Ben Rhodes (1:58)

Try it out for free@wix.com Harmony honestly,

Guest or Interviewee (Dr. Tien Min Dinh or Nick Enrich) (2:01)

I put off building a website way longer than I should have. Then I tried Wix Harmony and it was way easier than I expected. I just described what I wanted and I had an incredible looking website. The best part, I could change anything myself or ask my AI agent for help. I had everything my business needed right there. So if you've been procrastinating, this is your sign. Start building a website for free@wix.com Harmony.

Tommy Vietor (2:43)

Welcome back to POD Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Ben Rhodes (2:45)

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Tommy Vietor (2:46)

Then another Tuesday, another day spent waiting for Trump to make up his mind about what he wants to do in a run.

Ben Rhodes (2:52)

Yeah, we had that ceasefire. YouTube subscribe to our YouTube channel on Friday and feels like it wasn't a ceasefire after all. It was just a bunch of Truth Social posts.

Tommy Vietor (3:03)

Yeah, it was a lot of, a lot of diplomacy by Truth Social by tweets. We're gonna walk you through all the latest. There's the on again, off again diplomatic talks in Pakistan. There's the on again, off again closures of the Strait of Hormuz. We're also going to dig into deeper things like what life is like for people in Iran. We'll talk about the latest from Lebanon, including why conservative Christians are not at all thrilled with the Israeli military. I think this is a probably underappreciated story. The degree to which that this image of an IDF soldier smashing a statue of Christ circulated on the Internet over the past weekend. Then we're going to talk about corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration and how, how it's impacting foreign policy. Yeah, really. Wait till you hear about this Jared Kushner guy. Then we're going to talk about the recent elections in Hungary and Bulgaria. The latest on the administration's like, slow rolling regime change is efforts in Cuba. Try to figure out what the hell is happening there. Then we are going to update you guys about friend of the show and FBI Director Cash Patel. He's having a.

Ben Rhodes (4:05)

He's having a good one.

Tommy Vietor (4:07)

Having a time in the barrel, throwing

Ben Rhodes (4:09)

back a few beers.

Tommy Vietor (4:10)

$250 million lawsuit against the Atlantic. See if that goes to court. The discovery on that could be interesting for him. And then, Ben, stick around for my interview with Nick Enrich. He was a top global health official at USAID when Elon Musk and the Doge guys arrived and decided to destroy the entire agency. So he's a new book out called into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded usaid. As mad as you are about what Trump has done to the world and all the death and destruction that Elon Musk caused, this will make you even more angry. So I promise.

Ben Rhodes (4:42)

Good, good.

Tommy Vietor (4:44)

It's worth it.

Ben Rhodes (4:44)

No, it's. This is a story that we shouldn't let just go away because the consequences of it are not going away.

Tommy Vietor (4:49)

And, like, it's one of those. The consequences are growing by the day. I mean, spoiler. The latest count that we talk about the interview is like 750,000 deaths as a result of USAID being destroyed. But the conversations Nick had with the people in charge of destroying USAID are like, absolutely more maddening and stupid than you would think.

Ben Rhodes (5:09)

You mean Big Balls wasn't a development expert?

Tommy Vietor (5:11)

Mr. Balls was not a pro on global health or PEPFAR. All right, so let's try to. Let's start with this. What we know about Iran. So as of this recording, the Strait of Hormuz is closed. The war in Iran is not resolved. The talks in Pakistan don't seem to be happening. I mean, we literally are waiting all day. It's like, will J.D. vance get on a plane? That was sort of like the conversation all day in Washington. The President's statements about it all are as incoherent and full of shit as ever. Here are a few examples from an interview Trump did Tuesday morning with cnbc. Let's listen to that. You need a.

Ben Rhodes (5:45)

At least the prospects for a signed

Tommy Vietor (5:47)

deal today and tomorrow, or else you would resume bombing Iran.

Donald J. Trump (5:56)

Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with. But we're ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go. You know, they want it to be over immediately. And I just looked at a little chart. World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years. I'm five months. Okay, five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly. Look at Venezuela. I took it over in 45 minutes. It was basically a 45 minute, by the way, a very strong military country. We can't let traders like Schumer put pressure on you where they say, we want out. Think how bad that is. I'm negotiating with these people and they're telling us we have to get out now. We have to get out now. We have to get now. I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed. I have all the time in the world. So we've done a great job. And I don't want to be rushed by people that are. Are really Treasonous, as far as I'm concerned.

Tommy Vietor (6:53)

So I try to do a little less, like, media criticism these days, but I feel like one follow up would have been warranted on the, hey, I would have won Vietnam and Iraq in a couple of weeks.

Donald J. Trump (7:03)

That.

Tommy Vietor (7:03)

That seemed like a moment for one.

Ben Rhodes (7:05)

It's so clear that someone made that chart for him, too. You know, it's not like he just came across a chart.

Tommy Vietor (7:10)

No.

Ben Rhodes (7:11)

And I think what he fundamentally doesn't understand is that the consequences. Yes. I mean, objectively, the war in Iran has not lasted as long as Vietnam. Congratulations, you get a gold ribbon. You know, lesser disaster. It doesn't mean that it's not a disaster. But also, one of the things I think he's missed in this whole enterprise is that the geopolitical consequences of attacking Iran specifically are actually much bigger in some ways than some of the other wars. I mean, not World War I, but say, the war in Afghanistan. I don't mean to minimize that war in any way. Obviously horrifying for the people who lived through it, both in Afghanistan and service members, but Afghanistan wasn't a country of 94 million people that controls the Strait of Hormuz and is a significant supplier of global energy. He is set in motion. He's kind of messed with the tectonic plates underneath geopolitics and the global economy with this war. And so he doesn't understand this isn't like something that's measured in, like, how many months of active conflict there are. It's measured in what are the repercussions of this war going to be, above all, for the people that have already been killed or suffered, but also for the entire global economy.

