Countdown to War With Iran?

Summary

Pod Save the World — Episode 508: Countdown to War With Iran?

Date: February 25, 2026
Hosts: Tommy Vietor & Ben Rhodes
Guest: Ricardo Zuniga
(Ad sections, intros, outros, and unrelated content omitted in summary)

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Overview

In this week’s episode, Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes break down the escalating march toward war between the Trump administration and Iran, question the motivations and potential fallout, and examine the global ripple effects of recent U.S. foreign policy decisions. They also dig into Trump’s loss of tariff authority, Tucker Carlson’s incendiary interview with Mike Huckabee, the Pentagon’s push for unrestricted military AI, an ISIS prison break in Syria, U.S. cartel policy in Mexico, and the deepening crisis in Cuba.

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1. U.S. on the Verge of War with Iran

[07:11 – 28:24]

Military Buildup & Escalation

• The U.S. is massing a huge number of military assets in the Middle East: two aircraft carriers (USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Gerald Ford), multiple destroyers, submarines, fighter jets, and missile defense systems.
• The U.S. embassy in Lebanon has evacuated non-essential staff because of the rising threat level.
• Trump has been presented with various military plans, from "limited strikes" to plans as extreme as targeting the Iranian Supreme Leader.
• “It feels like the final days before the Iraq war in 2003, except... we don't know why they want to start the war now, what the end game is.” (Tommy, 09:37)

Unclear Motives, Unachievable Demands

• No consensus on Trump’s goals: push Iran for “no enrichment” (nuclear), military show of force, or outright regime change.
• Negotiation terms are set so high (no nukes, no missiles, no proxies) that Iranian agreement is impossible, seeming to ensure eventual war.
• “We have to go through multiple wars to get back to a deal that [Trump] just pulled out of.” (Ben, 11:08)

Potential Catastrophe

• Analysts warn of civil conflict in Iran, regional missile attacks, massive refugee flows (“ten million refugees, people flowing into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Europe.” — Ben, 13:42), and global oil disruptions via the Strait of Hormuz.
• Concerns over cyber operations or strikes on U.S. homeland infrastructure.
• Regional actors (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar) are “calling Trump up... saying this is fucking crazy. You’re putting our stability at risk.” (Ben, 14:35)
• “It’d be very hard for him not to do something.” (Ben, 10:02)
• Hawkish U.S. and Israeli voices are the main advocates for war; even MAGA figures like Tucker Carlson oppose it.

Public and Political Pushback

• Roughly 80% of Americans oppose a war with Iran—contrasting sharply with elite hawkish opinion.
• “There's something fundamentally broken when what the polls show—80% of people are against this—that we're going to do this because... Lindsey Graham, [the] Journal editorial page and Bibi Netanyahu.” (Ben, 17:18)
• U.S. military personnel are being over-extended (“Their toilets don't work... 45-minute lines...” – Tommy, 23:17.)

Diplomacy—Or Just Face-Saving?

• Iran’s Foreign Minister emphasizes, “There is no military solution for Iran’s nuclear program… The only solution is diplomacy.” (24:53–25:26)
• U.S. negotiators are “literally sending in two real estate developers” (Ben, 26:24), contrasting with the Obama administration’s team of scientists and nuclear experts.

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2. Supreme Court Hits Trump’s Tariffs — Global Fallout

[31:09 – 37:19]

• The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose global tariffs, limiting his main foreign policy “stick.”
• Trump vows to use other authorities for tariffs, but these are less sweeping and more limited in time/scope.
• Some countries like the UK and Singapore feel burnt by negotiating deals just before the court’s decision, while China stands to benefit.
• “This is a huge blow to Trump... The countries that stood up to Trump are in a much better place today than the countries that rushed to cut deals.” (Ben, 34:43)
• This signals the world that Trump’s power is “a diminishing asset” and that future deals with the U.S. lack durability.

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3. Tucker Carlson v. Mike Huckabee — Israel, Borders, and Gaza

[37:28 – 54:45]

Biblical Land Claims and Territorial Ambitions

• Tucker executes a gotcha over Huckabee’s defense of Israel’s borders as biblically ordained, highlighting the contradiction with international law.
• Huckabee’s answer—“it would be fine with you if Israel took all of Syria, all of Lebanon”—sparks a diplomatic uproar across Muslim-majority countries and the OIC (38:10–39:25).

Quote:

• Tucker: “You just said it would be fine if the state of Israel took all of Syria, all of Lebanon.” (38:10)
• Huckabee: “It was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement...but it isn’t [the case].” (38:35)

Bigger Picture:

• The conversation lays bare MAGA/Christian Zionist extremism, confusion on Israeli borders, and how U.S. policy gets shaped by religious ideology instead of law (41:07–44:18).

Gaza & Civilian Casualties

• Huckabee claims the IDF is “more humane” than the U.S. military; Tucker skewers the logic.
• “When someone commits the acts of atrocity...if these were your children being held hostage in Gaza, what would you do to get them out?” (Huckabee, 45:38)
• “I wouldn’t want to kill 14 year olds, I’ll tell you that.” (Tucker, 45:53)
• Tommy: “When you say it out loud like [Huckabee] did there, he sounds like a fucking sociopath.” (47:08)

Why Do Americans Care?

• Tucker: “As an American, I’m not having any problems on the border with Lebanon right now. I live in Maine…” (50:28)
• Huckabee cannot articulate a coherent U.S. interest in these foreign adventures, highlighting a disconnect between D.C. and voter sentiment.

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4. Pentagon vs. Anthropic: The AI Arms Race

[58:45 – 65:35]

• Pentagon demands that AI vendors allow “anything lawful” for U.S. war applications; Anthropic (creator of Claude) resists, wanting protections against mass surveillance and killer robots.
• Pentagon threatens to blacklist Anthropic if it doesn’t drop these safeguards (61:06).
• Secretary Hegseth: “Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us. We’re building war-ready weapons and systems, not chatbots for an Ivy League faculty lounge.”
  • “Such a fucking goober, man. He’s just such an unserious motherfucker.” (Tommy, 61:41)
• Ben: “If this succeeds in removing all guardrails...that’s scary… When the Chinese were using AI for mass surveillance, we would all get on a high horse…How is this any different?” (65:13)
• The fate of military AI policy is left to the companies, not legislators—setting a hazardous precedent.

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5. Syria: 15,000 ISIS Militants Escape Detention

[65:35 – 68:47]

• Syrian government offensive causes chaos in Al-Hol detention camp; thousands, including ISIS fighters, escape.
• Failure attributed to the U.S. abandoning the Kurdish SDF after the Trump administration cut and ran: “…this is not something that happened and Trump didn’t stop it. This is something that Trump contributed directly.” (Ben, 67:47)
• “We’ve got 15,000 ISIS guys wandering around.” (Ben, 68:47)

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6. FBI Director Kash Patel’s Olympic Debacle

[68:47 – 75:10]

• FBI Director Kash Patel skips a cartel crisis to party with the U.S. hockey team at the Olympics, using FBI resources for travel.
• Criticism over repeated misuse of government flights and politicizing athletic victories.
• “...the entirety of his tenure as FBI director is doing shit like this. It’s literally just fantasy camp.” (Ben, 71:21)
• Patel’s dereliction has led to delays in real law enforcement operations (e.g., delayed team deployment after major crimes because the official plane was tied up with his travel).

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7. Mexico’s Cartel Chaos — Guest: Ricardo Zuniga

[78:44 – 101:14]

Assassination of ‘El Mencho’ and Blowback

• Cartel leader El Mencho (CJNG) is killed with possible help from U.S. intelligence; in retaliation, cartels paralyze parts of Jalisco: burning vehicles, attacks, killing at least 25 police.
• “They wanted that broadcast. They wanted that to be their brand. That’s their model.” (Zuniga, 82:17)
• Violence meant mainly as a show of force; cartel leadership succession is already underway.

US–Mexico Cooperation & Risks

• Increasingly close law enforcement cooperation, including new Pentagon efforts and intelligence support.
• Zuniga: “There’s a long history of [U.S.] intelligence community work…through Northern Command and a new JIATF Joint Interagency Task Force that's been put together to focus on cartels in Mexico.” (84:39)
• Direct U.S. military action inside Mexico remains a possibility, but Mexican officials work hard to demonstrate their own resolve to stave it off.

Policy Effectiveness & Evolving Threats

• Fentanyl has made interdiction vastly harder—cartels bypass old supply chains; crypto aids money laundering.
• “What’s been effective? Very little… Going after their money works better than anything else.” (Zuniga, 95:43)

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8. The Crisis in Cuba

[96:11 – 101:07]

• U.S. policy has left Cuba in humanitarian crisis; 89% of the population now lives in extreme poverty.

• “There's very little hope. Every potential opening has been snuffed out...by the Trump administration.” (Zuniga, 97:54)

• Over 2 million have fled since the pandemic; the situation threatens to spiral into a Haiti-like collapse on America’s doorstep.

• “Marco Rubio is single-handedly making, running this policy where the current policy is starve an entire island worth of people.” (Tommy, 99:10)

• Zuniga: “...what they're trying to do is...bring that entire economy to a standstill… when do we get to that magical point where the population has had enough and there’s this uprising...Well, I guess we’re going to find out.” (99:23)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “It feels like the final days before the Iraq war in 2003...” (Tommy, 09:37)
• “The polls show 80% of people are against this...we’re going to do this because some hawks like...and Bibi Netanyahu.” (Ben, 17:18)
• “[Iranian] regime's principal objective is to survive.” (Ben, 19:54)
• “When you say it out loud...he sounds like a fucking sociopath.” (Tommy, 47:08)
• “If this succeeds in removing all guardrails [on military AI], that’s scary.” (Ben, 64:20)

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Key Takeaways

• War with Iran feels increasingly likely but is widely unpopular, with policy driven by a small, hawkish elite. The risks of destabilization are enormous, and diplomacy is hamstrung by maximalist demands and weak negotiators.
• Trump’s loss of tariff powers undermines his “deal-making” leverage globally, emboldens countries to resist, and further erodes confidence in U.S. treaty commitments.
• U.S. foreign policymaking is shown as incoherent and driven by ego, rather than clear interests or values, whether in the Middle East or the Western Hemisphere.
• AI in warfare lacks meaningful civilian or international oversight, with the Pentagon insisting on total latitude and companies like Anthropic as some of the only bulwarks against dystopian uses.
• Instability is rising: In Syria with an ISIS resurgence, in Mexico with relentless cartel violence, and in Cuba with U.S. policy pushing the population to the brink.
• Public trust in government action abroad is at a nadir, driven by experiences of endless war, hollow justifications, and an elite DC consensus totally divorced from voter priorities.

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This episode provides a comprehensive, candid, and at times darkly comedic analysis of the foreign policy crossroads facing the U.S. and lays out a case for skepticism—and activism—on all fronts.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

The holidays are all about connection, good food, good friends and those cozy moments. This season, skip boring mocktails and celebrate with rk, the world's first zero proof spirits. All the taste and warmth of your favorite holiday pours with zero alcohol, zero guilt and the patented warm molecule for that festive kick. Perfect for toasting, hosting or gifting freely. With RK0 proof, visit rkbeverages.com. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[B]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[A]

Great to see You. We're in studio. Have we been in the same room since I was in Auckland and.

[B]

Welcome back.

[A]

You're in Munich. Welcome back to you, pal.

[B]

Yeah, well, I didn't miss a pod in the studio, man. I flew Tuesday night. That's how dedicated I am. I left Tuesday night and came back Tuesday morning.

[A]

One up in me.

[B]

I'm usually the one in the hotel, so I know that is.

[A]

Oh, you're staying in the city. Well, I mean, I skipped the second one. I don't know, I was just too. That time change is wild. La was negative. 19 hours from us, I think, or something like that. Anyway, it was fun to be on the road, but good to be back. We're recording this a few hours before Trump's State of the Union. Pbs I saw a reporter just say that the speech could be over two hours long. Potentially between two and a half to three hours long.

