass a resolution to get it funded. And it was, at the time important for two reasons. One, we were trying to get the United States to do something which we weren't doing back in 93. And threatening war crimes trials was deemed as potential deterrent to mass murder. Of course, it didn't work out that way. But secondly, this principle we just referred, to wars and ethnic conflicts and wars of retribution and history are created when you don't assign individual guilt to guilty parties and you collectively blame the Serbs, the Albanians, the Croats, the Nazis, the. The Japanese, rather than those specifically responsible for ordering mass murder. They're the ones who belong in prison in Rwanda. They're the ones who belonged in prison in Bosnia and Kosovo. And I'm defending someone who. I obviously have a different view, but we'll get to that when I can talk about my testimony.
- [20:03]
Christiane Amanpour
We will. And I remember you because he was head of the armed group fighting Slobodan Milosevic for the freedom of Kosovo back in the 90s. And at the end of the war, once Milosevic being beaten back and out of Kosovo, you had to go and meet Hashim Thatchi and have him essentially lay down weapons and join a political process. You know, you just talked about the history. I really want to read this because I went back and looked over an interview I did with Ben forens. He was 103 when I last spoke to him in 2022. He's no longer alive, but he was one of the first ever prosecute. Well, the first prosecutors at Nuremberg. And he had gone from landing at D day, fighting all the wars or all the battles to the battle of the bulge and then holding, you know, the perpetrators, the Nazis accountable, the specific ones who were involved. And what he said, given, you know, you're talking about not collective judgment. He said something that's amazing, his opening statement there. And he read it back to me. Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution. We ask this court to affirm by international penal action man's right to live in peace and dignity, regardless of his race or creed. The case we present is a plea of humanity to the law. I just thought it was so powerful. And he told me he was heartbroken about what's going on in Russia and how Putin and his henchmen need to be held accountable, but not collective punishment. And I also remember, and this is key, Jamie, and I want you to talk about this. Do you remember when Milosevic, who was responsible for the horror in Kosovo and people like Hashim Thatchi were trying to resist, he was indicted as the war was going on. Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor there, indicted him under a sealed indictment. And I remember there was quite some hullabaloo in the Clinton administration. Oh, my goodness. We're trying to get him to negotiate. How can this indictment come out now? It'll further push his back against the wal. Do you remember that?
- [22:08]
Jamie Rubin
I do. I remember you flying over there to be there for the indictment, if I recall correctly. Look, this is always one of the most difficult things. If you indict a sitting leader for war crimes and say that even if he makes a peace agreement, even if he stops the war, that he's going to face trial and prison. People in the diplomatic business think you're going to make it less likely to get a peace agreement, less likely to end a war. People in the. The human rights community and the international legal community say, well, that may or may not be, we don't know, but we have to do our job in assigning individual guilt and pursuing war crimes. In the case you're describing, I have to admit I was a little worried because, remember, we were going to try to get Milosevic to capitulate, to give up Kosovo, the supposed cradle of Serbian civilization, give up power in Kosovo. And in order to do that, he had to remove all his forces, accept NATO's victory. And then we were saying, and then go to the Hague. Now, here we had a great example. It's the only time it's all Worked beautifully. Kosovo, one of the reasons I'm so proud of it, we achieved our objective. We stopped the war. We got the Serbs out of Kosovo. Kosovo is now a democratic country. Milosevic fell from power and did go to the Hague, and we had a peace agreement. We had a deployment of NATO with very little risk to the soldiers. We achieved an international goal with competently. And if you compare that obviously to Iraq and potentially to Afghanistan, where things didn't work out so well, obviously the Vietnam war, other interventions, this was not only the right thing to do to prevent a genocide, but we did it right. We did it with the world's support, and we even got Milosevic sent to the war crimes tribunal, where he died, I think, in prison.
- [24:12]
Christiane Amanpour
Yes, he did. He died before conviction and sentencing. But, you know, he also spent years challenging the court. It just went on for years. But the prosecutors were really diligent. They had to bend over backwards to accommodate him and the other Bosnian Serbs who completely refused to recognize the legitimacy. But I just also recently spoke, in view of what's going on in Russia and Israel and Gaza, et cetera, to Jeffrey Nice. Now, he was the Sir. Jeffrey Nice was the person, the lawyer who prosecuted Milosevic. And I asked him, are these war crimes tribunals, these trials, these cases still fit for purpose? And he was more optimistic than pessimistic. He said, you may not think it works, but in fact it does. The very fact that there are these investigations, this is really major. There's a huge amount of accountability, and it's all put out there in the public. Now, whether the political class are willing to keep these going is another matter. And he was hoping that the Trump administration would not try to kill the ICC and all those who disagree and have not recognized the icc, but would, you know, really see it through, because investigations work. And that's something that we should really, I think, take as a plus when it comes to justice.
