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Pod Save the World
A Trauma Surgeon's Story From Gaza
01:44:53
Tommy and Ben discuss President Trump’s policy changes on Syria and his man-crush on its president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, what lifting sanctions on Syria could (and should) look like, more details on how Qatar’s plane bribe came together, and Tulsi Gabbard’s shocking politicization of the intelligence community. They also talk about the continuing crackdown on journalists and human rights activists by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, the dire–and indefensible–humanitarian situation in Gaza, the lack of any meaningful progress in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and elections in Portugal, Romania and Poland. Then, Ben speaks with Dr. Feroze Sidwha, a trauma surgeon who has volunteered twice in Gaza, about his experience treating patients in Khan Younis. Finally, Ben and Tommy are forced to endure some selections from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
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- [00:00]
Tommy Vitor
Pod Day of the World is brought to you by Quint. You know when a new shirt becomes your go to? That's what will happen. When you pick up a few new pieces from Quint. They'll be the first things you reach for in your closet. Lightweight, comfortable, and always on point, Quint is all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. The best part, everything with Quint is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quint gives you luxury pieces without crazy markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. I wore some Quint stuff this morning. I have a bunch of workout shirts. I bought like five of the same one. They were very cheap. They last forever. They look great, they're comfortable, and I literally use them today. It's like they might become my go to place for the essential items that you need and you want quickly and you want at a good price. Elevate your closet with quints. Go to quint.comworld for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C E.comWorld to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.comWorld welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitorino.
- [01:24]
Ben Rhodes
I'm Ben Rhodes.
- [01:25]
Tommy Vitor
Ben, I'm feeling emotional today. There's some reports out that Bill Belichick, my former head coach, might be engaged to his much, much, much, much younger girlfriend.
- [01:36]
Ben Rhodes
Is this your redirection from talking about the absolute dismantling the Celtics that the Knicks did on.
- [01:41]
Tommy Vitor
You saw right through it.
- [01:42]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Yeah.
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Tommy Vitor
Yep, you did.
- [01:43]
Ben Rhodes
Congratulations to Bill Belichick. I don't that. That the age difference notwithstanding.
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Tommy Vitor
Yeah, you probably shouldn't 3x or 4x your significant other. Everyone should read about the Bill Belichick Jordan Hudson saga. It's quite.
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Ben Rhodes
I think she's younger than Jalen Brunson. Just to connect this to the Knicks in some way that I can.
- [02:03]
Tommy Vitor
How you feeling? When's the next game?
- [02:04]
Ben Rhodes
It's tomorrow night.
- [02:06]
Tommy Vitor
Wednesday night.
- [02:06]
Ben Rhodes
It's the night that this podcast airs. The Knicks will be winning game one against the Pacers.
- [02:10]
Tommy Vitor
Is it in New York or in Indiana?
- [02:11]
Ben Rhodes
It's in New York. We are somehow hosting the Eastern Conference finals. And I'm reliving my teenage years when we played the Pacers like, you know, four times in the conference final.
- [02:21]
Tommy Vitor
Should we do a GoFundMe to fly you out to a game?
- [02:24]
Ben Rhodes
I don't think that the collective listenership, as large as it is, could pay for ticket at Mass Square. I saw that, like a bad seat for game one of the NBA finals is over $2,000 already. It's crazy.
- [02:36]
Tommy Vitor
Two grand. I guess there's a lot of rich people in New York.
- [02:39]
Ben Rhodes
Bill Belichick, though, he could afford it if he's listening. Congratulations, Bill.
- [02:44]
Tommy Vitor
He listens every week.
- [02:45]
Ben Rhodes
And, you know, you could, you could pick up a ticket.
- [02:47]
Tommy Vitor
Mazel tov, Bill. To new beginnings. We have a great show today. We're going to close the loop for you on Trump's corruption tour in the Middle east and his major Syria policy changes. We're also going to fill you in on the latest background we've Learned about the Qatar's 747 sized bribe of the administration. Lots of interesting information there. Then we will talk about the shocking politicization of intelligence by Tulsi Gabbard, a wave of oppression in El Salvador. The latest just ungodly awful news out of Gaza and why parts of Europe, countries in Europe are condemning the Israeli government's latest actions. We'll talk about Trump seeming to give up on brokering peace in Ukraine and some big elections in Portugal, Romania and Poland. And then we've promised that we'll talk about Eurovision. So we shall do that. And then, Ben, you just did our interview today. What are folks going to hear?
- [03:38]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I talked to Firoz Sidwa, who is a trauma surgeon who has done two stints in Gaza. So this is like a really important conversation that I think everybody needs to hear about what it's like to be, you know, in the middle of it in Gaza. And we hear some really harrowing stories. We hear details that we never get to see about what it's actually like in Gaza. We talk about the likely undercount of the death count. We talk about the fact that, I mean, just to give you a taste of the interview, Firoz said his entire time there, he maybe saw one combatant on the Hamas side. It was mainly children that he was treating. We hear about some children, we get to know something about some of those children. So I really hope people stick around for this because it was one of the hardest but most, I don't know, necessary conversations I've had in a long time.
- [04:40]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't in the interview, but I spent five minutes or so talking to him beforehand, just chatting. And it's really valuable to hear someone's firsthand experience like that. Like, we see it on the Internet all day long. You see the videos, you see, read the stories. Sometimes they're so awful that there's like a part of your brain that wants to disbelieve it, you know what I mean? Because the horror is so real. But to have someone be like, I was a surgeon in a hospital and the following things happen to me. I don't know, it's just. It hits in a different way.
- [05:13]
Ben Rhodes
Well, yeah, I mean, one of the things we talk about is that, you know, what he saw, what he experienced, the people he interacted with, the nature of the injuries he treated, all point to why people are not allowed to see what's happening in Gaza, why we don't have press on the ground in Gaza a year and a half into this. So that makes it even more important to hear stories like his, because it's the only firsthand testimony that, you know, we can, we can get absent, yes, obviously, some heroic reporting from Palestinians that we see on social media. And that's immensely valuable, that kind of witness. This is from inside a hospital, though, so I think it's a unique perspective.
- [05:55]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, absolutely. All right, Ben. Well, we're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about some political developments in Gaza. But let's start just by closing the loop on this Middle Eastern corruption bonanza from our President, Donald Trump. So the big news that we talked about last week was Trump promising to lift the crippling sanctions on Syria that were left over from the Assad regime. Actually, I think the first sanctions by the US on Syria were from, like the 1970s. So there's decades of sanctions on this country. Trump met with Syria's interim president Ahmed El Shara in Saudi Arabia last Wednesday. The Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman joined them, as did Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan via telephone. Here's a clip of Trump on Fox News talking about his meeting with Al Shara. I said, let's give him a chance. I met the leader, I met the new leader and handsome guy, by the way, young, handsome. And I said, you know, you have quite a past, got a tough pass.
- [06:50]
Ben Rhodes
But when you think about it, are.
- [06:52]
Tommy Vitor
You going to put a choir boy in that position? I don't think so. You know, it's going to be a little bit tough. It's a tough fight.
- [06:59]
Ben Rhodes
So you're willing to give him a shot.
- [07:00]
Tommy Vitor
You know, the way they say it's A nasty neighborhood.
- [07:02]
Firoz Sidwa
It's a rough neighborhood.
- [07:03]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. And I thought he was really.
- [07:06]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I thought he was terrific. Tough pass is one way to describe being a senior Al Qaeda leader. Ben, this is not the most important thing we'll discuss, but I just would like you to imagine for a minute Bret Baier's face if he was interviewing Barack Obama. And Obama was like, yo, that al Qaeda guy can fucking get it.
- [07:23]
Ben Rhodes
Handsome guy, really good looking guy.
- [07:25]
Tommy Vitor
What do we do? Why does he have to gild the lily about like the, it's just so weird.
- [07:30]
Ben Rhodes
It's like he's on a casting call for everything.
- [07:34]
Tommy Vitor
So after the meeting, Trump spoke to the press on Air Force One. He claimed that Alshara agreed to join the Abraham Accords but said they first have to get themselves straightened up. We'll see. The big question though for the the Syrian people are all about sanctions relief. What does it mean in practice? When will it happen? Secretary OF Suck, Marco Rubio I don't know. I don't know if that one works. He met with Syria's foreign minister last week. Afterwards he talked about sanctions. Here's a clip from Mr. Rubio.
- [08:01]
Ben Rhodes
The core of these sanctions are statutory under the CAESAR Act. I've had members of Congress, Congress in both parties ask us to use the waivers authorities in that law. But and that's what the president intends to do. Those waivers have to be renewed every 180 days. Ultimately, if we make enough progress, we'd like to see the law repealed because you're going to struggle to find people to invest in a country when any in six months sanctions could come back. We're not there yet. That's premature. I think we want to start with the initial waiver which will allow foreign partners who wanted to flow in aid to begin to do so without running the risk of sanctions. I think as we make progress, hopefully we'll be in a position soon or one day to go to Congress and ask them to permanently remove the sanctions.
- [08:45]
Tommy Vitor
The look on your face is preempting my question. So Rubio there is mentioning the CAESAR act sanctions as were passed by Congress in 2019. Chris Murphy actually mentioned this to me last week as being a hurdle. So Rubio there, he's sort of talking about a phased approach to lifting sanctions that will first allow foreign governments to get aid into Syria that will probably not lead to an immediate private sector investments. You've also heard Qatar and Saudi Arabia say that they'll pay off Syria's debt to the World bank which will allow the World bank to re engage with Syria. So that's a good thing. Saw the Syrian government also just signed an $800 million deal with an Emirati based logistics company to develop their port. So hopefully that will help with some imports and exports. But Ben, I guess my question for you is, do you think this goes far enough? Is it unrealistic to think businesses would kind of rush into Syria and start investing anyway and therefore this makes sense, or what do you think?
- [09:39]
Ben Rhodes
First thing is, looks notwithstanding, if you think about Ahmed Al Shara like seven months ago or somewhere in that neighborhood, he was on a truck coming south from Idlib. Think of the journey this guy's been on to go from there. I mean, not since, I don't know the last time a revolutionary had this level of success in this short amount of time. So he's doing something right. But in terms of the sanctions, so people understand how this works when you have legislative sanctions, Congress passed sanctions. What they often do is they require a sanction, but they give the president a waiver. So the president can essentially say, well, this law is on the books, but I'm waiving this law for 180 days and that means I won't sanction anything that kind of flows in during this period of time. I think that is sufficient to get in a lot of immediate needs. And you've had Qatar and other countries, probably Gulf countries like Saudi, willing to kind of put in some money to pay salaries, to start to rebuild things, to just kind of get the place up and running. I think the waiver is certainly sufficient for that to happen. The question though is the kind of investment a business makes requires kind of planning out a few years, right? Yeah, years. And a business is probably not going to invest if there's the uncertainty that sanctions carry. I went through this with Iran to some extent with Cuba. And as long as the sanctions are still on the books, anything that's kind of a multi year investment is probably chilled. And so it's a positive step. And again, it'll allow for the kinds of things that will make life better right away and let the Syrian state kind of get up off the ground. I would like to see them within the next 180 days try to lift the sanctions. So why not just do the waiver and use that period to do the work on the Hill? Because I don't really know. You know, Rubio didn't like say what he's looking for.
- [11:35]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, there's a clear list.
- [11:36]
Ben Rhodes
So I just think if these guys continue to say and do the right Things or enough of the right things. And again, perfect can't be the standard here. It's not gonna be perfect. No government's perfect. Ours is certainly not perfect. But I'd like to see them just get this off the books. Look, the Caesar act was passed again because Caesar was a photographer who captured horrific human rights violations in Syrian prisons. Like, those prisons are closed. Those people are out of prison. Like, the basis for those sanctions is gone. This is a good start. But then let's lift the sanctions and hope that Democrats, because Republicans, not the Democrats, listen to us necessarily, but more likely than Republicans, I hope Democrats choose to vote for the right thing here in lifting these sanctions.