[B]

I mean, make it four hours. Let's have him give a Fidel Castro performance. I'm sure that'll win over a lot of people.

[A]

Hopefully. It's bullshit and listeners will already know whether it is or not, but it does feel like cruel and unusual punishment.

[B]

I would not go if I had the out. You know, I'd be at the rally. The people, State of the Union or whatever is the alternative to sitting there.

[A]

I'd be like streaming whatever sports were on TV or something. We got a great show for you guys, though. We're gonna cover the Trump administration's rush to war with Iran.

[B]

Great. Still going to come and hat on this today, people. Just be warned.

[A]

Still trying to understand why now, what the goal is, why we're doing this massive military buildup, what hope there might be for diplomacy, what a deal would even look like. So we'll get into all of that. We're also going to cover the global fallout from Trump's tariffs getting struck down by the Supreme Court and what it means that you. He's lost his favorite foreign policy tool and for all these countries that cut deals already, then we're gonna dig into this interview that Tucker Carlson did with the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. It is a truly wild two hour experience that created an international incident.

[B]

I texted you, I listened to all two and a half hours when the day came out and I thought, I'll just listen to a little bit of this because I'd seen the dust up and then I just got sucked in.

[A]

The first 20 minutes is just sort of like him talking about how the interview came to go. It's so conspiratorial and crazy. It's like this real. Is this not real? I don't know. Anyway, we're going to explain. Then we're going to dig into this fight between an AI company called Anthropic and the Pentagon over the use of its model. Claude and what it means for all of us who are trying to figure out how this technology will shape our future. We're going to talk about an ISIS prison escape in Syria and the ongoing fallout from FBI Director Kash Patel's Eat, Pray, chug trip to Italy to go fuck around at the Olympics. Glad to see that. Yeah, him and the boys, I'm sure they love to see him. Anyway, then we, then I talk with Carlos Zuna about the shocking cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend. The death of a cartel leader named El Mencho, which sounds like a Larry David.

[B]

He was a real mensch.

[A]

And then we, we also talk at the area and Ben about the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to starve the entire island of Cuba. For those who don't know, Ben and Ricardo led the negotiations to create the opening between the Obama administration and the Cuban government at the time. And Trump has just unwound that. And now Marco Rubio is single handedly trying to, I guess, starve them all out.

[B]

Yeah, it's one of the more grotesque things that's happening in the world. Doesn't get a lot of attention. But we are actively trying to starve to death an island that poses no national security threat to the United States whatsoever. Whatever you think of the Cuban government, name me, the national interest in starving

[A]

those people hasn't for a long, long time. One story we're not going to cover today is the truly historic arrest of the creep formerly known as Prince Andrew. And that is because we covered it last week on the Pod Save the World YouTube channel. So subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. We do tons of great bonus episodes like that one. And check out this episode if you want to know just how much this, this incident has rocked the British royal family, the political system. And then since we recorded, things got even hairier over there because the former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, has been arrested on similar charges. Remember, this all stems from them being mentioned in the Epstein files. We explain what this misconduct in public office charge means, what it would take to convict them. It's a great episode. But also please just follow us on YouTube. For the love of God, support Pod Save the world on YouTube. Follow us on YouTube. Subscribe you know, wherever you get your podcasts. Otherwise you're just, it's just right wing crap out there.

[B]

It's a good content, too.

[A]

It's good content.

[B]

We had Prince Andrew, we did this on, on Jonathan Pollard, who we'll talk about. Oh, yeah, Tucker interview. So we, we, we pop up with some good ones. Hot takes.

[A]

Jonathan Pollard makes an early appearance in the Tucker Huckabee interview. It's just, it's wild. Anyway. All right, Ben, so we're recording this on Tuesday afternoon. At this moment, it seems less a question of if Trump will go to war with Iran, but when and why and why? Another good question. There are talks between the US And Iranian sides on Thursday. Maybe they'll get to a deal. But again, it's not even clear what kind of deal Trump wants at this point. Like every day there is a new leak about his thinking or the military options. One report says he wants no enrichment, no nuclear enrichment from Iran. Then the next day there's a report that says Trump might allow a deal where Iran has some sort of like, token face saving amount of nuclear enrichment. Other stories are focusing on the kind of wide range of military options he's considering. So you get Alex Ward over at the Wall Street Journal had the scoop that Trump was considering a, quote, initial limited military strike designed to pressure Iran into cutting a deal. But then there's been other stories that say he's considering this, like massive range of strikes that include hitting nuclear sites, hitting missile sites, hitting maybe bombing the IRGC headquarters. Axio said Trump was presented a plan to kill the supreme Leader and his son. So that's nice. They're keeping it in the family. The only good news is it does seem like he's rolled out commando raids or boots on the ground in Iran, at least for now. But I don't know, could change tomorrow. This does like, it feels like the final days before the Iraq war in 2003. Except to your point earlier, we don't know why they want to start the war now, what the end game is. I guess maybe Trump doesn't either. Regardless, the US has accumulated a truly massive amount of military assets in the Middle East. So in January, remember, Trump sent the USS Abraham Lincoln from the South China Sea to the Gulf. That is an aircraft carrier that comes with three guided missile destroyers and 5,700 or so sailors. Then Trump ordered our largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to the Middle East. They had been deployed in the Caribbean as part of the Venezuela operation. The Ford also travels with three destroyers and about 5,000 more troops. I think that brings the total to like 14 Navy ships in the region. There's also a guided missile submarine floating around there somewhere. I'm not sure if that's part of the 14 or not. On top of that, the US has sent 50 additional fighter jets, AWACS command and control planes, the EA18G Growler planes that do electronic warfare. Then According to the AP 85 fuel tankers, 170 cargo planes, more missile defense systems. And then on Monday, the US Embassy in Lebanon ordered all non essential staff to leave the country. So Ben Long wind up there, but my question is, what do you think Trump's goal is here and like there? I think there's a lot of people who feel like when you assemble this much military hardware, like kind of on the brink of war, it almost becomes inevitable that it is going to happen. Do you agree with that theory? Because I'm certainly concerned about it.

[B]

I think it'd be very hard for him not to do something. First of all, on the deals. Yeah, we should note that Witkoff said that the nuclear program is one week away from developing enough fuel for a nuclear weapon, which completely contradicts the claim that they had obliterated the nuclear program then, you know, a face saving enrichment capability. We used to call that the Iran nuclear deal under Barack Obama. I know, so amazing that we have to go through multiple wars to get back to a deal that he just pulled out of. And look, the other things that have come out for negotiation are beyond the nuclear program that Iran has to give up its ballistic missile program. They won't do that to them. That's their insurance policy to survive. That's what allows them to defend themselves. That has been a major ask for Israel since the Iran nuclear deal in 2014. People may remember when Bibi flew to Washington to give a speech opposing the Iran nuclear deal in front of Congress and he said no enrichment capability, no ballistic missile program, no support for proxies. And that is essentially a deal. And we said this at the time, so I'm not just saying this now. That's Bibi wanting to go to war with Iran because he knows that the regime will never agree to that. You know, and so if those are the terms that they're trying to negotiate, they'll never get that. They could get a nuclear deal. They don't need a massive armada to get a nuclear deal though.

[A]

Or another like, like a pinprick tiny strike. Like you bombed them last year, dude, you bombed in June.

[B]

Yeah. And this is what's so strange. About this is that let's. Should we break this into two things? One is, what are the negative consequences that could happen and why we're doing this? Because I think it's worth it. I think people have begun to digest just how catastrophic this could be. I'm not saying it definitely will be, but essentially, if you do the regime change strike, or even if you do the limited strike and Iran hits back this time because they are tired of getting bombed and feel like they have to hit back or else they're going to keep getting bombed, then you could have an implosion of that regime. There's not going to be some scenario where in a couple of weeks Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, goes and manages a democratic transition. This is a country of over 90 million people, heavily armed factions, Basij Militia, Revolutionary Guard Corps. These are not people that are just gonna step aside for a democratic transition. The place will probably descend into some kind of civil conflict with a lot of violence. They could also strike and lash out with those ballistic missile capabilities and hit Qatar, hit Jordan, hit Israel, hit. Just whatever, just fire in every direction in the Middle east to kind of send the point that, like, we're not going to go down without a fight. This is existential. We're ideological people.

[A]

Or hit like, you know, Saudi oil infrastructure or, you know, I was talking to a smart person yesterday who reminded me that Iran is really good at offensive cyber operations. And there was concerns in previous administrations about them doing things in the US Homeland or hitting critical infrastructure. They also pointed out that Iran's navy was pretty much left unscathed in the lat in the 12 day war. It makes you wonder if that will be put to use in the street of Hormuz, which could shut down. You know, what was it, 20% of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz. So, you know, maybe, maybe the US is just so much more powerful than the Iranian military and they are so decimated that they will just get a missile off the ground or maybe something really bad will happen. But remember, it only takes one missile getting through the missile defense systems, which, by the way, are badly depleted both on the US and on the Israeli end.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, of course it's possible it could go well, but I think we need to surface these consequences before war because that's what we haven't done in the past. One other thing I talked to some people in the region that they, they've been pointing out, which is that you could have A massive refugee crisis. I mean, something that dwarfs even the Syrian one. This is a country four times the size of Syria. If Iran implodes into kind of civil conflict and violence, I mean, you could have 10 million refugees, people flowing into Afghanistan and Pakistan, people flowing into Turkey and into Europe. How would that go in today's politics?

[C]

Right.

[B]

There are ethnic groups, minority groups that have separatist ambitions. Right. The Baluchistan region of Iran, for instance. Well, Pakistan could come involved because they don't want to see a separatist Buluchistan movement that could spread across their borders. I mean, this thing, shit could get real very fast. I think what's happened is a lot of the countries in the region, basically everybody except Israel and the uae, and we'll come back to them. So that's Saudi, that's Turkey, that's Egypt, that's Qatar. They're calling Trump up. And Trump listens to those guys and they're saying, this is fucking crazy. You're putting our stability at risk. You're putting this whole region at risk. This is totally unnecessary. Why are you doing this now? And it's at least causing him to pause. But, Tommy, here's this gets to the why. And I think we have to just deal with this because what you're seeing is a lot of leaks about who does not want this to happen.

[A]

So General Kaine.

[B]

So, yes, we already know, like MAGA doesn't, like Tucker Carlson. MAGA doesn't want this to happen.

[C]

Right.

[B]

We also know that these countries in the region don't want it to happen. Now we see these leaks that I thought are important. That said, General Kaine was warning Trump that this could go very badly. Like we were just saying, like, even a well executed military operation could end in disaster and draw us in more. Trump denied that. But, you know, it seems pretty clear based on the number of reports that this is the case. You look at Trump's cabinet, Marco Rubio does not seem that jazzed about this. No.

[A]

He's reportedly kind of keeping his cars close to his vest and JD Vance is pushing back. I mean, I think they all realize that this is a much tougher operation than Venezuela was.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And so the question is, like, who is for this? And there are really only two factions I can think of. But I'm really curious what you think. There's in this country, there's this kind of absolute hawkish dead enders who just like, yeah, they just, they've had it in for the Iranians since 1979. In the same way They've had in for the Cubans since 1959. And you know, this is Lindsey Graham. This is just your kind of garden variety hawk or neocon who is just like, we gotta finish the job because they're weak. And so the timing is they're weak. Now Trump can do whatever the fuck he wants and we won't have a president like that again, so let's do it now. And then the other one is Bibi. And again, like we have to talk about this. The Israelis are interestingly being pretty quiet about this because I think they know that this is unpopular. But in the physical reality of this world, I can tell you that Bibi Netanyahu has wanted the United States to remove the Iranian regime for as long as I've been in politics. Yeah.