- [25:35]
Jamie Rubin
Not that it's that different, but I have a slightly different view, as I think, you know, I've become quite skeptical of international lawyers and international legal instruments purporting to conduct American or international foreign policy. Sometimes the law gets in the way. Sometimes legalisms are not the best way to go. And I think there are a lot of cases like that. When this trial is over, I'm going to give you a pretty good example of that in the case of Kosovo, where. Where international politics meets with international law and the world isn't better off for it, where judges and lawyers make decisions based on their own careers, not based on the rule of law. And then people lose respect for law. And one of the reasons why the United States didn't support the icc, frankly, it was negotiated under Clinton, but we could never quite satisfy ourself that the special, you know, exemptions were going to work is because international criminal court is only when domestic legal instruments don't work. The concept is if in America there's no legal recourse for crimes committed by soldiers, you need a court. It does work in America. There was a My Lai massacre trial of Lieutenant Cali in Vietnam. You didn't need an international court to pursue justice for American soldiers. And you don't today. We have justice systems now. Some countries don't pursue domestic justice, and that's where perhaps it plays a role. But what it shouldn't do and what I don't think it does well is distinguish between the international legal process of investigation, which is valuable and potentially even a deterrent and definitely a way of assigning individual guilt rather than collective guilt. Sometimes those lawyers are doing it to make foreign policy. They wanted decide what's right and what's wrong. They called Clinton people war criminals for bombing the Serb television stations that were advocating the mass murder of Kosovar Albanians. That is not a war crime. That was an act of preventing a genocide. And lawyers sometimes take judgments into their own hands of what's right and wrong.
- [27:52]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, so that's some you can't tarnish. All you can't also make perfect, be the enemy, the good. And I have to have a last word here because I covered so many of them. They did actually result, for instance, the Bosnia and the Serb and the former Yugoslavia war crimes tribunals, also the ones prosecuting the genocide in Rwanda and elsewhere, they did bring a lot of the major command and control authorities to justice. And you can't diminish that because it's super important. And you can, as you say, though, if the US Or Israel or others were ready to actually prosecute on their own, they wouldn't have to be dragged to the icc. But this is for those countries that won't use their own sovereign justice in order to prosecute some. And you know that some soldiers in Afghanistan, American soldiers were prosecuted in America, convicted, sentenced, and then suddenly their terms were overturned. Politically, it was a political matter that curried favor with those in power. And these convicted war criminals were released in the United States. Anyway, we're going to go on to the next segment because that's going to be a little bit about the upcoming state visit of President Trump to the United Kingdom and our recommendations. We're going to take a break.
- [29:24]
Jamie Rubin
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Christiane Amanpour
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Jamie Rubin
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Christiane Amanpour
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- [29:53]
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- [29:58]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, we're back. Jeffrey Epstein is not just a problem for Donald Trump now. He's a problem for the British government. As this podcast drops, Keir Starmer will be hosting, as well as the King of England, Donald Trump in his second state visit here. And Keir Starmer is under huge pressure to do something. Some are calling for leadership change here because he had to fire his ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over a revelation and a trove of emails that they're saying they didn't know about about the closeness of Peter Mandelson's relationship to Epstein, even after Epstein's conviction. Do you think there's going to be a joint press conference between Trump and Starmer when everybody's gonna wanna talk to Starmer about Epstein?
- [30:43]
Jamie Rubin
Yeah. Trump likes press conferences. I find it hard to believe they can avoid such a thing. I mean, maybe they'll find, well, he.
- [30:52]
Christiane Amanpour
Avoided that one with Putin. I mean, they said what they said and then they left. They took.
- [30:57]
Jamie Rubin
Right, but that is, that is, that was about a large summit where they were supposed to make an agreement they never made. This is about a state visit to the close ally of the United States. Be pretty, pretty strange if they can't have a press conference. And look, I worked for Bill Clinton. There was Monica Lewinsky going on while we were doing foreign policy. And you find a way to talk about what you need to talk about and ignore the questions you don't want to answer. And obviously Mandelson is a tricky one for Starmer, but he did the right thing. He got him out of there. So he would minimize the Epstein factor. Imagine if Peter Mandelson was accompanying Trump to the visit. That would be all they talk about.
- [31:36]
Christiane Amanpour
Mandelson was considered to have done a good job on trade and managing the relationship, and Trump actually liked him. But you can't overestimate the amount of trouble Starmer is in because of Epstein and he Ads of this recording has not spoken about it publicly. The latest. Why didn't you know who did the vetting? How come? Et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, these questions are going to be dominant in the UK for sure for the next week or so. So, Jamie, what can be expected on the major international issue that affects the United Kingdom, Europe, and of course, the United States, and that is Russia's invasion and escalation into NATO countries, by the way, into their airspace by President Putin, Because Trump has just sent a letter to all NATO nations saying, hey, you guys, just stop buying Russian oil and gas and I'll put sanctions on Russia. That could, Jamie, pressure Hungary and Slovakia, which are reluctant to sanction gas in Russia. The others have stopped, I think.
