J. Edgar Boozer

Summary

Pod Save America: "J. Edgar Boozer"

Date: April 21, 2026
Hosts: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor
Special Guest: Ilan Goldenberg (J Street)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Pod Save America tackles the chaos and misinformation surrounding Trump’s Iran war “diplomacy,” his attempts to win back the favor of podcaster Joe Rogan with speedy psychedelic approvals, escalating dysfunction in federal personnel (featuring the drama-filled lawsuit of FBI Director Cash Patel), and the intensifying early shadow campaign of 2028 Democratic hopefuls. In the second half, Tommy Vietor speaks with Ilan Goldenberg, Chief Policy Officer at J Street, about the future for pro-Israel progressives and the messy, polarized Israel/Palestine debate playing out among Democrats.

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Main Segments & Timestamps

• [02:12] Trump’s “Victory Lap” and Iran Negotiations
• [20:46] Public Opinion on Trump's War & Efforts to Win Back Joe Rogan
• [28:37] Cash Patel, the FBI, and Lawsuit Backlash
• [40:07] 2028 Democratic Contenders—Early Moves and Messaging
• [59:07] Ilan Goldenberg Interview: The Progressive Israel Debate

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Trump’s Iran “Victory Lap” and Negotiation Chaos

(02:12–20:46)

Key Discussions and Insights

• Trump prematurely declared victory in negotiations with Iran, posting wild and unsubstantiated claims that were almost immediately contradicted by Iran.
  • “Trump spent Friday counting all of his chickens before they hatched, firing off a series of manic all-caps posts...” – Jon Favreau [02:20]
• As the hosts note, the collapse of talks and ensuing escalation underscores the unreliability and theatrical nature of Trump’s communication:
  • "I think he was just making shit up. He was tweeting out his wishlist of outcomes for talks that had not yet happened..." – Tommy Vietor [05:10]
  • "It's not even tethered to what he's hearing or not. ... It's just bullshit. It's just, it's not even tethered to what he's hearing" – Jon Lovett [08:04]
• They point out fractures and chaos within both the Iranian regime and the Trump admin negotiating team.
  • "Within Iran itself, there's all these reports of an ongoing power struggle..." – Tommy Vietor [05:34]
• J.D. Vance’s unexpected role as a go-between in talks and the spectacle of cruise ships “sneaking” through the Strait of Hormuz provide comic relief.
• Trump’s public “war updates” are compared to emotional therapy or vision boards, detached from reality.
  • “So it's just like he's journaling? ... Sometimes it's therapy, sometimes it's like a vision board.” – Jon Favreau & Jon Lovett [08:31–08:41]

Notable Quotes

• “Trump is willing to lift sanctions, give some money, even though he's not saying that publicly, and release a bunch of frozen assets. Billions of dollars.” – Tommy Vietor [07:15]
• "Every day it's, we won the war. Every single day we won the war or we're going to destroy civilization. That's it." – Jon Favreau [10:17]

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Trump, Public Opinion, and Joe Rogan Appeal

(20:46–28:37)

Highlights

• Polls indicate overwhelming public disapproval of Trump’s handling of the war, with strong negative ratings on Iran and cost of living.
• The hosts analyze Trump’s political scramble to win back one-time media allies like Joe Rogan, fast-tracking FDA review of psychedelics (ibogaine) apparently after Rogan sent Trump a text about it.
  • “Joe Rogan texting Trump some medical information and being like, cool, let's do it. That's not a good process...” – Tommy Vietor [23:15]
  • “Just keep posting.” – Jon Favreau [23:44]
• There’s skepticism that Trump’s transactional approach, rewarding friends and donors with policy change, ever results in meaningful action.
  • “He gets the press event about how quickly he can do things, but meanwhile he actually stops paying attention, doesn't really focus on it, doesn't really give a fuck, gets the good headline and never really happens.” – Jon Lovett [24:51]
• Discussion of how Rogan is likely to continue criticizing Trump despite the gesture, and how this “abundance-coded” (move fast/break things) governance has deep systemic risks.

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Cash Patel: Dysfunction at the Top of Law Enforcement

(28:37–40:07)

Main Points

• FBI Director Cash Patel sues The Atlantic for a scathing exposé describing him as “erratic, suspicious of others, prone to jumping to conclusions... so drunk so often that his meetings have had to be rescheduled for later in the day.”
• Patel, a former low-level DOJ lawyer drawn into Trump’s inner circle, is ridiculed for treating the job as a “fantasy camp” – focusing on perks, image, and petty feuds rather than national security.
  • “Cash Patel shouldn't have this job to begin with. He's not remotely qualified to be FBI director in the first place.” – Tommy Vietor [30:31]
• The deeper concern is the hollowing out of the FBI and replacement of career professionals with “kooks and cranks,” leaving US law enforcement structurally weaker.
  • “...Through firings and attrition. The FBI has lost a lot of key people... replaced by Trump diehards and people that were part of the election interference operation.” – Jon Lovett [33:20]
• Revelations about Patel’s conduct undermine the credibility of his lawsuit; there’s public evidence of his drinking and unprofessionalism.
  • “Video of him drinking to excess at the fucking Olympics. The whole beer. He chugged the whole beer. We have proof of him flying off half cocked because he posted crazy things...” – Jon Lovett [35:52]
• Recent high-profile resignations among Trump cabinet officials (e.g., Labor Secretary Lori Chavez deraymer) further highlight dysfunction and infighting.

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Early Moves of 2028 Democratic Contenders

(40:07–59:07)

Ossoff, Buttigieg, Harris, and the Messaging Wars

• Several likely 2028 Democratic hopefuls—Jon Ossoff, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris—are ramping up public appearances and sharpening their political messages.

Jon Ossoff:

• Ossoff delivers a biting anti-corruption speech focused on Trump’s enrichment, the war, and everyday Americans’ struggles:
  • “The First Family's wealth is growing by billions of dollars because they're crooks.” – Jon Ossoff [41:37]
• Hosts praise Ossoff’s tight, crowd-engaging messaging, though nitpick old political tropes like “wars of choice.”
• Ossoff’s ability to indict both sides and issue a “pro-democracy, anti-corruption” call is admired.
  • “There's a lazy, cynical expedience. Politics unmoored from fixed moral principles and incapable of inspiration...” – Jon Lovett [43:16]

Pete Buttigieg:

• Buttigieg focuses on “bridge building” and engaging with opponents outside ideological bubbles.
  • “Step one, I think, try to do it offline as much as possible. ... I always imagine that I'm talking to people like people I grew up with who I disagree with and also actually like.” – Pete Buttigieg [45:19]
• Hosts note Pete’s intellectual grasp but question whether he truly connects beyond savvy debate performances.
  • “In politics, you can't just make an argument for the car. You're making an argument for you as the person selling the car.” – Jon Lovett [49:11]

Kamala Harris:

• Harris’ messaging varies between effective war critiques and awkward, old-school “gas station” consumer protection stunts.
• Hosts urge her to develop a clearer, more authentic forward-looking narrative.
  • “She is at her best when she is doing the prosecution of the administration that she was in the first half of the clip, the gas... it is such a talk about, like, signaling that you are a throwback from a different era of politics.” – Jon Favreau [53:06]
• All agree the 2028 field will need not just critique of Trump but a distinctive, positive Democratic vision.

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Interview: Ilan Goldenberg on Progressive Zionism and the Democratic Coalition

(59:07–End)

Debate Context

• Goldenberg, a liberal Zionist and J Street policy leader, weighs in on the party’s internal conflict surrounding Israel, with particular focus on the recent outcry over whether Democrats should even appear on platforms like Hasan Piker’s Twitch channel.
• He disputes the framing of Israel as a “uniquely evil” state but fully acknowledges its “deeply imperfect” democracy and the failures of Netanyahu.
  • “...Israel is intended to be a Jewish democratic state. It was also to be, in its Declaration of Independence, described as a state with equal rights for all of its citizens. That's what the vision of the state was. Now, that's been incredibly imperfect.” – Ilan Goldenberg [60:16]
• Goldenberg calls for a nuanced middle ground: both critical and supportive of Israel, opposed to Hamas and Netanyahu, pragmatic about potential progress.
  • “I can be horrified by the acts of October 7th by Hamas, and I can be horrified by the horrific actions that the Israeli government has perpetrated in Gaza... Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism.” [64:03]
• Tommy challenges Goldenberg on whether the “two-state solution” is a fantasy given the current rightward shift in Israeli politics and Netanyahu’s boasting of blocking Palestinian statehood.
• Goldenberg acknowledges the difficulty but maintains that phasing out unconditional US financial support, enforcing accountability via arms sales, and treating Israel as a “normal ally” are the path forward.
  • “They get $4 billion a year from us and have been for years and years and years. ...There’s no reason that they don’t need this financial subsidy for anything anymore... Let’s treat Israel like a normal country.” – Ilan Goldenberg [84:54]
• Both agree the Democratic base has moved far faster on Palestinian rights than elected leaders, raising generational and electoral tensions the party will need to bridge by 2028.

Memorable Moments

• The debate over the use of “apartheid” to describe current Israeli policy, spotlighting B’Tselem’s controversial report:

  • “In 2021, the most prominent Israeli human rights organization in Israel called Israel an apartheid regime.” – Tommy Vietor [77:42]

• Closing thought from Goldenberg:

  • “If you want to ultimately in the United States, build a political coalition that’s actually going to win in 26 and more importantly in 28, I don’t think that most people are where APAC is... there’s just a huge constituency for this very common sense view.” [66:00]

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Additional Notable Quotes & Moments

• “He treats the social media as just about what he wants to vent about... It bears absolutely no resemblance to what he's hearing internally.” – Jon Lovett [08:04]
• On political messaging: “Pro-democracy, anti-corruption, here's how corruption at the top has hurt you... Both [Ossoff and Buttigieg] are doing a version of that message.” – Jon Lovett [48:48]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a relentless, insightful breakdown of political theater, institutional decay, and Democratic anxieties in the Trump era, while providing a nuanced progressive take on the fraught battle over Israel/Palestine and the Democratic Party’s future. The hosts’ irreverent humor, sharp analysis, and high-profile guest interview give listeners both outrage and clarity on the state of politics in 2026.

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For more:

• Listen ad-free and get bonus episodes at Crooked.com/friends
• Follow J Street’s work at jstreet.org or their Substack (“Word on the Street”)

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Favreau]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm Jon Lovett.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm Tommy Vitorino.

[Jon Favreau]

Onto. Oh, wow. Enthusiastic.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's go.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, on today's show, we're gonna talk about Trump's premature victory lap on Iran, his attempts to win back Joe Rogan with psychedelics and cash Patel suing the Atlantic because over two dozen people basically said he's a paranoid idiot who drinks too much. We'll also cover what was a big weekend for potential Democratic presidential contenders who are very much stepping up their public appearances and honing their stump speeches. Then Ilan Goldenberg of J Street talks to Tommy about how pro Israel progressives are trying to make their case. Speaking of progressives trying to make their case, if you ever wondered what you could be doing to fight back against the right wing propaganda that's clogging up all of our feeds and our screens. Do we have an idea for you. You could become a crooked media subscriber. How's that?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it'll help you unclog seeing images of toilets too.