- [12:14]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think it's clearly the right thing to do. This is the first meeting between a US president and a Syrian leader in 25 years. Remarkable, chilling. But to your point, I mean, 90% of Syrians are currently living in poverty. According to the UN there's desperate immediate need, hopefully that will start to address some of it. It's also worth noting that Syria is experiencing a ton of violence right now. There was a car bomb that exploded near a police station in eastern Syria over the weekend that killed three people. The day before, Syrian forces raided an ISIS hideout in Aleppo, killing several. There's been sectarian violence in a region run by the Druze minority. There's been violence against the Alawites back in March. So there's like a lot of simmering tensions in sectarian minefields that will be, that will increase, right? That tension will increase. If there's just no economic opportunity and people are starving.
- [13:05]
Ben Rhodes
If there's a smaller, you know, if there's very little resources, people are more likely to fight over those scarce resources. Right. I mean, you have to let activity start to resume. You have to kind of normalize politics. And you can't do that under sanctions.
- [13:19]
Tommy Vitor
That's right. So Ben, as you know, me, Love and John share an office. We have Fox News on all day long. Just because it's, it's just funnier. Yeah, it's much, much meaner to Democrats. But you also just, you can't overstate the degree to which Fox is state owned media. They take like we just were watching the Golden Dome announcement. Yeah, they took it live. He said nothing. It was complete nonsense. Most days include some sort of like gauzy hour long feature about a cabinet secretary. Here's an example of a part of one from Monday that this was Fox News host Will Kane interviewing former Fox News weekend anchor turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
- [13:56]
Ben Rhodes
This Was not planned. This is embarrassing. No, I think it's beautiful.
- [14:00]
Tommy Vitor
It's friendship, Will, all the way to the Pentagon. That was them talking about how crazy it was that they wore the same tie. It's hard sitting. But, you know, you and I both had some experience with Brett Baer over the years. He's become kind of like the. The alpha of all the betas. You know, he's like the lead propagandist.
- [14:18]
Ben Rhodes
He's like that guy in Russian media that we see, like, you know. Yeah, like that talk show host who's always, like, yelling at, you know, like a panel of people.
- [14:26]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, yeah. And so, Brett, he is so dedicated to his craft of propaganda that he even followed Trump to the UAE and to Qatar, and he did softball interviews with the leaders there. That in a roundabout way will get us to the latest on the story of Qatar gifting Trump a 747. 8. So, thanks to the New York Times and CNN, we have. They did some real reporting on this. They figured out that the backstory for how this plane happened entails Steve Witkoff specifically approaching Qatar about getting Trump a new plane, and he did so at Trump's request. Apparently, Qatar also gifted the same kind of plane, the 747 8, to President Erdogan of Turkey back in 2018, which bought them a bunch of goodwill. So maybe it's like a gift bag thing. It's like Derek Jeter back in the day with his dates. Allegedly. So, Ben, here is a clip of the Qatari prime talking about this plain bribe fiasco with Bret Baier and then with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum.
- [15:24]
Ben Rhodes
I was told that you wanted to.
- [15:25]
Firoz Sidwa
Address the gift that Qatar is giving.
- [15:28]
Ben Rhodes
To the US Government, to the Defense Department of this.
- [15:31]
Firoz Sidwa
Of this jet.
- [15:32]
Tommy Vitor
Well, I see that this story is.
- [15:34]
Ben Rhodes
Making a big story in the news.
- [15:36]
Tommy Vitor
Unfortunately, I see that this story is taking a different direction and being more politicized.
- [15:43]
Ben Rhodes
While it's.
- [15:44]
Tommy Vitor
That's a normal government to government deal. What was the purpose? What is the purpose of this gift? I don't know why people, they are thinking about it, about that this is considered as a bribery or considered as something that Qatar wants to buy, an.
- [16:02]
Ben Rhodes
Influence with this administration.
- [16:05]
Tommy Vitor
Were you convinced by those rejoinders?
- [16:08]
Ben Rhodes
Well, but the other thing about that, though, if you connect the reporting, if you're a Qatar and your literal survival kind of depends on the U.S. i mean, just look at a map. Like, it's pretty vulnerable, right. And there's a US Air base there, and Steve Wyckoff comes to you and is like hey, nice plane you got there.
- [16:28]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I like your plane.
- [16:29]
Ben Rhodes
Think my boss, the President of the United States, would like your plane. The same guy that blockaded you the first time around. You'd probably be retrofitting that plane, you.
- [16:39]
Tommy Vitor
Know, coughing that sucker up in a minute. Although apparently the Qataris have been trying to sell the plane since 2018. 2020, because it's just too big, it costs too much to operate. It's, like, kind of too gaudy. And I think, according to the Times report, they initially thought that when they flew this plane to Florida for Trump to check it out that it was in the context of a sale. But Wyckoff apparently believed it would be a gift.
- [17:03]
Ben Rhodes
Ah, okay.
- [17:04]
Tommy Vitor
Interesting, right?
- [17:04]
Ben Rhodes
Plot thickens, right? Interesting stuff. Yeah. So it's like, oh, yeah, what's the price of that? Well, it's X. That's funny. We had a different price in mind. It's free.
- [17:13]
Tommy Vitor
You know, it really has a vibe of like, Joe Pesci closing the door. Be like, nazi can't leave.
- [17:18]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this whole thing is just. It's just so obvious. I mean, the grift is so massive and so in plain sight that there's really nothing you can say about it. I mean, I will say, like, the Qataris are pretty savvy people. Like, they, you know, Al Jazeera runs there. Like, I doubt that they're shocked. Shocked that this is a big story in American politics and media. You know, like, of course it is. You know, it's Air Force One. I mean, it's the most iconic, it's crazy call sign in the world. You know, it's so stupid.
- [17:49]
Tommy Vitor
There's also all this reporting that what it would cost to retrofit the plane might would, like, ultimately cost taxpayers double.
- [17:56]
Ben Rhodes
Of course it would, because, I mean, I, you know, I don't think it's revealing anything, but, I mean, just being on Air Force One all those years, like, it can do evasive maneuvers if there's some attack, it can refuel in the air. It must probably need all kinds of encryption for secure communications. There's a reason it takes Boeing a long time to build a new Air Force One. And so either they're not going to do that kind of retrofitting, in which case it won't have all the security that you would want the US President to have flying around, or it's going to end up costing roughly the same to the taxpayer anyway. So this is just like a pure ego thing. But Wyckoff, so perfect. I mean, why is The Middle east peace envoy, like negotiating gifts from Arab government.
- [18:45]
Tommy Vitor
Well, I think it's because he has a preexisting relationship with them. Yeah, they like bailed out one of his businesses back in the day. So, yeah, the whole thing feels gross. And again, we know this is, this is now an old story, but, like, it's such a staggering bit of corruption that it's, I think, important to just remember that this is still going to happen. Like, I think they're still going to give Trump this plane. He's still going to take it with him to his grave.
- [19:05]
Ben Rhodes
And they'll still, you know, these countries will plow money into Trump coin and they'll still, I mean, they'll give money to Trump kids.
- [19:13]
Tommy Vitor
You know what I saw today, Eric Trump, apparently this week is in Vietnam. They're having talks about, I think, opening maybe another Trump Tower somewhere in the capital. I think there's also, there's reports that Eric may be attending like a groundbreaking ceremony for a Trump golf course while he's in Vietnam. And by the way, this is all happening though, as the Vietnam during the government is negotiating, trying to negotiate away their 46% tariff.
- [19:39]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, that's what this is. Like, the reason Trump wants to have this dial that he can turn up and down around tariffs and all these things is that each one of these things is a massive profit opportunity. Right? So Vietnam has like a sword hanging over its head of like, what, 47% tariffs. And it's like, well, in the next 90 days you could plow, you know, a ton of money into some Trump golf course and have Eric there and tell him what a business genius he is, that you want to have the Trump people running a golf course in a hotel in Vietnam. Of course you're going to do that if you think you want relief from tariffs. So this is going to be such a massive wealth transfer to the Trump family for doing fucking nothing.
- [20:16]
Tommy Vitor
Oh, I'm sorry, there's the Vietnam just gave the Trump family the green light. A $1.5 billion golf development project, and they're talking about building a skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City. So we're double dipping here and Eric's gonna go come to town.
- [20:29]
Ben Rhodes
I wouldn't give Eric Trump 20 bucks to go across the street to get a fucking sandwich, you know? Yeah, no, if you have a 40 cent tariff hanging over your head, you give him a billion half dollars for.
- [20:39]
Tommy Vitor
A golf course, you do what you gotta do. You give him a skyscraper, you give him a 747, we move on with.
- [20:42]
Ben Rhodes
Our lives looks ridiculous.
- [20:44]
Tommy Vitor
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Firoz Sidwa
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Tommy Vitor
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Tommy Vitor
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Firoz Sidwa
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- [23:08]
Tommy Vitor
All right, we're going to switch gears a little bit, get some more serious stuff, Ben, because this is another big story that I think it's a huge deal and it's not getting covered enough. So the context is, as we've discussed, Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies act to speed up the deportation of Venezuelan migrants. The administration basically wants to set up this parallel immigration process with no due process or checks and balances to just race people out of the country. And the results, as we've all discussed, is that about 240 migrants are now rotting in hell in El Salvador. To justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump had to declare that the Venezuelan government is controlling Tundra Agua, which we'll call TDA going forward. Directing this. The Trump administration is saying the Maduro government is telling TDA to invade the United States, basically.
- [23:51]
Ben Rhodes
And, yeah, it's using them as a, as an arm to conduct war against the United States, because that's what the Alien Enemies act is about.
- [23:57]
Tommy Vitor
Now, the problem is the intelligence community looked at alleged ties between the Maduro government and TDA and determined that the Maduro government is probably not directing their movements or operations within the United States. This assessment is likely to create some major legal issues for the Trump administration's lawyers as they defend this policy in court. So you might wonder, how did Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, react when her workforce released this assessment that spoke truth to power and had a different assessment than what Trump was stating in his talking points? Well, first her chief of staff tried to pressure the analysts into changing their conclusions. They refused. So last week, Gabbard fired the head of the National Intelligence Council and his deputy and then had the nerve to say that she did so to, quote, end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community. So, Ben, the outcome from the cherry picking of intelligence that led us into the Iraq War was obviously far worse and more catastrophic and long lasting than what we're talking about here. But just in terms of the naked politicization of the intelligence community itself, I would actually argue that what Tulsi did here is worse than Dick Cheney. Just like cherry picking things, he wanted me. They literally went to these guys and said, change your assessment. And when they refused to change their intelligence assessment, they fired them.
- [25:21]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, this is a huge story on so many levels because, first of all, yes, the history of presidents going Shopping for the intelligence they want in the United States is not good. That's how you get the Vietnam War. That's how you get the Iraq War. Bad to do that. The second point is, before we even get to tda, this is going to send a message to the entire intelligence community that on whatever issue it is that you're being tasked for analysis on, if you don't provide the information that validates Donald Trump's worldview, like, you're gonna be out of the job. Right? So the message in firing these people isn't just that we want analysts to write a report on TDA that confirms what we say. It's whatever the fucking topic is. We're not here to give impartial facts. We're not here to understand what's happening in the world. We're not here to avoid mistakes by the US Government. We are here to tell Donald Trump whatever he wants to hear.
- [26:16]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, it's a head on a pike to warn future truth tellers not to do it.
- [26:20]
Ben Rhodes
Basically hang in front of the fucking intelligence community. And by the way, I see that Tulsa Gabbard is pulling the production of the PDB into the DNI's office, not at CIA. But then on the TDA issue itself, this is a huge deal because they have used, we've talked about this in other contexts, but they continually use national security. I think they studied this in the last few years and they realized that national security authorities are the most powerful shortcuts to the President having kind of emergency powers. Right. So in this case, the emergency power is we can basically deport anybody that has like a tattoo or whatever. We can just call somebody Trende Aragua, and we can deport them even if we don't have due process, even if we don't have evidence. But they're also using national security authorities to put tariffs on people going forward. If they can draw these kinds of connections, they could use those authorities to do basically anything. Far end, extreme end. We can't hold an election because it's a national emergency, or we have to invade such country because they're at war with us, or you can basically claim whatever powers you want. If you're saying we're at war with a foreign government, with this proxy fighting us.