[A]

And there was a lot of reporting, I think back in December when Trump initially threatened to bomb Iran again, that the Israelis were saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't do it. And that was interesting and surprising. And now it's clear that that was only because we did not have the force posture in the region to defend Israel from an Iranian response. And again, this person I was talking to yesterday said part of, you know, why you want the USS Gerald Ford there is because of the warships that travel with it that have tons of missile defense capabilities and can fire up interceptor missiles that take down ballistic missiles.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Fired at Tel Aviv. Right. And now we are postured there. And there's also F15s and F16s and Patriot missile batteries that have all been moved into the region that can do, the Biden administration did when there was that massive, you know, barrage fired at the Israelis which is try to shoot down basically everything.

[B]

That's right. I mean that, that a lot of those assets in the region are there for defensive purposes as well as offensive. And, and, and look, I, I just think that there's something fundamentally broken when what the polls show 80% of people are against this in this country, that we're going to do this because like some hawks like want to get it done and Lindsey Graham in this country and then like journal editorial page and Bibi Nanyao like this kind of the absolute dead ender, you know, let's keep fighting wars, people. And I just also want to say, like, I think this is, that's not good for Israel in the long run. Like what if we do this and it goes poorly and that the region descends into chaos? What is that going to do to the long term support for Israel in this country?

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's Already on thin ice. So I just, I can't for the life of me think of some other reason. Iran is not posing any. Like, Iran has always been adversarial. It's always been a shitty regime. We'd like the Iranian people over time to change that regime. The Supreme Leader, by the way, is 87. He's going to die, and he needs to.

[A]

He's changing his own regime, guys, and

[B]

the regime can evolve. Now, what threat does Iran pose today to the United States of America that it didn't pose? Six months, two years. Six years during Trump's first term. There's nothing different. If anything, they're less dangerous.

[A]

Yeah, look, the. There's not any kind of existential threat, that's for sure. Right. Like, the nuclear material was the biggest concern. That's when we were always told it's one week, we're two weeks away, we're four hours away from them having a nuclear weapon like Trump, as Trump said, they set back that program several years. It's not completely and totally obliterated, but it's certainly set back. You're right. That, that fundamentally hasn't changed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Since, what was it, June of last year. They certainly, they, they've developed more ballistic missiles. They probably rebuilt some of their defenses. But my sense in talking to some, some experts is that they're still, like, pretty weakened. My gut on what's happening is that you have people like Lindsey Graham who are in Trump's ear all the time and saying to him, Mr. President, if you take out Maduro, if you take out those communists down in Cuba and you take out the Iranian regime, you are the greatest president in history. You are historic, you are this, you are that. And all he sees is like, kind of like the easy good outcome. Right. Because this guy has gotten super lucky in the Venezuela operation. He got really lucky after the Qasem Soleimani assassination back in 2020, that no service members were killed in those operations, and it didn't become this escalatory, like major war. And so he thinks, like, the cost of war is really low and it's easy.

[B]

I think you're exactly right. I think there's these constellation of forces, right, because the regime is weakened, and then you have this protest movement. So that weakens them further, but not enough to topple the regime. And so I think that the Lindsey Graham argument is, make your mark in history, be the one that finally got rid of this regime that has bedeviled the United States for a long time. Bibi's probably saying a Version of the same thing. He's wanting to get rid of this regime for a long time. I will say the ballistic missiles, if people, they're not a threat to us now, are they a threat to Israel? Yes. But one of the things we've learned, you know, for. Throughout the whole history of the Islamic Republic is they're not just firing those ballistic missiles at Israel. And in fact, they've been methodically weakened. I mean, what we've learned is that the regime cares about its survival. Yeah. That's its principal objective is to survive. And so I don't think just because they're manufacturing ballistic missiles again, that they're going to launch an offensive war against Israel. There's defensive weapons that can shoot those missiles down. Israel's bombarded and broken a lot of the Iranian proxies without Iran doing that. Iran only fired ballistic missiles at Israel after Israel attacked them. And so I just, you know, I don't think that there's an offensive threat if the reason is to do this to protect Israel. First of all, Israel can protect itself. But also, and with our support, by the way, their missile defense systems are provided by us. But also, I just, I don't think this regime is like, on the precipice of launching an offensive preemptive strike on

[A]

Israel largely because they know that they would be the response. Would they be destroyed, states, government. I think the only way, yeah, like, every sort of response they had. Look, they're bad actors. They, they fund terrorism. They do all kinds of shitty stuff. None of us like that. But, you know, their responses to getting bombed constantly has been relatively measured. Like warning us in advance before they shot missiles at our base. Yeah, because they don't want to get. They don't fucking decimate.

[B]

They want to survive.

[A]

And it's like at some point, though, what if, like, Ali Viez has been out sort of making this observation, at some point they are going to calculate that they need to exact some sort of cost in response or else they're just going to get bombed every six to eight months in perpetuity.

[B]

And I think that that might be what happened. Ali also had some good analysis that the more restrained commanders are the ones that were killed and that the younger people who kind of moved into these roles are like, it was a mistake not to respond.

[A]

You know, do you see the reports in the Times that the supreme leaders had, like, name, like, four levels of succession? It's like, sir, that's a great idea in theory, but in practice, when, like, the missiles are raining down on You, I don't know that you're like your carpool, you know, snow day phone tree is going to quite work.

[B]

One other thing I was going to say because there's a huge risk to our personnel and people could get hurt and killed, but also because it doesn't come up in the conversation, a lot of Iranians will get killed and not just the bad guys. I mean Tehran is a gigantic city. Like a lot of Iranians were killed in the 12 day war.

[A]

And those protests have kicked up again, by the way. There's five days of protests at like a bunch of college campuses.

[B]

And so the fact that we're being so kind of, kind of glib about that, we're so desensitized and we so dehumanize thoroughly these populations that, that we're just talking about like bombing them with massive military force and we're not even thinking about the human cost on the Iranian side as well.

[A]

Absolutely. And there's also like very little discussion of the human cost to the service members. Like of course, like we all want to protect them and keep them safe, but these guys on the Gerald Ford, I think they've been deployed for eight months now. They've been extended twice and this deployment might last up to 11 months. And again, these guys, these, this aircraft carrier was in Venezuela for the Maduro operation. They are now in the Middle east and their toilets don't work. There's like 4,600 guys or men and women on this aircraft carrier and a bunch of the toilets are broken. So there's 45 minute long lines on a $13 billion aircraft carrier and it needs to be docked to fully fix it. But of course they can't because these guys are stuck waiting for Donald Trump to decide if he's going to fucking bomb a Ron again.

[B]

Yes. Someone who we know who's like worked in the security apparatus US said to me that the toilets on the Gerald Ford may do more to prevent the war with Iran than Congress. And also pointed out that a lot of these people, to your point, are just being sent over there and have no idea what the fuck they're doing there. Yeah, I don't think they know. I don't think, you know, someone on the Gerald Ford has any better idea what they're there to do than you and I do.

[A]

No. Yeah, but the, the bowels of the places are full of ass wipes in both cases. So Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Haraji, he's been making the rounds in the US media, trying to be like, can Someone tell me what you want from us. Here he is. This is a clip from Morning Joe last week. Let's watch.

[C]

One thing I have to emphasize is

[B]

that there is no military solution for Iran's nuclear program that has been tested last year and there were a huge

[C]

attack on our facilities, on our, you know, they killed and assassinated our scientists, but they couldn't kill our nuclear program. Why?

[B]

Because it is developed by ourselves, by our scientists.

[C]

This is a technology developed by us, belongs to us, and it cannot be destroyed by, by bombings, by, you know, militarily.

[B]

The only solution is diplomacy. This is why the US Is back

[C]

on in the table of negotiation and is seeking a deal.

[A]

Just feels like we're going in a time warp 10 years. Ben, same arguments as you mentioned earlier. So Steve Wyckoff was on Fox News, even though he was literally interviewed by a member of the Trump family, it was like Laura Trump, he still managed to sound like a fucking bumbling idiot. And when he said they're a week away from industrial grade bomb making material, which no expert would agree with, and as you mentioned, completely contradicts Trump's claims that Iran's nuclear infrastructure was totally obliterated. But again, we get back to this question of what kind of deal does Trump want? Is it a nuclear deal that he can just sell as being better than jcpoa? Is it what you said earlier, the Israeli position that it has to include nukes, ballistic missiles, support for terror groups, or is it just full, like regime change? I just, it's crazy that we don't even know what he wants.

[B]

It is. And it's also crazy that Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner are the people in these negotiations. When we did the Iran nuclear deal, we had like nuclear physicists and Ernie Moniz at the table. We had Iran experts, we had sanctions experts. They're literally sending in two real estate developers to sit across the table from these people. They have no idea what the fuck they're talking. They don't know how to design a nuclear program that is not threatening. It's fundamentally unserious. Which makes you wonder, like, what is the purpose of the whole exercise Now I hope they get a deal. If they do get a deal, though, it's just going to be some broad principles on paper. What is the implementation pathway? What are the monitoring, inspections regime? Can the Iranians believe that any deal will last more than six months? They're probably just trying to get out from under the war. But again, the problem is they're not going to do the broader one with the missiles because they just see that as negotiating away regime change because they see once we get rid of our ballistic missiles and our proxy groups and Israel will come in and just remove our regime and you may not like that, that, that, that's the reality.

[A]

Yeah. And just by the way, last thing on this, I mean I saw in the Financial Times they reported that Ron has signed a secret 500 million euro arms deal with Russia to inquire a bunch of shoulder fired missiles to supplement their air defense. They also reported a Reuters reported that Iran is close to closing deals with China to buy supersonic anti ship missiles. It's just interesting you don't hear a lot of criticism in public from Donald Trump about those deals. Also lastly, Ben, it's just, it's just worth noting that as we're recording it's the fourth anniversary of the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Trump promised to end that war in 24 hours. Instead it's gotten so much worse for the Ukrainian people. And meanwhile now we're entirely focused on a regime change in another place in Iran right after the Venezuela one. So it just like speaks to the total incoherence of the policy and the lack of focus and just the lies based on, you know, what he ran on which MAGA was supposed to be isolationists and against regime change wars and here we are.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, and it does. He never said he was going to do this. It's not like he ran for president. Like I'm going to go in there and take out the Iranian regime.

[A]

No. It's baffling. Politically baffling. Security reasons baffling. All of it is baffling. But here we are, I guess. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. From consultations to events to experiences, Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI enhanced website builder to get a fully custom website in just a few steps. Using basic information about your industry goals and personality to generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations. Squarespace makes it easy to showcase your expertise and engage clients with video content on your website. Upload and organize your videos, create stunning video libraries and even monetize your content by adding a paywall. Perfect for online courses, exclusive tutorials and premium workshops. Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all inclusive price. No hidden fees or add ons required. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.comworld to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com World Pod Save the World is brought to you by Haya. Here's a wake up call for parents. Our kids are the first generation raised on ultra processed diets and the long term health consequences are still a mystery. Haya was created to change that. We offer a real nutritional alternative in a market full of vitamins that are basically just candy in disguise. Some children's vitamins on the market today contain up to 7 grams of sugar per serving and are stuffed with artificial additives and petroleum based dyes. Haya took the opposite approach. Zero sugar, zero gummy junk. Just clean nutrition. Haya created a super powered chewable vitamin that packs 12 organic fruits and vegetables plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals into every dose. Designed for kids two and up, Haya shipped straight to your door. You'll get this awesome reusable bottle in your first order and then they send you refills every month. One less thing to remember at the store. High vitamins are great. As we've discussed before on the show, Charlie Favreau takes them every day. He's reading it like a PhD level at this point. So there's this obviously this ongoing debate about whether or not the Schrodinger's equation, including the fact that there are the potential of a magnetic field or the potential of a gravitational field. Does that suggest potential is more than just a mathematical tool for understanding fields, but something deeper about our universe? And he really has helped figure out the kinds of experiments we need to figure out how to measure that even when obviously with a solenoid it's impossible to have a truly infinite solenoid.