[Jon Favreau]

There you go.

[Jon Lovett]

Get those pipes flowing.

[Jon Favreau]

We are. Look, we're one of the only independent, pro democracy media outlets left in Trump's America. We're growing every day. We want you to be part of that. And if you do subscribe, guess what? No more ads. No more ads in Pod Save America Ad free. Pod Save the World Ad free offline and love it or leave it. Plus you get all the great content we're putting out for our friends of the pod. Got an extra episode of Pod Save America for you. We got Dan's Polar Coaster, all of our excellent substack newsletter. It's all there. Check it out. It's great. We'd love to have you head on over to crooked.com friends and subscribe. Alright, let's get to the news. Donald Trump spent Friday counting all of his chickens before they hatched, firing off a series of manic all caps posts where he announced that Iran had agreed to, quote, never close the Strait of Hormuz again, would turn over all their enriched uranium, would receive no money for it, would remove all sea mines, and that Israel would be prohibited from bombing Lebanon any longer. Trump then continued his premature celebration at a TPUSA event in Arizona where he

[Ilan Goldenberg]

said this Iran has just announced that the Strait of Hormuz is fully open

[Jon Favreau]

and ready for business.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

This process should go very quickly, that

[Jon Lovett]

most of the points are already negotiated and agreed to.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

You'll be very happy. The USA will get all nuclear dust.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know what the nuclear dust is?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

That was that white powdery substance created by our B2 bombers. Those great B2 bombers. Late one evening seven months ago.

[Tommy Vietor]

No money will exchange hands in any way, shape or form.

[Jon Favreau]

So right after this, maybe as he was speaking, everything appeared to fall apart. The Iranians said that all of Trump's claims were false, closed the strait and fired on two ships, which led Trump to threaten war crimes again. Fire on an Iranian ship that tried to run the US Naval blockade and seize the ship, which in turn led the Iranians to threaten retaliation. And yet, it seems as of this recording late Monday afternoon, a second round of negotiations in Pakistan may still happen. The latest is that JD Vance and the US Delegation seem to be planning to go. And while the Iranians haven't publicly confirmed their attendance, two Iranian officials told the Times that they'll likely attend if JD Vance goes. Still some confusing first time in history

[Jon Lovett]

anyone says I'm not going to that event unless J.D.

[Tommy Vietor]

vance is there.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe the last.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, other than his literal wedding.

[Jon Favreau]

So it seems like Trump was either lying or heavily exaggerating on Friday about the progress they'd made on a deal or he off the Iranians by spiking the ball before the deal was done. Or maybe a little bit of both. I don't know. Tommy, what do you think? What happened?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think he was just making shit up. He was tweeting out his wish list of outcomes for talks that had not yet happened. And then he kind of elaborated there. Tposa with the golden dust.

[Jon Lovett]

The dust?

[Jon Favreau]

The nuclear well created by our B2 bombers.

[Jon Lovett]

The nuclear dust is his way of squaring the circle between we obliterated the program and we have to fight a war against them. It's all about the dust because it's just dust.

[Tommy Vietor]

RFK is going to snort it into dust. But. Yeah, but even last week, it was clear Iran was saying in their tweets that the Strait of Hormuz is only partially open. The Foreign Minister, Abbas Arachi, said the state of Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire on the coordinated route. That's very important, which is like their little part that goes close to their shoreline so they can control everybody. That was what was open. And Trump was saying, oh, it'll never be closed again. Israel will never bomb Lebanon again. It was all, they're going to turn over their stockpile, which is the dust. It was all just made up. And then the other problem is, within Iran itself, there's all these reports of, like, an ongoing power struggle between Israel elected officials, the irgc, the nationalists versus the Islamists. It's not really clear who's in charge over there. It's like 1979, the kind of first few months. And the way, you know, that was manifesting was the Economist had a great piece today where they talked about how the Islamabad talks. The Iranian delegation had 80 people in it, including 30 who are described as decision makers.

[Jon Favreau]

That's rolling deep.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's like a state that you need

[Jon Favreau]

a lot of cooks in that kitchen.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Too many cooks.

[Jon Favreau]

So too many cooks, not enough dust. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Who knows what's going to happen? Keep them all going, but it's a mess.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

The.

[Jon Favreau]

Apparently the Trump administration officials told Axios today that there is this genuine. They kind of blamed it on this genuine split between the negotiating team and the irgc. They also, though, admitted to Axios, they said that the Iranians never, ever, at no point agreed to give up enrichment permanently. No, they certainly never agreed to do anything for free. They also said Trump is willing to lift sanctions, give some money, even though he's not saying that publicly, and release

[Tommy Vietor]

a bunch of frozen assets. Billions of dollars.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. There was also a story about the six cruise ships that had to like, sneak through the straight of Hormuz during this opening, which I just. There's something so funny about this is it's like, like, no, honey, we're not. No protocol. I know, it's such a bummer. It's such a bummer that they're empty, but just be like, we're going through the shade Hormuz.

[Jon Favreau]

Like a cannonball run of cruise ships.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

That's something you just don't tell the passengers. Just look out the window, wave on your left. That's not a rocket launcher, that a drone. They're just fireworks.

[Jon Lovett]

Look at the beautiful golf. Yeah. I'm like, I think increasingly we just need to look at whatever Trump is posting about this as a completely separate. Like, is he lying? Is he telling the truth?

[Jon Favreau]

It's a bit.

[Jon Lovett]

It's not even, it's.

[Jon Favreau]

It's a performance piece.

[Jon Lovett]

It's just bullshit. It's just, it's not even tethered to what he's hearing or not. Maybe it's in some way a version of what he hopes the outcome will be. But based on this and more of the reporting that we'll talk about in a minute, just, he treats. The social media has. Is basically just about what he wants to vent about, how he's feeling and what he wants the public to believe is going on. It bears absolutely no resemblance to what he's hearing internally, to what they're conveying to the Iranians, to what the internal discussions look like. It is just a separate track.

[Jon Favreau]

So it's just like he's journaling? Yeah, it's just, he's just doing therapy

[Jon Lovett]

and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes it's what it's. Sometimes it's therapy, sometimes it's like a vision board.

[Jon Favreau]

Did you guys read all the truths today? There's a lot today.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's like a lot.

[Jon Favreau]

Some of the couple of things that stood out to me there, you know, he says, I'm winning. I'm winning a war by a lot. And then goes on to like mock Iran for losing again. He attacked Obama and the JCPOA. He said Obama gave $1.7 billion in all capital letters green cash. He emptied out all the cash from banks in D.C. virginia and Maryland. Those bankers said they've never seen anything like it before.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just there's always got to be some made up detail like, like Tony, like

[Jon Lovett]

Tony Blinken was going bank to bank

[Tommy Vietor]

with like to sort of like all

[Jon Lovett]

the banks, like in the Movie Assassins, where you have to wait for a couple of hours where they count all the money.

[Jon Favreau]

He did. He did one that started, he said, despite World War I lasting, and then he goes on and talks about the exact length in years and days of World War II, World War I, Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq. And then he said, I promised six weeks. And by the way, I am under no pressure whatsoever to make a deal, although it will all happen relatively quickly. Time is not my adversary. Oh, I would say, yeah, exactly.

[Jon Lovett]

Time. Time. Time.

[Jon Favreau]

Called Democrats traitors, bragged about building the greatest military our country's ever seen, including adding the space force. That's something that we had to get in today. And then also, Israel never talked me into the war with Iran.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sure, buddy.

[Jon Favreau]

My, my. Israel never talked me into the war with Iran T shirt. It's answering a lot of questions.

[Jon Lovett]

I just like, as is giving a speech meant to be a kind of political booster speech. And you say, great news, everybody. The Strait of Hormuz is open. Like, that wasn't a problem two months ago.

[Jon Favreau]

The lesson he took from the Iraq war was that the one most successful episode in the whole war was the Mission Accomplished banner. Because he basically has been doing that every single day since the war began. Yeah, every day it's, we won the war. Every single day we won the war or we're going to destroy civilization. That's it.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not pressured to end it soon, but I'm going to end it soon. But I don't care when I end it, because we've already won, then we're going to. We're going to accomplish all this stuff. Do you see that? Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are being referred to as Whit Kush.

[Jon Favreau]

It's so in diplomatic circles, Whit Kush,

[Tommy Vietor]

according to playbook, Kush wit.

[Jon Favreau]

Kush wit sounds better.

[Jon Lovett]

Kushkoff.

[Jon Favreau]

Jerk off.

[Jon Lovett]

Kush off.

[Jon Favreau]

Jerk off.

[Tommy Vietor]

Jar off.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, Jaroff.

[Tommy Vietor]

That works for me.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, there was also an incredible Wall Street Journal story over the weekend about how Trump has been, quote, grappling with his own fears about this war, namely that if too many American troops were killed or captured, his presidency could end up like Jimmy Carter's. That seemed to be the main takeaway for him. I also found this part notable when a White House adviser asked Trump about his. Remember the Easter Sunday post that threatened war crimes and ended with, quote, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Praise be to Allah. Happy Easter. So Trump said about this post, quote, he came up with the Allah idea himself. He said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring the Iranians to the table, senior administration officials said. Nailed the first part, I guess. What did you guys make of the piece?

[Tommy Vietor]

I'd quibble with the analysis a bit. I don't think you needed the praise be to Allah tweet for the Iranians that think you're unstable and insulting to them. That's pretty well established, I think, with

[Jon Lovett]

the crazy bastards part.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And all the bombing.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you guys think that telling people that you're just pretending to be a lunatic to get a deal kind of ruins the point of pretending to be a lunatic?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, the madman theory.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, yeah, you read the piece like, oh, he really was just. Yeah, right, well, right. You are what you pretend to be, but he's just sort of jerking everybody around. And I look back to like that concern, which I was completely legitimate given what he was threatening that day. Then you read the piece and he, he was also meeting about the ballroom and doing fundraisers and kind of doing normal business that day. And there was a little bit of like the alarm that wasn't going off, the dog that wasn't barking, like there was no. We weren't getting reportings that he was in the situation room laying out the final parts of the plan. And so it confirms what we were just talking about, which is what he is posting publicly is not coming out of a conversation with the negotiators. It's not some part of some like public facing strategy and private facing strategy. It's just his separate stream of consciousness. He has a kind of whatever contractors mentality about negotiations. He clearly, like, as I think the Iranians have assumed, as a lot of people have assumed, does not want the economic pain that comes with a long term conflict. So he has to counteract that with. By seeming unstable and issuing these big threats and seeming blustery. But behind the scenes, that's all just a show, which is what the Iranians knew because they called his bluff that day and, you know, didn't relent to what he was saying in the lead up to this civilization destroying threat.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. The story I think really drives home that the whole war is just an exercise in ego and narcissism and stupidity.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

There was the Venezuela operation that was easy in Trump's mind. He was told by all these sycophants like Lindsey Graham and Pete Hegseth that Iran would be easy too, and that he could be a historic figure and reshape the geopolitical order and be better than Obama. And so here we are. And so there's also more detail about how in the opening days they were presenting him hype videos of explosions and he was like, this is cool. Why isn't the press just reporting this? Look at all the things blowing up. And then it also sounds like Hegseth told him that Iran wouldn't close the street or Hormuz or the people around him, or at least Trump was telling them that. I assume someone told him that. They wouldn't respond in the most obvious way possible. And so Trump was shocked when it happened and when global oil prices spiked. And that ultimately though, like, what is upsetting him about what's happening with Iran is not the death and the destruction or the high gas prices. It is being compared to Jimmy Carter or Joe Biden. That is what is terrifying him and what he cannot stomach. And so yeah, he's changing the subject. He's talking to his architect about the ballroom or like anything he can to get from this.