Tommy Vietor (8:30)

Yeah, for the global economy. The kind of thing you think that CNBC might ask about.

Ben Rhodes (8:34)

Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (8:35)

Who am I to criticize? Joe Kernan? So, like I said, Ben, we were waiting all day to see if J.D. vance would make this trip. Just before we started recording, President Trump posted the following message on Truth Social. Based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shabazz Shar of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as our leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all the respects, remain ready and able and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted. Discussions are concluded one way or the other. President Donald J. Trump. So I interpreted this as Trump blinking. He doesn't want to go back to war. The Iranians know that. The Wall street knows that. Oil traders know that. That's why all the prices are down. But he's also unwilling to lift the US Blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which sounds like it was a precondition to get Iran to agree to come back to the table. Does that sound right to you?

Ben Rhodes (9:37)

That sounds right to me. I think there's a couple other things happening here. The first is that, first of all, remember he was saying like a week ago that the regime has changed and there are all these wonderful people in charge now.

Tommy Vietor (9:49)

He's still kind of on that message right there.

Ben Rhodes (9:51)

Well, like, it hasn't. And what's happening on the Iranian side is pretty clear to me from the outside, which is that the irgc, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hardest core element of the regime, they're calling the actual shots, right? They are the ones who've closed the Strait of Hormuz. They're the ones who are collecting the tolls. They're the ones who are firing drones at the Gulf. And so some of kind of civilian leaders, these political leaders of Iran, may not even be able to deliver what they're negotiating at the table, because the IRGC are the ones that ultimately have to sign off, and they're the hardest of the hardliners.

Tommy Vietor (10:27)

And they got the big guns, and

Ben Rhodes (10:29)

they've got the guns, literally. And so, first of all, this is what happens when you kill the leadership of a country, right? So they've killed multiple people, not just Ayatollah. They've killed other people that could have been decision makers because they had more sway with the irgc. And they've kind of finally settled on this speaker of the Iranian Parliament who has some cred with the irgc. But. But so on the Iranian side, you've got this split, and the IRGC is like, you know what? We can sense that Trump is afraid of this war. And so why would we make a deal that doesn't get us everything we want? You know, we want sanctions relief. We want the Strait of Hormuz to be a toll road. And, you know, maybe we'll ship out the heu, the. The dust, as Trump says. But we probably don't want to make any more concessions on a nuclear program. Why should we? This guy's scared of us. He doesn't want the war. Then Trump doesn't really know what he wants. He just wants to be able to say he won. Clearly, he wants to get like the dust out. Which again, as we've talked about, doesn't change the underlying Iranian nuclear program.

Tommy Vietor (11:30)

Sprinkle it on a toilet seat for Bobby Kennedy.

Ben Rhodes (11:32)

He just wants something to say he won, but because he doesn't really know why he went to war, he doesn't even know what he's really pushing at the table. Before the war, they were pushing ballistic missiles, support for proxies. That's all gone.

Tommy Vietor (11:43)

Regime change. We're just regime change for protesters killed.

Ben Rhodes (11:47)

We're back to the JCPO negotiation, you know, and so that's all Trump knows. And then the Pakistanis probably don't even know why they're hosting this thing.

Tommy Vietor (11:55)

There's happy to be there.

Ben Rhodes (11:56)

Yeah, there's happy to be known. They, you know, made billions of dollars of investments in Trump and Witkoff's kids business, you know, crypto business. So this is not the best recipe for de escalation.

Tommy Vietor (12:08)

Yeah. So I saw this BBC reporter tweeted that the Iranian delegation was basically ready to come to the negotiating table. But then everything changed over the weekend when the US military fired on an Iranian flag cargo ship, according to some Iranian source. And that just blew everything up. And they want the blockade basically lifted. We'll get more into the TikTok of how we got there. But Ben, I've been reading there's a great Economist piece about the kind of intra Iranian power struggle that you are just touching on. It's between elected officials, it's between the military, it's between nationalists and Islamists. And the way this kind of played out and manifested in practice was Iran sent 8080 officials to the last round of Pakistan talks.

Ben Rhodes (12:50)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (12:50)

30 of them were deemed decision makers. And I think on a previous episode we talked about how the Iranian delegation was stacked with experts and expertise and people had been in negotiations before. And that is definitely like the glass half full version of it. But the glass half empty version was the Economist reported that the Pakistani mediators spent as much time kind of refereeing fights between members of the Iranian delegation as facilitating talks with the US So yes, it does sound like there's a very real power struggle happening and no clear way that it ends besides, you know, the military probably killing a bunch of people or throwing them.

Ben Rhodes (13:25)

Yeah, I mean, some of this is also probably like you want to go to Pakistan. It's been a little rough in Iran. It's probably sounds nice to be in a hotel with good wi Fi and like room service, all you can eat, breakfast buffet, you know, it's a good point the other thing I would say is, and this gets to the true social posts, when I was, you know, in charge of, for lack of a better term, like, you know, advocating for the Iran deal, there was a dynamic that would happen where, look, obviously we were trying to emphasize all that we got in the deal. So we would lean into like, you know, they're going to submit to these intrusive inspections and they're going to ship out the stockpile and they're going to, we're going to be able to see all of their program, the uranium mines and mills and the centrifuges. All true. But sometimes John Kerry would get a call from Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, who'd be like, hey, can you guys kind of chill out, chill out a bit on the intrusive inspections piece? Because it's true. But the irgc, I mean, he didn't necessarily say in these words, but basically it was giving him problems with the hardliners back home. Right? The IRGC didn't want the deal or they didn't like aspects of the deal like the intrusive inspections where you could just show up and look at stuff. And so it hurt him in the Iranian system. If we were leaning into that. Imagine if you were the Iranian negotiator and you know, you're probably out in front of the IRGC a little bit in Pakistan and you're like, well, yeah, maybe we could ship the dust out in exchange for this. And you know, you have to sell it back home to these killers in the irgc. And then all of a sudden you wake up on a Friday and Trump is true social, posting all these concessions that you actually didn't make. The strait will be open forever, which is not something that I'm sure the Iranians agreed to, that they're not gonna be enriched uranium. Trump was posting that the IRGC guys, I guarantee you, called up the negotiators and were like, golly fuck, what the fuckin. Hey, maybe come pay a visit to us. And it's like. And so of course they're backing out because they don't wanna get killed by the irgc. And so Trump is literally endangering the negotiators by what he's doing. I can sense that it's a good strategy.