[B]

Like that's not possible.

[A]

Couldn't have said it any better myself. And here's something every parent needs to hear. If you're getting shout out Veritasium for that one, I have to do a shout out to a great YouTube about that. All right, go on. And here's something every parent needs to hear. If getting your kids to eat vegetables feels like an impossible daily battle bottle, Haya's new kids Daily greens and Superfoods is a total game changer. It's basically chocolate milk stuffed with veggies. It's a greens powder that's packed with 55 or more whole food source ingredients. Just mix one scoop with the milk or any non dairy beverage and watch them actually enjoy something that's secretly fueling their growing bodies. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamins. Get 50 off your first order to claim this deal you must go to hayahealth.com world. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H I Y A H E a l t h.com world and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Okay, so by now I'm sure a lot of listeners have been following the Supreme Court striking down the majority of Trump's tariffs. We're going to unpack the foreign policy implications of this decision going forward. So just for context, what the court struck down was Trump's use of a 1977 law called the International Emergency, the Economic Powers act or ipa. So that law lets the President declare a national emergency to respond to foreign threats. Often it's used to impose sanctions. But Trump used the authority in an unprecedented and now we know illegal way, which was using AIPA authority to slap tariffs on countries over like random. That made him mad. Like the Swedish leader's tone of voice in a phone call, the prosecution of his buddy Jair Bolsonaro down in Brazil. But since this court ruling, Trump has promised to use other legal authorities to put his whole tariff regime back into place. One of those is called section 122 of the Trade act of 1974 that lets him place tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days. So confusingly, Trump said he was immediately going to do that, immediately put in place a 10% global tariff. Then over the weekend he truth socialed that he was going to up it to 15%. But then this morning it seems that the tariff went into effect at 10%. So you know, per usual well oiled machine, he does have other tariff authorities. There's provisions that let him respond to discriminatory trade practices. Others let him address national security threats, but those take longer. He can't just wield them like a dictator. So he's pissed. But Ben, like the rest of the world, is just trying to figure out what they should do about all this. Like some countries seem to have gotten screwed at first Blanche. Like the the UK, Singapore and Australia negotiated rates lower than the 15% universal rate that Trump says he will ultimately implement. On the other hand, China, Brazil and India should see a big tariff reduction in the short term. And then, you know, the tariffs on Mexico and Canada will likely remain as is because they are already under some of these authorities that have not been struck down. So it's also confusing for the eu. They negotiated this deal with Trump over the summer. Now they're reportedly having doubts about whether to ratify it or not. I bet the Japanese are pissed because I think like two days or three days before the court decision, they cut some deal that offered a bunch of concessions to get down to a 15% rate. And now that's the universal standard. So, Ben, the big elephant in the room to me, though is China. Trump is going to China in late March, early April, but like his big stick was being able to slap them with tariffs, even if he's already kind of backed off the early Liberation Day trade war. Like, what do you think the impact of losing this tool is for him on those negotiations? And then kind of like big picture, his attempt to bully the world with tariffs.

[B]

I think this is a huge blow to Trump and that may be one reason why he threw such a tantrum about it. Because we've already seen other countries begin to figure out that maybe it's better to stand up to Trump and that there's some short term risk in standing up to Trump. But there's both political benefit and maybe strategically it's better to be strong and not make concessions and kind of wait this guy out, grind him down, or wait for his attention to go somewhere else. And that's what was borne out. The countries that stood up to Trump are in a much better place today than the countries that rushed to cut deals and kind of curry favor with him. And look, the Chinese are the best example of that. They faced Trump down when he was doing like 200% tariffs for like a few days, because guess what? They don't have a Supreme Court. And so when they just cut off rare earth materials and critical components coming to our economy, Trump folded. And so that's the first point. I think you're going to see more countries be like, you know what, actually maybe we just, we stand up to Trump instead of, you know, signing some short term deal. It reinforces also the idea that deals with the United States right now are kind of meaningless because already Trump made it such that deals are never seen as lasting more than one administration. So you're already only cutting like essentially four year deals, and now you don't even know if those deals are going to survive the Trump administration, either because he's going to have a different impulse in six months or because his power is getting taken away. And this is the last point is that this is like the beginning. Countries can begin to see over the Trump horizon. You know, his power is a diminishing asset. Like he was at the height of his powers around Liberation Day. It looked like everybody was capitulating to him. The Supreme Court wouldn't stand up to him. Congress was feckless. All these institutions are folding. Well, now you're starting to see, like, pushback to Trump on lots of different fronts. And I think that it's a bit like the wizard of Oz. Like the curtain gets pulled back and there he is and you're like, that's the guy, you know? And so, I don't know, I think there'll be economic chaos to some extent, because, you know, this is a hell of a way to run a global economy. But I also think you're going to see probably less capitulation.

[A]

Yeah. And they're already unpopular. I mean, 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump's tariffs. And I think it was a Pew poll, like a few weeks ago. So, yeah, like, any attention to this, it makes me happy because it's wildly unpopular. By the way, if folks want to dig deeper into the legal arguments and the opinions, our friends at Strict Scrutiny broke it all down in an episode. So check that out if you want the much smarter legal take on all this. We're going to switch gears, though, because we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee. So last week, Tucker released this interview with Trump's ambassador, Israel Mike Huckabee, and it was something else. So to set the scene. Right, like, I obviously have huge. I know you do, too, disagreements with both of these guys on policy and politics. Right.

[B]

Like, both of them.

[A]

Tucker had a literal neo Nazi on his show recently. He had a historian.

[B]

Not so neo. Yeah.

[A]

He said Winston Churchill was actually the chief villain of World War II. Right. That colors my view of his criticism of Israel, obviously. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, he's kind of like, you know, jocular guy, but he is an extremist on policy. He supports annexing the West Bank. He says there's no such thing as a Palestinian. He opposes a two state solution. So you sit these two dudes down for two hours, and it is explosive, but also illustrative of the broader splits we've been seeing in the Republican Party in the MAGA movement. So let's start with an exchange that quite literally created an international incident.

[D]

You have said it three times that God gave this land to this people. And so it is entirely fair for me with respect to ask, what land are you talking about? Because I just read Genesis of 15, as I have many times. And that land, I think it says from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is once again basically the entire Middle East. So God gave that land to his people, the Jews, or he didn't. You're saying he did. What does that mean? Does Israel have the right to that land? Because you're appealing to Genesis, you're saying that's the original deed. It would be fine if they took it all. You just said it would be fine with you if the state of Israel took all of Syria, all of Lebanon. That's. That's really not exactly what I'm trying to say. I'm asking, is that what you said? I thought that's what you just said. It was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement in that, you know, if that's what you feel like that we're talking about, but it isn't. We're talking about this land that Israel, the state of Israel now lives in and wants to have peace in. They're not trying to take over Jordan, they're not trying to take over Syria, they're not trying to take over Iraq or anywhere else.

[A]

So for listeners who didn't consume the whole two hour things like Ben and I did, because we're freaks. So Tucker clearly came into this interview with a plan to lay a trap for Huckabee because he knew, he kept asking him, like, why does Israel have a right to exist? Because he knew Huckabee would cite both

[B]

international and why that, why that particular language. Right to exist.

[A]

Right, Right to. Because he knew Huckabee would say, well, there's international law and there's this biblical, you know, right in theology because of Genesis 15. But as you saw there, those two views are totally irreconcilable. You can't believe that Israel has the right to all of that territory is outlined in that conversation, but also that international law holds. So Huckabee articulates it there in the worst way he could have, pretty much. And it ultimately those comments were denounced by I think, a dozen Muslim countries, the oic, the gcc, the Arab League, like everybody. So must have been a very, a fun day to have our old jobs in the NSC press office.

[B]

And I actually think this was an important statement because for a couple of reasons. If you let me ask you this, Tommy, because this, and I'm going to write a substack on this. People should check out my substack. What are the borders of Israel?

[A]

What are they?

[B]

Yeah, right now?

[A]

Well, I mean, they're the ones that are on the map. And then they've taken some territory recently in Syria, they've taken some land in Lebanon. So it's, it's expanding this.

[B]

So you, you just got in the point.

[A]

And there's the west bank and settlement construction there.

[B]

I, I talked to some people in the Middle east about this and, and these are not, you know, rabid anti Semites or something. What they're saying is that the actually international law, you know, recognize boundaries or the 1967 borders.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And then Israel is in a military occupation of the west bank in Gaza. Clearly they've ignored that. They've built all these settlements over the years. And this Israeli government does not recognize that as Palestinian land. They've said they want to annex, you know, the Knesset has passed a resolution, they want to annex the West Bank. Eamon and I did a long segment on this, but essentially, and Huckabee himself refers to the west bank as Judea and Samarra, which are biblical terms for what you might call Greater Israel.

[A]

Right. So already he says there is no West Bank.

[B]

There is no West Bank. So already it's clearly Mike Huckabee's position and the position of the majority of the Israeli government that the west bank should be part of Israel. And then if you're in the region, you see these kind of relentless bombing of, of southern Syria and this Israeli buffer zone. So Israel is literally controlling part of southern Syria. They've already annexed the Golan Heights from Syria. And then in Lebanon, you have some of the more extreme Israeli settlers who want to go up and build settlements in southern Lebanon. Right. So if you're in the region, those, if you're those countries that are issuing that response. This is not just performative.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You generally are not sure where Israel's territorial, this Israeli government's territorial ambitions end. Does it include annexing the West Bank? Does it include Gaza? Does it include parts of southern Syria? Does it include parts of southern Lebanon? So this is not just like an exercise, and I think that's why you saw those statements, is that there's not a lot of clarity about what Greater Israel is. The one thing that is clear is that there are people in Netanyahu's coalition, probably including Netanyahu himself, who believe in some version of it. Now, I don't think that they want to take a rock up to the Euphrates, but there is this question of how far will this go in terms of territorial expansion. Then the second piece of this is Huckabee is one of these Christian Zionists who has this kind of biblical interpretation. And Tucker was kind of smoking that out. By the way. This is not about Jews at all. This is actually about a Christian view that Israel needs to kind of reconstitute its control of this land as part of the second coming, you know, so it's crazy.

[A]

And I don't think Huckabee is there, but there are like some really.

[B]

John Hagee.

[A]

John Hagee. Some really crazy right wing Christian Zionists. And the, the conversation kind of happened because I think at some point recently Tucker said, I, I despise Christian Scientists. Yeah. He repeatedly apologizes for. Throughout the interview, which is an insane thing to have to do.

[B]

But anyway, no, and I. Look, I, I'm curious. Like, I. So I think it was useful. It was actually useful for Tucker to kind of really pull the thread on this, to try to understand. I mean, there is a genuine question as to where do the borders end in the views of Mike Huckabee, who represents kind of a faction of pro Israel sport in the United States. And frankly, in the views of the Israeli government, I don't think that they want to take all the land to the Euphrates. But if you are saying that it's a biblical, you know, you know, Huckabee said a biblical deed, you know, well, that's the logic of it. And so you. How do you. You need to figure out how to square that with international.

[A]

Well, I mean, look, I just think the fact that Huckabee would say that out loud speaks to how insane the policy is. Right. Like, you are a U.S. government official. You are the U.S. ambassador to Israel. You should support U.S. policy and international law.

[B]

Yeah, just say, yeah, like, you should

[A]

be not articulating this extremist view that.

[B]

Why not just say, well, U.S. policy is. We recognize this, but we. Yeah, you're right.

[A]

Like, hey, I'm a Christian. I don't give a fudge what the Bible says about, like, the borders of Israel. That's not how we should be making these. No, that's nuts.