[Jon Lovett]

Multiple meetings a week on the ballroom. He refers to that. He sees himself as quote, the general contractor of the ballroom.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I think in his mind he would see a successful outcome in Iran as a legacy item. He puts that on the same plane as the ballroom as a legacy item. Like it's all just one level for him, you know. And look, if the reason he is worried about US casualties and chaos in the Middle east is for reasons of self preservation and legacy, like that's a fine motivation, but because at least the outcome could be the same. But his other problem is he can never risk seeming like he is not completely dominating and winning at every given moment. Like I don't know if the negotiations would be further along right now if he just simply shut his fucking mouth and stopped posting about stuff. But I certainly think he's made it worse. Like if you instead of saying that you won all the time and just pissing off the Iranians and say, oh, they did this and they're destroyed, imagine if every time someone asked about the negotiations, Trump and the White House were just like, when we have something to report and we have good news to report, we'll let you know. Otherwise we're just engaged in negotiations.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's not the big under promise over deliver guy.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, it also like, what is the end game of this? Any actual deal, not one he's describing, but a real deal will involve, you know, puts and takes. It'll have compromises on our side, compromises that will in some way like resemble the parts of the deal he's been mocking for years that the Obama administration did with Iran. There's only so many levers that this kind of an agreement will have. And so the hope to me is you come to some sort of conclusion to this that results in a deal that he pretends is some kind of dominating victory. And it is understood by everyone that Donald Trump is gonna call this the greatest deal in human history, even if it resembles in many ways the Obama deal. That's the hope, right?

[Jon Favreau]

And he wants to give himself the medal of honor. So that was in there too.

[Jon Lovett]

He's kidding.

[Jon Favreau]

That keeps coming up.

[Jon Lovett]

But it was a joke.

[Tommy Vietor]

Let's talk about that. Who had the story, was it the Times the other day about how the arch he's building for himself went from like 70ft to 150ft. Now it's 250ft. It's like, yeah, they're going to have

[Jon Lovett]

to reroute the planes. They're going to have to have the planes. They're going to have to go on.

[Jon Favreau]

Even like the architect that was for it was like, no, this is crazy. You can't do this.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's going to dwarf a bunch of veterans memorials and monuments.

[Jon Favreau]

Before we move on, I want to call your attention to a political piece from Friday that has already become to me just an incredible artifact from a simpler time. The headline is big sigh of relief. Republicans finally get some good news. Can it last? And I was like, I saw, I'm like, what is this about? And the leaders. Republicans are breathing a little easier this weekend, cautiously optimistic that Trump has finally found an off ramp to end the war. With oil dropping below $90 a barrel, the stock market making new all time highs and gas down 8 cents a gallon this week, some feel the slightest bit of a wind at their back for the first time since February. Good luck. And then it's got Representative Carlos Scribelo saying big sigh of relief from congressional Republicans today. It just, it's so funny to like, to like do that story and for Republicans to like go on the record for that story when there's been like an hour after Trump said everything's open, everything's great. It just goes to show that it's like it's not just Trump. Like, this is how this is like how Washington operates. DC Media operates the whole thing.

[Jon Lovett]

And there's some, you know, like, oh, this is, they're trying to say, they're trying to, they're wish casting to Trump. See, like, this is, this is good. When we de escalate, this will be something that you'll get positive press about from your congressional.

[Jon Favreau]

It's also a window into like the second no matter what the deal is, no matter how bad the deal is, no matter how different it is from the jcpoa, no matter what it is, it's gonna be like, like the second there is any kind of a deal in the war's over. It's gonna be like, all right, now Republicans are feeling bullish again on the midterms.

[Jon Lovett]

Great.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Look for that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, well, we can, we can talk about that.

[Jon Lovett]

Pod Save America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. I don't know about you, but I'm keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping your money too. If you're fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run, then switch to Mint Mobile. Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talks and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Bring your own phone and number, activate with EIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long term contracts, no hassle. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. You could save so much with Mint getting, getting reamed by these other people. Taking to the. Taking to the cleaners. You know, if you like your.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, you know, I feel you man.

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Favreau]

Vast majority of Americans still hate the war. Think Trump's doing a shitty job. A brand new NBC News poll looks just like all the others. Trump is at 37% approval, 63% disapproval, including 50% who say they strongly disapprove. Record lows all around. And his numbers are even worse on Iran and the cost of living. Probably not helped by his energy secretary telling CNN over the weekend that, quote, it could be next year before gas is under $3 a gallon again. Republicans are starting to panic they may lose the Senate as well as the House. And you can tell the White House is nervous because they're making public overtures to win back one time ally Joe Rogan, who's been saying things like this about the war.

[Tommy Vietor]

Most people that voted for Trump or wanted Trump to be in office, one of the things that was attractive was this.

[Jon Lovett]

No more wars.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Sure, of course.

[Tommy Vietor]

And now we're in one of the craziest ones. What the fuck are we doing? Like, how is this still going on?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, over the weekend, Trump made a surprise announcement that he's fast tracking FDA review of psychedelics as a medical treatment, an issue Rogan is passionate about. And you can tell Trump is too from his mastery of the terms involved.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

It's called ibogaine treatment.

[Jon Favreau]

Ibogaine.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Remember the name. Is that pronounced rock properly? Would you say?

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

I don't want to get it wrong. I bogan because it's so important. And experienced an 80 to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month. Can I have some, please?

[Tommy Vietor]

I'll take.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

I'll take whatever it takes. Careful, I don't have time to be depressed. You know, if you stay busy enough, maybe that works too. That's what I do.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's how depression works. I sent President Trump some information. We have a gigantic opiate problem in this Country. I sent him that information. The text message came back, sounds great.

[Jon Lovett]

Do you want FDA approval?

[Tommy Vietor]

Let's do it. For 56 years, we've lived under those terrible conditions. We're free of that now. We're free of that now. Thanks to all these people that you see next to me and thanks to President Trump.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

We all respect Joe, and he's a little bit more liberal than. That's okay. I have a lot of friends that are liberal.

[Jon Favreau]

Interesting window into how the sausage gets made, huh? You just text the president something, and suddenly the FDA independent regulatory agency just fast tracks it. No problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, this is a good outcome on this specifics here, but Joe Rogan texting Trump some medical information and being like, cool, let's do it. That's not a good process because you're,

[Jon Favreau]

because you're pissing me on the war. And so I'm trying to get you back. So whatever you want. I don't know what this drug is. It sounds great. I'll take some. But, you know, I just stave off depression by just. I just keep moving. I just keep posting.

[Jon Lovett]

Never be alone if you don't want to feel sad. Never be alone with your thoughts. Just keep moving.

[Jon Favreau]

Just keep your family. That's a Trump thing for sure.

[Jon Lovett]

Just get out there. Just, just, just turn the TV on. Turn it louder.

[Jon Favreau]

Keep posting.

[Jon Lovett]

Gotta post through it.

[Jon Favreau]

Through it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Like, I do think, like, what Ro. Like, I think it's worth saying that this is something people like about Trump. The idea that it doesn't have the red tape and the sludge of normal government, that there's stuff that should be happening that isn't, because government is slow and stupid. And there should be a president just says, oh, this is a good idea. There's good studies. Let's do it. And there's. There's two big problems with it.

[Jon Favreau]

Real abundance coded there a little bit.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, there's somewhere between being able to build a train in California and Joe Rogan being bizarre for magic mushrooms. But, but the problem with it with Trump is a. It becomes about. It's not about, like, oh, doing good things faster based on any kind of a process. It's just who knows him and who has access. So, yeah, Rogan can get this done, and maybe that's a good thing, but also means the CEO of United can give Trump $1 million for the inaugural and then soft pitch, creating the biggest airline by two in the world and potentially get it done because Trump knows him. And it seems like it's a big fun deal. To do.

[Jon Favreau]

And when the, and when the resulting merger sucks, Trump's like, well, I don't have to deal with that. I have my freaking guitar playing. They're pretty. They wish they hadn't made that gift, right?

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, you're mad about the things I did before I left. Get in line. I'm trying to stay ahead of depression. But the other. And the other part of it, though, and I think it's like actually just as important is he actually doesn't. Other than, other than like the, the like he can break things very quickly. He can do that with Doge, he can shut down agencies, but when he finishes these events where he's moving fast and doing things that other people couldn't do, nothing fucking happens. Joe Biden was really fucking slow on getting marijuana off of Schedule 1. He put out an order to review it in 2022. Trump says, I'm going to fast track it. Right. That gave him a real opportunity that he shouldn't have had, but it hasn't happened. It didn't. It's not. Marijuana remains a Schedule 1 drug as we're sitting here and talking. It has been held up ever since he wrote signed that order over a year ago. Pam Bondi couldn't get it done. There's an opening for the administrative law judge that be that could be the one to approve it. And by the way, even if it does happen, there's a bunch of Republicans who are lined up to sue to prevent it from going into effect. So he gets the press event about how quickly he can do things, but meanwhile he actually stops paying attention, doesn't really focus on it, doesn't really give a fuck, gets the good headline and never really happens.

[Tommy Vietor]

I do love the events where you can tell he's learning the details in real time. And he's like kind of does a meta commentary on himself as he's reading the facts about, oh, that sounds good. Depression, I don't need that. But on began, there was a great piece in the New York Times about ibogaine treatment by Robert Draper that's worth reading. He did an episode of the Daily that you could listen to it too. It's helped a lot of people. It's helped a lot of people struggling from ptsd, depression, truly debilitating mental health challenges, especially veterans. And the cause was picked up by Rick Perry, Kirsten Cinema. Some interesting people. Sean Ryan, who's got a huge show on YouTube, a bunch of veterans, he's a veteran himself and former Navy seal, has talked about using ibogaine to Shake his addiction to drinking, drugs, a lot of stuff. So Rogan had a bunch of conversations about this with people impacted, including Sean Ryan, including Rick Perry, including a couple people at that event there. And it just, it did not. I think there's actually a really good outcome because it didn't make sense that you, like, you couldn't do medical trials on people with ptsd, but you could, like, go to Mexico and get treatment.

[Jon Lovett]

Like, what?

[Tommy Vietor]

That's stupid. So I'm glad Trump cut through the red tape here. Like, I'm sure Joe Rogan will kind of like give Trump his flowers on this issue. Rightfully so. I doubt it changes his concern about Iran or the fact that he's talking about it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I think it's important for people. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't short circuit the actual reclassification process or the approval process for the, for the treatments themselves, but for this, for the studying. And it's not just for the medical studies and it's ibogaine, but it's also MDMA and psychedelic mushrooms. Yeah, it's a whole, whole category.