- [27:30]
Tommy Vitor
Can I ask you a quick question? How many national emergencies do you think Trump declared in the first 100 days?
- [27:37]
Ben Rhodes
Oh, that's a good pop quiz. I'm gonna guess 58, which is still.
- [27:44]
Tommy Vitor
I think, more than any other president in this period of time in history. But they Include things like a national emergency to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court.
- [27:53]
Ben Rhodes
Well, but the reason I said 50, the reason I said 50 is actually I was thinking more outputs and inputs, right? Cuz the national emergency has been used to do far more than eight things, right? That's how they're deporting all these people, that's how they're tariffing all these countries. And then the last thing I just wanna say about this, Tommy, is that the idea that the Venezuelan government is directing TDA like some terrorist, state sponsored terrorist organization is absolutely fucking insane. There's no way that's happening. If you know anything about Venezuela, if you know anything about these gangs, the most you could find is that there are probably some corrupt dudes somewhere in the Maduro government who like are on the take from tda, right? And they do business with them, which is nothing like, you know, Iran directing Hezbollah or something. And that's what they're trying to portray as happening is just not happening. And they can't find anybody to say it's happening.
- [28:45]
Tommy Vitor
No, it's true.
- [28:46]
Ben Rhodes
But they're gonna keep looking until they find someone who'll just make shit up for them.
- [28:49]
Tommy Vitor
It's completely absurd. And as we discussed, the result is they are sending human beings to this gulag in El Salvador. And the Cato Institute did a recent review of all these men who had been sent down and they found that 50 of the guys now in Sukkot, in this prison in El Salvador came to the US legally and never violated any immigration law. So this rushed, half assed, fucked up process, it's just sending innocent people to rot.
- [29:14]
Ben Rhodes
This is what's so grotesque about the whole immigration approach you're taking too, is that most of these, you know, Venezuelans had temporary protected status in this country, Haitians had temporary protected status in the country. That means that they were here legally. So like when you say they didn't commit crimes, what you often hear back is, well, it was a crime to come here, right? Well, it wasn't because they were granted legal status. So this is really fascist stuff.
- [29:38]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, it really is. And before we move on, speaking of fascist stuff, we wanted to highlight the escalating attacks in El Salvador itself against the press and human rights organizations by Naya Bukele's government. So over the weekend, the Washington Post wrote about this trio of investigative journalists from an independent outlet called El Faro, which is Spanish for lighthouse, who joined four other colleagues who'd previously fled the country after reporting on these alleged deals between Bukele and the country's gangs. And then on Sunday, authorities arrested Ruth Lopez, a lawyer at the human rights organization Christo Saul, who has publicly accused the Bukele government of corruption. Ruth's colleague Noah Bullock, who's been on the show before, sent us a voice memo just offering some more context about this wave of repression. Here's a clip. My colleague Ruth, she's the head of.
- [30:25]
Ben Rhodes
Our anti corruption unit, and so she's led a team that's investigated over 15 cases of corruption during the Bukele regime. She's a person who's super credible in.
- [30:37]
Tommy Vitor
The country and really well loved.
- [30:39]
Ben Rhodes
She's one of the most visible and consistently critical voices. So the big takeaway from this is that the Bukele regime is no longer worried about appearances. A lot of that, I think, has to do with this being probably the worst three months of his whole two presidential administrations. His popularity has dropped from like above 80% down to like 50. When you have people expressing dissent and you lose control of the narrative, then the regime begins to act and use.
- [31:15]
Tommy Vitor
The repressive power that it has.
- [31:16]
Ben Rhodes
Like, just in the last week, there were about 20 different people who were detained illegally. Clearly political motives behind it. Three journalists who revealed or did an interview with gang members talking about their partnership with them had to flee the country. One of those 20 people who were detained has already died in custody of the state as a lack of access to medicine. On top of that, Bukele announced.
- [31:48]
Tommy Vitor
A.
- [31:49]
Ben Rhodes
Russian style foreign agents law that would put a tax on NGOs. Sunday night, with the capture of Ruth.
- [31:57]
Tommy Vitor
What'S really surprising is that in attacking.
- [32:01]
Ben Rhodes
Her, they're not going after the weakest links. She's one of the best connected, most credible voices in the country and internationally. And so they're trying to silence a powerful voice.
- [32:12]
Tommy Vitor
So that's who the US Government's in bed with. Ben, you know, Marco Rubio's flying down to hang out with Bukele, calling him.
- [32:19]
Ben Rhodes
Like, such a great friend.
- [32:20]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. Trump's welcoming into the Oval Office, like, this is the government we are now closest with in the region.
- [32:27]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. I mean, these are the people Trump likes. He's strongmen around the world. I mean, the one thing that I think is interesting, well, more than one thing in that clip, the fact that Bukele's popularity is dropping. I don't think countries like El Salvador want to be like some subsidiary of the Trump Organization. I mean, the guy is. So let's just like, let's go at the world's quote, unquote, coolest dictator this way. This guy's such a tough guy that he's basically like a bagman for Donald Trump. That's not strength. He doesn't look like a strong man, like sitting there kissing Donald Trump's ass and taking direction from Stephen Miller. I shouldn't say this because in case I end up. But I'm just. Seriously, this is just a sign of we'll get to the elections later in the thing, but Trump is not exactly a brand you want to associate with. I mean, you can do it in the Gulf because there's no opposition there, but I think it's going to. People are going to find in other parts of the world that hitching your wagon to this is not the best move.
- [33:24]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, look, there's no doubt that Bukele took some really drastic unconstitutional steps to address an acute need, which was a murder rate that was like shockingly high, I think went from 51 murders per 100,000 people in 2019 to 1.9 people per 100,000 in 2024. So you can't overstate, like, how important that increase in security and safety is for people on the ground. But the poverty rate in El Salvador went from 26.8% in 2019 to 30% in 2023. So people can't find work, they can't find food. You can't just continuedly arrest people until poverty is solved. That's just not how it works.
- [34:04]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, he'll try that, but I mean, because people want security, but then they want security to be a pathway towards a more prosperous society and more return of freedoms. Right. And so he's following the same pattern. All these people like, wow, look, this right wing, hard right wing crackdown politics is successful. Well, the first couple years it is. But then once it's like a repressive police state that is impoverished because of corruption and everything else, then all of a sudden people are like, well, actually, no, I want something different.
- [34:35]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I want different leadership. All right, Ben, we're gonna switch gears here and talk about the situation on the ground in Gaza. So you're obviously gonna hear a lot more about the humanitarian situation for ordinary people in Ben's interview. But there's some big political developments we wanted to cover too. The biggest news is that Israel's launched a massive new offensive into Gaza. On Monday, Netanyahu said that Israel is, quote, moving toward full control of Gaza. As of this recording, the New York Times says that Israel had not yet begun this long awaited military advance which would involve thousands of ground troops. But the IDF has ordered the evacuation of Gaza's second largest city, Khan Yunis, which is in line with their plan to displace people into a humanitarian zone and then begin this invasion. The international response to this ground offensive has been swift and harsh. The uk, France and Canada released a joint statement which reads in part, we strongly oppose the expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. They also said, quote, israel must halt settlements which are illegal. We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions. So really like, you know, expanding the things they're criticizing and including threats. David Lammy, friend of the POD UK Foreign Secretary, announced the suspension of trade talks between the UK and Israel. Here's a bit of his speech to Parliament where he talks about all this.
- [35:54]
Ben Rhodes
The government has always backed Israel's right to defend itself. We have condemned Hamas and its abhorrent treatment of the hostages, and we have stood with families and demanded their loved ones be released. It's morally unjustifiable. It's wholly disproportionate. It's utterly, utterly counterproductive. Whatever Israeli ministers claim, this is not the way to bring the hostages safely home.
- [36:25]
Tommy Vitor
Good for Lammy. There's been a lot of pressure from the left in the UK for the Labour Party to step up and do and say more. So good to hear him do that. So, Ben, like, we just, we talked about this war for so long that you've. You kind of run out of words for how terrible things are. Like, just to lay out a couple facts as we've, as we speak, the Israeli government has had a near total blockade of Gaza for about 11 weeks. A top UN official named Tom Fletcher said that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die in the next 48 hours if aid doesn't get in. Airstrikes have drastically ramped up in advance of this new ground offensive. There are sites like Dropsite News have done a great job of recirculating clips from Palestinian journalists of the aftermath of these airstrikes. And it's as bad as anything you've ever seen. People are being displaced for the third, fourth, 15th time. And let's just be honest, like, as Lamy said there, Ben, Israeli hostages are far more likely to die as a result of this operation and the starvation of people in Gaza than to be saved by some military campaign. So it's just, there's no military rationale for this war. There's no moral justification for it. This is Netanyahu continuing the slaughter of human beings in Gaza for political reasons so he can appease his kind of right wing base and government. And meanwhile, like frenemy Donald Trump is working on an ethnic cleansing plan that would send a million Palestinians to live in exile in Libya.
- [37:51]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, there's no military rationale for this. Right. Hamas is not like fighting. There's absolutely no threat that is being addressed by this military operation. Right. I mean this is a population that lives in a place that has been entirely destroyed. Right. Like almost every structure destroyed or damaged you've had, you know, I talk about in the interview, but like the death toll is much higher than you know, they can report anymore. It's probably like somewhere over 100,000 people. They have not let any food into the Gaza Strip. Now they may let it dribble in. Right. They're just killing these people and they're mainly almost entirely killing civilians at this point, you know. And so I have to say Tommy, like I talked to Firoz and he said everybody in Gaza expects to die. Right. That's a genocide. Okay. And people don't like to hear that term. But I don't really know what the military rationale is to starve children and bomb innocent people in tents and just kind of keep moving this war around and keep talking about ethnic cleansing people to other places. I'm out of words to describe what is happening, you know. And I think the reason you see some of these governments saying these things is cuz they know what's happening and you know, they're creating a bit of a record, you know, that they were calling this out because I just don't know what to say about this anymore, you know, I mean, I didn't mean. I just don't know what else to say.
- [39:35]
Tommy Vitor
Listen, I'm with you. Like, I bet listeners to the show have probably not. You've heard us talk to really smart human rights lawyers about the genocide filing in the case by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. The elements that go into a determination of genocide. But like I have not thrown around the term because I think it's the worst thing you could ever accuse someone of and you want that you want to do so in a way that's based in fact and the letter of the law. And also you to be mindful of the history of the Holocaust.
- [40:07]
Ben Rhodes
I'm mindful.
- [40:08]
Tommy Vitor
No, no, I know, I know. And so, but just so note, folks know, but like in the, in the, like in the present Convention on Human Rights, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group that involves killing members of the group, causing bodily harm and mental illness to members of the group, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children. But to constitute genocide, there must be proven intent on the part of the perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. I think what you just said is the key point. When you start talking about starving an entire population, what else is that?
- [40:48]
Ben Rhodes
I like, I mean, honestly, at this point, because again, I'm not a human rights lawyer, right. And so I'm not making some like, legal determination here. The question I have is what are they doing? Because they're not rescuing hostages. These are not like hostage rescue operations. You know, they're not. I mean, they've killed the leadership of Hamas. Like, I don't. Like there should actually be an onus on Netanyahu and these Israeli ministers to describe why are you starving people? Why is there no aid getting in? Why are you doing ground operations for the umpteenth time in these. What is the purpose of this? Because nobody can describe a military purpose anymore. And sure, they say it's cuz they have to release the hostage. That is not what is happening here. This is not about hostages. Cuz you would get the hostages out by doing a deal, Right. That's been well established. Even Trump says that. Right, right. So I just, this is just me saying, like, I don't know what else is going on here. Like, I don't. The Israeli government cannot provide like a military rationale for starving children, bombing civilians and doing ground operations in Gaza a year and a half after October 7th.