[B]

And look, on the Tucker thing, obviously he's a problematic messenger for all the reasons, you know, Nick Fuentes did not get grilled like Mike Huckabee did. I will say if More journal. Like, one of the interesting things is Huckabee said a lot of things in this interview that you hear a lot. Like, he said the IDF was more humane.

[A]

Let's play that. Let's play that. Yeah, but like what Tucker's brilliant at, I think what you're getting at is he follows up. He follows up, he's like, why? Why do you think that way? So here was that exchange about the war in Gaza and civilian casualties.

[D]

I'm merely noting what you just said, which was that the IDF takes greater pains in the US Our military does, to spare civilian lives. And I guess my question is, when was the last time the U. S. Military killed this many civilians? Do you know? Well, it could have been Nagasaki, Hiroshima, could have been Iraq, Afghanistan, Hamas operatives. How do you feel about their deaths? If they participated in that, then God help them. I'm telling you.

[A]

What does that mean?

[D]

God, I don't know. That they were 14 years. No, but I'm telling you that when someone commits the acts of atrocity and then they hold hostages, if these were your children being held hostage in Gaza, what would you do to get them out? I wouldn't want to kill 14 year olds, I'll tell you that. Let me ask you something. Would you do whatever it took to get your kids back if they were being tortured, raped, starved? I would not kill children, period. Well, I'm just telling you. And I would never make excuses for killing children either. And I'm not talking about targeting children. I'm talking about told me that 14 year olds deserve to die because they're working for Hamas. I'm telling you, my question is, can you hear yourself?

[A]

It's a great question. I mean, and again, Tucker comes at this in an interesting way for like a MAGA audience because he's like, how dare you suggest that the US Military cares less about civilian casualties than the idf? And that gets you into this conversation where Huckabee reveals himself to be one of the many people who have a totally dehumanizing view about Palestinian people, which is to say there are. There's no such thing as a Palestinian children. Right? There's. There's Palestinian terrorists in his view, or Palestinian non terrorists. And if you're a kid with a gun and you happen to be Palestinian, you're a terrorist and it's okay to kill you. And when you say it out loud like he did there, he sounds like a fucking sociopath.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think what was so telling about this interview is, you know, if you go to, because this, I've heard all these things, you know, I've heard that, you know, all these 14 year olds actually worked for Hamas, which there's no evidence of that by the way. We hear, oh, we have to get hostages back. Well, a lot of the hostages families are like, better to get them back through negotiation because, you know, I can't

[A]

believe people are still saying this because the only way we got these hostages home is through a negotiation.

[B]

They weren't rescued, they weren't rescuing. Right, yeah. Then, then this, this, these negative comparisons. Look, I'm not here to defend the US military, but there was not an urban warfare anywhere near Gaza. And Huckabee said Kabul, like he literally name checked Kabul is a place where we were worse than. It's an insane thing to say.

[A]

Must have meant to say like Raqqa

[B]

or something or Mosul, like you could have said Raqqa or Mosul. But like even that, like Gaza, like look at it, it's utterly destroyed. And the thing is, you and I have had this conversation a lot. There's such comfort. You know, you get up at aipac, you give the speech, you get rounds of applause or Bibi Netanyahu always uses these talking points. He'll go on some Sunday show or he'll go on some cable show and he'll say all this shit and nobody fucking pushes back on him.

[A]

And again, like Huckabee in this interview is still trying to claim that every time the Israelis like bombed a site, they called the person in advance. And it's like they don't even claim that anymore. The IDF doesn't claim anymore. It's like it's complete nonsense.

[B]

But he's saying the same shit that Netanyahu says and he's so unaccustomed to pushback. And I guess my, my argument to those who rightly point out all of Tucker's problems, right from you know, like the Nick Fuentes interview to the kind of conspiracy theory, you know, subtext to a lot of what he says, to the great replacement theory stuff, which has some anti Semitism too. But if more journalists would do what Tucker did, then Tucker's interview wouldn't be such a bombshell. Like the way, the way to. If you think you need to defang anti Semitism on the right right now in their civil war, the way they're trying to defang anti Semitism is to tell Tucker to shut up, right? No, the way you do it is you, you create space where people are allowed to ask follow up questions without being Called in anti Semite, to be blunt, you know, and, and, and so I, I share the concerns that, that of where Tucker goes with some of this stuff. But that speaks to the need to have like people asking actual follow up questions, you know, of people like Huckabee, other than Tucker.

[A]

Yeah. I was in London in, I think it was January and I literally got there and it was the day that there was like a big departure from like the, a Tory party MP to reform. So I turn on the TV and there's fucking Nigel Farage, of course, like right in my face. But it's a live press conference. And the way that those journalists were going after him and kind of mocking him and, you know, taking the piss out of him, the exchanges going back and forth, I was like, God, I wish our. Yes, our news media was more like them. Finally, Ben, they talked about Iran. Here's just a little clip of that exchange as well.

[D]

I know that if it weren't for Iran, there wouldn't be Hamas, there wouldn't be the Houthis, there wouldn't be Hezbollah. We wouldn't have the problem on the border with Lebanon. We wouldn't have the problem with Yemen, we wouldn't have the problem on the border with Lebanon. As I'm an American, I'm not having any problems on the border with Lebanon right now. I live in Maine. We don't have problems on the border of Lebanon. Like, what are you even talking about?

[B]

No offense.

[D]

Can I ask you a question? Like, how much does it matter what Americans think? Well, it matters every bit what Americans think. That's why Americans vote. It's why Americans have the opportunity to have free speech. We want them to have that. Okay, so what percentage of Americans support a war with Iran? I don't know. Do you know?

[C]

I do.

[D]

It's. I think it's around. I saw the numbers yesterday. I think it was like 21. Okay. Is that enough to have a war with Ron? We don't live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be a particular direction. What I hear is it matters what they think, but it really doesn't matter what they think because. No, you take it in. You certainly ingest that. And then what do you do once you ingest it? Then you make sure that you have.

[B]

No, you just got it.

[D]

It goes out the other end.

[A]

So it's like there's so much there.

[B]

First of all, there's so much there.

[A]

I hate how he says hooty. Oh, yeah, yeah, The Hootie Rebels. It's not the Blowfish, sir. It's the Houthis. I live in Maine is such a. So funny. It's like you to your point earlier, you can tell, like, Mike Huckabee has never had to articulate why this is actually in the US Security interest, which is like, you know, well.

[B]

And he says we wouldn't have these problems on the border of Lebanon. Who is the we?

[A]

Yeah, it's very weird. And also, again, like, Huckabee's not wrong that you don't poll test every decision you make. Sometimes you do things as president, the things that are unpopular. However, I think what Tucker is getting at there is Trump ran against regime change, wars. He ran against the Iraq war. He told us this stuff was stupid and that he would keep us out of World War iii. Like, specifically said that about Joe Biden. And now we're about to launch a new war with Iran, and no one can explain why.

[B]

Yeah. And just to make this kind of equal opportunity, you know, but this is the problem with, like, the Mike Hockeys of the world. But also we have the same problem in the Democratic side of the national security establishment in the sense that that answer he gave, you know, we wouldn't have these problems. The Houthis and the Lebanon.

[A]

I hear that all the time.

[B]

And it's such bullshit, separated even from the. The kind of Israel of it all, that people say shit like that all the time. And nobody's like, what are you talking about? Nobody. Does anybody in America care about the Houthis, for that matter? Like, this is Americans in the one thing left. Right. They agree on is they don't understand why we have to do all this stuff.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Why are we. Why are we going to war with the Houthis? And again, I'm not even talking about Israel. I'm talking about the kind of mindset where it's just trust us. We have to care about all these things. We have to fight all these groups. We have to be here forever. We have to spend billions of dollars. And do we? I mean, like, like. And what's amazing is the American people in election after election, including the one that put us in the White house time in 2008, were saying, like, we don't like this. The Iraq war was the end of it. We don't wanna do this anymore. And yet we keep doing it again and again. And on the Iran side, you've got Democrats in Congress who are saying that War Powers Resolution is like the Ayatollah Protection Act.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Josh, Schottheimer and Jared Moskowitz, like, what the fuck is that? That's a Mike Huckabee answer.

[A]

That's like saying, it's such an insultingly stupid way to.

[B]

It's like, I can sound tough and I can name drop a bunch of groups that you might not have heard of. And, and therefore, trust me. And. And I think the American people don't trust this way of making policy.

[A]

If Moskowitz and Gottheimer don't support the War Powers Resolution, that is totally fine. That is their right. If they think we should bomb Iran again, that is totally fine. That is their right. But don't, like, don't. Don't diminish and mock your colleagues who don't want a war by suggesting they're trying to keep the Ayatollah alive. That's just stupid, insulting. Have a real debate. Make the case.

[B]

Yeah, and why, if you want to know why the American people don't trust the establishment anymore, I mean, it's this kind of mentality. And this is why this is so politically dangerous for Trump, because this is not what anyone elect. His people did not vote to fight the Houthis. They voted to lower prices and maybe seal the border. Sure. Like, but, like, not this.

[A]

We must kill the Houthis or the blowfish cross the border. We must kill Toad and the wet sprocket. Let's kill all the gin blossoms.

[B]

The hoodies thing is amazing because he's trying to be, like, an expert and he can't even, you know, come close. I mean, we're not the pronunciation experts here.

[A]

No, no. We do a little better with English than him. Also Israel. Anyway. Southern accent thing. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but, Ben, I want to ask you first, where do you get all your polling information?

[B]

Usually Dan Pfeiffer.

[A]

Dan Pfeiffer.

[B]

Well, he really breaks it down.

[A]

He breaks it all down.

[B]

It's like our group. It goes deeper than our group text.

[A]

Dan really is like the smartest friend. We're all like, dan, what do you think about this? So I could formulate my opinion. If you're looking for something like that. Let me tell you about being a friends of the POD subscriber. That is our subscription community. You get all kinds of great content. We got POD Save America, only Friends, which is basically like Pod Save America, but it's a little more unhinged because it's behind the paywall.

[B]

Or it's like Only Fans, except it's only Dan's.

[A]

You get Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. He's got, you know, just keeping you on top of all the latest data. There is a great newsletter called Open Tabs from Reed Churlin. There's Terminally Online, which is just a totally unhinged story about the weirdest shit on the Internet. Regardless, you get ad free episodes of your favorite Crooked Pods. And most importantly, you help us here at Crooked Media build a progressive independent media company that isn't totally beholden to big tech platforms that want to replace us all with AI. So we'd really appreciate it if you love the show. If you want to be a subscriber, go to crooked.com friends that's crooked.com friends. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Helix. Look, it's getting a little colder out there, you know, easy to convince yourself to stay inside, maybe watch a movie, maybe never leave your bed. If you're going to do that, you need a comfortable bed. And if you're looking for the best one on the market, check out Helix. Helix offers a variety of mattresses designed to fit your sleep needs. How do you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? You take the Helix Sleep Quiz. It matches you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences, making it easy to find a mattress that suits your sleep needs. Helix will deliver your mattresses right to your door with free shipping. In the US The Happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. You can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. They even offer a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Go to helixsleep.comworld for 27% off site wide. That's helixsleep.comworld for27% off site wide. This offer is exclusive to our listeners. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Helixsleep.com World Pots of the World is brought to you by Bilt. It's 2026 and if you're still paying rent without Bilt, it is time for a change. BILT is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you for your biggest monthly expense. Rent. With Bilt, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases and so much more. And here's something to get excited about. Now BILT members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. That means you can get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits from more than 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies and other neighborhood partners. There's a lot of great ways to redeem your built points. You can go to, you know, SoulCycle, Barry's Boot Camp. You know, the bunch of different fitness classes. They have a whole travel portal. If you're trying to plan a vacation, you can get Lyft rides. You're just trying to get around. You could do gift cards. If you just want to use the money somewhere else, that's maybe not listed on the as one of the options. It's really simple. Paying rent is better with Bilt and now owning a home can be better with Bilt. To earn rewards and get something back wherever you live, join the loyalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com world. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com world. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. All right, Ben, so we just talked about a bunch of Trump stories, but you and I, I think I've said many times on this show that Trump blots out the sun, right? Like he is constantly the the story that we are covering. But there are many days when we read about the latest development in artificial intelligence and wonder if we are just completely missing the more important story. So today we're going to talk about a fight about AI and a fight between the Pentagon and Anthropic, which is the AI company that makes the model Claude and what it tells us about kind of the future. So my understanding is that this controversy started after Axios and the Wall Street Journal reported that Claude was used during the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Not sure how that works.