[Jon Lovett]

I was at a fish concert recently. I think a lot of people were in that study.

[Tommy Vietor]

A lot of studies.

[Jon Lovett]

A lot of people doing some of.

[Jon Favreau]

A lot of studying.

[Tommy Vietor]

There is a number one place for studying.

[Jon Lovett]

This.

[Jon Favreau]

Good place to study. Yeah. On the Rogan, like, I think if Rogan's smart, he will realize that this was. He got Trump to do something he wanted him to do, and he will go back to continue. He will criticize him when he wants to criticize him and not criticize him when he thinks he's doing something good. Like, it could just be like that. And I don't think it'll change anything big. I think it's smart politics probably on, on both parts on Trump's behalf and on Rogan's behalf.

[Jon Lovett]

Like, good for Rogan for just saying, fuck it. I'm. They think they need me because they see that I'm critical of them. Like, let's get something good to happen. Like, great. Good for him.

[Tommy Vietor]

But if you're amazing thing to do.

[Jon Favreau]

But if you're a Rogan listener and have heard Joe Rogan talk about Donald Trump in Iran and the Epstein files and all the other things now that. That Rogan has criticized Trump for, I don't think this changes. You're not an idiot. This doesn't change anything for you.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is the thing I don't get. Like, the Rupert Murdoch approach to Trump is always a smart one. You got like Fox News doing The propaganda. But then the Wall Street Journal is kicking the shit out of him. Like, reserve some optionality, man. Like, show him you can throw a punch. He respects that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that is very true. All right, speaking of infamous podcasters, we should talk about the FBI director who is suing the Atlantic over an absolutely brutal and somewhat terrifying story about his management style and personal behavior that sourced to more than two dozen people, including, quote, current and former FBI officials and staff at law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He is called, quote, erratic, suspicious of others, prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence. Always a great quality in an FBI director.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's what you want.

[Jon Favreau]

You always want the top cop just jumping to conclusions before you have evidence. He's also accused of, quote, conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences and described as a national security vulnerability. He's reportedly been so drunk so often that his meetings have had to be rescheduled for later in the day, and his security detail has had difficulty waking him up. This is from the piece, quote, a request for breaching equipment normally used by SWAT and hostage rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. Anyway, Cash is handling this. Well, here he is announcing his lawsuit on Maria Bartiromo's show.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

You want to attack my character, Come at me. Bring it on. I'll see you in court. So you're going to sue them? Absolutely. It's coming tomorrow. Tomorrow you will be dropping a lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine. Yes, yes, I will. For defamation. And because you know what, Maria? We have to fight back against the fake news.

[Tommy Vietor]

He looks drunk. Put a tie on.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I'll be filing it tomorrow, but don't expect it before noon.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm going to roll into court.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

File this bad boy.

[Tommy Vietor]

I heard. The problem is he's actually down a podcaster after Bongino resigned.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, yeah, that's why he's kind of struggling. Needs more podcasters.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, send more podcasters.

[Tommy Vietor]

Blockhead. Dan. Dan.

[Jon Favreau]

What did you guys think of the Atlantic's piece Fire?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, look, just worth saying, Cash Patel shouldn't have this job to begin with. He's not remotely qualified to be FBI director in the first place. He's a low level DOJ lawyer, then a Capitol Hill staffer. Then he got, like, sucked into the Trump orbit, and now he's the FBI director.

[Jon Favreau]

This is crazy. It's crazy.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's been a lot of reporting about how he treated the job like a joke. Like it was fantasy camp. There was. He was focused on the image and the perks. Like, he used the private jet to fly to the Olympics. He's flying around to see his girlfriend. Remember, he went to a place called the Boondoggle Ranch for a weekend off of hunting with a big GOP donor. And then also, there's a report said he just. Him and Dan Bongino would just freak out about, like, what Twitter thought of them and plan their tweets, not, like, investigations and things.

[Jon Favreau]

Look, that's understandable.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. But this story, it does make him sound like a genuine danger to the country. Like, he is paranoid, prone to emotional outbursts, impulsive. He's so bad at managing the building that good people are leaving. And, like, he is drunk. And let's just be. He is drunk on the job because FBI director is a 247 job. You don't get a night out from the terrorists or the bad guys. And so the question is, why is he still there? And the answer is, because he will go after Trump's enemies. And Trump knows this. And now that he's even more damaged, he's probably gonna step that up and go that extra mile to prosecute John Brennan or, you know, whoever. And that's. It's scary.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Trump likes his Cabinet secretaries weak and dependent upon him, but this, I do think, crosses a line into probably too weak and too dependent. In the same way you saw Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem kind of sweatily trying to regain their good graces. It kind of crosses a line that you can't come back from.

[Jon Favreau]

I'll just say, honestly, no one's sweating harder than him.

[Jon Lovett]

No, this guy's ye.

[Tommy Vietor]

And just not that booze.

[Jon Lovett]

And it has a smell. Yeah, I had a different reaction, which is, I saw this a little bit the way I saw ice at the airports. Like, the more ice at the airports, the fewer of them that are in American cities. And look, I think it is terrible to have someone like Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, but there's no meeting he is in that he makes better, sober or otherwise. And so the idea that he's. According to the report, in Vegas, in the Poodle Room atop the Fontainebleau Hotel. I went and looked up how you get into this private club, the Poodle Room, and it is so, so exclusive for American Express card holders. It is available only to private members, people on a certain level of the hotel in a certain kind of suite, and exclusive to certain holders of American Express credit cards, charge cards. So. So that's interesting. The part to me that is the most alarming is not how he is absent and drinking all the time. It is the way through firings and attrition. The FBI has lost a lot of key people. There was this story, there's also a story last week by ProPublica about 75 people that were part of different public integrity units, cyber units, election units that have all been forced out and left replaced by Trump diehards and people that were part of the election interference operation. And now you have career people and people in the states on phone calls with dhs. And the people representing the federal government are the kooks who they used to be suing from the outside. You go from as a Secretary of state or a lead, a law enforcement official in a state trying to fight some of these people. Next thing you know they're the people representing DHS on the calls. And so senior serious people are leaving and kind of kooks and cranks and Trump anti election zealots are coming in. That to me is the biggest and most dangerous part. Who's gonna want to fucking report to this guy who apparently had a panic attack because his email wasn't working and he thought he'd been fired. That's what they report here.

[Jon Favreau]

Opening anecdote. And by the way, amazing, can't get it, can't get into a Zima, can't get into his, some part of the system but probably his password didn't, couldn't remember his password or something. And then he was like called I've been fired, I've been fired, I've been fired. And then like news goes around the FBI headquarters. All these people are like oh, he's gone, he's gone, he's gone. They were like no, no, it's just technical difficulties, he's fine.

[Jon Lovett]

And then, and then the, the, the, the lawsuit clearly put together by some, whoever kind of lawyers that are going to still be, that are going to be working for Cash Patel at this point. They, they, they referred to this in their, their lawsuit as a made up rumor basically confirming that the room that he was locked out of his computer and the rumor did at some point exist. And then in the lawsuit they say Director Patel does not drink to excess at these establishments. The Ned something and the poodle room doesn't drink to excess there or anywhere else. And this has not and has never been a source of concern across the government. They are claiming in their lawsuit against the Atlantic that no one in the government is concerned about Cash Patel's drinking quite A claim to make from a Sunday to a Monday.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just also a claim that has nothing to do with proving the lawsuit or the allegation itself in order for them to win this lawsuit, because this is. They're doing defamation based on what over. Over two dozen sources told the reporter. So basically, the way that you win a lawsuit like this is basically the reporter has to say that. That she didn't believe any of her sources at all. The over 24 that she talked to. And yet she published it anyway because she had.

[Jon Lovett]

Because she was. Had a. She hated Cash Patel and wanted him to suffer.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And she got all this information and she's like, I don't care that all these people are telling me this information. It's all wrong. Publish it anyway.

[Jon Lovett]

Video of him drinking to excess at the fucking Olympics. The whole beer. He chugged the whole beer. We have, we have, we have proof of him flying off half cocked because he posted crazy things that we all saw that went beyond the investigation. The proof is publicly available. Forget show showing that it wasn't true or that the sources didn't say it. She could just point to the actual public, public videos that he himself has been in.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is also like the 10th story about him being a clown. There was a. There was an article in the Times earlier this year about him going to a five Eyes conference in the UK as like our closest intelligent allies. And Cash Patel's team said he wanted to go to Premier League soccer games, he wanted to go jet skiing in London, he wanted to go on a helicopter tour. And we were like, this is an absolute joke. This guy's laughable.

[Jon Favreau]

Before Noem and Bondi, I would have said, Trump's just gonna keep him. He keeps all of them. But he seems to be on a bit of a tear recently and I

[Tommy Vietor]

feel like, what's her name too?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I wanna mention that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Lori Chavez.

[Jon Favreau]

So right before we recorded the news broke that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez deraymer has resigned. She's the third cabinet member to do so in the last month and a half. And she was under internal investigation from complaints about her conduct and how she treated her staffers. Also an alleged affair with a security staffer. Also using taxpayer funds for personal travel. And also like Cash Patel drinking.

[Tommy Vietor]

Also texting your staffer to be like, savvy B. Question mark?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Asking the staffers just to bring up a bottle of wine to the hotel room. I don't know, is that the worst? Maybe it's the end of a long night.

[Jon Lovett]

It maybe part of A pattern perhaps.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So she, she. She's gone. She's gone now too. That's another. She resigned. Although I'm sure she. It sounds like she was pushed out and she's. And then the White House announced she's going to the. She's going to the private sector. Just like Bambondi.

[Tommy Vietor]

She can be one of those. What is it? The. The Shield for the Central Americas or whatever. Kristine Noem's fake job.

[Jon Favreau]

They didn't even give her a fake. It. It sounds like with. They. They decided to stop giving fake jobs after. No. Right. Like Pam Bondi is just getting private sector. She's getting private sector.

[Jon Lovett]

It's been the case of death recently. If somebody at the White House says that the President has utmost confidence in his cabinet secretaries because soon, soon after they're gone. But Caroline Levitt put out a statement about Patel in this article that doesn't even say that as part of it. She says Director Patel remains a critical player on the administration's law and order team. It's basically the equivalent of like a valued member of our law enforcement operations, which sounds like he could be put fucking anywhere. He's going to be the deputy to Gnome at the Shield of the Americas in like the next like 48 hours. Maybe before we're done recording.

[Jon Favreau]

Wild. Wild. That's that. Somehow Pete Heath still has his job.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that really sucks.

[Jon Lovett]

Pod Save America is brought to you by hims boner. Time for that. A nickel every time. Tommy said that. You know, at times point you stop blaming stress, sleep or just getting older. If bedroom performance is in question, it's probably crossed your mind to do something about it. The good news, you don't have to jump through hoops to fix it. Would do nothing for you to jump through a hoop to fix it, in fact. Yeah, although it's easier to do without a boner, I'd say. You know, getting caught in the hoop.