Tommy Vietor (15:42)

No, it makes a lot of sense. Okay, so let's do a bit of the Tail of the Tape about how we got to this point. And like you said earlier, we recorded a bonus episode for the Pod Save the World YouTube on Friday about this. Like Flurry of social media activity. So please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube to make sure you don't miss any of these bonus episodes. And also when you subscribe and you like and you share the stuff we do on YouTube, you help us get people good information when they're just searching for what the hell happening with the Iran talks. And not factual, not like propaganda. Because, Ben, I made the mistake of watching a clip of Hugh Hewitt on his show interviewing Eli Lake about the latest ceasefire talks. It was like a parallel universe where everything was solved, the war was a triumph, they figured it all out. So how do those guys live with

Ben Rhodes (16:26)

the reality that that's not true?

Tommy Vietor (16:28)

They do a lot of dust, you know, a lot of that.

Ben Rhodes (16:30)

If Obama had done this, they'd be yelling about how we let the regime in place, how they left the ballistic missiles anyway.

Tommy Vietor (16:36)

Yeah, yeah. So, okay, last week we had this flurry of claims from Trump on social media. You mentioned a few of them, but let me read them. Iran has agreed to never close the straight up rumors again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the world. Not sure that one held up. The USA will get all nuclear dust created by our great B2 bombers. No money will exchange hands in any way, shape or form. Then finally he said, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited all caps from doing so by the usa. That one I liked. So it was all bullshit. Iran had only announced a partial opening of the strait. And then by Saturday, they'd walked back even that partial opening because the Iranians were pissed that Trump said, well, we're going to continue our blockade of the strait. Then things escalated further after the Iranians attacked two Indian flagships attempting to transit the strait. Trump called those attacks a total violation of our ceasefire agreement. And then he re upped his threat to destroy Iran's civilization, its civilian infrastructure by saying, you know, if they don't take the deal, the United States is going to knock out every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice Guy. All caps is how we've ended that one. The US later boarded and seized an Iranian vessel that was en route from China. The US seized a tanker in the Indian Ocean. So things just kept escalating, escalating. On Monday, Iran's speaker of the Parliament and lead negotiator Mohammed Galibov said Iran will, quote, not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats. And quote, we have been preparing to show new cards in the battlefield. So I was excited for like a. The new cards, you Know, mid season twist here. So Ben, obviously, like my, my working assumption has been that Trump wants a deal or he wants the war over. He wants to punt this as far down the road as he possibly can and just do CNBC hits and convinch a bunch of, of commodities traders, traders that he is in fact going to fold on everything and taco or whatever you want to call it and just like not make their lives harder, not increase the oil of energy. But also he refuses to admit that he hasn't accomplished all of his goals. There will be people pushing him from the right to actually get the heu. Like I have zero doubt, I have zero hope that the Israelis will actually adhere to this demand that they never attack.

Ben Rhodes (18:52)

They're still in Lebanon.

Tommy Vietor (18:53)

Lebanon again? Yeah. And they're still occupying Lebanon. We'll get into all the details of that later. So I don't know, man, like this is as clear as mud. But like, how do you see this playing out in this moment?

Ben Rhodes (19:02)

I think if you look at the Iranians, they know they don't have to give much. You know, in some ways they could choose to give nothing and the war just kind of freezes. I think what they want though is money. They want either unfrozen assets. We heard rumors of $20 billion. They want either probably more comprehensive sanctions relief so they can just sell oil without it being sanctioned. They want to tax the Strait of Hormuz in perpetuity. They just want revenue. And what will they trade to get that? They will not trade away their ballistic missile program because they've just demonstrated how much they need it. They're not going to trade away their support for proxies because it's kind of existential to them that they have these proxies. And they're not going to say that they'll never enrich uranium. They're not going to say we won't have a nuclear program. So I think what they had to trade away is the dust because the dust is not frankly that important.

Tommy Vietor (20:02)

Which isn't dust, by the way.

Ben Rhodes (20:05)

It's enriched uranium. It's highly enriched uranium. It's so weird we have to call it dust because he has to say that he obliterated the program. But anyway, yeah, because fundamentally that means nothing to them. They still have centrifuges that they can operate. If they choose to, you know, have a covert nuclear program, they just take those centrifuges underground and accumulate more dust, you know, so I could kind of see some deal where they ship out the AGU and I Don't know, maybe they promise not to enrich uranium for some period of time, which, by the way, that promise is worth nothing absent, like, rigorous inspections, which I don't think they're gonna submit to. Right. And so then Trump says he got the deal of the century. It's so much better than Obama's Iran deal, even though it's gonna be probably a lesser version of the Iran deal. And that it'll be like the dust for some sanctions relief, you know, and

Tommy Vietor (20:56)

the war's over 15 years instead of 10 or something.

Ben Rhodes (20:59)

And if you think about. Yeah, but it'll be a phony. They can say 100. You know, like they've learned that deals are fungible. They've learned that, you know, so to them, any deal they make is a deal for the duration of the Trump presidency. It's a two and a half year deal, and they'll reassess at that point, or maybe they'll just cheat and have a covert nuclear program. And so you could see this world in which Trump declares victory because he got the dust out in the straightforward moves. It was open before. The war is open again. Measure that against what he said at the beginning of the war. There's going to be regime change. We're going to obliterate their nuclear program, they have to end their ballistic missile program. We're going to destroy their navy. Well, clearly we haven't destroyed their navy because they've closed the Strait of Hormuz with like a bunch of speedboats, you know, so he's not achieved the things he said he would. And it was totally unnecessary to launch this war, kill all these people, upend the entire global economy, you know, permanently lose the Gulf states as people that are reliant on the United States, and on and on and on. Was all that worth it to get the dust out? Does anybody in America even care about the dust?