[B]

Claude is like gently, may I suggest,

[A]

how much water did you drink today? So we do know. So we don't know how Claude was used. We know that Pentagon, the Pentagon uses Claude in concert with technology from the big data company Palantir and then Amazon's kind of classified side cloud server on its classified systems. I assume it's like the sipper system. My guess is that Claude was helping them sort through some sort of bulk collection of data of some sort. But who knows? I'm literally guessing regardless, though, like those news reports or maybe some conversation between an Anthropic executive and some Palantir executive kicked up this broader conversation between Anthropic and the Pentagon about the use of Claude and when, you know, it violated their terms of service. For context, despite having a Pentagon contract, Anthropic is the AI company that seems to be the most concerned with safety and how technology is used and are the most openly in favor of government regulation. Although you never know with these guys. They can change their mind. So the Pentagon has contracts with the four major AI companies. OpenAI XAI, Google, Anthropic. Apparently Hexath's team went to all of them and said basically we want to rewrite your terms of service and replace them with language that says the US military can do anything lawful with your models. OpenAI XAI, Google, they were like, fine. Anthropic said, no, we want to make sure our tech is not used for mass surveillance of Americans or in autonomous killing machines like killer robots. And the Pentagon basically replied, how fucking dare you?

[B]

Kind of a tell.

[A]

Yeah. And so. So the Pentagon threatened not only to cancel Anthropic's, I think it's like $200 million contract with the Pentagon, but also to designate them as a supply chain risk, which is a step in the past the US has done to Huawei, which is a Chinese telecom company, and Kaspersky Lab, which is a Russian antivirus company. So big, like state backed companies that we were worried could be backdoors for state actors that we will get. We don't get into all the details, but that could create huge business problems for Anthropic. On Tuesday, the day we recorded this, Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei met with Pistol Pete Secretary Hegseth. According to a readout they leaked to cnn, Hegseth gave Anthropic until Friday to get rid of its safeguards or else he will punish them, as I mentioned earlier. Ben, here's a clip of Hegseth talking about the Pentagon's AI use last month. Let's watch.

[B]

We will not employ AI models that

[A]

won't allow you to fight wars.

[B]

We will judge AI models on this standard alone. Factually accurate, mission relevant, without ideological constraints

[A]

that limit lawful military applications.

[B]

Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us. Oh God. We're building war ready weapons and systems, not chatbots for an Ivy League fact faculty lounge. Such a fucking goober, man. I mean, like, he's just such an unserious motherfucker.

[A]

Well, he can bench press 3:15, so there's that. Look, we've been talking about this for five minutes now where I've been talking. I can't say I understand it any better, but I certainly don't feel better about our AI future having watched that clip, other people regulating it.

[B]

Because what does he know about AI? He probably like puts in, you know, workout routines or, you know, protein shakes.

[A]

Honestly, that's my, like, sole use case at this point. It's a great personal trainer.

[B]

That's what's iron. He's saying these Ivy League people, he's probably the one who's just plotting it up. Yeah, I mean, give me a fucking break. Look, this is really important and there's a world in which we look back on this era and Trump is like the B story to tech and AI. And I think what people have to realize is that more and more, the war fighting to use a hegseth buzzword of the future is going to be done with artificial intelligence. These AI companies and these kind of defense tech startups are the Lockheed Martins and Boeings of the future. Because it's not going to be tanks, it's going to be AI drones and massive surveillance capabilities and offensive cyber and all these things. Right? And these companies have terms of service. And that in part is because they know at Anthropic better than the Pentagon. And this is one of the things that's interesting about AI. It's the private companies know better than the government where it's going and what their technology can do. They know what the misuse of that technology could lead to. Mass surveillance with AI of Americans is a truly terrifying thing. I'm very glad that these companies, I wish more companies would want to put that in their terms of service. Right. Anthropica's employees, those employees may not want the intelligence that they're creating to be used to kill people with robots. You know, they should have the ability to do that without losing all their US Government contracts. This is the US Government essentially saying, we want your technology. And there's another important context here. It'd be one thing if we were regulating this from Congress. Normally, if we were in before times with international order, we'd be negotiating like norms with China and Russia about the use of military AI. None of that is happening. It's the Wild West. So the only regulation of these platforms is coming from the companies themselves. And it's only places like Anthropic and a few others that actually want to have guardrails or states.

[A]

But like the administration's trying to prevent that from happening.

[B]

They're trying to prevent that. So this is, if you, if this succeeds in removing all guardrails from any AI that's used by the military, I mean, that, that's scary. And that's, by the way, like Alex Karp, the Palantir, like, go down a rabbit hole with him. On YouTube. Terrifying.

[A]

Odd. Odd doc. But I don't know if you saw this. The Reuters reported that. So remember Deep Seek we talked about. Audience probably remembers Deep Seek. We talked about them. Was it last year? I don't know. Fairly recently they released this AI model that seemingly had been trained at way less of an expense with less commute compute. That worked nearly as well as like the frontier models in the US So they're releasing a new model that's set to be released as soon as next week that according to this Reuters report was actually trained on Nvidia's most advanced new AI chip, Blackwell chips, which are the ones that Trump administration has been talking about giving them. So this whole idea that like, like somehow we are going to keep China down by giving them our best stuff is like just self evidently stupid and crazy.

[B]

And you know, when the Chinese were using AI for mass surveillance, we would all like get on a high horse and be like, look at those totalitarians. How is this any different? You know, I mean, think about this technology in the worst hands. And I actually think Pete Hegseth is high on the list of the potential worst hands. Yeah, you would want, you want a little guard, you want some terms of service. Nervous.

[A]

Him and a guy we're about to talk about in a second, Cash Patel. But first, a little bit on Syria before we get to cash. So here's a great headline, Ben, that President Trump could highlight at his State of the Union tonight if he wanted. This is via the Wall Street Journal. U.S. intelligence says at least 15,000 at large after ISIS detention camp collapses in Syria. Security at Al Hol camp, which housed thousands of radicalized Islamic State family members, came apart after last month's government offensive. Huh. Put it in a press release. Another, another Trump administration win. So we're talking about a camp.

[B]

He sprung 15,000 ISIS fires.

[A]

Just part of his pardons. Yeah, they paid him off. They bought some crypto.

[B]

Binance, you know.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So this, do you see the story about binance routing like 1.4 billion to Iran? Yeah, absolutely incredible. Anyway, so Alhol detention camp, it has been in place since like 2016. It's been housing ISIS militants, ISIS supporters, the family members of ISIS supporters, but then also thousands of just totally innocent people who happened to live in the region who were trying to escape ISIS and got swept up during these operations. So at one point, this camp held over 70,000 people. The conditions were horrific. And it also seemed like there was just no plan for what to do with a lot of people in the camp because A lot of them were from, you know, Europe and other places and countries that absolutely did not want to take them back because they were radicalized ISIS people. It was a policy and humanitarian disaster. This all changed in January. The new Syrian government launched an offensive against the Kurdish led and US backed forces that have been guarding the camp. That led to this chaos, the mass escape. And as of this past Sunday, the Alhal camp has been fully evacuated and shut down. So the good news is that just before that happened, the US moved about 6,000 prisoners from Alhol to other prisons in Iraq. But they're almost, they're almost certainly hundreds, if not thousands of dangerous, radicalized isis, you know, members or fans just kind of hanging out in parts of Syria. So that is wonderful news. The Alshara's government blames the Kurdish forces for this mess. But Ben, I mean, given that the Trump administration just completely pulled the rug out from under these Kurdish forces, the SDF who are guarding this camp, like, I would argue they are directly responsible for anything these ISIS guys do.

[B]

That's the only thing I'll say about this, is that this is not something that happened and Trump didn't stop it. This is something that Trump contributed directly to the outcome because he decided to stop protecting the Kurds in these internal negotiations with Al Shara and the Syrian government. He got behind the Syrian government when they launched these offensives into Kurdish territory. Of course, this is the outcome of that. The Kurds need to protect themselves. They're knocked back. And so he doesn't think through the second and third order consequences of these decisions he makes. He's like, I like Alshara. What'd he say? He was. I don't know. He said all kinds of weird things about him. He called him hot or something.

[A]

Yeah, great. Like sweet ass or something.

[B]

I mean, yeah, pretty much. How many whys do you have? Remember that one? But he likes the guy. And look, but you don't need to greenlight an offensive against the Kurds. Just maintain the status quo. Just maintain the status quo. Play for time. Like, keep negotiating the rush to kind of get behind this guy. Now we've got got 15,000 ISIS guys wandering around.

[A]

Not good. Not good. Okay, last story. So we're going to talk in the interview of me and Ricardo about this cartel violence over the weekend that engulfed parts of Mexico and has all these American tourists still trapped and sheltering in place in Mexico. But one person who was not helping rescue them is FBI Director Kash Patel, who instead had taken the FBI Gulfstream G550 over to Milan to fuck around and chug beer at the Olympics. Here's a clip of our buddy Cash. So that's Cash pretending he is a member of the gold what Medal winning men's hockey team. Shout out. Those guys. They're total badasses.

[B]

Are they though?

[A]

They're.

[B]

I'm gonna be that guy. That.

[C]

That's. That.

[B]

That's that dumb song about the Statue of Liberty shaking its fist.

[A]

I don't know that song. I don't give a. But the team. You don't like. The team's great.

[B]

Hey, Canadian listeners, I see you.

[A]

Oh, shut the up. Get out of here with that. What country are you from?

[B]

No, I root for our guys, but I don't need to like, all of them. I mean, I mean, do you know

[A]

any of their names?

[B]

Parting with Cash Patel, Dude.

[A]

Okay, this is the bullshit I'm seeing online that I want to push back on. They don't want this fucking loser in their locker room. This. I know.

[B]

They look pretty happy to have him there.

[A]

They're happy because they won the gold medal.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

They're getting shit faced after.

[B]

I know I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this. I'm just.

[A]

No, I'm triggered, you know? Right. Look, these guys. Look, these guys are getting ripped on now because Cash came into their locker room and they did this call with Trump and Trump made this like, sex is coming and be like, oh, now I have to invite the women too. Even though everyone's like, well, the women are better. They win more often. All of that is true. And also, like, Trump is flying them back to go to the state of the union. These are athletes representing the United States.

[B]

I'll defend our boys. As Cash would say now, unbelievable. Because I actually, I don't care what their. Like, I would like to get back to a time I'm sure there's some people I agree with politically on that team and some people I don't. You're right, it is Cass fucking Patel who's politicizing this. Like, and Donald Trump with his, like, misogyny. Like, like, let them listen to whatever fucking music they want and party. Cash Patel. I mean, the thing about this is it's not just like, this isn't just a situation where, like, a serious guy who's a serious FBI director, like, had a slip up. Like, this is the entirety of his tenure as FBI director is doing shit like this.

[A]

Just raging.

[B]

It's literally just fantasy camp. You know, whether it's like walking around in some jacket that's too big for him. That says FBI in the back. Whether it's like, tweeting arrests that aren't the right arrests, like, whether it's like flying to see his girlfriend on a Gulf Stream jet. Like, this is the only thing that he does. And now I, I was psyched. You know, I'm glad we won the gold medal. And, and I've got to have this guy, like, go in the locker room and make it about himself.

[A]

That's the thing.