- [42:03]
Tommy Vitor
And when you read the words of top Israeli officials, like cabinet ministers, like the finance minister, Smotrich, he said that Israel's goal is, quote, destroying everything that's left of the Gaza Strip. We are conquering, cleansing and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.
- [42:20]
Ben Rhodes
What is that? I mean, what is, I mean that. How does that overlap with the definition you read?
- [42:24]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, pretty. Pretty one. I mean, well, there's an entire other definition which is just ethnic cleansing.
- [42:29]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, well, that's. And that's actually, you know, that. That's very clear.
- [42:32]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah.
- [42:32]
Ben Rhodes
That there's a version of that happening.
- [42:34]
Tommy Vitor
It's, it's, it's horrifying. And again, like Israel allowed five trucks into Gaza on Monday. On Tuesday, I think they let in 93 trucks. I think the human rights, at this point, people are so. They're starving so much that they need like 500 a day.
- [42:50]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [42:51]
Tommy Vitor
And despite a couple trucks getting in or 93 plus 5 trucks getting in. No aid has been distributed, according to the un. Like, what is going to happen to these kids?
- [43:01]
Ben Rhodes
Like, babies, Babies, children.
- [43:03]
Tommy Vitor
I mean, J.D. vance apparently was considering visiting Gaza this week. He decided against it, Axios reported that was because he didn't want to be seen as endorsing this latest offensive.
- [43:12]
Ben Rhodes
If you're offending, JD Vance is offended. Yeah.
- [43:14]
Tommy Vitor
He claimed it was logistics. That is, you have nothing better to do. You're vice president.
- [43:18]
Ben Rhodes
And that's my suspicion about these statements, and that is that people, we can't see what's going on inside. But some of these governments, you know, they have intelligence agencies. I think people are aware that what is happening now is, like, next level, even from what we've seen, you know, and that's why we're. I mean, that's why we're having an uncomfortable conversation about it right now.
- [43:38]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. I mean, like, there were obvious reasons where, like, the weeks after October 7, that Israel would launch some sort of military and intelligence.
- [43:46]
Ben Rhodes
We're a year and a half out.
- [43:46]
Tommy Vitor
We are a year and a half into this thing. Like, the leaders of Hamas are dead.
- [43:50]
Ben Rhodes
More than that, actually. We're, you know, over a year.
- [43:52]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. The only way we're getting hostages home alive is through a deal.
- [43:55]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [43:55]
Tommy Vitor
And Netanyahu just won't cut one because it doesn't serve his political ends.
- [43:58]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [43:59]
Tommy Vitor
Is what it is. Also, the other major conflict, Ben, is the war in Ukraine. Last week, we previewed these. Trump endorsed talks between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey. This is their first direct talk since the invasion started. Trump was in the Middle East. He was pushing for the talks to happen. He at first suggested he might join the talks himself. And then, of course, he didn't show up. Putin didn't show up. And then Trump defended Putin for not showing up, which is just perfect. The talks accomplished very little. They agreed to exchange a thousand prisoners. That was the largest prisoner swap yet. But this Reuters headline summed it up well, quote, istanbul peace talks lay bear chasm between Ukraine and Russia. Then on Monday, Trump talked with Zelensky on the phone. Then he called Putin for two hours, and then he had a conference call with Zelensky and leaders from Germany, France, Italy, Finland, and the European Commission to kind of like sync up on what had been said. In short, this call accomplished absolutely nothing. It was like talks about starting talks. Trump got no concessions from Putin. Doesn't sound like he pressured him in any way. My takeaway, Ben, is that Trump is sick of this process. He wants out of it, and he wants to push it onto the Vatican. Am I, is that too cynical? Am I missing anything?
- [45:08]
Ben Rhodes
It seems like, you know, he's sick of it and he realizes that his plan, you know, is going nowhere because his plan was essentially to come in and pressure Ukraine in the war. And the Ukrainians agreed to everything Trump pressured them to do. And then Putin just ignored Trump. And Putin, like, clearly doesn't feel any pressure from Trump. I mean, that's what's, what's amazing. I mean, it is, you know, I'm not like, putting on, like, you know, want some tinfoil resistance hat here, but I mean, Trump, like loses his shit.
- [45:39]
Tommy Vitor
Got a Mueller time dawling here somewhere if you want.
- [45:41]
Ben Rhodes
No, but the thing is, like, Trump loses his shit when anybody disrespects him. Putin is totally disrespecting him. And he won't even say a bad word about him. You know, he won't even, like, say that it's his fault. He won't even say the things about Putin that he says about Zelensky, you know, and if Putin doesn't feel like the cost to him doing that is some big new package of military assistance to Ukraine or something, something that would be materially bad for Russia. Putin has no incentive to stop what he's doing, which is really escalating the war. We've seen waves of drone attacks, we've seen grinding on the front line here. And it does feel like Trump's, rather than pivoting to pressuring Putin, he's probably gonna look to just offload this back to the Europeans. And, and then the question is, if that happens, does he cut the Ukrainians off anyway? And that's. We don't know the answer. I think what Ukraine's been trying to do is go the extra mile to appear reasonable. Right. Zelensky goes to Turkey. Putin doesn't show up. Zelenskyy agrees to a 30 day ceasefire. Putin doesn't. I think what Zelenskyy and the Europeans are hoping is that if it's so clear that Russia is the reason why this Trump peace effort failed, that they'll continue to provide weapons and intelligence to Ukrainians. We don't know the answer to that yet.
- [46:50]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think there's like $3 billion worth of military assistance that's ready to go and Trump just won't send it. I do think the intelligence piece is probably the biggest thing it's under discussed. And if Trump cuts off intelligence cooperation fully with Ukrainians, that will be devastating for them. Ben, it also seems like Putin is floating To Witkoff and then to Trump, some kind of vague opportunity for increased trade between the US and Russia. But before the Russian invasion in 2022, the full scale Russian invasion, US exports to Russia accounted for 0.3% of total US exports. Imports were about 1.1% of total US imports. So, like the big countries, we're talking big dollar numbers, like $36 billion in 2021, but it's not. It's like, not enough to juice the U.S. economy.
- [47:35]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [47:36]
Tommy Vitor
You know.
- [47:36]
Ben Rhodes
Right.
- [47:36]
Tommy Vitor
And Putin is just clearly stringing Trump along. I mean, Dmitry Peskov, his spokesman, said that there cannot be any deadlines for these kind of like, memorandums they're going to put together about restarting talks, because the devil is in the details. So they're just giving themselves, like a string it out forever plan. I'm with you. I think, I guess I wonder is, I hope the Europeans have come to grips with the fact that Trump is walking away from Ukraine and they are doing what they can to prepare in the little bit of time they're getting here from this stupid process.
- [48:09]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, but, like, the part of the problem here is that nobody really knows because Trump, like, they, they don't. Like, you've got Trump, he's got some play. He's running. You've got J.D. vance, who, you know, in the J.D. vance version of history, I mean, this all happened because, you know, NATO membership was dangled for Ukraine. Well, you know what, we've now removed that. And Putin is still fighting the war, so that turns out to not be correct. Right. And then Marco Rubio's out to lunch. Steve Wytkoff is just flattered. He gets to be in the room of Putin.
- [48:46]
Tommy Vitor
Got a painting.
- [48:47]
Ben Rhodes
Got a painting. But the point is that nobody knows. Everybody's just kind of guessing, like, what is Trump actually doing here if this fails? Nobody knows what his plan B is. Doesn't feel like there's a lot of consultation going on with the Europeans about, you know, if X happens, then Y will happen. And that's what's so strange about this, is it's like it hasn't been like a methodical effort to develop a peace strategy. It's basically been like chasing like, Putin is Lucy with the football, and, like, Lucy pulls back the football, and then Trump goes and kicks Zelensky in the balls. You know, like, that's all we've seen. And so it's hard to see where it's going if, again, if what ends up happening is we end up cutting off Ukraine without a peace deal. Then Putin is rewarded for sticking it to Trump and Zelensky's punished for agreeing to all the terms that Trump demanded that he agree to. I mean, he didn't agree to all them, but he agreed to the ceasefire.
- [49:43]
Tommy Vitor
Ones and the minerals deal and stuff too.
- [49:46]
Ben Rhodes
This is not the art of the deal. I mean, not to use a.
- [49:48]
Tommy Vitor
No, this is just a mess. It's a failed negotiation. He said he would end the war in 24 hours. Obviously that hasn't happened. He seems fed up. All his cabinet members are whining about it because they had to do their jobs for 100 days because it's not.
- [49:59]
Ben Rhodes
As simple as JD Vance hit on the all in pod would make it seem.
- [50:03]
Tommy Vitor
Yes, that's exactly right. And meanwhile, all of Europe is terrified. Speaking of Europe and this past weekend, Europe had three elections we wanted to highlight. So there are elections in Romania, Poland and Portugal. Start with Portugal on Sunday. Portugal's Center Right Democratic alliance, which is led by Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, they won a snap election. It was the third election in three years, which sounds really annoying.
- [50:25]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [50:25]
Tommy Vitor
It will allow the ruling party that the government to continue as a minority government. But the biggest and most worrying story coming out of the results was the rise of the country's far right Chega Party, which means enough in Portuguese. This party was founded only six years ago. Chega got 22% of the vote. They might surpass the second place finishing socialist Party for the number of parliamentary seats. And again, just for context, Chega went from having one lawmaker in 2019 to probably about 58 now. The last time a far right party held this much sway in Portugal, it was a nationalist dictatorship. Not good.
- [50:59]
Ben Rhodes
A little fascism back there.
- [51:01]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. So in Poland, Rafal Trzkovsky, who is aligned with the Prime Minister Donald Tusk, narrowly won the first round of an election where the second, third and fourth place were just taken by the far right. There's going to be a runoff in Poland on June 1st. So that's another very important election to watch. Watch. And then in Romania, the Bucharest mayor, Nika Shirdan took almost 54% of the vote, which was surprising. He beat a Christian nationalist named George Simeon, who had won the first round. It has been, as we've discussed on the show, a crazy six Journey in Romanian politics.
- [51:30]
Ben Rhodes
Journey in Romanian politics.
- [51:31]
Tommy Vitor
So, like last year, there was this a different far right pro Russian candidate named Colleen Georgescu. He won the first round of their election back in November 2024. The results were annulled because of concerns about Russian interference. Georgescu was banned from running again by Romania's constitutional courts, which led to the second election. So, Ben, just like stepping back, there's a couple trends here that seem interesting to me. I would love to know what your thoughts are out of all of this. One, across Europe, you're just seeing like this unsettlingly large chunk of the electorate voting for far right populist parties. It's like 20 to 40% of the vote in a lot of places, including scary parties like the AfD in Germany. But also Jaeger 2, you're seeing incumbents just getting smoked in a lot of places. Voters are very open to new parties, including parties that were literally created just a few years ago. The thing that was interesting about Romania, though, it was sort of hopeful to me that the new party doesn't have to be nationalist and institution. Like Don is pro NATO, he's pro eu. But I don't know, what did you take away from, I don't know, these three elections?
- [52:38]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, it's an interesting picture into the kind of fluidity of politics in Europe right now in the sense that, okay, you have these very worrying signs about the rapid evolution and growth of the far right as we see in Portugal. But on the other hand, I didn't see that outcome in Romania.
- [52:56]
Tommy Vitor
I didn't either.
- [52:57]
Ben Rhodes
I thought the far right guy was going to win in Romania. And that makes you again, question, is there some reconsideration of a full move to the far right kind of post Trump election post kind of seeing there's something sobering about getting right up to the edge and looking over. I mean.
- [53:14]
Tommy Vitor
Cause what we've seen in a lot of theoretics.