Tommy Vietor (22:10)

By the way, it had already been dusted as far as we are concerned, based on Trump's claims.

Ben Rhodes (22:14)

Well, and the question is, and I have a question for you, Tommy, is like, this is a Hugh Hewitt question, is like, will the right wingers accept. Cuz that's the total capitulation to the Iranians.

Tommy Vietor (22:23)

Yeah, I think that where what they will tell themselves, the story they'll tell themselves is, look, he destroyed all of, you know, Isfahan, he destroyed all the nuclear facilities. It will take a generation to build them back. They have no revenue. The military capacity is, you know, a fraction of what it once was. Therefore that is some big win when it's like what everyone has always said about military efforts to shut down Iran's nuclear program. It's like you can set them back, but you cannot permanently take it away or solve the problem. And I think they'll convince themselves that the problem has been, you know, as solved as much as it could have been. What I think we know in reality there could be like a garage somewhere in Iran with some nuclear centrifuges spinning that's enriching, you know, uranium to the grade they need it to be.

Ben Rhodes (23:14)

They're just in this fantasy world where this is a game of risk. Because I think the most important thing we've learned from this war is that the demonstrated capacity the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz is worth 10,000 ballistic missiles. It's worth, it's worth far more than support for Hezbollah, you know, like, and they can't. Whatever capabilities Iran lost, they gained a much bigger one in showing that just firing a few drones at some tankers and threatening to strait if Hormuz gives them control of the global economy. So congratulations, Hugh Hewitt and Eli Lake. You've just empowered the IRGC more than anything that has happened since the 1979 revolution.

Tommy Vietor (23:55)

Another Trump win, except for maybe the

Ben Rhodes (23:57)

Iraq war, which empowered them significantly. So this is the second time, another big win that the neocons have given the IRGC a gigantic win.

Tommy Vietor (24:10)

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I think we should assume that that's a massive undercount. But that would only be the direct death toll and that is far from the only impact. The center for American Progress put together a report that talks about the kind of the human environmental costs of the war that includes the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that release these toxic chemicals and pollutants into the air. Remember when the Israelis bombed this big petrochemical facility? It was like, you know, there was it raining like acid for days on people. Right? God knows what that did to civilians. That there have been, you know, further erosions of Iran's healthcare infrastructure, which is already under enormous stress before the war because of anti government protests and decades of sanctions and mismanagement. And then Iran was experiencing this massive water shortage again before the war that has gotten worse because, you know, at least one of their desalination plants was bombed. And then on top of that, Ben. So the Iranians have dealt with like an almost total Internet blackout since the war started. And I would just ask anyone, like imagine any modern economy running without an Internet for two months. It's impossible. Every business, every business is screwed, right? And so on top of that, you know, you have the US and Israel targeting major industries like petrochemical and steel. You need those industries to rebuild the country and also to get the revenue to rebuild the country. I saw one analyst told the Wall Street Journal that the disruption to the steel industry put at risk more than 5.5 million jobs within Iran and then another 1.2 million at risk because of impacts on the chemical and pharma industry. And so like again, to sum it all up, there were all these protesters who Trump said he was going to rescue who are now like staring down the barrel of a more hardline regime. Right? They traded the older hominy for the younger hominy. The IRGC is more entrenched and life is just exponentially worse for them. A disastrous economic situation somehow got worse because we bombed the shit out of it.

Ben Rhodes (29:26)

Yeah, I think that we live in this world in which our news cycle focuses on this place when the bombs are falling and then it's Same impulse as Trump. Trump kind of reflects the worst aspects of America. It's a common thread with Trump. If I can just get this off the television set and actually, to him, it's a television set. For most of us, it's our phones. Then we'll think about other things. We'll think about, I don't know, the ballroom or the next war against Cuba or whatever. But I think what you're reminding us is of the people inside of Iran. This war is gonna be with them for a very long time. It's gonna show up in deeper poverty, deeper repression, maybe health effects of some of these things that have been done that millions of people will. And actually, millions of Iranians were also displaced. Millions of people's lives are worse because of what Donald Trump did. And that's the kind of moral outrage that sometimes missing when people talk about Democratic opposition to the war. That's about. He didn't ask Congress the right way. What about the fact that it's about the briefing? Yeah, he just fucked over millions of Iranians. And in perpetuity, by the way, Gulf Arabs and Lebanese and the U.S. civil service members who died or were wounded, their lives are never going to be the same. And I think we kind of have to remind ourselves of that human cost. I think the other thing that'll be interesting is there's a world in which protests resume. Life is shitty there. But the IRGC is now more dug in. They frankly think that they just weathered. If we can weather Trump bombing us and the Israelis bombing us, we can deal with these protesters. And there's less of a threat of the United States bombing again. Like, if they're cracking down and killing thousands of protesters at some future date, you know, they probably think, well, Trump doesn't want to get another war. And I think the other thing that's happened, I'd be curious. And we won't know until we ask, you know, actual Iranians, which is hard because Internet blockout, among other things. These diaspora Iranians that were very supportive of the war, like Reza Pahlavi, who was calling on people to rise up and suggesting he was going to go run a transition. Those people have to be pretty discredited because.

Tommy Vietor (31:41)

Oh, you would think. Well, you and I talked about this. I mean, people who push for wars and the wars go badly are almost never discredited in Washington. So I'm sure he'll have a friend there.

Ben Rhodes (31:50)

Yeah, he'll have a friend in Washington within Iran. Again, he told these people that he was gonna run some transition. Trump Cast him aside the same way he did Maria Machado in Venezuela. So it'll be interesting to see how the diaspora kind of adjusts to this, because I think there's a lot of splits. The people that advocated for this now look like they just advocated for something horrible to happen to their country. I'm not suggesting that's what they wanted to happen, but that is what happened.