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[Jon Favreau]

The 2028 Democratic presidential contenders probably won't start announcing their candidacies until shortly after the midterms this November. But a lot of the potential candidates are really ramping up their public appearances and attending events alongside their potential opponents. This last weekend was particularly busy. Kamala Harris, Andy Beshear and Cory Booker were campaigning with other Democrats in Detroit. AOC and Kamala Harris were in Chicago, Pete Buttigieg held an event in Tulsa, and John Ossoff held another Senate reelection rally in Georgia. We thought it'd be useful to just react to a few clips from the weekend that caught our attention so we can talk about how Democrats are thinking about shaping the party's message ahead of 2026 and of course, 2028. First up, Jon Ossoff In Georgia, the

[Tommy Vietor]

faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice, while he and his family rake

[Jon Favreau]

in billions from foreign princes,

[Tommy Vietor]

while he

[Jon Favreau]

plunders our health care to cut taxes for the rich.

[Tommy Vietor]

Meanwhile, rent, power, groceries and health care

[Ilan Goldenberg]

have all hit all time highs this year.

[Tommy Vietor]

While you pay more for everything, the

[Ilan Goldenberg]

First Family's wealth is growing by billions of dollars

[Tommy Vietor]

because they're crooks.

[Jon Favreau]

I just love how you land.

[Tommy Vietor]

I like that they're crooks.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you guys think?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think because they're crooks is the message, right? He brings it all back to corruption. I think it's smart to mention the story of the week, the Christ imagery, and then kind of wrap that into this broader message of the day about corruption that he has. My little nitpick was I want everyone to stop saying war of choice.

[Jon Lovett]

That's what I want that to I have the same with you.

[Tommy Vietor]

I've done it too. It's just the phrasing make sense like people don't really know you're talking about. It's like this war is immoral. It's illegal. It's a strategic disaster like any other way.

[Jon Favreau]

It's, it's too too light for me. War of choice. It's like, it's like, oh I just made the bad choice. It's like, no, no, you. You launched an illegal war that's killing a whole bunch of people and fucking up the Middle east and the world.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. I think the problem with it. I noticed it, too. He. He says it. Kamala also says it in her.

[Jon Favreau]

They all say it.

[Jon Lovett]

They all say. Everyone says it. And it. It. It is a lingering thing from. From. From post Iraq. And it sort of like, we did not. It was. We. It's. We preempted. We did this preemptively. We chose to go to war. It was where we didn't have to fight. And it feels like it's a legacy of a different kind of way of talking about it. I had the same thought when I heard. It was like, literally the one thing that, to me, rang very political in the whole speech. It's an excellent speech. The other thing I appreciated about it, I just. I said. I just watched the whole thing. He does not just gets up there and he jumps in. It is. It is made to be. It is. First of all, it's tight. It is made for people with low attention spans. He does not waste. There's not a lot of filler. There's an argument. There's a lot of facts. He moves quickly through it. He is into the meat of the speech and to the message of the speech within about a minute or a minute and a half from when he takes the mic, maybe even a little bit faster. And he has a great indictment to me, like a broader indictment that's sort of a bipartisan indictment of the current way politics is done. And I thought it was a great quote, which was, there's a lazy, cynical expedience. Politics unmoored from fixed moral principles and incapable of inspiration or great national achievement. All of this gave rise to a depraved president who exploits this rot to empower and enrich himself. And that, to me, was as clean a way of critiquing Republicans and Democrats and a style of politics that's depleting and enervating that I just really liked.

[Jon Favreau]

There's a way that he. It wasn't in this clip. I should have put it in. But there's a way that he brings the crowd in just very. So that he's not just speaking at them. Because I think the risk of a. The risk of just giving big rally speeches is that you're just talking to people. And when he gives his speeches and he talks about, like, something like what Tommy was saying, like, oh, the story of the week, he'll always be like, did you see that? Did you see how that happened? I'm interested if after the Senate race and he feels a little looser because he just won reelection, if he's like a little more, you know, informal in the way he's. Because I do think, like, he's. He's really nailed. I think the rally speech better than almost any of the other potential candidates right now. And what I'd love to see from him is like, how does he do an interview? How does he do when he, like, sits down and just talks about stuff? Because, like, message wise in a rally speech, it's great. And you don't see. You don't see really good rally speeches anymore.

[Tommy Vietor]

The tone when he was in here was pretty similar. It was pretty serious, sober, kind of.

[Jon Favreau]

I know. And I can't tell if that's like, I'm running for reelection in Georgia and like, I gotta just focus on that. And I'm not. I'm not here to opine on, you know, national presidential politics, but I don't know. We'll see.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, we should play it because it's interesting to how Pete's event was just a different style.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So here's Pete. He's answering a question from an Oklahoma voter about how to talk to people

[Tommy Vietor]

who disagree with you.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

We all live in Oklahoma, or a

[Tommy Vietor]

lot of us do.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Lots of people that are on the other side. What's your advice to engage them when we seem to be in such echo chambers and are so divided?

[Tommy Vietor]

Step one, I think try to do it offline as much as possible. And if you go into that encounter with an open heart, you do it knowing that you might have some of your own values and views challenged.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

And that's okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's why I developed this very unexpected specialty of going to places like Fox News and other conservative outlets. How can I blame somebody for not embracing my. My point of view if they've literally

[Ilan Goldenberg]

never even heard it?

[Tommy Vietor]

I always imagine that I'm talking to people like people I grew up with who I disagree with and also actually like. Which I think is really important too, because we've been made to feel like we just ought to be, like, snarling at each other. And I think there are so many people who maybe have a different worldview than we do, but just like us, they're tired of the sense that politics is just punching you in the face every time you look at your phone

[Jon Favreau]

or turn on the TV headline. Pete open to speaking with Hasan Paik.

[Tommy Vietor]

Was he on the list?

[Jon Lovett]

Did he get that question.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't remember.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't know. Everyone did.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think, I mean, I think it's. He's good. Like, I think by the time we get to 2028, my hope is that people want the opposite of Trump and that they'll look betting on like a more unifying tone and message. I think Pete is betting on that and he's trying to argue that I'm the guy who can best reach across the aisle and convince people. I think that the reality of what he's good at is a little more nuanced. Like. Like he is really smart and can debate anyone and can beat anyone in debate, which is why libs like us are like, yeah, you gave it to Joe Kernan on cnbc, that guy. Or like, he goes on Fox News and he's great. Or the all in podcast. He was really good with them. He can fight back with everyone. That is a little bit of a different skill than being able to reach every community and like, you know, like, connect with people. I'm not saying he can't do that. It's just. It's a different thing than they're kind of trying to sell by going to Tulsa for a town hall. If that makes sense.

[Jon Favreau]

It makes. It's like intellectually he knows and can articulate why it's so important to connect with people who are different and why and how he. In what he just said there. And like, it helps to persuade you and stuff like that, but there's like another step when you're running to be the president, which is you actually have to do that, connecting yourself. And I do think that's different. And a lot of it is like, he does deliver maybe the smartest analysis of politics and message than most Democrats I've seen. But then is that enough or do you need to actually show and just tell and look. I think this is. But like, I thought the clip you referenced with Joe Kernan, like, that's the one that got me even more excited, even though this is more my style of message. But like, what him going back and forth with Kernan. And he wasn't a dick either.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, he was great.

[Jon Favreau]

He beat him in that debate, but he wasn't like, attacking him.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that is red meat from my silo and I loved it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, right.

[Jon Lovett]

So I. Pete opened this up with. With like a 9 or 10 minute speech just on Mike, which was great. And he's. He.

[Tommy Vietor]

The way they shot that too.

[Jon Lovett]

They both. Everyone's doing from below the same thing for. For ass off. It's like from the below kind of leader shot.

[Jon Favreau]

Looks like Osof also is like, is he getting bigger?

[Tommy Vietor]

No, they're tailor. Tailoring the out of those shirts.

[Jon Favreau]

Unbelievable.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, we got. Listen, he's not missing chess club. What's he doing know what's happening with leg day. All right, that's what I want to know. Where's. Where's our. What's happening with the, the glutes? Yeah, how are the glutes? No, people are posting pics of the fucking ass off glutes now.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, no.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, no, he. There, there's. It's not like, you know back there.

[Jon Favreau]

Every, everyone's for you feet is different.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, that's right.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's.

[Jon Lovett]

That's what's coming to my silo. But no, I, I. So it's with Pete and, and Ossoff. It's funny.

[Jon Favreau]

It's interesting to see them like, what that would be like competing against each other.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, they're both, they're both like, I was thinking about this sort of what are the lessons from what happened to Orban and people writing about what is like sort of the, from it. And there's a kind of pro, pro democracy, anti corruption, here's how corruption at the top has hurt you message that was galvanizing and unifying. Fine. And both of them are doing a version of that message, I think, right now. Because Ossif is in the middle of a reelection. He's trying to, to show, not tell. He's trying to make the biggest argument he can to get to the most people. And that'll be a proof point later. Pete can be more intellectual because he's not running for anything. So he can say, he says this a lot when he's up there, which is, hey, you're not alone. A lot of people feel the way you do, no matter what you're seeing on television. Trying to make that same argument around a lot of the same issues. I was thinking about Pete because some people ask me all the time, I'm sure they ask you, like, what do you think about Pete Pe. So good on Fox? And I don't really have the answer to it, but to me it's the difference between Pete selling, voting for Democrats, democracy, whatever. He's an incredible salesman for it. He goes to these hostile places and he sells the fuck out of it. And the question is, why is it with Pete sometimes you maybe agree with what he's saying, but you don't come away thinking, that's my salesman. You know, you like, what a pitch I agree. Right. But it doesn't. In politics, you can't just make an argument for the car. You're making an argument for you as the person selling the car. And there is a gap there with him that I think this is the kind of event he's trying to kind of feel out. I don't think he's trying to just prove it. I think he's literally out there kind of getting reps.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think where he gets. Where he gets shit from the left in particular is people question whether the bio and the lived experience kind of matches up with the reality. Like when I had Peggy Flanagan in here the other day, Lieutenant governor of Minnesota, running for the Democratic nomination in Minnesota for the Senate seat, she was talking about growing up and living on Medicaid and living on SNAP and how that informs all her choices and the people she fights for. And when someone talks to you like that from that lived experience, it's impossible not to be moved by it and to connect and to believe it. And I think, like, the criticism Pete sometimes gets is like, well, you know, you were in the military and you worked at McKinsey and you did all the things that kind of like, check the box on the way to being an elected official. But does that mean you were, like, really connected with the people you represent? I'm not, like, I'm not questioning him or trying to be a dick about it, but I think that is the hit.

[Jon Lovett]

And I, and I agree, but I also think that is Newsom will deal

[Jon Favreau]

with that as well.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, but. But for both of them, that is an intellectual, logical framework for trying to understand a feeling. Right. Because Trump is worse than all of them. Right. But there are people that think that he can connect and. And there's a way in which he has an ability to overcome that. And so I think when people go to that, like, what. What's. People look for facts and figures, such a sort of story to explain it. But then there is something that. Like, what is it that prevents Pete from connecting to big parts of the Democratic base, which we talked about a million times, like, what is that gap? I don't think it's just resume. I think it's something else that he's trying to figure out.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Finally, two clips from Kamala Harris, one from the Detroit event where she was talking about the war, and one wanted a play she posted that was actually from her trip to North Carolina last week.