[B]

What did he do to win the gold medal?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Like, what?

[A]

He's a hockey vet.

[D]

He.

[A]

Look, he, he absolutely should not have gone over look for the, the first look. There's a lot of things to criticize. One, the cost of them, like flying a private jet over there, Right? But, like, that is far less than the cost of having a clown as an FBI director who's not doing the right thing. I don't know if you saw this, Ben. Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin today said a whistleblower came to him and said that after Charlie Kirk's murder, the FBI was asked to fly to Utah to aid the investigation. But, like, the deployment of the specialized team was delayed because the. There was not an FBI plane or pilot available because of cash's repeated personal flights. And that, that also happened after the Brown University game, right? Which, like, that colors the fact that this guy, like, pretended he had some, like, official business, flew over to Milan so he could, you know, watch this game and party with those guys.

[B]

I will say I've been on a delegation to an Olympic Games now before, people are like, oh, look, I'm not the FBI director, you know, like, like,

[A]

like, I, I feel like this. There's no comparison. There's an official delegation every year.

[B]

Yeah, I went on the official delegation. Like Michelle Kwan was on the delegation. Pour one out for one of our great figure skaters. But the point I was going to make is I went for like a day and a half. We got there, we went to a couple events and went to the closing ceremonies. At the closing ceremonies and at the events, I sat in the fucking stands, like, way up, and I didn't go in the locker room. I mean, like, this is an important point. Like, it's bad enough that he went. That's the original sin here. When he doesn't need to go. He's not in the delegation. He's not like an elected representative. He's not like, even in the White House, which is kind of a political function. What's he doing in the fucking locker room?

[A]

He's a loser.

[B]

Like, how does he. Because you know, he had to ask. I don't think they were like, where's cash, man? Is this not the gold medal if we don't have cash?

[A]

He says he's a genuine hockey fan, so he may be his friends of the player or something.

[B]

I'm a genuine basketball fan. I know I went to the women's basketball final. I didn't, like, I'm not saying this

[A]

is why he should go, but you're seeing all these people on the Internet being like, like, why would you let him in there and party? You're a 23 year old. You're gonna kick the FBI director out of your locker room.

[B]

Get out of here with that.

[A]

I'm like, that's what I'm saying.

[B]

I mean, he's leveraging this position for just all this.

[A]

He's the worst. He went, he took the FBI jet to the a place literally called the Boondoggle Ranch. He took the FBI jet to Scotland to golf. He took it to Penn State to watch his dumb girlfriend sing the national anthem. And now that girl is suing a bunch of right wing influencers.

[B]

He made up this bullshit story that he was going for important security consultations in Milan. Coincidence of the games. We also know that when he went to London for actual security consultations, all he wanted to do was go to like a Premier league game.

[A]

Yeah, he wanted to go play soccer. So didn't he want to go on a helicopter ride, jet skiing or something like that?

[B]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I don't like him.

[B]

No. But we're going to stay on it.

[C]

How dare you?

[B]

For your sake.

[A]

How dare you pander to Canada on this show? Unbelievable. They don't need your pity.

[B]

If you.

[A]

They've been good at hockey for a long time.

[B]

If you're just listening and you didn't see the video, the video is like paying a gold medal around cash and there's a bunch of guys doing the, like the. Is it like Toby Keith, like, not shake statue? Anyway, I'm sorry, I, I love our guys. I root for America. But that was not one of our finest moments. Cash Patel in the locker room.

[A]

Cash Patel. Sir, I think Trump knows about this and I think he's mad. That is my guess because he does not. Trump doesn't drink. He doesn't want to see his FBI director, like, chugging a beer. Like, he actually doesn't think that's cool. He think, like, a lot of people are like, oh, he's growing out. It's amazing. Loves America. No, I actually think.

[B]

I don't think people want their FBI director to do that.

[A]

Donald Trump wants you in a tie, right? Like on the weekends. Like he is a serious, he's a joke. But he is like a person who cares about optics and how you look. He doesn't want to see that. A dumpy loser in a jersey. Adult men should not be like him. Should not be wearing a jersey at an official event like that.

[B]

I just think the whole FBI has gone downhill since Bongino left. Bongino never would have done that.

[A]

It's never would happen.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It never would happen under the bunch of.

[A]

It never would happen under Dan. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We come back. I will talk with Carlos Zuniga about this shocking cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend, the death of cartel leader El Mencho. We're also going to talk about Cuba. So stick around for that that. Positive the World is brought to you by Select Quote. Time for some life talk. Life insurance talk that is. You probably have it. But do you know how much you're paying for it and how much you are being covered? Odds are you pay too much for too little. And did you know if you receive life insurance through your job and you're unexpectedly laid off, you could suddenly be covered for nothing? Scary to think about that, but simple to get it right. Thanks to select quote For over 40 years, Selectquote has been one of the most trusted brokers in insurance, helping More than 2 million Americans secure over $700 billion in coverage. Their mission is simple, to find the right insurance policy for your unique needs. They shop, you save. Unlike other one size fits all life insurance companies, SelectQuote's licensed agents work for you in as little as 15 minutes. They'll compare policies from top rated carriers to find you the best fit for your health and your budget. And they work for you for free. No medical exam. No problem. They partner with providers offering same day coverage up to $2 million without needing to visit your doctor. You have high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease. Selectquote partners with policies designed for many pre existing health conditions so you get the protection you deserve, get the right life insurance for you for less and Save more than [e-mail] World Save more than 50% on term life [e-mail] World Go today to get started SelectQuote.com World the holidays are all about connection. Good food, good friends and those cozy moments this season. Skip boring mocktails and celebrate with rk, the world's first Zero proof spirits. All the taste and warmth of your favorite holiday pours with zero alcohol, zero guilt and the patented warm molecule for that festive kick. Perfect for toasting, hosting or gifting. Celebrate free freely with RK0 proof. Visit rkbeverages.com New year, new vibe.

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[C]

Thanks very much.

[A]

I wish we talked about better things. Usually it's about something awful happening in the world. Today is no exception because I bet a lot of listeners had the same experience I did this past weekend. I woke up to see these images coming out of Mexico where you had just residential areas looking like a war zone, burning cars, burning stores, images of people running for cover in airports and hotels. There's all these stories of American tourists still trapped in Mexico, let alone Mexican citizens who are just sheltering in place. It was terrifying and I'm hoping you can help us understand what happened. So let's start with the sort of proximate incident that set this all off was the killing of a cartel leader named El Mencho. Can you tell us who this guy was and how he was taken out and how big a deal that that is?

[C]

So he was the head of the cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion CJ ng and it was a split from the Sinaloa cartel, which a lot of your listeners probably have heard of, is one of the largest cartels. And look, when people think about a cartel and a drug cartel in Latin America, they think about Pavil esque or like the movies, right? What we saw in Narcos Mexico or something like that. And that has changed quite a bit. These are much more sort of fragmented organizations. They have a lot of different, like verticals that operate. They operate like a corporation and they are multinational. This one was as well, operated a massive empire that reached down into south, deep into South America and competed with Sinaloa and other criminal organizations for control of ports as far away as Ecuador. And they had global relationships. This guy was for all the kind of the image of this guy as sort of somebody who hides in the shadows. He had a sprawling network and he was very powerful. These organizations, by the way, earn typically the GDP of a small country per year. These are not small, these are in the billions. Multi billion dollar organizations.

[A]

And I've read a couple things on mention. I mean, it seems like there's not a lot of bio out there about him, or at least not credible. I mean, I've heard he was a former police officer. Is that accurate? And also there's a lot of reporting that suggests that he was violent and cruel and guilty of atrocities that were shocking even by cartel standards. Is that accurate too?

[C]

Yeah, like nueva generation, the new generation had a. Their approach was. I mean, basically their. Their business model was to be more violent than any other organization, to terrorize their competitors and to get immediate acquiescence by local authorities and civilians alike. And so. Absolutely. And they wanted that broadcast. They wanted that to be their brand. That's their model. And it was effective because certainly if he or his organization was involved, he would get cooperation because the alternative was pretty bad. They were also quite showy about trying to put together these armored vehicles with their emblems on them and uniformed people. And they have an armed wing, as if the whole thing weren't sort of an armed organization. But there was a big show around the use of violence. The spectacle of violence was important to him.

[A]

So often when a senior cartel leader is killed or arrested, there is violence like this. Is that because other cartels are. The cartels are trying to send a message to the law enforcement saying, like, you know, you can do this, but it's gonna. We're gonna exact a cost. Is it fighting for control in a power vacuum? Some combination of both. Like, what are you seeing?

[C]

Yeah, so we, you know, what happened in Mexico over the weekend is what was expected to happen. They had threatened a, you know, large scale violence. If there was any action taken against the leadership of the organization, they carried it out. Most of what they did, there was a lot of visibility, it was very dramatic. And they did kill at least 25 police officials in Mexico as part of the retaliation. There were quite a few deaths, mostly lower level police that were in more vulnerable locations. And there was a spasm day one, a little bit of violence subsequently, and it should kind of end with that. Or there might be other Scattered episodes. But for the most part, this is not like this sustained war of attrition against the state. They're making a point about their reach. And then after that they'll go back to kind of a more business as usual. There was a report this afternoon that his leader, his replacement, has already been named. A relative of his who was born in the United States, Juan Carlos Valencia.

[A]

Nice. Another American export.

[D]

Maybe.

[C]

We'll talk Orange County.

[A]

Really? Jesus Christ. Speaking of the United States, there's reports that the CIA and CIA intelligence helped track El Mencho down. He was found and killed after the Mexican Special Forces and National Guard troops followed basically a girlfriend of his to some secluded cabin. The New York Times reported that, you know, there was sort of tracking on an associate of the girlfriend who brought them to the girlfriend who got them, whatever. Do you have a sense of what kind of cooperation the CIA may or may not be doing with the Mexican authorities? For example, there's lots of reports about the CIA flying drones over Mexico during both the Biden and the Trump administration. And, you know, do you think this happened because, you know, Trump is putting all this pressure on the Mexican government to do more to stop the cartels, or is this, you know, just kind of like how these things go? Like, sometimes you have good intel, sometimes you don't.

[C]

Well, so there's a long history of the CIA being used against primarily criminal organizations because, remember, they don't just commit drug related crimes. They're involved in a whole range of organized crime activity, state threatening organized crime activity in Latin America very often. And so there's an intelligence community, there's intelligence community work that is carried out against these organizations that, for example, in Colombia overlap with guerrilla organizations as well, political criminal groups as well. And what there is now is and has been extensive cooperation between law enforcement now US Armed forces at a much higher scale than what has been true in the past through Northern Command and a new JIATF Joint Interagency Task Force that's been put together to focus on cartels in Mexico. And certainly the intelligence community is a part of that, providing analysis, providing information that your partner on the ground, in this case the Mexican armed forces, Mexican police, wouldn't necessarily have available. It's additive because a lot of the human intelligence comes from local law enforcement. And that's probably the case here. Mexican law enforcement is much better placed than any US Intelligence to gather human intelligence on the ground. On the other hand, Mexican organizations are also under a greater level of threat than US Security officials are. And so for them, it's convenient for the United States to conduct some of the surveillance.

[A]

Got it. I think a lot of people who worked in Latin American policy, certainly Ben and I on this show, have kind of expected Donald Trump to bomb or have the CIA drone strike, some sort of cartel site, maybe a fentanyl production site in Mexico's territory. That hasn't happened yet. We, in fact, we saw a regime change operation in Venezuela before we saw that happen. We might see another regime change operation by the time people are listening to this. So stay tuned. It's always exciting here in the Trump 2.0 foreign policy, but do you think this operation increases lessons? Doesn't change the odds of that happening. Direct action by the US In Mexico.