Tommy Vietor (32:13)

That's what happened.

Ben Rhodes (32:14)

So I think, yeah, by every metric, life is worse for Iranians and there's

Tommy Vietor (32:19)

just no timeframe for building it back. I mean, Iranian state media put the cost of rebuilding Iran at $270 billion. Yeah, where is that money going to come from? And even over in the uae, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering basically a bailout for the UAE because their economy has been hit so hard. So, like, the entire Gulf is feeling this ripple out. And so, Ben, like, maybe the best news we have for you guys today, at least in this kind of bucket, is that the ceasefire is mostly holding in Lebanon. On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social, like we mentioned earlier, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited from doing so by the usa. Enough is enough. Axios reported that this caught the Israelis by surprise and that Netanyahu was, quote, personally stunned and alarmed by the message. It's nice. Take that one. Trump later elaborated to Axios saying Israel has to stop. They can't continue to blow buildings up. I'm not going to allow it again, I'm very skeptical that that will hold. But God, I would have loved to hear Joe Biden say that one fucking time about Gaza over the course of two years anyway. The idf, though, is still occupying a huge chunk of southern Lebanon. The IDF calls it a forward defense line. We should call it what it is, which is Israel invading and occupying another country. A bunch of Lebanese people use the ceasefire to return to their villages and just check out their homes. They found them destroyed, in many cases flattened to the ground by US military provided bulldozers. Last week, 40 Democrats voted to block the sale of military bulldozers to Israel because they're using for this kind of stuff. But unfortunately, that vote failed. Folks, on social media over the weekend, Ben might have seen this pretty shocking image of an IDF soldier literally sledgehammering the face of a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross. This happened in a Christian town in southern Lebanon. When I first saw this image, I thought it must have been AI generated because it looked designed in a lab to inflame sectarian tensions and erode support for Israel among evangelicals. But nope, turns out it was real. In a statement, notably a statement released in English, Netanyahu said he was stunned and saddened by the soldier's actions, and he condemned the act in the strongest terms. So the soldier who vandalized the statue and the soldier who took the picture were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 day military detentions. But there were six others on the scene who were going to be punished separately. Probably get a slap on the wrist or something, we'll find out. But the damage was done. This incident outraged conservatives, outraged religious leaders. It's not an isolated incident. Folks probably remember that the only Catholic church in Gaza was shelled a couple different times, and the priest there was wounded in one of those shellings. So, Ben, we've talked before on the show about how Israel's biggest supporters in the US Are not American Jews, it's evangelical Christians who want the rapture to come. Do you think these stories will kind of will dent that support? Because you do see this narrative get lifted up by Tucker Carlson, a lot of, for example.

Ben Rhodes (35:13)

I think so. I mean, first of all, I'm dubious of this ceasefire. One statistic I saw, Tommy, was that there was a ceasefire with Hezbollah in late 2024 that was reached. And the UN, the UN force in Lebanon reported 10,000 Israeli violations of that ceasefire. That doesn't seem good before this latest war started.

Tommy Vietor (35:38)

That's how.

Ben Rhodes (35:38)

And so. And we saw the same thing in Gaza. Israel's violated the ceasefire in Gaza hundreds, if not thousands of times. And so what they do is what Trump wants is again, Trump doesn't really care about the people in Lebanon or Gaza. He wants it to be a low enough level of violence that it's just kind of not leading the news. And so if Israel's like occasionally bombing Lebanon in perpetuity, that's fine as long as it's not like the big show where they were obliterating Beirut. So count me skeptical about the directives to Netanyahu to prohibit him from doing this in Lebanon. On the Christian stuff, I think that the problem for Trump and Israel is that there's a bunch of converging things happening. Is that you have. Yes. Like in Lebanon, some of these villages that are being destroyed are Christian villages. Some of them are Christian. Like, you know, they've lineage that goes back to like the Bible, you know, like the New Testament. Like this is a holy land, you know, for Christians. Like, this is where this war is happening, where Israel is occupying territory. And some of the people, the Priests have been killed in the bombing. I saw, you know, a child that had met with the Pope was killed in the bombing. Like, there are these different things that are, are touching this space when you add on top of that Trump posting the picture of himself as Jesus and Trump putting out this threat to annihilate Iran on Easter morning. Happy Easter. There's a disrespect and disregard for Christianity in both the actions of the Israeli government and in the personal actions of Trump. And so the evangelical Christians are having a double reckoning because they're both like, huh, Trump, I thought we liked him. He got rid of Roe v. Wade, but it turns out he's mocking Jesus now.

Tommy Vietor (37:32)

He seems like the Antichrist.

Ben Rhodes (37:33)

And, huh, like, I, you know, I thought Israel was our friend, but they're blowing up, you know, Christian villages. And now there's this, you know, picture of an Israeli IDF soldier, like, you know, desecrating Jesus.

Tommy Vietor (37:48)

Of all the things to post on social media, you take literally taking a sledgehammer to Jesus face. What are you thinking? What are your hobbies? What does that guy say?

Ben Rhodes (37:58)

It does show you the impunity. I mean, you see this sometimes on IDF social media. Like, remember when he used to be the most moral army in the world? I guess that talked more.

Tommy Vietor (38:06)

And there was another incident, I think, in a church in southern Lebanon where a bunch of IDF soldiers, like, staged a fake wedding inside an Orthodox church and probably didn't realize, like, how profoundly offensive that was for a bunch of Christians in that community. And that went super viral on social media. So, like, people who, again, whose feeds push them this kind of content have seen example after example after example and are now like, this whole most moral army thing has just been tossed out the window. And we're not even talking about the disrespect and treatment to Muslims, Palestinians, your average sort of like Lebanese person like that, that is unfortunately priced in well.

Ben Rhodes (38:44)

And you also remember they, the Israeli government closed on Palm Sunday the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the highest

Tommy Vietor (38:52)

representative of the Vatican in literally where Jesus was born.