[Tommy Vietor]

He entered a war, got pulled into

[Jon Favreau]

it by Bibi Netanyahu, let's be clear about that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Entered A war that the American people

[Jon Favreau]

do not want putting at risk American service members. Since the start of Trump's war of

[Tommy Vietor]

choice, it's 15 more dollars every time you fill up your tank of gas. The price of diesel has now gone up 80% since the start of the war. And you best believe that's going to carry over to how much you're paying for all the goods that are being transported.

[Jon Favreau]

Who let her do that?

[Tommy Vietor]

I would love to just know how that gas station video came together, because it's like, my friend, you live in California. The prices are much higher here. If you want some, like, sticker shock in the backdrop, it's like. It's like they got out of the car on the way to the airport and we're like, I think it's the

[Jon Lovett]

same suit as the Chicago event. So I think. Is that the same day?

[Jon Favreau]

I don't think it was the same day because I remember wondering what the hell that was a couple days before.

[Jon Lovett]

No, I agree. It came out. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe she just. I don't know. But anyway, I wanted to put both in because I do think that she is at her best when she is doing the prosecution of the administration that she was in the first half of the clip, the gas. And look, she's not the only one who's done this, but it is such a talk about, like, signaling that you are a throwback from a different era of politics.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a Chuck Schumer event.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, even Chuck Schumer would give a little. Like, she's literally driving to North Carolina. Gets out of the car, there's a gas station. She's like, all right, vertical video. Here I am. And I'm just gonna be like, the cost of this war is blah, blah, blah. It's just so, like, it's very Senate.

[Tommy Vietor]

It.

[Jon Lovett]

You could.

[Jon Favreau]

You could see a whole bunch of Democratic senators who. That who would maybe not run for president probably do that.

[Jon Lovett]

We all know gas prices are really high. Like when Chuck Schumer would do this at the gas station press conferences, because gas. He was. Prices were high.

[Jon Favreau]

And it was the 90s and it

[Jon Lovett]

was the 90s and 2000. He was trying to signal to people that. That he would want to be his voters party, that he cares about the things he cares about. He was trying to do a hit to get him on, you know, CBS2 and ABC7 and have, like a moment so people see that he cares about these issues. He introduced some kind of like a. Like a message bill that would address gouging or whatever.

[Tommy Vietor]

It Was.

[Jon Lovett]

And it was just a message hit to stay in front of his voters to show that he's fighting for them. Kamala's ostensibly not running for anything, and if she is, it won't be for some time. She happens to be in North Carolina. We all know gas prices are high because they're on the fucking signs when you go to the gas station. That's the beauty of the issue, honestly. So look, who doesn't know that? We all know that. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

It just sort of seems random, you know what I mean? And I think that's sort of what I'm looking for from political leaders, all of them right now, is I want you to be leading on things in a full threaded way early. You know what I mean? Early on, let's take on the argument against the Iran war. Not once the prices are way up. Like, it's okay to do it then. But. I don't know, it just sort of felt like, you've been here, you've been L. A. You could have done these events or

[Jon Lovett]

we have some big political issues here.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. You know, it's just the. The choices of when to speak out and on. What just confuses me a little bit as a strategic matter, I think, is what I'm reacting to.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. The challenge for her is, so she was the last nominee. She is leading in the polls right now. For. If you look at polls of national Democrats, she's especially leading with black voters. So she's gonna get a look. Right. And she's gonna have. If she decides to run, she's gonna be, like, a real formidable candidate. But that's not gonna last long if she doesn't back that up with, okay, here's why I'm running, here's what I have to say. Here's what I have learned, and here's my thoughts about not just where we are, but where we have to go and in a way that is personal to her and that no one else can copy, you know, Which. I mean, they all have to do that. But I do think even though she was only nominee for 100 days, she's already been there, so the burden is even higher for her. The bar is even higher for her to come up with something a little new and different.

[Jon Lovett]

Angie was vice president of the administration for four years. I almost think that's, like, more important to the challenge that she has. And I watch, but I even.

[Jon Favreau]

I saw her. I've seen her do the like. She's tried to do the like. Well, you know, we need some. I've had experience. I've sat in these rooms, I've had these jobs, and I, I do not think the experience argument is going to carry any Democrat very far in 2028.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, well, it's also that that was. We already know that argument. Part of it was part of the argument she made when she was running the first time. I watched her. The, the full event that. In which she spoke. And I got, you know, she spoke out about the war and the way that, that you clipped. But then, like, the. When asked about, like, what do Democrats have to do differently, you end up with, like, I think something I agree with. We can't just be nostalgic for the past. We have to have a different vision. But she does what I think a lot of Democrats have become accustomed to doing, which is say Democrats need to have a vision. Democrats need a vision for what we're going to do about affordable healthcare. We need a vision for affordable housing. I completely agree. I do think that's exactly what we need.

[Jon Favreau]

I know it's a lot of translating pundit speak that we all do into rhetoric for an audience.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right?

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, it's not enough to be against something. We have to be for something.

[Jon Lovett]

We can't just go back to how things were. That wasn't good enough for people. We got to figure out a new way forward.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like, this is what people. This is what people are saying in the focus group. So now I'm gonna say it. And again, this is a problem a lot of them have.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, so we'll do that with a couple. We'll do that with different candidates as they pop up. You know, I know there was some other Owens out there. I only saw a little bit of Cory Booker speech. I didn't see much of it. I didn't really see Andy Beshear's, but, you know, they'll be out there more.

[Tommy Vietor]

Got time we'll take.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, we'll look at a lot of them when we come back. Tommy speaks to Alain Goldenberg of J Street about how pro Israel progressives are trying to make their case.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Lovett]

How nice.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Ilan Goldenberg]

Thanks for having me.

[Tommy Vietor]

Great to see you. So over the last couple of years, probably longer, there has been an intense debate about the war in Gaza, the US Israel relationship, especially US Military support to Israel, and the line between anti Zionism, anti Semitism. Now, thanks to President Trump, you can lump in the role Israel may or may not have played in the latest war with Iran and Lebanon to that debate. So most recently in the Democratic Party, this debate manifested as a fight over whether Democrats should go on a Twitch streamer show a guy named Hasan Piker. There's this think tank called the Third Way. They said that Hasan should essentially be banished from the party. This was in a Wall Street Journal op ed. So Jon Favreau talked through a lot of this with Hasan for an episode that came out about a week ago. Folks should check that out if they want more, but you wanted to provide a different perspective on how you believe one can still be a supporter of Israel and a liberal Zionist and a Democrat all at once. So we want to talk through that, and maybe I can poke and prod your argument and see how we go. So let's just start with where you disagreed with Hasan on his definition of Zionism and kind of. We'll go from there.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Sure. So the problem with, I think, Hasan's argument on that, and thanks for having me, Tommy, was, you know, he talked about Israel and Zionism as essentially an ethno state with superior, you know, essentially looking at a. What you'd call a supremacy ideology. And if you actually look at the founding documents of the state of Israel, for example, and you look at the history of Zionism, you know, Israel is intended to be a Jewish democratic state. It was also to be, in its Declaration of Independence, described as a state with equal rights for all of its citizens. That's what the vision of the state was. Now, that's been incredibly imperfect, and huge efforts still need to be made to move that in the right direction. That's one of the reasons J Street exists. Right. I mean, we exist because the view before us was, you know, you just gotta support Israel in everything. Israel is the perfect democracy in the Middle east, the only American democracy in the Middle east, the only democracy in the Middle east, really. And, you know, our argument was no, there's all kinds of problems that need to be worked out, and we need to be honest and critical with a friend of ours in Israel. But the answer isn't to tilt all the way in the other direction and to say, well, you know, Hamas and Israel are. Hamas is a lot better than the Israeli government, and I'd much rather have Hamas than I would the Israeli government and treating it as uniquely evil. Because, look, Bibi Netanyahu is a fascist, potentially an authoritarian. Donald Trump is also a fascist and authoritarian. Right. Do I call America a fascist state, an authoritarian state? No, I don't. I recognize that there's huge problems here, and I operate from within that very kind of basic understanding. So this, I think, was kind of my problem with Hasan. Right. Which was the argument was this state is uniquely evil. This state was founded purely based on ethnic cleansing. I mean, we have terrible ethnic cleansing and the founding of the history of the United States and in so many different countries around the world. And so I think we just need to pull back and have a longer conversation about what is wrong and what is right and within the context of the state of Israel and how to move it to a better place.

[Tommy Vietor]

So, look, I don't want to. I'm not going to try to speak for Hassan or anybody else, frankly. But let me just offer what I think kind of the pushback to your argument would be, which is not that I think anyone was saying Israel was uniquely evil. It was just sort of whether or not there's a supremacy ideology in the sort of the founding documents. I think what he would say is Israel was founded after the mass displacement of, I think, 700,000 Palestinians since 1967. Israel has occupied the west bank and Gaza, and there has been, you know, groups of people living under permanent occupation. And the reality today is that it seems like Israel has chosen to be a Jewish state and not a democratic state. And so I guess, like, I can't. I'm. I. It's fine to debate what, like, David Ben Gurion and others had in mind in the 1940s. You know, I'm not an expert on this stuff. I would never pretend to be, but I think people would just say, look at the reality on the ground is that it's this much darker version of whatever that intention was of permanent occupation. And then some would argue apartheid or at least very clear instances where there are different rules for Jews and Palestinians, that we can unpack that as well. What would you say to that?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Sure. Well, I'd say I don't disagree with that. Right. But the answer is not Hamas. Right. I mean, this. Pull back a little bit. I also worked on the presidential campaign in 2024. I spent a lot of time talking to American Jews. I spent a lot of time talking to voters. And I think most voters are not in these two extreme positions. Right. I mean, I think at the end