- [53:16]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, well, what I have seen in Europe, we've seen. We saw it in France. Right. Like most notably, people kind of these far right parties grow and grow and grow and they kind of get right to the edge of taking power and people kind of look over that cliff and they're like, well, maybe let's just dial back a little bit. Right?
- [53:35]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. It's like I want to protest, vote for them, but I don't really want them to run stuff.
- [53:38]
Ben Rhodes
I don't really want them to run stuff. You know, Now Poland will be interesting because, you know, we had the center left coalition win. This is. And that's already the parliamentary majority. The question is, do you get a president aligned with that? So the Polish runoff will be really important to watch because if the center left can win, which will be hard because if you add up all the numbers of the different parties, like you Know they're not winning right now, but then that would kind of consolidate a positive trend in Poland. But the point is, it's fluid. It's push and pull. The far right can't quite make it over that hump in most places. And you gotta hope that they're receding a bit. And the Romanian election might indicate that, because people are like, yeah, you know what, Maybe this isn't the right protest vote to your point. I mean, like, traditional social democratic parties are not doing great. There may be an opening for like some enough parties on the left. Like, not a bad name, by the way. Enough. Like, I'd vote for the non far right version of enough in this country at this point, you know?
- [54:32]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, yeah. What's like, how do you say fuck off in Romania? Fuck off elites. Yeah, you're the describing the politics as fluid, I think is spot on and kind of at times even internally incoherent. Like, yeah, you have a pro NATO, pro EU candidate winning in Romania, but there was a February 2024 survey that found that less than 20% of Romanians think they should continue providing support for Ukraine. So it's like hardly like a. A globalist spring.
- [54:59]
Ben Rhodes
These are not resounding endorsements. Either way, though, the far right is getting traction, but they're not getting like some resounding Norsemen either. Like, people are just. They're not happy with their political choices is what's interesting.
- [55:09]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, the big issue in Romania, it's. It remains one of the poorest countries in the EU if you look at GDP per capita. Actually, Poland is pretty far down there too. I mean, the number one, the highest. Do you know what the number one rated country is? But in terms of per capita GDP in the eu, I'm quizzing you.
- [55:26]
Ben Rhodes
I'm gonna say it's Liechtenstein or Luxembourg.
- [55:29]
Tommy Vitor
You nailed it. Then Ireland.
- [55:30]
Ben Rhodes
I knew it was one of those little guys.
- [55:31]
Tommy Vitor
Ireland, yeah, good for you, Ireland. But I'm sure they have all that tax revenue from all our tech companies.
- [55:37]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, it probably drives at the GDP, but like the.
- [55:40]
Tommy Vitor
The Romanian population. From 1990 to 2024, Romania's population declined by about 4 million people because there were just no job opportunities and the labor market stagnated. So it was a tough life. The last thing I saw that was interesting. Did you see that?
- [55:53]
Ben Rhodes
Have you been to Romania?
- [55:54]
Tommy Vitor
I've not been, no. No. I'd like to go live.
- [55:56]
Ben Rhodes
Show.
- [55:59]
Tommy Vitor
Pavel Durov. Remember the CEO of Telegram?
- [56:01]
Ben Rhodes
Of course.
- [56:02]
Tommy Vitor
He said that the French government came to him and asked him to silence Conservative voices in Romania. The French government denies that, but I thought that was interesting given the context.
- [56:12]
Ben Rhodes
Did he say that from his prison cell in France?
- [56:14]
Tommy Vitor
Maybe. I bet he escaped before.
- [56:15]
Ben Rhodes
We should check up on that guy. I didn't know what happened to him.
- [56:18]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I don't remember either.
- [56:18]
Ben Rhodes
They arrested him.
- [56:19]
Tommy Vitor
Do they let him leave?
- [56:20]
Ben Rhodes
I don't know.
- [56:21]
Tommy Vitor
We'll dig it up.
- [56:21]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [56:22]
Tommy Vitor
Okay, well, that. That's. We just assigned ourselves some homework for the next show. Okay. We're going to do something a little bit different this week. We're going to go to Ben's interview with Pharoah Sidwa about what it was like for him being a trauma surgeon in the Gaza Strip. And then after that interview, when you come back, you'll hear a very stupid segment that Ben and I recorded about the Eurovision contest. I barely know what it is, but.
- [56:44]
Ben Rhodes
It was a great. If you want to see us or hear us or see us embarrassed.
- [56:48]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah.
- [56:48]
Ben Rhodes
Well, let's tease the sauna. Yeah, yeah.
- [56:54]
Tommy Vitor
When I say stupid, I mean funny because we don't know what we're talking about and you'll hear us just sound like idiots. Also, if you're in D.C. on June 6, check out Jon Lovett with the Bulwarks, Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell. They're hosting a big live show and fundraiser at the Lincoln Theater in dc. They'll be celebrating pride by venting pre gaming, commiserating, laughing, venting some more, and most importantly, raising money for the Immigrant Defenders Law center, which represents Andre Hernandez Romero and others who have been disappeared by our government to El Salvador without any due process. So get your tickets now@crooked.com events. Also, the cricket Store has got lots of new merch, including new designs for a classic friend of the pod tea. If you're looking for some new Crooked merch, go now. Crooked.com store. This show was sponsored by Better Help. Love you remember back in the day when you watch like a TV show and they'd be like talking about going to a shrink? Oh, yeah, they call them shrinks. And it was like head shrinkers made fun of or mocked or scorned upon. We come a long way. Yeah.
- [58:01]
Ben Rhodes
We have.
- [58:01]
Tommy Vitor
From the days of the head shrinkers. For Mental Health Awareness Month, Better Help surveyed 16,000 people across 23 countries for its first ever state of stigma report. Wow. And found that while 75 of people believe it's wise to seek support, only 27 of Americans are in therapy. And that tracks. To be honest, when people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them. It impacts families, workplaces and entire communities. Let's encourage everyone to take care of their well being and break the stigma. The world is better when people are happy and healthy. Sometimes I think about January 6th. Oh, if all those people had just gone to a little bit of therapy, maybe on the 5th or the 4th or yeah, a couple weeks beforehand, therapy would have made a huge difference. It would have helped them set boundaries, would have made them the best versions of themselves. Better at least deal with trauma. Think about it. With over 35, 000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. It's convenient too. You can join a session with a click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus switch therapists at any time. We're all better with help. 72% of better help members reported a reduction in symptoms. Visit betterhelp.com crookedworld to get 10% off your first month of therapy. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com CrookedWorld the new Huggies Snug N Dry are luxuriously soft and ultra dry. How soft are we talking? Unbelievably soft? Irresistibly soft? Doesn't your baby deserve a diaper that's oh so gentle?
- [59:22]
Firoz Sidwa
On their tushy?
- [59:22]
Tommy Vitor
Huggies Snug N Dry helps keep them comfy, cozy and protected. Experience the unexpected softness and up to 100% leak protection. More parents choose the new Huggy Snug n Dry softness versus the leading premium diaper Huggies. We got you, baby.
- [59:44]
Ben Rhodes
Okay. I'm very pleased to welcome Dr. Firoz Sidwa to the podcast. He's a trauma surgeon based in Stockton, California, who's volunteered in Gaza twice, most recently this past March at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis. He's also volunteered in Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso. Firoz, thanks so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
- [60:05]
Firoz Sidwa
Thanks. Nice to be here.
- [60:06]
Ben Rhodes
All right, so I want to get to asking you to kind of compare the two times you've been in Gaza, but let's just start at the beginning. What took you to Gaza? I mean, like, how does a trauma surgeon from California end up in European hospital?
- [60:23]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first time the, so the, the, the, the humanitarian sphere is like completely disjointed, totally disorganized as you can imagine. And, but so I got a, I got an email from the Society of Critical Care Medicine, which is just a professional society that I'm part of, and say Letting people know that if you want to volunteer in Israel after the October 7 attacks, this is how you can do it. And if you want to volunteer in Gaza, this is how you can do it. And that, that call for volunteers, the, the call for volunteers was to work with the WHO in Gaza because you can't really work with the Ministry of Health directly because you'll be, you know, because. Yeah, exactly. You'll be considered working with a terrorist organization. Organization. So, so that, and that call went out through the Palestinian American Medical Association. So I contacted them and they, they sent us over and at that time we went to Cairo. We could take a whole bunch of supplies with us and stuff because the Rafah gate was still open, but now obviously not.
- [61:26]
Ben Rhodes
So obviously we're going to focus on your experience there. And I guess it is worth contrasting here. So how would you compare the two different times you spent there? I assume that just as someone who's following this, what was already not a significant amount of healthcare infrastructure has basically been destroyed. But what did you see differently the last time you were there from the first time?
- [61:57]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, so the first time I went, I was at European on the eastern edge of Khan Younis. And at that time, European Hospital, like most of the hospitals in Gaza, was a displaced persons camp. So there were 10 to 15,000 people sheltering on the grounds of the hospital. But then also within the hospital, like lining the corridors of the hospital, there were families living in tents because it's better to live inside than outside, have some electricity, something like that. So like women were cooking pita bread in the emergency room during mass casualty events. Women, you know, there were people trying to drain out, you know, canned vegetables in the ICU sink. Like it was a total disaster. There was no way for a hospital to function this way. And so that is, that is the fact that that wasn't going on when I went back this time. I went from, I got, I entered Gaza this time on March 6th and I left on April 1st, if I remember right. And so when I went back. Every hospital in Gaza has been forcibly emptied at some point. And when, it's when people have been allowed to come back in. The administration and the Ministry of Health have kind of decided together that we're not going to let Palestinians camp in the hospital, hospital anymore. Just, it's not, you know, they don't have anywhere to go. But at the same time, there's just no way for them to. The, the hospital can't function like that. Even though it's sheltering people. It's not being a hospital at that point. So Nasser. I went back to Nasser medical complex, which is on the other side of Kanyunis and the own. The thing that was better was that Kanye or that, that Nasser was not a DP camp so the hospital could actually function. But everything else was worse. I arrived during the ceasefire. You know, March 6 to April 18 was still ceasefire time. And we were seeing trauma cases for sure. Like one or two people shot every day. Sometimes it was from Israel, some Israeli forces, sometimes it was actually because there was a dispute going on between two families in, in Khan Yunis and the, the Hamas government couldn't suppress it like they normally would. But the, but the other types of trauma cases we were seeing were people who were. There was no widespread bombing going on at this point. So other type of trauma we would see was from bombings that had happened like six months ago and people's homes would collapse on them when they tried to go back in. The main thing was actually to retrieve their loved ones bodies, but also like to try and get their possessions out, you know, if they had cash that had been just in the building when it had been destroyed, things like that. And, and yeah, so, but the, but unfortunately, you know, the destruction of Gaza was far, far more severe. When I was there the first time, the Battle of Kanye was still going on. Like Israeli troops were basically moving from north to south and the hospital was constantly shaking. Even though European hospital is on the outskirts of Khan Yunis. The, the hospital was just literally swaying back and forth almost the entire time. There were windows broken on the third floor. One of the guys I went there with, Mark Perlmutter, he was thrown into a wall by an explosion. Broke one of his teeth, you know. So it was, it was the, it was close up when I got back to Nasser or when I went, when I went to NASSER from the 2nd to the 18th, there was no bombing at all. So it was, you know, they were shooting but not, not bombing. So it was relatively quiet. But then after the 18th, when, you know, at 2:30 in the morning about the, the Israelis resumed the really widespread bombing of, of Gaza, mostly to kill Hamas's political leadership, they said. And it was that, that was the biggest, that was the start of the biggest mass casualty event I've ever seen in my life. Like I was a resident during the Boston Marathon bombing and it doesn't even. That was like an order of magnitude off of what we saw on the 18th and then not just the 18th.
- [65:27]
Ben Rhodes
But going forward and who, like how many people that you're treating are children, are civilians. I mean, how take us inside? Like the kind of, the pace and the kind of patients you're seeing.
- [65:43]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah.
- [65:44]
Ben Rhodes
And the kind of injuries you're seeing.