Ben Rhodes (38:56)

So I think that, look, it is the case that a lot of Americans and American Christians actually probably didn't know until a few months ago that there's a huge Palestinian Christian community that includes and encompasses the most holy sites in the Christian church, Bethlehem and Tucker Carlson. People like that are now, really, you know, hitting on that point. And so I think it does risk lowering the floor of support for both Israel and Trump because, you know, people who actually care about their Christian faith are going to be upset about this. It also is a very dangerous gateway to a certain kind of anti Semitism that is one of the older kinds of anti Semitism. Well, the Jews are the ones who killed Jesus.

Tommy Vietor (39:44)

Exactly, exactly. And it's very dangerous.

Ben Rhodes (39:47)

And again, like, it's Trump and Bibi. That, you know, doesn't just justify it in any way. It's. It shows why these kinds of wars are so dangerous for anti Semitism, you know, because they lead people in those directions.

Tommy Vietor (40:00)

Yeah. And again, like, the, the, the cost to civilians on the ground in Lebanon has been unbearable. Right. I mean, there's the direct casualty number, but then there's the million people who have been displaced and the people who came back to their homes that have just been leveled. We reached out to Doctors Without Borders to see kind of what they're experiencing on the ground in Lebanon. And we got this note from an emergency physician, Dr. Tien Min Dinh. Let's listen.

Guest or Interviewee (Dr. Tien Min Dinh or Nick Enrich) (40:24)

I need people to understand what the injuries looked like that we were seeing before the ceasefire. Now, beyond the acute injuries, we're looking at a generation left with lifelong disabilities. I visited a young woman a few days ago in ICU who we treated. When she came through the emergency department, she'd been walking along with a friend when both her legs were blown off. She managed to survive her initial injuries, but when I visited her a couple of days ago, she was hooked up to dialysis because the muscle destruction from her injury was so extensive that it had started destroying her kidneys. I also recently visited a migrant woman who'd been a patient at a clinic for years. She was injured in one of the very first strikes in the south, and she's still in the hospital. She's bled into her brain stem and spine. She's paralyzed, her home is destroyed, and the people who would have cared for her were killed in the same strike. We are also seeing an overwhelming number of people whose health needs were neglected during the war either because they couldn't reach health care or their doctors were displaced, or hospitals had to shut their outpatient clinics to direct resources to trauma and emergency care. Yesterday our clinic diagnosed a young pregnant woman with a baby who had died in utero. Imagine having a fully form wanted and loved baby and having its heart stopped because the healthcare system had collapsed. These are complications that if they get caught early, they can be treated. They can be delivered safely by C section when there's a functioning system, but there isn't one.

Tommy Vietor (41:55)

So look, you often hear people say, well, the IDF military campaign in Lebanon is the most justified of all their actions because there is this real threat from Hezbollah and for rockets, et cetera. And it's like, okay, but there is a flip side to that argument about the human cost for people living in Lebanon who have no association with Hezbollah, probably hate them. And that's some examples right there.

Ben Rhodes (42:21)

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that strikes me listening to that clip is these people and Doctors Without Borders, they've been in a lot of difficult places. And you could hear her voice, like, breaking.

Tommy Vietor (42:29)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (42:29)

And it's the same thing we experience in Gaza. Like, the scale of this destruction is not normal even for a war, because you hear it in her voice. The things that are happening kind of go beyond there was a civilian casualty event because, again, this gets at. Why is it necessary to go after the health infrastructure if you're targeting Hezbollah? Clearly, this war went well beyond targeting Hezbollah, either because there was no targeting or because it was indiscriminate or because there was really an objective to kind of paralyze Lebanese society. While you take southern Lebanon. Now, the other thing I want to say, Tommy, and I'm gonna say this at the beginning. Many thanks to the worldo Lebanese American who sent me some wonderful Lebanese olive oil.

Tommy Vietor (43:14)

Okay.

Ben Rhodes (43:15)

Because, you know, she was.

Tommy Vietor (43:16)

It's not the swerve I was expecting.

Ben Rhodes (43:18)

Grateful for our coverage of Lebanon, but actually, the reason I make this point beyond just thanking that person is Lebanese. The Lebanese I know, hate that their country is only seen as, like, this war zone.

Tommy Vietor (43:32)

It's like this beautiful cosmopolitan scene.

Ben Rhodes (43:34)

Yeah. If it's on the news, it's because Hezbollah and, you know, rubble and Beirut and what the olive oil reminds me of, this is this incredible place, one

Tommy Vietor (43:42)

of the prettiest places.

Ben Rhodes (43:43)

Yeah. It's this gorgeous country. They produce wonderful things. They, like, have wonderful artists. I mean, it's worth naming this because there's something dehumanizing about how we kind of like, you know, the camera only turns on these places to show, like, rubble and then a commentator talking about Hezbollah. You know, like, it's like the vast majority of Lebanese, including Shia Muslims, are not, like, Hezbollah operatives, you know, just normal human beings. Beirut is usually like an incredibly cosmopolitan city, not just a bunch of rubble from Israeli bombs. You know, and so the erasure of the humanity of people cannot be a consequence of the war.

Tommy Vietor (44:27)

Yeah. And it doesn't have to be this way. It's a bunch of political choices made by political leaders. All right, let's turn to just the broader problem within the administration of the failure of diplomacy and the role I think you and I both believe that corruption has played in all of it. So Trump, when he has diplomatic problem, he does not send experts, as we've discussed. He sends his idiot son in law, Jared Kushner, and his idiot golf buddy, Steve Witkoff. And the issue is not just that they're in over their heads, which they are. They very much are. It's that they are corrupt. They have these huge financial conflicts of interests, and we basically have no visibility into the specifics or how those conflicts of interest might impact their decision making. Especially we're talking about the Middle East. Right. And Jared Kushner's got all this Gulf money. So let's just go through the examples because we've talked about this before, but I don't know if we've done like, a comprehensive kind of like, corruption conversation recently. So Kushner is this floating envoy. He meets with the Board of Peace. He meets with the Russians, he meets with the Iranians. He's in Gaza all the time. He's talking to the Israelis and the White House. They talk about Jared, like, in this role, he's making this big sacrifice because he doesn't take, like, the White House salary.