[Jon Lovett]

of the day,

[Ilan Goldenberg]

you have those who are from the beginning inside the Democratic Party have said, here's the AIPAC position, we're going to support Israel no matter what. And then there's where Hasan is, which is to argue that Israel is this kind of uniquely evil or deeply, deeply problematic state. Where the reality is, I think you find most, at least, American voters, I would argue. And you can look at polling that shows this, that can say, hey, you know, what I really want is for all Jews in Israel and all Palestinians to have freedom, security, equality, a state of their own. That's what we're arguing for at J Street. I can be horrified by the acts of October 7th by Hamas, and I can be horrified by the horrific actions that the Israeli government has perpetrated in Gaza against Palestinian civilians. You know, I can really hate Bibi Netanyahu, and I can have some sympathy for the Israeli people. At the same time, I can recognize that anti Semitism is a real problem. And I can also recognize that criticism of Israel is not anti Semitism and that even very sharp criticism of Israel and anti Zionism is not anti Semitism. So this is where, you know, a guy like Hasan Piker, I don't necessarily think he's anti Semitic, I just disagree with his views. And I think this is the kind of nuanced, hard conversation that I think we need to have in the Democratic Party and in the sort of Democratic coalition. Because I also think that's where most Democratic voters are. That's where I would say most normie voters. Democratic voters are certainly American Jews that I talked to, and that's what J Street was founded to represent, was that this is where most American Jews are. They're not where AIPAC is. But it's also, I think, just not where, even if we have some folks on the base who are going further left, I think that there's just a huge constituency for this very common sense view that I'm expressing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, look, my view on Hamas is that what they did on October 7th is evil and unjustifiable and fuck them. And that they're bad for the Palestinian people and for the Jewish people. And that's fine. I think what Hasan was making kind of an inflammatory point when you look at the death toll in terms of the number of people that Hamas killed on October 7th versus the IDF. But I think you get in trouble when you're doing comparisons. I'm also been someone who was not a fan of bibi Netanyahu since 2009 when I first was in the same room with the guy. I think you're getting at this middle ground position. I want to push you on that a bit because I think every elected official in the United States basically pays lip service to the idea of a two state solution. And I think for decades, the US Government made a very sincere effort to facilitate talks that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. But for basically his entire career, Netanyahu has worked to block the creation of a Palestinian state. And these days he brags about it. You know, he says, like, throw my adept statesmanship, we prevented this from happening. He calls it a terror state. And in reality, I think the peace process has been dead for a long time. And then since October 7, both Israelis and Palestinians have lost faith that it will ever happen. I think like one fifth of Israelis in polls think there's any hope for a Palestinian state. And that number is kind of propped up by Arab Israelis. So, you know, meanwhile, the situation on the Ground, it's the west bank gets further annexed every week. Gaza is now even further occupied by Israel. Israel. So I think the critics would say this liberal Zionist vision of support for Israel and a two state solution is kind of delusional in a way of just avoiding the obvious reality that Israel long ago chose to be a Jewish state and not a democracy. So full democracy for all people who live there. So what's your response to that, that argument?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

So look, again, I don't disagree. The situation is grim. And also I'll say I worked on some of those negotiations that John Kerry led in 2014. I was part of that process. You know that during President, you know, under President Obama. And yeah, some of the assumptions in those, in that old way of doing things were deeply problematic. For example, the idea that we couldn't touch security assistance for Israel and we need to give them a blank check. Because if we start to, you know, enforce or threaten or just basically say, forget even threaten or leverage, just say, you know what, if you're not behaving in a way that is consistent with our policy and our interests and our laws, we're just not going to give you these weapons and not sell you these weapons, which is really what my position is now and where J Street is and has been for a long time. We were advocating last week, you know, for 40 senators to vote against these kinds of pieces, these kinds of weapons. So, so I'm not arguing for that. The liberal Zionist old position of let Israel do whatever it wants and let's just work this out, right? We can use leverage. We do have leverage. And at the same time, I also don't think the answer is, well, we should support Hamas or we should be.

[Tommy Vietor]

No one's saying, let's just throw. It feels like it's a straw man that we're leaning on here to make a silly argument. Fuck Hamas. Everyone agrees. Fuck Hamas.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Okay, well, let's just say this. I actually think what you do have a problem is you have extremists on both sides. You have Netanyahu and you have Hamas. Right? And let's not forget in the 90s, when we actually almost did get to a peace deal, it was Hamas bus bombings that then brought Netanyahu to power. These two guys, these two sides are two sides of the same coin. They're thriving off, building off each other. You know, and similarly in the 2000s, right, like Netanyahu actually has millions of dollars in cash from Qatar landing in Ben Gurion Airport and being pushed into Gaza to pay off Hamas. And empower Hamas and keep it quiet while he's purposefully weakening alternative moderates on the Palestinian side. So the point is, what J Street advocates for and what we do when we talk to Israelis and Palestinians on the ground is there is, I think, still a strong minority who wants to work towards that alternative vision. Both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. We don't call it a two state solution. We actually call it, we started calling it a 23 state solution because we don't think it's just going to be a deal that gets a new Palestinian state and Israel being living side by side. We think it needs to be part of a regional integration that actually has Israel at peace with all of its neighbors, which creates a lot of incentives for the Israelis. And part of that is a new Palestinian state. Now, when you do polling like that and you present Israelis with, if the President of the United States were to come to Israel and say, here's a plan, end all the wars, this was done during the war in Gaza. We're gonna end the war in Gaza, we're gonna get the hostages out, we're gonna pursue a plan that ultimately ends with Israel at peace with all of its neighbors. And as part of that, you can have a Palestinian state. Like that kind of proposal still gets 60% in Israel.

[Tommy Vietor]

Isn't that a lot of hurdles to set up before the Palestinians are just like, I just want to live in peace and with self determination. Suddenly Israel has to make peace with every single neighbor before they can have that opportunity?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

No, it's actually not that complicated. You just do both processes at the same time. And at the end of the day, that's really about peace with Saudi Arabia and everybody else goes along.

[Tommy Vietor]

Hasn't that been pretty complicated though?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

It is complicated, but so is a Palestinian state on its own. You're trying to create. And by the way, I should say the problem, like you said, there's a lot of non believers in the Palestinian side too. Polling in the Palestinian public is also pretty terrible right now, right on both sides. But at the same time, on the Palestinian side, again, if you actually offer them a pathway, those numbers change dramatically. If you just say what makes the most sense now? I mean, the overwhelming majority is still for armed resistance, but there's still 40% who are pushing for this two state solution. And the other thing I'll say about this is, you know, and this goes back to my days again working at the State Department on these. When you present both sides of the public with here's a deal, would you Take it and you present it to the Israeli public and you do polling, you get to about 40% and you present it to the Palestinians and like, here's a deal, would you take it 40%, then you say here's a deal and the other side has already agreed to it. The numbers jump to like 65%, 70%. Point is, I still think there is a desire on both sides sides to get there. And I think what you have to start doing slowly and it's going to take time is get away from this dynamic where it's Hamas on the one side representing the Palestinians and Bibi Netanyahu on the other side representing the Israelis. And they're playing off each other and they're strengthening each other and they're weakening all of the alternatives. You're going to have elections in Israel later this year. That's a real opportunity. We just saw what happened in Hungary and there is an opportunity that those elections aren't going to necessarily bring you the most left leaning government you could ever imagine in Israel. The alternative to Netanyahu is probably kind of a center to center right government, but it's one where at least you have people you can work with.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, let's talk about the Netanyahu piece of this because look, again, I greatly dislike Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. I have for a very long time. I think he's corrupt, I think he's racist, I think he's bad for Israel. But I do, I feel like in the US people talk about him sometimes as if getting rid of him is like a quick fix and we'll fix everything. And I just like, it seems very unlikely to me. As you mentioned, the country is lurched to the right. You've got violent extremists, like literal terrorist sympathizers like this guy Itamar Ben gvir, who are now in government. And by the way, his support for his party in polls is going up and up and up, not down. Even the moderate candidates, though, they're not that liberal on the Palestinian issue. Like the head of the moderate Yashar party just visited a North west bank settlement and that was like tied to some really horrible abuses. Yair Lapid seemed to back Mike Huckabee's bizarre claim that Israel has like a right to take over the whole Middle east because of biblical claims. So like again, it would be great to see Netanyahu, Gan and like preferably in a prison somewhere. But isn't there a lot of evidence that for the Palestinians and for the Palestinian issue, the even More moderate parties are not going to be all that much better.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

I think what you will see is first of all, you're going to stop digging. Right? So going back to Ben gvir, for example, yeah, his numbers have gone up, but also Smotrich's numbers have gone down. These two parties together, his numbers in

[Tommy Vietor]

terms of real extremist currently.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Exactly. Two extremists currently in the government basically stays the same, but. Exactly. Guys like Smotrich and Ben GVIR aren't in this new government. Right. And Smotrich and Ben gvir, these extremists play this unique role of essentially being kingmakers, which gives them huge amounts of leverage in Israeli decision making and pushes the government to more terrible and terrible places. Whereas if you had instead guys like Yair Lapid or Yair Golan who are not ideal, but these are kind of the Israeli center left playing the kingmaker role, that's a meaningful difference. Yair Golan, being a retired general who ran down to Southern Israel on October 7 and saved a lot of people, just basically got up and went down there. But also is very much arguing for a two state solution and is arguing for some of these things. Things. And what you could get then at least is a government that at least starts cracking down on things like what we are seeing in the west bank and extremist seller violence in the West Bank. We're at J Street pushing for legislation actually on Capitol Hill called the West Bank Violence Prevention act, that at this point has overwhelming support of Senate Democrats, more than 40 and 130 or so members of the House, which would start to impose sanctions on these guys, on these extremist settlers, but could actually make a real profound difference because all these things, the violence and the settlements and all of it is tied together, all these institutions are tied together. You can actually start to apply real pressure and change behavior. And so I think there's opportunities to. We're not solving this problem anytime soon. But if you have a government that is at least more restrained and also cares about the US Israel relationship, because it's very clear now, and this is also another thing that started happening in Israel in the last couple weeks. In particular, you've seen it with some of the polling that's come out about Israel and you've seen it with, you know, what's happened with this vote last week in the Senate. There finally is a questioning that's coming to the center of Israeli politics of like, what's happened here? How is our relationship with the US Collapsing in such an extreme way? And as that happens, I think you're gonna have a government that is more centrist, not great, but is gonna care more about that. And that gives us more leverage and also creates a situation where they start to potentially at different moments, say, well, yeah, maybe I'd. Parts of the party of our government would like to do this thing in the west bank or in Gaza. But we're actually worried about the Americans and their opinion, and we care about, for example, what Democrats also think of us. And so we're gonna restrain ourselves more and you start to move. We're not solving this problem immediately, but at least start to change the trajectory of this whole conflict.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, look, I hope that's true. I don't know. I guess I just worry that, look, when I see this effort, it's a very misguided effort by the Third Way to try to declare that Hasan Piker, a twitch streamer is sort of like out of bounds. It seems to me to be part of a broader effort to silence critics of Israel in the US and chill debate about policy. That, frankly happens all the time in Israeli media, for example, right? Like if, if, if an American politician was like, israel's an apartheid state. That is, that's, you know, language that is treated as outrageous or potentially anti Semitic all the time. But as you know, I mean, in 2021, the most prominent Israeli human rights organization in Israel called Israel an apartheid regime. And I was just like, that was in 2021. And I've just sort of pushed back on this idea that, you know, maybe the Knesset is growing increasingly concerned about, like, sort of US views of laws and decisions like that, because pretty recently, Israeli lawmakers passed a law to expand the death penalty, but only for Palestinians, which seems like a pretty like egregious example of the kind of law or policy that betsellm was talking about when they wrote that paper several years ago. So, I mean, aren't those pretty clear cut examples of kind of apartheid, like, or, you know, unequal treatment of individuals based on religion? And shouldn't we be having a more honest conversation about that kind of stuff in the United States and not like doing what the Third Way is doing here?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Yeah, I mean, we should be having an honest conversation about these things. You know, I will say I'm not saying that the Knesset's moving further to the left. I think that if you look at the Israeli public and you look at polling, we have elections in October, you're going to have a different government. This government in Israel is horrific in all the different ways. But it's not just this government. There's a lot of systemic and deeper things. And that's exactly the conversation I want us to be having. And I 100% we were out there as an organization sharply critical about this. But I think we just need to be careful when we have that conversation to not, you know, and like, not sway too far in the other direction to the point of, you know, essentially casting Israel as this, you know, okay, there is ethnic cleansing in Israel's history. There's probably ethnic cleansing in cases of, I'd say 50 or 100 of the countries that exist in the world today, including some very recent as well. And so what we just have to be careful to do is not turn Israel into. We need to normalize our relationship with Israel. Right. That's what I've actually, that's one of the things we've argued for a long time that means no more blank check. Let's treat Israel like a normal country. Right. And let's have those hard conversations. It also means let's not treat it as this uniquely evil or sinister thing which I think is happening in some far extreme places. So I think I agree with you, the whole third way conversation here of like turning Hasan Piker into some kind of measuring stick for all this, you know, I don't think that, you know, I listened to the interview with Jon Favreau. I don't think Hassan Piker is anti Semitic. I just think his views are misinformed. And in many ways I just think we need to be careful to not go in that direction. Because if you want to ultimately in the United States, build a political coalition that's actually going to win in 26 and more importantly in 28, I don't think that most people are aware he is. I think most people are kind of in this middle, in this position. It's not the middle ground of Democrats versus Republicans. I'd argue it's the middle ground of where the Democratic Party is, which is just kind of like, yeah, there's all kinds of horrible stuff happening there and we should do something about that instead of just letting them use our weapons. But also, I don't think these people are the devil, necessarily. Right. And so that's what I'm arguing for.