- [32:40]
Jamie Rubin
Well, look, we can hope that President Trump and Keir Starmer are gonna focus their attention on Ukraine. And if they do, we are always waiting for the moment when President Trump crosses the line into actually placing pressure on Vladimir Putin. And remember, the two countries that he's urging to stop buying oil, Slovakia and Hungary, are what we call, you know, illiberal democracies, at least, certainly in Hungary, not so much in Slovakia. But they are politically, ideologically aligned with President Trump and have made those points, their leaders. So I hope they listen to President Trump on this. But most important, we have to accept the following. Until Vladimir Putin realizes that he cannot achieve his objectives militarily, can't get more of Ukraine at an acceptable cost, and then he can negotiate. And there's been some pretty interesting information coming out of Western intelligence sources that I've been made aware of, that at the current rate, think about this. They've lost a million soldiers, wounded and dead, to take what they can. A small portion of Ukraine, in order to take the whole Donbas. The region thereafter right now is likely to take them five years at the current rate. And if President Trump and Keir Starmer can find a way to communicate that estimate to the Russian leadership and President Trump does talk to Vladimir Putin, and he could say to him, are you really willing to wait five more years and lose another million soldiers, another million dead and wounded, then maybe it's time to negotiate. So we need a motivation for Putin to negotiate which we haven't had. And we need Trump to incentivize Putin by putting a pressure on him, sanctions, etc. He didn't do the India thing so much for Ukraine. He sanctioned India because he was mad at India. Now, it may have an impact on Russia, we hope. And we hope there'll be more action by President Trump.
- [34:43]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. And everybody's saying, listen, President Trump can't just do this by. By phoning Vladimir Putin and just hoping. It has to be a real organized plan and that Putin only understands strength. Only understands strength. So economic sanctions, US Senators tell me they are ready to be imposed. Europeans obviously want to use huge amount of financial. And then they've got to figure out how to patrol their borders and respond to Putin's escalation, because every time he sends a fleet of drones or apparently a, you know, a fighter jet into Romania is the latest one. You know, I mean, it's. Something's got to happen. Not fighting, but something's got to happen.
- [35:24]
Jamie Rubin
Because there's a real risk of conflict and of conflict with NATO. He's playing with fire.
- [35:30]
Christiane Amanpour
Yep, yep. And people say that he's doing it out of sort of a defensive position, actually, and that is constant. This is Putin dangling of the sort of World War III threat is also, you know, he's not doing it from a position of strength. But anyway, we'll see. Anyway, time for our recommendations. We have time for one each this week. Jamie, you go first.
- [35:54]
Jamie Rubin
All right. Well, we started the show with the assassination. Really, it's political, I think, fair to say, of a political figure in the United States. We talked about assassination. There's a new book by a wonderful British author named William Boyd. It's called the Predicament, and it is a brilliant, brilliant, fictional account of the Kennedy assassination and a British agent, how he played a role. Look, I don't know what happened in 1963. Of all the conspiracy theories that I know of, that's where it all began, with John F. Kennedy's assassination, with a lot of real, legitimate questions about whether Lee or V. Oswald really killed him alone. And the author is really quite skilled in understanding what went on back then and linking those in the United States government parts with those in the Mafia. And I think this is a great story about a conspiracy at 1963, which is the mother of all conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination doesn't mean that people should start getting out, you know, reacting. But it's a great, great reaction.
- [37:09]
Christiane Amanpour
And it is a fiction, right?
- [37:11]
Jamie Rubin
Correct. All fiction.
- [37:12]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay. So mine, I try to seek the antidotes and the bright side of life. And there's some darkness. I have to say, this week, more than many, I felt scared, stressed, and just, you know, worried about what's going on in the world, from the US to what's happening in the wars in the Middle east, in Europe. So I turned this weekend to parenthood. Now that is about the animal kingdom. It's a wonderful series by the fantastic, venerated, great, phenomenal Sir David Attenborough, who's got another of his beautiful wildlife series on. And this is about how animals are just as many of them, just as considerate and attached and teaching of their, you know, of their, of their offspring that parents in the real world are so good. Parenthood in the animal kingdom is just a joy to watch because the pictures and the animals, you know, in the air, on the land, under the sea, just phenomenal. The color, the narration, everything about it says, you know, relax, enjoy.
- [38:26]
Jamie Rubin
Let's try to do that. Okay.
- [38:29]
Christiane Amanpour
All right. Well, good luck. Go back to your testifying and we'll hear more next week about more about what happened in the state visit. And we'll be in New York. It'll be the unga, the annual summit of world leaders. So we'll have some things to say about that next Monday. So thank you to everybody for listening. Make sure you're following our feed so you never miss an episode. And remember, you can watch our episodes on YouTube as well by searching. Christiana Monpour presents the x files on YouTube. So subscribing to our channel. And you can listen for free on Global player, download it from the App Store or go to globalplayer.com and we'll see you Thursday for our regular Q and A bonus episode. And as you may know from last week, we now have those on YouTube as well. Keep them coming. We like your questions, we like to try to answer them or find us on social media. Amanpur Pod okay by Jamie. Back to court for you.
- [39:26]
Jamie Rubin
Bye bye. From the Hague.
- [39:29]
Christiane Amanpour
You having a bite?
- [39:30]
Jamie Rubin
Yep. Not smoking. Eating. And I do have a smoking room here.
- [39:35]
Christiane Amanpour
Oh my God, of course you do.
- [39:37]
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