Ben Rhodes (45:36)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (45:37)

And don't. For those who might have been. Who might believe this bullshit, Jared is an unpaid volunteer because volunteers don't have to make ethics disclosures and release their conf. Their personal financial disclosure forms. So we only know because of previous press reports that Jared's investment firm, Affinity Partners, got $2 billion from the Saudis, and he got hundreds of millions more from the Emiratis and the Qataris. We also know that at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Jared was ostensibly there as Trump's Middle east envoy, but he was also soliciting funds for his firm. The New York Times said Jared was trying to raise another 5 billion for his fund. I assume most of that would come from the Saudis if he had his druthers. Bloomberg reported that 99% of all Affinity Partners assets belong to non US investors. So that's the little we know about Jared. Eric and Don Jr. Recently announced they're going to work for a drone manufacturing company, which later merged with a publicly traded Trump company that owns golf courses. So that makes a lot of sense. Ben is totally on the up and up. Forbes estimated that between from 2024 to 2025, Don Jr's net worth went from 50 million to 300 million. Eric's went from 40 million to 750 million. And Barron Trump, who is a college sophomore is estimated by Forbes to be worth $150 million, all of it tied to cryptocurrency stuff. And then finally, Ben, I know you've heard of Truth Social, but did you know that its revenue does not just come from spammy ads for mail order brides and Chinese peptides and things of that nature. They also. We'll do it. A little multiple choice game here. What business did Trump Media, the owner of Truth Social, get into recently via a $6 billion merger? Was it A, Orbital Data Centers, B, Fusion Energy, C, Non Woke AI? D, Anti Woke Legal Services via its acquisition of Liberty Legal, which is an anti woke legal services company for patriots who don't want their case law to be totally gay.

Ben Rhodes (47:43)

All right, so in my mind it's probably Orbital Data Centers or Non Woke AI. And I'm going to go with Non Woke AI.

Tommy Vietor (47:53)

Sorry, my friend. Is Fusion Energy really? Yes, yes. The Trumps recently got into the fusion energy business. The company conflicts of interest are so massive the media barely covers them. Do you see the reporting the other day? That's like Jared Kushner's conflicts are barely mentioned in the reporting.

Ben Rhodes (48:12)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (48:12)

And it's like this is harming our national security and it's kind of just not part of the conversation.

Ben Rhodes (48:16)

First of all, we should say there is a highly evolved network of corruption between kind of Russia, the Gulf, the US Far right, kind of Magaverse, Hungary. There's just a lot of money that kind of swashes around this space. And what's interesting is Jared gravitates to all the places that are the most corrupt.

Tommy Vietor (48:39)

Interesting how that works.

Ben Rhodes (48:40)

So the hotel deals in Serbia, probably one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and an extension of Russian interests in a lot of ways. Or obviously he's vacuuming up money in the Gulf. Pakistan, as I mentioned, has a partnership with World Liberty Financial controlled by Trump and Witkoff kids to launch a stablecoin. Right. And so that's why else are the talks in Pakistan? So the point is that Jared is negotiating issues that are directly related to the interests of these countries that are paying him in the countries that are paying, if not him, his family members, and is simultaneously raising funds for his business while he's negotiating. And I think what is so grotesque about this is sure, like in some ways this is kind of how business is done in parts of the world. Like there's a lot of corruption, there's some big commercial deal and there's some money that exchanges hands under the table. But what Jared is Leveraging is literally the US Military. Like the US Military is an instrument of his corruption. Our capacity to sell weapons to the Gulf countries or to protect the Gulf countries or to go to war with the opponents of the Gulf countries is directly related to both his diplomatic portfolio and probably the reason they're writing checks. And so it's just a higher scale corruption because he's not trading like small. It's not like, hey, we're going to do a soybean deal and I'm gonna get some money under the table. Or Hunter Biden, I'm gonna get a $50,000 a month retainer from Burisma to sit on their board and hopefully get influence to the big guy, Joe Biden. No, this is like billions of dollars that are being paid because he has the power of the US Government behind him. And it is a shame on the US Media that they don't name. That should be in the first paragraph of every story.

Tommy Vietor (50:40)

It should be.

Ben Rhodes (50:40)

It has to be. And not for like partisan reasons because, like, how are you informing your readers?

Tommy Vietor (50:45)

Tell people why.

Ben Rhodes (50:46)

Why is Jared at the table?

Tommy Vietor (50:47)

Why is he at the table? Why are these talks failing? Why do we keep reading that? Like, Jared and Steve Woodkoff didn't understand the substance of the nuclear negotiation. Oh, right. They're not nuclear scientists. They're there because of corruption. And like Steve Wyckoff's son Zach is the co founder of World Liberty Financial. Yeah, the crypto firm that like it, it sounds, sure. Sounds like a big scam or a Ponzi scheme. Like, you know who's, you know who's mad at World Liberty Financial recently? Ben is Justin Sun. Remember that crypto billionaire that pumped billions into World Liberty Financial. Wow, what a coincidence, right? At the same time, the SEC investigation into one of his companies went away and now he's accusing them of fraud.

Ben Rhodes (51:25)

Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (51:26)

This guy's attacking World Liberty Financial. The Qataris gave Trump the plane. There's the real estate deals all across the world. And you got like, you know, remember what was it, the Gaza peace agreement event? When some world leader is like, hey, Trump, can I get done? Or Eric's phone numbers.