- [65:45]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, well, so, yeah, so at Nasser, when I went this time, everything was. After March 18th, everything was explosions. There were. I don't actually, I'm trying to think maybe, or. You know, actually the only shootings that I saw after March 18th that I can remember off the top of my head were from a helicopter gunship. Not like, you know, not, not small arms or even medium arms, but really big, big weapons. And of course, all those people died, but the, the types of injuries that we were seeing were mostly explosive and shrapnel injuries. Now if, if a bomb just shreds someone to pieces, they're, they're dead. There's nothing we can really do about it. But the types of injuries we can do something about are injuries basically for, you know, shrapnel injuries from the neck down to the pelvis and then the, the arms and legs, obviously. But those aren't, those usually are less life threatening just because you can amputate someone's arm if you need to, or their leg. And yeah, in terms of children, because I, I'm a trauma. I'm a, I'm trained in trauma surgery, which means my job is mostly to stop people from bleeding to death. So because of that, during mass casualty events, I go to what's called the red zone, like the red triage area where the most severe patients are coming. And I would say most of those patients were, were small kids, not like 17 and a half year olds, but like, you know, pre teen children, like, you know, 12 and 12 and under. That's not because most of the injuries are actually in children, but most of the severe injuries seem to be in children, if that makes any sense. And it, it kind of tracks because, you know, if you expose you or me to a bomb versus a five year old, the five year old's gonna be much more seriously injured. So, yeah, we were dealing with a lot of, a lot of injured children, unfortunately.
- [67:20]
Ben Rhodes
Well, you, you wrote a piece for the Times last fall in which you Talked about surveying 65 healthcare workers like yourself, and of them, 44 said they, quote, saw multiple cases of preteen children who'd been shot. Yeah, in the header chest. I mean, that should be jarring to people. How are these children being shot like this?
- [67:48]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, so this was all of this. So that survey was done mostly of people who were in Gaza during the ground invasion, in other words, when there were Israeli troops in the vicinity of the hospitals that they were working in. And, and I'm that, I think that's just what explains it. I mean there, there are, it's unfortunate, but in every society's army has people who are sadistic or cruel and will do things like that, like shoot a child. Shoot a child in the head. But yeah, no, the, the large majority of us did regularly see children shot in the head or the chest on a, on a regular basis. Like for me, I was there, like I said, March 25th to April 8th of that year and every day, like on average I saw one kid shot in the head every day. And that's despite the fact that I'm not even the person they call for this. Like, I'm not a neurosurgeon. Right. So that's not, I'm not, It was just, I happened to be there, so I'm sure there were many more. But, but yeah, you know, what explains it? I don't, I, it's, it's conjecture on my part. So I'm not, I don't know exactly what explains it, but I think with the, you know, the October 7th attacks were shocking atrocity to, to Israelis especially, and there was also a lot of atrocity propaganda that happened afterwards. You had the beheaded babies, the, the widespread rape and these kinds of things that there isn't any evidence for. So when you've got a, when you've got an army that feels like it's fighting for its national survival against people who are constantly being called animals and vermin and other such things, and furthermore, there's a humongous power disparity. Like, it's like, you know, like the Palestinians have basically very, very, very little means of self defense. Less than one Israeli soldier has been killed per day in Gaza since the invasion started. And so I think Israeli soldiers just have the opportunity to do these things if they want to and it's kind of clear that the Israeli army is not going to stop them from doing it.
- [69:52]
Ben Rhodes
So yeah, you know, well, I want to come back to that, but to just stay with the circumstances for the Palestinians, the death count seems low to me and most people that have evaluated this think it's, I mean, what is your assessment? I'm not asking you to give me a count, but how do you even keep track of the number of people who are being killed?
- [70:14]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, so this is important for people to understand. In the media, it's often said the Hamas run Ministry of Health says this many people have been killed, but it doesn't distinguish between combatants and civilians. That's all, that's all accurate, but it's a little bit misleading. Firstly, I don't know. I literally don't know anyone, with one exception. I don't know anyone who has treated a combatant in Gaza. The Everyone I treated in both the first time and the second time I was there, everyone came in with their family and you can say whatever you want about Hamas. No one thinks they're dragging their wives out to the battlefield or something. That's silly. The. So I, I suspect that combatants are not even really counted in that, in that group. But the. It's basically 100% civilian casualty that we're seeing. I'm sure there's one fighter somewhere in there that we just can't see, but that's not the common, common situation. There is actual data on this question of like, like just sticking with violent deaths. Forget the starvation and the disease and the other things, but just sticking with violent deaths. There are, are. There was once there was a study that was just done in the Lancet, which is a major British medical journal, and what they showed. So they got the Ministry of Health's entire database, not the aggregate numbers, but literally line by line, person by person data. And they compared that to a survey that had been done and social media postings, and they kind of did what air wars does where they needed two points to verify that somebody had been killed, like a social media posting and a survey or a social media posting and the Ministry of Health data, something like that. And they found that even just sticking to violent deaths, the Ministry of Health was undercounting publicly verifiable deaths by 40%. So there's that aspect of it. On top of that, there's the, the major question of, of what's broadly called famine. But it's usually people think of famine as meaning there isn't enough food. Right. But famine really encompasses more than that. It encompasses displacement, lack of water, like drinking water, lack of sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, lack of food, obviously, and lack of health care as well. And these, these are all things that are under direct and sustained attack by, during this assault. So the. So, yeah, so nobody knows what the death count is because people aren't allowed to study it. It's important for people to understand that with $50,000 and about three weeks, we could answer that question, like, not me, but a public health researcher, the US.
- [72:42]
Ben Rhodes
Government could answer that question.
- [72:44]
Firoz Sidwa
It probably could. It probably has access to Israeli intelligence reports about what's actually going on. But the. They probably could. Yeah. Or at least they could give some sensible, some sensible number beyond what, what it is. But, but, you know, even just like a. You could have an academic from Yale or Hopkins School of Public Health or Harvard School of Public Health answer that question literally in three weeks with 50 grand if the Israelis would just allow the study to be done. But they won't let these people in. So that's, it's just, it's one of those things about our own society that, that's how little we care about how many people we're killing.
- [73:20]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Their humanity. I mean, so, so we're talking about death count that, you know, is. Could somewhere be in the neighborhood of 100,000. But I want to talk about wounded people. I mean, you're a trauma care person. You save somebody's life, you stop them from bleeding to death. Look, if I was shot or got shrapnel in me, you know, not that that's going to happen here. I imagine I'd recover for a long time in a hospital and then I'd have some kind of home care. And I'm trying to imagine people that kind of come through the hospital and out and they are people with horrific wounds. They've lost limbs, they've lost blood, they are risk of infection and they're just turned back out into tents where they're dropping more bombs. I mean, what is your look when we hear about famine, lack of aid? What do you think about the patients you treat, about how and where they're recovering?
- [74:11]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, well, yeah, so we, there's a. How are they recovering? Honestly, a lot of them are not. We see. We very regularly find wounds with maggots in them. Like not from, not in the hospital, but people coming in from, from outside. Although at European, we did find them in the hospital as well, just because it was so overcrowded. But if you, if you walk around in like, like I walked between, there's a. I was at Nasser Medical Complex and Amal is the Palestine Red Crescent Society's headquarters in Khan Yuna. So I walked between the two. It's maybe like a mile or a mile and a half. And when you're walking around, you see tons and tons of people with amputations, but they still have like cotton dressings on them and they're just soaked. I mean, like, it's just like they're obviously infected. There's no, no two ways about it. But they're, they're just trying to power through and, and deal with it, you know, and yeah, I mean, obviously there's no rehabilitation. There's no like, you know, the, one of the things actually that's kind of remarkable, I saw a report from. It might have been Save the Children, I can't remember. But it's actually, it's very difficult to assist disabled children, but also disabled adults simply because there are very few flat spaces left in Gaza. Like places where you don't have to, well, where you can lie down but also where the, the, the one part of the floor isn't like this and another is, is bent and crooked and like just because everything has been bombed and, and run over by military vehicles and it just the, and, and a lot you got. Also like a lot of these people are living in bombed out homes. Like the, the two walls are missing or the floor is unstable or whatever. So if you have to like climb up a destroyed and slanted roof to get into your second floor apartment because the stairs have been destroyed and then you're, there's rubble everywhere. Like it's just like, yeah, it keeps the rain off of you, but like a lot. Again you actually see this when you're walking around. People actually like picking someone up, putting them on their back and then trying to ascend up like a mountain of rubble to get into their apartment. And it's, it's, it's wild. Yeah. But yeah, there's, there's the, the ability for people to recover from these injuries because like, like you, like you were kind of saying the stopping someone from bleeding to death is the like baseline.
- [76:23]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [76:24]
Firoz Sidwa
Of medical care. That's not real medical care. Right. I mean you didn't die, great. But like you're not going to recover, you're not going to thrive just because you didn't bleed to death. If your arms are broken and you're, you know, blah, blah, blah, you have a head injury, whatever it might be, the, the, the recovery and the rehabilitation and the reconstructive operations are super, super important. And none of that can be done in Gaza right now. Literally none of it.
- [76:44]
Ben Rhodes
Well, and you're not a mental health person, you're a trauma surgeon. But what is the mental state that the scale of trauma of the kind of families you're seeing?
- [76:55]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, it's terrible. I'll tell you that. Almost every. I mostly talked to healthcare workers in English, right. Because I don't speak Arabic, unfortunately. So, so I mostly talked to physicians and nurses while I was there. I will tell you that with very few exceptions, all of them expect to die. They all expect their families to die. They all expect their children to die. And it's, it's, it's kind of a weird thing to be, to be sitting there taught like, like everyone kind of taught like. I'll tell you a story. When I was, I was talking to an anesthesiologist named Aar. Really, really sweet man, goofy, kind of chubby faced guy. You know, he's a nice guy. And his family lives east of European hospital. So very now they must have been evacuated from their village permanently. But his, he has five. Five, I'm pretty five or six, I can't remember. Anyway, five boys. And I was just having coffee with him. It was Ramadan, so people stay up late having coffee and stuff like that. Um, so I was having coffee with him and you know, we're just, everyone just banters back and forth. It's just casual conversation. And at some point he, he starts telling me he's kind of making fun of his wife. He's, oh my, you know, my wife, she just can't do anything for herself. She can't go to the market by herself, she can't discipline the boys by herself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he goes, when I'm martyred, I don't know what she's going to do. And I can storm like, you know, we're kind of sitting across the table, he had his little cup of coffee, you know, a little Arabic coffee cup, and he's got his big belly and he's sitting there with his hands like this. And then, you know, sometimes you say something that you don't expect is going to kind of trigger an emotional response in you. And he kind of looked down at the table and his voice started to quiver and he just said, you know, like, what, what is this? What kind of life is this now? And that, that kind of resignation to a fate that's just awful is, is extremely widespread. You see it like actually I, I forget if it saved the children or somebody else, but maybe it was UNICEF. Well, one of these children's groups found that about 50 of children, small children, not again, not 17 and a half year old boys with small children in Gaza are actively suicidal. That's extremely unusual. You know, I, I actually remember at European Hospital, it was shocking to me how many kids regularly said, again, this is all through translators because I can't understand it, but how many kids regularly said, why couldn't I have died with Sarah when she might my sister when she died? Why couldn't I have died with mom? Why do I have to be the only one that's alive. Why do I have to feel my leg hurting so bad? Like this was very common and it is extremely unusual. Like have you ever met a suicidal 5 year old that said it's not outside of extreme psychiatric disease that is not common, common at all. Even, even in other war zones. You know what I mean? Like that it's not, it is not that. That is not a, a well described response for children. But you know, you can. I'll tell you another story just about their mental state. The. There was a. I met a cardiologist that. I can't remember his name now, but he has four small children or four children, excuse me, one small girl who's a four or five years old. They live in Rafa and this, this was during the ceasefire time. They live in Rafa and the. There, there are Israeli sniper towers now in the Philadelphia corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt. And one of those towers was firing into Rafa and some of the bullets came into their home or their, their, their apartment. So the whole family hit the deck. But the four or five year old girl who like, you know, if you think about it, her only conscious memories are from this war, right? Like that's, that's all she can remember. She's just dancing around in a circle like singing to herself and they were like, you know, you know, I don't remember her name but you know, Sarah, what are you doing? What are you doing? Come here, come here and. No, no, don't worry, mommy. The bullets are all the way up there look like. Because they were hitting above the. So they, you know, these parents had to like bear. Crawl over to her, their child and tackle her to try and keep her safe. You know, it's kind of like like a kid walking out into traffic, you know. But yeah, but you're, but the traffic is bullets. But the. So yeah, what, what this kind of prolonged and really dramatic extensive experience with death and misery and starvation and hunger and lack of cleanliness and displacement and fear. Like seeing your parents afraid all the time. You know what that is going to do, what, what that's going to do to the half of Gaza that is children is not clear. But, but it's, it's already having a dramatic and very noticeable effect.