[Tommy Vietor]

I hear that. Look, I don't think people, I don't think Hassan is arguing that like, Israel is the devil or that Israeli people are evil in any way. I think what's happening and what I think the sort of political class can sometimes miss because they've been having these conversations for years. You know, people like you are genuine experts in the founding documents of Israel. Right. And maybe sometimes we make a mistake when we kind of try to pull from history, like, what I think the average American's experience of what's happening in Israel right now, especially young people, if they started paying attention to politics a couple years ago, they just see intolerable amounts of killing by Israel, first in Gaza, now in Lebanon and Iran, and they're doing it with American weapons. And then if you're my age, you've been kind of watching, you know, Netanyahu since 2009, sort of doing his best to prevent the Palestinian state from being created, coming to Congress to insult Barack Obama and try to blow up the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and then just wrapping his arms around Donald Trump in the biggest kind of bear hug ever. And so it's like, it's not that people have deeply held views about the origins of Zionism or because they're anti Semitic. They're just like, like, why is this really strong country bombing the shit out of Gaza over and over again? And why are we giving them weapons to do it? Why am I paying for that?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And they're just horrified by it. And, like, it's a visceral reaction that I think, you know, like, Jonathan Greenblatt will try to, like, scold me if I use the wrong words to try to prevent this conversation from happening, but it's happening no matter what.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Yeah. No, look, I can't disagree with a lot of that in terms of the fact that. But, I mean, Bibi Netanyahu is an asshole. And I've also been living with him for 15 years. Right. I mean, my first government job was working on Iran and the Pentagon in 2009, just literally starting about a month or two after he came into office. And he's been the problem since then for years and years. And so we're not in a different place on that at all. And I think he's the one who's done the most damage to this entire nature of the relationship. But I agree, it is bigger. The history is longer. We can have those honest conversations. I mean, it's one of the reasons. Now, I don't know if you've paid attention. We've taken a fair amount of flack for it. J Street, we've been advocating for years for this position of you can have both a support for Israel and no blank check. Let's ask all the hard questions. So last week, we came out with a new position that's flared up a lot of interest, which is basically to say there's three pieces to the US Israel security relationship. Right. The first piece is we do operational cooperation on certain things. When it's in our interest, we should do that. Whether it's our militaries working together, whether it's sharing intel, which they do help us with, with everything from ISIS to Iran to all kinds of other challenges. When it makes sense, we can do that. Two, basically, they get $4 billion a year from us and have been for years and years and years. And J Street's position is it's time for that to end. It's basically a financial subsidy, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

And there's no reason that they don't need this financial subsidy for anything anymore. Israel at this point, it's a country with a per capita GDP similar to France or the UK Or Germany or any of these very wealthy countries. They don't need this money. They have a. They have a $45 billion budget. So let's just kind of phase that out relatively quickly. And by the way, I'm not the only guy saying that Rahm Emanuel is saying that, Bibi Netanyahu is saying that, Lindsey Graham is saying that. AOC is saying that. It's one thing everybody agrees on. It's time for that money to go. And then the third piece is, when it comes to arm sales, there's some things that really do make sense. Like Iron Dome, for example. Right. Missile defense system that protects Israeli civilians from attacks.

[Tommy Vietor]

There are some people who argue that the Iron Dome enables more militarism by the IDF because they know that they can repeatedly bomb a country like Iran and then just be protected from incoming fire. I'm just sort of laying out the other side of that debate for listeners.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

No, for sure. And my argument on that is, if you go back, for example, and imagine there are moments when that might be true. But if you really think about it in totality, imagine if on October 7, Israel didn't have those systems and hundreds of more in the aftermath when Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran started launching and the Houthis started launching missiles at Israel, if Israel didn't have the capabilities to protect civilians. First of all, just on a human life perspective, we're talking about somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000American citizens living in Israel. That's a real issue. But also, what do you think the Israeli response would have been if a couple of thousand more people would have been killed, you know, as a result of these missiles landing in their cities? I think There would have been more killing of Palestinians and Lebanese, for example. But you know, but even, you know, so I would argue for Iron Dome, but I also think when it comes to other weapons systems, let's just apply, you know, the laws that exist on the books already and apply and hold Israel to the same standard as every other country. Which means there are certain things they wouldn't get. You know, especially, you know, there's a, there's a law called the Leahy Law which reviews unit by unit what is what our partner countries are doing in the world. There's a special process for Israel that is different than. It's pretty much the most lenient process that any country in the world gets. We don't need that. Israel doesn't need that. That's not good for US interests. It's not good for Israel. There's other laws which look at, if you're preventing aid from going in, American aid from going in, you should be cut off from certain weapons. Again, we should have done that. Biden administration should have done that. I was part of the Biden administration. It didn't do that. I disagreed with that at the time. I kind of evolved on that. I will admit. I evolved on that as the war went on, you know, and I certainly am there now, right where it's time to cut off some of these weapons. So you can be just discerning and nuanced in all of this is my view.

[Tommy Vietor]

I totally hear that. Look, I think I'm really glad that Jay street is part of this conversation and was lobbying senators to cut off certain types of U.S. military. I think the votes last week were what, for 1,000 pound bombs and like armored bulldozers? There's absolutely no reason the US needs to be providing those systems to Israel, especially given the context right now. I think you're right that we absolutely should not be giving a rich country $4 billion a year for no reason for military support. By the way, money is fungible and that money can then be. They're using that to fund a universal healthcare system that a lot of people here would love to have. And so I'm glad that this conversation has become more nuanced and more rational and that people are less scared of getting slapped down if you sort of break from the APAC party line or orthodoxy going forward. I do think the challenge the Democratic Party leaders are having is the base of the party. Young people have moved way further, way faster than the Democratic elected officials have. Even if Democratic Party elected officials have moved really, really fast, historically speaking, on this issue.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Yeah, no, I think that that's true, but I also think we need to balance that with the sort of independent voter and the non base and majority sort of normie voter. Right. And I think you're right. If you look at young people and their view on this, you know, somebody like me, I imagine somebody like you are probably roughly the same age. Right. You know, we both grew up with kind of Israel of Yitzhak Rabin, which was not the, you know, Joe Biden grew up with the Israel of. I should start with Joe Biden grew up with the Israel of really the post Holocaust scrappy country came out of, you know, essentially underdog and. And every event he would do on this always started with this story of going to Israel in 1972 and Golden Meir. So he had. It was brutal one mentality. Right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Like folks like you or. I grew up with a liberal Israel that was powerful but was looking to make peace. Right. At least I did. And then you look at, you know, people, you look at my kids and you look at just everybody. Again, anybody under the age of 25 or 30 doesn't remember a world without Bibi Netanyahu. And it's a huge problem. But I also think, you know, there's still the majority of the Democratic Party that's not necessarily there, despite those being the loudest voices. Right. And certainly it's not the majority of, you know, American voters who, who are kind of at this, as far left as the base, as far as the base has gone on this. And so we're going to have to find. I think we just might. There's a danger of going too far. I think you're right. I also think politicians haven't moved far enough yet, but I think that 27 will be a really interesting dynamic. I hope that there can be. That can be a unifying moment for politicians and Democratic Party leaders and candidates to be able to essentially express a position of not throwing the U. S. Israel relationship in the garbage and still recognizing that there is potential value there, while at the same time saying the way this has been done in the past needs to end. And for me, the answer is again, it goes back to treat Israel like a normal country, treat Israel like a normal ally. Whether you want to call it an ally or not. Some would say ally, some, you know, others more opposed, can just say normal country. That means on both sides, right? That means no more blank check. It also means there's some things we'll work with them on because we have an interest in Doing so for sure.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think that's right. Look, I think, I think a normie voter, the most powerful, have not thought about this for one fucking second. And the most powerful argument to them is gonna be let's stop spending money on wars or giving it to other countries and spend it at home. And. Right. So like that is really going to be the, the people are going to have to sketch out thoughtful nuance views of foreign policy because that kind of like nationalist isolationist view is going to be the, the siren song politically. That is incredibly powerful. That frankly works on me in a lot of instances and is, I think, something we all just have to, to keep in mind as we are seeped in this stuff and have more nuanced views that might not, you know, kind of gets the average voter on a, on a random day. But either way, look, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this stuff. I imagine this will not be the last time we'll be talking about this. Maybe we'll pop back on to talk about another round of talks tomorrow in Pakistan with the Iranians. Hopefully they're not as terrible as the last one, but we'll find out.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

I think I told you before we started is I kind of feel like we're just in. It'll be fine. Trump will make something up and we won't go back to war, but we also won't be in a position where we've made any progress in the straight of where moves will remain closed. That's kind of like my, my guess.

[Tommy Vietor]

Wonderful, but wonderful. Well, could be worse, I guess. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can folks find J Street's work and what you guys are up to?

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Sure. You can look us up on jstreet.org we also have our substack the Jeremy and I. Jeremy Ben Ami, our founder, writes myself Word on the street. But really the website and sign up for, you know, we do a lot of different things. We do, you know, we work with candidates, we do a lot of lobbying on the Hill. We are going deep into American Jewish community trying to change a conversation and have this nuanced conversation. So there's ways to get involved all over the country, 20 chapters around the country who are doing this kind of work to really build at the end of the day a liberal alternative to, you know, that conversation that until recently was just an APAC conversation. And this is what we're trying to build in really democratic politics with the Jewish community overall.

[Tommy Vietor]

Excellent. Well, thank you again.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Alain Goldenberg for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday from dc. How about that? If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our Executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our Head of production. Naomi Sengel is our Executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kirill Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.