[C]

You know, that's a. That's a good question. Clearly, President Sheinbaum is doing everything she can to prevent a US Direct attack on Mexican territory. I agree. Right from the very beginning, Mexico watchers, I have completely aligned with the view from before this administration took office that they really wanted to carry out an armed strike in Mexican territory. I'm not sure it was so much this incident where the Sheinbaum government showed, oh, no, we're taking action. If you'll give us the tools or the information will carry out the action so you don't have to be here. That's very much where she wants to be because also there's a good chunk of the population that wants her to take this kind of action against organized crime in Mexico. There's a belief that her predecessor did not do enough and kind of left her in a very bad situation. On the other hand, I think that maybe they got the thrill they wanted from shooting small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. And that was enough to prove the point that they could kill at will and bring military force into what had traditionally been law enforcement. So I think there might be a little. I think there might be less pressure to kind of carry out these attacks in Mexico. On the other hand, I think that the president really wants to.

[A]

Watching what happened over the weekend made me wonder. Clearly there was this cartel response to government authorities in Mexico because of this action. Do you think we might see a similar kind of response against US Interests or Americans if the US Were to take direct action in Mexico?

[C]

Possibly. But the common wisdom, and actually what we've seen documented, is that cartels tend to avoid action against U.S. interests to the extent they can to avoid bringing the US More directly into. Against them. So they see. But look, if their backs are against the wall and they don't see any other Way out. You know, potentially they would do that to try to reduce us will. But the chances of that backfiring. These are sophisticated people. They're not, you know, they're not some sort of backwoods neophytes. They've been doing this for generations in some cases, and they will do all they can to avoid having a direct conflict with US Forces.

[A]

Probably wise. We reached out to Will Grant, a great reporter from BBC News who's been on the ground kind of covering the aftermath. Here is what he had to say about the situation as of midday Tuesday, Pacific time. A semblance of normality is beginning to return to some parts of Jalisco. I've been to two of them. The state capital, Guadalajara, where the evidence of what had taken place was clear from the moment one leaves the airport. There were still burnt out cars on the road, a massive police, law enforcement and military presence on the streets with patrols circulating around the city. There was a real sense of unease too, as people didn't return to work on the first day. They remained indoors, stayed with their families. Few workers went to their places of employment. There was a lot of businesses were shuttered, schools were closed, and a general sense of unease and uncertainty on the streets. People are stoic in Mexico in general in front of these moments, but it wasn't comfortable. There was no nightlife with people obviously fearful of a, a second flare up of violence. So, you know, Ricardo, you can hear there, like how much this impacted everyone in the region, not just people who are directly harmed or police. Given that impact. I mean, are these kinds of operations popular with the Mexican people? Do they want to see their government going after cartel bosses?

[C]

Well, they definitely want to see much more accountability for criminals in Mexico. There's a sense that her predecessor, who was a very popular president, he was not popular in terms of the security practices of his government, which were, to concede a lot of space, frankly, to organize crime, which under Sheinbaum has been reversed. And that part is popular. Making criminals sort of pay a price or be held to account is popular because the level of insecurity in Mexico is quite high. People still disappear in large numbers in some parts of Mexico. It's still quite dangerous for ordinary people. On the other hand, this is going to remind people of the worst parts of when Felipe Calderon, a prior president, basically declared war on the cartels and they declared war on the population. And you saw massive violence that really began a period of large scale disappearances, fragmentation, a lot of infighting that led to a lot of civilian deaths as well, so I think that they are fearful of the consequence, but I think in general, the idea of being more aggressive against organized crime is popular.

[A]

So as you said earlier, there are members of these cartels who've been doing this job for generations. The drug war, such as it is, has been going on for a very long time. As far as I can tell, we have not won it yet. I imagine things are only getting more complicated as you bring in synthetic drugs like fentanyl, because at least with cocaine, at least there was a complicated supply chain that you could find ways to disrupt. If we're just talking about, like shipping in a bunch of chemicals from China and then mixing them someplace and then getting them to the U.S. maybe that is just as complicated. I don't know. But in your opinion, like, what policies have worked and what has been effective and how is this threat evolving?

[C]

Wow. What has been effective? Very little. The reality is that what has been effective is, to an extent, demand reduction in the United States sometimes works. Look, you're exactly right about the problem with fentanyl is that it is easy, relatively easy to synthesize in Mexico once the precursors, or even the precursors to the precursors have made their way through the very normal industrial supply chain. I was talking to a banking official in Central America who said, these organizations know exactly what they're doing. They'll order maybe 3 or 4% more supply to legitimate industrial sites and then siphon off those supplies to kind of. To create what. To develop what they need. They know what they're doing. And I think that that is. That's one of the great challenges. You know, what does work is going after them like enterprises. The kingpin strategy is criticized as kind of showy. And you remember all those years where the number two and number three of Al Qaeda kept on getting killed and

[A]

replaced the week later, over and over and over again. Number three. Number three.

[C]

Yeah, that's right. And today I saw the number two of the Nueva Henderacion was killed today. And I thought, yeah, okay, here we go. But the reality is that when strategies like going after. I'm not kidding, their HR departments, the recruiters, that works. Going after their money works better than anything else. So complicating the business side of the business, where we have some skill, and not just us like other regulators, other governments have skills at doing that kind of work, that does work. It's boring. It's not as exciting as putting. Launching a rocket and blowing up a drug site. But the truth is the they're in this for business. And I'd say, actually, one of the real risks is let's say that I don't think that they will manage to significantly reduce the supply of drugs moving into the United States. But if they do, the businesses will turn to other markets. And just as they're doing, frankly, Asia and Europe are booming for the cocaine trap, and we're awash in more cocaine than we've ever seen. We're at historically high levels of cocaine production that's not coming to the US or at least not in vast quantities. It's mostly going to Europe and Asia. And if that doesn't work for them, they'll turn to other crimes. I mean, they're a business, and they will adjust. And that means that we have to be ready for that kind of adjustment. Maybe they turned more to fraud or. I mean, crypto has been a godsend for organized crime. Crypto has made it so much cheaper for them to handle the cash into the business, so much easier for them to integrate their. And to launder their cash. That has also changed the equation significantly.

[A]

Another wonderful use case for crypto. It's helping cartels. Iran. There's a report today, I think Binance got like a billion, $1.4 billion via Binance to Iran and then the Trump family. To your point on Al Qaeda, I always did wonder why. Why someone at the lower level of the organization didn't just sort of pitch a flatter org chart. You know, what if we just don't rank each other?

[C]

That's right. Oh, promotion. No, that's okay.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

This is an egalitarian organization.

[C]

I'm happy where I am.

[A]

Yeah, just. Just. No. No new business cards. Finally, since I have you, I'd love to get your take on the situation in Cuba, because you and Ben Rhodes led the effort to normalize relations with Cuba during the Obama administration. So since the. The raid to capture President Maduro in Venezuela, Cuba has been essentially blockaded. It is experiencing this horrific, you know, fuel shortage, all these blackouts, this economic crisis that's getting worse by the day. I'm wondering if you could give us just sort of your sense of the humanitarian situation on the ground in Cuba and whether you think they're close to reaching a breaking point or if there. If there's any sense that, like, there's cracks that might lead to a leadership change because of this blockade.

[C]

All right, well, look, let's set aside for one second the who's at fault conversation, which is normally where we start a conversation about Cuba and let's Talk about what's actually happening to people right now. The fuel shortages have kicked in. You're seeing a lot less activity in the streets. When you talk to people who are in Havana now or have just come back from Havana, have visited, they say that people are waiting for something big to happen and the streets are calm. But there is a sense of that something momentous is kind of afoot. But the way it's being felt right now is in massive poverty. It's something like 89% of the population is in extreme poverty in Cuba now, which is historically high levels. There's much more food insecurity. I mean, there's just a lot more malnutrition, a lot more insecurity. The difference between now and when Ben and I were involved is the level of resentment is sky high. There's very little hope. Everything that has been, you know, every potential opening has been snuffed out on the government side. And then in the first Trump administration, with the help of the Trump administration. So all the tools that people had for making their lives a little bit better under these extreme conditions have been shut off one after another. Which is why 2 million people left after the COVID epidemic.

[A]

Right? Yeah. And folks should know, like the, the, you know, the fuel embargo, the fuel shortages mean more than just not being able to drive around. It's like water filtration, refrigeration, power, energy refrigeration.

[C]

Right?

[B]

Everything.

[C]

It's everything. Yeah, yeah. They will prioritize, I think, the health care and so forth. But look, these are tiny stopgap measures. So to your other question, when do we get to that magical point where the population has had enough and there's this uprising and the outbreak of democracy? Well, I guess we're going to find out because if we kind of keep going forward with this, then we potentially get to a situation where the economy is fully broken down and there's no economic activity taking place. And essentially what we have is Haiti 90 miles from the United States. And so then it just feels unprecedented.

[A]

Right. Like Marco Rubio is single handedly making, running this policy where the current policy is starve an entire island worth of people. I mean, is that unfair?

[C]

I think that that is what they're trying to do is trying to see if they can force some kind of action out of the government by bringing that entire economy to a standstill. And you can say it's for the purpose of bringing about a better Cuba. And I think a lot of Cubans are done with this government that is crystal clear. But nor do they want to be the last victims, as you see this kind of period of improvement take place. So at the same time in Munich, Rubio said, look, if the government shows signs of an opening and the economy and opens its hand a little bit, then that's a positive. We'll interpret that positively. So I don't know that there's also alignment between Rubio knowing what the President is prepared to kind of dedicate to this effort. It's not the same as Venezuela. There's no oil. Right. So what's President Trump's interest in this? That's an open question. Ultimately, what it comes down to is, is there leadership that's adept enough to manage this on the Cuban side, and will it be interpreted the right way on the US Side? That will they take yes for an answer when yes shows up, up. And that's. That's a. That's an open question. And in the meantime, you're going to have all the consequences of that being felt and borne by the population in Cuba.

[A]

Yeah, it seems just absolutely unsustainable and awful and just, you know, obviously none of us like the Cuban government. But, boy, what the impact on the Cuban people, the kids, innocent families, is just. It's unimaginable right now.

[C]

Yeah, look, I mean, and I think that's the, that's the real issue. And a lot of that is overlooked. I mean, I think people are. There's not enough sort of understanding of what that actually means for, like, ordinary people who in theory, are the ones we're trying to help.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Well, Ricardo, thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it. It's great to check in with you and talk to you again soon.

[C]

All right, talk soon.

[A]

Thanks again, Ricardo, for coming on the show. And we will hopefully make it through the State of the Union. Man. Two and a half hours.

[B]

I'm not going to watch all of that. That if it's half hours. The Tucker Huckabee interview, maybe, but watch that twice.

[A]

All right, talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Kanter. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team. Ben Hethcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt De Gro is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of dues and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at Crook and Media on Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and much more. And if you're opinionated like us, leave a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America East.

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If you guys like Positive America, please consider subscribing to our Friends of the Pod program. So Friends of the POD get lots of stuff. You get more Pod Save America. That includes our new show which is called Pod Save America. Only friends, it's where Dan gets naked. Where Dan gets it's full frontal nudity. But mostly it's a bi weekly subscription exclusive podcast that is basically Pod Save America but behind a paywall, so it's a little bit looser and more fun and it's love it. And Favreau and me and Pfeiffer and then other crooked hosts. We go deeper on the news and cover more stories. You also get Open Tabs, which is a weekly behind the scenes newsletter from the show. Plus you get ad free episodes of your favorite Crooked podcasts and all kinds of other stuff. Dan will come to your house and clean it once every quarter. Yeah, clothed. Dan is very busy. Clothed only. But along with just getting great content. Becoming a Friend of the Pod Joining our subscription community is the number one thing you can do to help us grow to help independent progressive media. So if you're ever thought about doing it, if you ever wanted more pod save America, consider going to crooked.com friends and becoming a friend of the Pod. Support is available 247 with VRBoCare. We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help because a great trip starts with the right support.