- [81:37]
Ben Rhodes
Well, I mean, I want to ask you one kind of political question. I mean, I'm going to ask it this way. I mean you're American, as you said, and so you represent America in your own way. Like you're in Gaza as an American providing this assistance and you know that the bombs that are being dropped on the people you care are American bombs. What is it like to be an American in this place treating people whose wounds are almost entirely with American made weapons?
- [82:07]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, it's. It's weird. I'll tell you two stories about that. So like the first one was on March 18th. That's when the widespread bombing resumed. 2:30 in the morning, the bombs go off. The door to our living quarters was blown open and smashed into the cabinet behind it. That kind of woke us all up. We're like, holy crap. So we ran down to the, to the ER and started working. The first, well, the first two kids that I saw were, were dead. So where they were on their way to dying. But the first one that we could save, she turned out to be a five year old girl named Sham. And Sham had. She had injuries to her left chest and her belly. It turned out that her spleen was bleeding and her left lung was torn. But she also had a wound to her, the left side of her face that had traveled through the left side of her. It was a piece of shrapnel that had traveled through the left side of her brain, but it stayed on that side. So it's a recoverable injury actually. And actually she did quite well from that standpoint. She didn't talk for after she, she left the hospital, I think two or three weeks later, but she didn't. After like six or seven days, she started talking again and using the right side of her body again. But anyway, I still remember like I. Because, you know, we're looking. It's just a room full of kids lying on the. And there were adults too, but mostly full of kids lying on the ground. And you're just trying to pick out like, which one should I start with? You know, these are triage decisions. There's a way of doing them, but it's still pretty overwhelming at the time. But so I find this little girl and I look at her and she's not breathing properly. So I do a jaw thrust. Like if you've ever done like a CPR class they teach you just pull the draw forward. That lets somebody's. Because they're kind of obstructing their own airway by, by doing that. And all these kids are lying on the ground and kids have big heads, you know, they're just getting pushed down like that. But anyway, so I draw thruster and she starts breathing again. So. Oh good. Okay, this is one we might actually be able to save. So I tell the nurses, like, get Ready to, let's intubate this girl. Just stuff we have to do. So I just have to stand there holding her jaw up for, you know, three, four or five minutes, something like that, while they're getting set up to do the stuff we need to do and trying to make space and things like that. And I still remember while I was looking at her and I'm just looking at this wound bleeding on her face. It's not bleeding badly, but I'm just looking at it and I remember thinking like, did I pay for this shrapnel? Or did my neighbor or did their neighbor. Like, it's weird. Like it's, it's kind of wild, you know, I mean, it's not like nobody wants shrapnel to be in this little girl's brain. Like literally no one yet. We're doing. It's just very odd, you know. So that was one thing, but the, the other was that on. So the last operation I did on March 18 was in a kid named Ibrahim Barhum. He was a 16 year old boy. And on March 23rd he was ready to go home. He had injuries to his colon and his rectum from shrapnel. So we repaired them and we gave him a colostomy. Where your, the colon's coming out to the skin and he's 16. Most 16 year olds would be pretty pissed off about this, but he was pretty chill about it, actually. He was a nice kid. And on the 23rd, it was, it was the evening and that he, he had done pretty well that day. Now he was eating, he was walking around like his gut was starting to function, in other words. So I was like, okay, he can go home the next day. Great.
- [85:05]
Ben Rhodes
So.
- [85:06]
Firoz Sidwa
So at like, I don't know, probably 8:30 or 9 at night, I went. We used to live on the fourth floor of the hospital and the surgical ward, the men's surgical ward was on the second floor. So I left our little living quarters after iftar, the evening meal in Ramadan, and went to. So I'm walking to the stairs and I walk past the ICU on the fourth floor and there was a doctor, I think her name was Haneeb, she grabbed me and she was like, froze. There's a kid named Muhammad that was transferred over here from another hospital. He's bleeding to death. Like he needs to go to the operating room. So I took a look at him, that took about 10 minutes and, and he was bleeding. So I just told them, look, you guys get the operating room going. I'm gonna Go change Ibrahim's bandages, talk to his family about how to take care of this colostomy and because he's gonna go home the next morning and then I'm gonna come back up here and we'll take care of this kid's case. And like literally as I walked out of the icu, Ibrahim's room exploded. The, the Israelis fired a missile at. It's probably a drone fired missile, but who knows. At the room killing Ismail Barum, who they said was the Prime Minister of, of Gaza and, and Ibrahim because they were their distant cousins and they had the same last name. So the nurses had put them in this into the same room just to make family visits and stuff easier. And so Ibrahim was killed as well. And you know, I, so the whole, the whole hospital went unlocked actually, when I actually didn't even realize that the bomb had hit the hospital. It just felt like all the other ones, but the Palestinians somehow knew right away. So they like grabbed us and like put us in like the foreigners and put us in the, the safer corner of the hospital they thought. But the, after about an hour though, the administration lifted the lockdown to the hospital because you know, they don't know if like are we going to get invaded? Is there going to be another bombing? Who knows? They lifted it after about an hour. So I ran down to the ER to see if there was anybody that needed, needed to come up for an operation because this kid Muhammad still needed to go to the or. And when I was down there, three or four guys ran down with a body in a sheet because you know, you couldn't evaluate people in the, in this, in the blown up ward. It was just a disaster. So they ran down the, the, the stairs with the body and so I said no, go, go to the trauma base. So I followed them in and when I pulled the sheet off, I recognized Ibrahim's abdomen. His. He had been eviscerated is. The sutures were torn open, his bowel was outside, his colostomy was torn, but he was, I recognized him from his abdomen, you know, like this, this like 16 year old boy who. I should have just sent him home that day, you know, instead of waiting. But the. So yes, you know, that, that kind of thing, it's, it does weigh, it weighs on you a little bit, but it's, it's more just like the, like you, you know, how senseless all of this is. You know, it's not making anyone safer, you know, it's not doing anything to help anyone yet. We're all just Sleepwalking into doing it.
- [87:51]
Ben Rhodes
There's a book, last question, I'll ask. There's a book called Dispatches by a great Vietnam War correspondent. And he describes, I think it's Michael her coming back to New York. And he's just been in Vietnam for like a year and he's at like a bar or something and he wants to stand up on the table and shout at everybody, like, what the fuck are you doing? Do you know what's going on there? I mean, do you, must you feel that way? Like you're back in California, it's sunny outside, people are walking around and meanwhile we're paying for this.
- [88:17]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, like, do I wish people would pay attention more?
- [88:21]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I mean, I guess you're doing that. I mean.
- [88:23]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, yeah, you're right, exactly.
- [88:24]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, yeah.
- [88:25]
Firoz Sidwa
The. But at the same time, I have, I have never talked to a, nor my, my chairman at where I work is a fairly right wing guy, Trump voter, evangelical Christian guy. He's a very decent human being in his day to day life, but he and my politics would not line up at all. But very good. He's actually, he's my, he's our chairman. He's a great guy to work for, but when I went to Gaza the first time, he was like, oh, just be careful. You know, he's kind of, kind of implying that like these, these Muslims are crazy. You got to watch out, you know. When I came back though, he came to a presentation that I did at the hospital just for like our little local research day about Gaza. And when I, you know, I just showed the, the people I treated and what I saw and afterwards, he was like, froze. I had no idea. This stuff, this is awful. Like, this is crazy, you know. Yeah. And he was like, I always thought, you know, we were the good guys and the Israelis were the good guys. It's, it's the, the radical Islamic blah, blah, blah, you know, all of it. You know, not that Al Qaeda is good, but. Or even like not that Hamas is a bunch of great nice people. But the, but you know, he, as soon as he saw what was actually going on, it was totally untenable for him to continue to support. He just couldn't. And the vast majority, I think with maybe one exception of normal human beings that I've talked to and other people, not people who have some partisan interest, but just normal people are just appalled by this. They just can't understand it. What the hell, why on earth are we doing this? And so, but that's the reason that so much of this is hidden, you know what I mean? Like that's the reason press in there. Well, there's nobody allowed. Exactly, exactly. No one, no one who is a truly objective observer is allowed to go. And like the only people who are allowed to go are, you know, they're embedded with the Israeli military. A lot of them are just kind of weird, you know, like kind of neoconservative, odd, strange people. The, the, in the few reporters that do go in with the Israeli military and are serious actually still come out with shocking stories. Like, I don't remember, there was a, there was a CNN reporter who went in and saw the Israelis destroying a cemetery. And so he asked him, why are you. That's. How could that have any military? Oh well, there's a tunnel right underneath. He said, oh, can you show. No, no, it's too dangerous. Please show it to me. So they did. And just by simple aerial footage and geolocation, it's pretty easy to see that they were not under the cemetery at all. They were just destroying the cemetery. To destroy a cemetery, to humiliate people, to, you know, obliterate their cultural heritage, to, you know, make people really feel like we don't belong here. You know, it's not, we have to leave. In other words, there's nothing left to stay for. And you know, so, so it's just so. I think people want to. I've, I've never lost my faith that people at their core are decent, you know. Yes, we have. Maybe, maybe somebody has this or that view of abortion or so you know, we can talk about stuff all day long, no problem. But, but at their core, nobody is in favor of blowing up children. At their core, no one is in favor of making an entire society homeless. No. Nobody is in favor of obliterating, obliterating hospitals, of killing a 16 year old boy in his hospital bed. No one's in favor of this stuff. So that's why. Yeah, that I. Yes. Do I want to scream at everybody? Yeah, for sure. But, but I also recognize that the reason they're not screaming themselves is because they don't know what's going on. And if they did, they'd be appalled by it. And so that's why I try to get out there.
- [91:59]
Ben Rhodes
Well, look, thanks so much for joining us to let people know what you saw and thanks for the work you did over there. How can people follow what you're doing?
- [92:12]
Firoz Sidwa
Oh, I'm on Twitter just for O Sidwa or at Faro Sidwa and then on Instagram is F. Sidwa okay.
- [92:21]
Ben Rhodes
We'll put that in the notes too. All right, Froz, thanks so much for joining us.
- [92:24]
Firoz Sidwa
Thank you. Appreciate it.
- [92:34]
Tommy Vitor
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- [94:10]
Firoz Sidwa
Cowering of all one man ID software presents the Dark ages. Available now.
- [94:19]
Ben Rhodes
Rated mature.
- [94:26]
Tommy Vitor
Final topic here, Ben. So our producer, Michael. Excellent producer. He's the world's biggest Eurovision fan. The guy just will not stop talking about Eurovision. He will not stop singing the songs and we promised him that we would cover it. So what comes next will be as new to us as it is to you, the listener. So, Michael, this is your canvas. This is your paint. Let rip.
- [94:51]
Ben Rhodes
Okay. Open up, Slack.
- [94:53]
Tommy Vitor
No shit. I'm reading the script for the first time. All right, Ben, let's have a little fun. The Eurovision finals were over the weekend. I'm assuming you were glued to Peacock watching me too. I actually have no clue what happened. And our team has taken full advantage of that. We're gonna play a little game here. We're calling Ursula Von Der Lyons Spotify Raps. The team has pulled a few clips from some particularly notable entries, and we're going to guess which country these crimes against humanity, I mean, diddies, came from. Heads up, we're watching videos. You can check out what we're reacting to if you hop on YouTube. And also, thank you, everyone who's been subscribed. Yeah, to save the world on YouTube. As I said a million times, we're getting our asses handed to us by the right wing when it comes to YouTube. People are searching for political news or foreign policy news, and they're getting horrible takes by some fucking incel over at TP usa.
- [95:43]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [95:44]
Tommy Vitor
And when you subscribe to POD Save the World and POD Save America, it really helps us serve as good information in the algorithm. So thank you for watching this, but the audio of these Eurovision clips is a lot of fun too, so we'll play it for you here. All right, let's roll. Clip number one. Life may give you lemons when dancing with the demons. No stress or no stress or no.
- [96:14]
Ben Rhodes
Need to be depressed.
- [96:24]
Tommy Vitor
Please give me this stuff.
- [96:26]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think we got enough.
- [96:28]
Tommy Vitor
Okay. Wait.
- [96:29]
Ben Rhodes
Why are these the best people from the countries? Like, I thought these were supposed to be, like, the cream of the crop here. Well, what country do you think it was from?
- [96:40]
Tommy Vitor
I should know the language.
- [96:41]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, I saw some Italian in there, but.
- [96:43]
Tommy Vitor
Yes, Italian macchiato or something, so I don't know.
- [96:46]
Ben Rhodes
It was Estonia. Estonia. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna put some. I don't speak Estonian or Italian, so there's some facts in the slack for you, Tommy.
- [96:53]
Tommy Vitor
Here are some facts, Ben. So the song title was Espresso Macchiato. Two facts worth noting. The singer is named Tommy Cash. That's cool. An Italian lawmaker wanted to ban this song because of its Italian stereotypes and because it, quote, conveys a message of a population tied to organized crime. Does it?
- [97:10]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I, I, I didn't get anything. I don't know. I mean, I, my Estonian is not good, so I don't know.
- [97:15]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I didn't get any organized crime vibes from that?
- [97:16]
Ben Rhodes
I. I just got some strange vibes.
- [97:18]
Tommy Vitor
I just got some bad singing. All right, next.
- [97:36]
Ben Rhodes
This is more what I expect from your.
- [97:37]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, this is what I expected. This woman's singing in a giant set of lips. Yeah, she's serving something.
- [97:43]
Ben Rhodes
Okay, that wasn't bad.
- [97:45]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, yeah, that was. Sure, it's fine. Where is she from?
- [97:51]
Ben Rhodes
Oh, shit. I didn't. I wasn't prepared for this game.
- [97:56]
Tommy Vitor
Lithuania.
- [97:57]
Ben Rhodes
We're staying in the Baltics here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Malta, Malta.
- [98:02]
Tommy Vitor
Malta.
- [98:03]
Ben Rhodes
All right, this one was very controversial. And Tommy, you're gonna. I'm gonna make you read why.
- [98:08]
Firoz Sidwa
Okay. Okay.
- [98:08]
Tommy Vitor
I'm gonna tell you why this is controversial. So the song title was Serving. This one was controversial. It was originally called Kant, which means singing in Maltese, and the lyrics originally went surfing. Kant. Obviously. This sounds similar to a word the Brits throw around a lot. The Guardian describes this as a queer or drag slang phrase, roughly meaning to express boldness. It was deemed a little too risque by the competition by the European Broadcasting Commission. So the song was retitled Serving and the lyrics reworked to Serving.
- [98:45]
Ben Rhodes
More like serving.
- [98:49]
Tommy Vitor
Serving.
- [98:49]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, kind of like that.
- [98:50]
Firoz Sidwa
Yeah, it was fine.
- [98:51]
Tommy Vitor
That was good.
- [98:51]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Malta's pretty conservative society, though. It's, you know.
- [98:54]
Tommy Vitor
Have you been to Malta? I've never been to Malta.
- [98:56]
Ben Rhodes
No. I've never been to Malta.
- [98:57]
Tommy Vitor
We should make a list of places to go.
- [98:59]
Ben Rhodes
We clearly have no ear for languages. I apologize in advance, everybody.
- [99:04]
Tommy Vitor
I. Yeah, I can't learn languages to save my life. Okay, that was great. All right, let's hear another beauty.
- [99:26]
Ben Rhodes
Are these people with us? That.
- [99:42]
Tommy Vitor
Is that, like, a liar? What do you call those guitars?
- [99:44]
Ben Rhodes
I know, it's kind of cool, though. I mean. Yeah, it's pretty good.
- [99:47]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, it was like ABBA meets a Renaissance fair.
- [99:50]
Ben Rhodes
It's called a saz, which is a long necked lute native to the region we're talking about. I'm going to put that in. Let's go with. Let's go with Romania.
- [100:03]
Tommy Vitor
I'm going to go with.
- [100:04]
Ben Rhodes
Or like, somewhere in the Balkans. I don't know.
- [100:07]
Tommy Vitor
I'm going to go with Bosnia.
- [100:10]
Ben Rhodes
Okay. Azerbaijan. Okay. There you go. I mean, we clearly know nothing.
- [100:17]
Tommy Vitor
We nailed that one, too.
- [100:18]
Ben Rhodes
Host of Cop 29, so.
- [100:21]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. Right. So they solve climate change. That song is called Run with youh. It is. It does go hard from kind of a boy band vibe. Although the harmony kind of. It falls off a bit there.
- [100:32]
Ben Rhodes
Am I the only one who heard it? It's like, I want to fuck with you.
- [100:35]
Firoz Sidwa
Yes.
- [100:36]
Tommy Vitor
I heard Run. Yeah. I thought I heard Rock with youh and I thought it was just a ripoff of, like.
- [100:43]
Ben Rhodes
I liked it. It was good.
- [100:44]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah.
- [100:45]
Ben Rhodes
I can fuck with that.
- [100:46]
Tommy Vitor
The Saz is a long necked loot native to the region. Okay, Very good.
- [100:50]
Ben Rhodes
All right. Only two more. The torture will be done soon.
- [100:52]
Tommy Vitor
Okay, good. Azerbaijan. Let's hear the next clip. When you let me.
- [101:06]
Ben Rhodes
Still, I'm holding on to dramatic.
- [101:19]
Tommy Vitor
Man. Wow. We went from kind of an NSYNC motif to like a drowning opera story.
- [101:28]
Ben Rhodes
Drowning. Yeah.
- [101:29]
Tommy Vitor
Huh. Okay. Are we guessing where that one was?
- [101:34]
Ben Rhodes
I'm going to this water. I'm going to put it in, like, Scandinavia, you know, I'm going to put it like on a. I don't know, like a Swedish or. I don't know, somewhere it feels like Northern European. Scandinavian.
- [101:46]
Tommy Vitor
Okay. Sweden.
- [101:48]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I'll stick with.
- [101:49]
Tommy Vitor
Sure. You could say Skando. Okay. I'm going to say Austria.
- [101:53]
Ben Rhodes
Very good, Tommy. Oh, I got it. Yeah, you got it. And yeah, I think the heavy ocean imagery in the video is trying to throw you off because Austria is landlocked. Yeah. Obviously. Didn't Austria win?
- [102:06]
Firoz Sidwa
Yes.
- [102:07]
Ben Rhodes
You ruined the game. I mean, no, it's fine. I'm not that out of it. No, they did. They did win. That person won. That person won. He's a counter tenor named jj. We didn't have time to play it, but the song takes a really hard turn into EDM at the end, so. Of course it does. There's a. There's a.
- [102:24]
Tommy Vitor
It's a.
- [102:25]
Ben Rhodes
It was good.
- [102:25]
Tommy Vitor
This JJ Reddick's not bad.
- [102:28]
Ben Rhodes
All right, last one. Almost over, guys. Are these guys in the sauna? Is that like a sauna?
- [102:49]
Tommy Vitor
Does have a sauna vibe. There's big fire.
- [102:51]
Ben Rhodes
Are they wearing towels? Sauna.
- [102:57]
Tommy Vitor
That one was like Men at Work meets Borat.
- [103:02]
Ben Rhodes
Yes.
- [103:02]
Tommy Vitor
Meets something happening. An event in Poland.
- [103:04]
Ben Rhodes
Meets me in a sauna. Yeah.
- [103:06]
Tommy Vitor
Meets something. Huh? I'm going to say Poland.
- [103:10]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, I'm just like, literally just picking European countries at this point. Like, Poland's good guess. I mean, who has like a sauna culture? I mean, once again, I keep going back to Northern Europe.
- [103:20]
Tommy Vitor
Go for it.
- [103:20]
Ben Rhodes
I'm going to say I'm going to stick with Sweden. Like, eventually. I'll be right. Nailed it. Ben. Oh, I got it. Yeah. They love a sauna in Sweden. They do love a song.
- [103:30]
Tommy Vitor
The song is called Bara Botta Bastu. The group that sings is from the Swedish speaking minority in Finland. But as a celebration of the sauna the song transcends borders. This is the first song from Sweden, actually, in Swedish since 1998. The other entries have all been in English. That is interesting. All right, that's it.
- [103:50]
Ben Rhodes
Austria won. Israel came in second. It was close too, wasn't it? Like, it was close. They won the popular vote, but not the professional music jury vote. Is the popular vote like people are voting online or something? Or is it, like.
- [104:01]
Tommy Vitor
Is there electoral college?
- [104:02]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think you text or something and you're not allowed to vote for your own country.
- [104:05]
Tommy Vitor
Oh, wasn't there, once again a big controversy over Israel? Were people trying to ban them?
- [104:11]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, always. Always. Clearly not. I mean, if they won the popular vote, the. Clearly wasn't that widespread of a. I mean, it was a protest. I know, but they won. The, you know, people clearly didn't hold it against these people.
- [104:24]
Tommy Vitor
That's true. That's true.
- [104:25]
Ben Rhodes
I don't hold it against these people either, I have to say.
- [104:27]
Tommy Vitor
Like, you know, it's a complicated question whether we should be banning, like, Russian athletes.
- [104:34]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I kind of have a problem with. Because, like, I. I don't know. Would you like to be held accountable for everything that our fucking crazy government does? I mean, I wouldn't.
- [104:41]
Tommy Vitor
I'd prefer not.
- [104:41]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [104:43]
Tommy Vitor
Okay. Well, listen, that was a fantastic Eurovision segment. Please send all your questions, concerns, comments to Michael. He's in the slack. He'll answer all of your questions.
- [104:55]
Ben Rhodes
Discorders come to Michael.
- [104:56]
Tommy Vitor
I'm sorry, I didn't mean slack, I meant discord.
- [104:58]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, at me in the discord. And I'll see you there.
- [105:00]
Tommy Vitor
Thanks again to Firoz Tidwa for joining the show and for all the amazing, brave work he's done in Gaza and elsewhere. And thank you all for listening. Ponte World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben.
- [105:19]
Ben Rhodes
Hi.
- [105:20]
Tommy Vitor
The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Molly Lobel. Matt de Groot is our head of production. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community@qriket.com friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and more. If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [106:10]
Ben Rhodes
My.
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Tommy Vitor
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Ben Rhodes
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Tommy Vitor
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- [106:39]
Firoz Sidwa
Like fertilizer because of the way it promotes growth. Some say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk scaling with you while being magically affordable.
- [106:47]
Tommy Vitor
And some say Odoo's programs for manufacturing.
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Firoz Sidwa
Accounting, and more are like building blocks.
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Tommy Vitor
For creating a custom software suite. But I say Odoo is all of it. Fertilizer, Magic Beanstalk building blocks for business. Yeah, Odoo. Exactly what every business needs.
- [107:03]
Firoz Sidwa
Sign up@odoo.com that's o d o o dot com.