Ben Rhodes (51:39)

Yeah, yeah. They know the president of Indonesia, one of the biggest countries in the world, is like, hey, can I get Eric Trump's phone number? What do you think that's about? To get his advice about how to deal with development in Aceh in Indonesia. Like, no, I mean, and this is all just happening on the open. I mean, one thing I've heard you guys begin to talk on PSA about the Project 2029, like what happens if Democrats win? The accountability goes so far beyond Donald Trump Senior. You know, like the combination of the fraud and crimes that are being committed and also the need to have laws that prevent this kind of corruption is got to be like one of the first spate of executive orders from a Democratic person.

Tommy Vietor (52:23)

Totally agree. And Trump also got rid of all the inspector generals at all the agencies that might be providing like watchdogs or this. They closed the, remember, they closed the DOJ kleptocracy Task force. They stopped enforcing Farah, which is the Foreign Agent Registration act, which is try to prevent like, you know, foreign agents from buying influence in Washington. There's been a bunch of reporting recently about this friend of Trump's from like the 80s and 90s named Paulo Zampoli. Have you read about this guy?

Ben Rhodes (52:48)

Fucking guy, the one who knocked on his ex wife or something? Yes.

Tommy Vietor (52:52)

Yeah, this dude was boys with Trump in like the 80s and 90s. He was I think a modeling agent. Now Trump made him the special envoy of the President of the United States for a global partnership.

Ben Rhodes (53:01)

Has a very Epstein ring to.

Tommy Vietor (53:03)

Yeah, he's buddies with Epstein and he told the fc, whatever people see me, they want something, they want access to the President. I tell them, buy Boeing if you want to make the President happy, buy Boeing. It's the simplest thing in the world. It's like just talking about access trading.

Ben Rhodes (53:17)

Can we say one other thing about this, which is that the stock market, it's been extraordinary to watch this first of all, because there's an irrationality, you see it kind of going up. Part of the problem is Trump looks at that as a useful metric. There's two problems. One is clearly someone is doing massive insider trading and there's been, the BBC has a great investigation. People should look at that. They've accounted for all these trades before Trump makes an announcement of people essentially, you know, betting on Trump making that announcement and making hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's happened repeatedly on both Iran

Tommy Vietor (53:50)

and on tariff 15 minutes before. True social posts.

Ben Rhodes (53:52)

And so somebody is clearly profiting. But the other thing is the market is just a bullshit indicator for how the economy is going for people.

Tommy Vietor (53:59)

Right?

Ben Rhodes (53:59)

Because it's a bunch of fucking traders sitting in front of computer screens betting on currencies, betting on the price of oil. So even if you know you're going to get fucked and they're going to be oil scarcities and your gas prices are going to go up, they can still make a ton of money on trades by just betting where the currencies are going to go.

Tommy Vietor (54:17)

And the prices we're all seeing reported daily in the news are like futures prices usually, which often are less than the actual price of a barrel of oil. If you were to pull up to Kuwait and yeah, throw one in the back of your truck.

Ben Rhodes (54:29)

It's just the whole thing is corrupt capitalism has kind of reached its late stage. Frankenstein monster, you know, where it's just a vehicle for people like this to grift off of us.

Tommy Vietor (54:40)

You know, I think it's great that we're betting on when Maduro is going to be deposed. Some insider can make hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kalshi.

Ben Rhodes (54:48)

Some. Yeah, you couldn't be a Trump insider. You can be like a, you know, a special force. I'm not trying to pune them, but like, of course you shouldn't have that.

Tommy Vietor (54:56)

There's a lot of people.

Ben Rhodes (54:58)

Yeah, a lot of people know when things are going to happen and they can make money off it.

Tommy Vietor (55:00)

Yeah. All right, well, that was nice to get that off our chest. By the way, if you guys want to support a media company that will always report on Jared Kushner's corruption and the Witcoff family's corruption, please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscriber. Go to crooked.com friends. You can subscribe. You get ad free episodes, you get lots of bonus content, and you also help us build an independent, progressive media company that can help hold this administration accountable. Pod Save the World is brought to you by hims. At some point, you stop blaming stress, sleep or just getting older. Bedroom performance is in question. It's probably crossed your mind to do something about it. The good news? You don't have to jump through hoops to fix it. HIMSS connects you with licensed healthcare providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home. No awkward appointments, no pharmacy lines. 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That's an additional 20 off better plants and better growing at fast growingtrees.com using the code world at checkout fast growingtrees.com code world now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use World to Save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. All right, let's talk about corruption over in Europe. So last week there was this historical election in hungary where after 16 long years, a right wing populist named Viktor Orban was finally ousted after losing the parliamentary elections to a party led by his former ally, Peter Magyar. It was an election that focused on anger about corruption and frankly, you know, anger at Orban's total failure to deliver for his country. Many supporters of democracy writ large are hoping that this election might provide a playbook for how to defeat other authoritarian creeps like Orban, and also that it might be a bellwether that might help us just kind of see the future and determine which direction Europe is going to go. Because there's a lot of far right parties that have been doing well. So that brings us to Bulgaria. Ben. They just had an election over the weekend that seems to have some of the same dynamics at play. Four months ago, there were these major protests against corruption and the economic state of the country, which forced the former government to resign. The Progressive Bulgaria party, aka PB, they just wanted a landslide victory on Sunday with 44.7% of the vote. The leader is Bulgaria's former president, Rumen Radev. Now, that's more of a ceremonial position, but he is a former fighter pilot. He commanded the Bulgarian Air Force. And, you know, he's sort of an interesting character. Like, like Orban, he took a bunch of pro Russia sounding positions. He opposed Bulgarian military assistance to Ukraine. He's criticized EU sanctions. But there are questions about whether he's just sort of like posturing for the election or whether he's really committed to these positions or whether, you know, he's more of a pragmatist than Orban ever was, I guess we'll find. But Radev's win was bigger than what the polling anticipated. This coalition should have a majority in parliament. Now, the former prime minister and the GERB Party. I love the names of these parties overseas. The Gerb party came in second with like 13%. The Liberals got like 12% or closer to 13% too. Ben, any thoughts on sort of developments you've seen in Hungary since we last talked and how you might interpret the elections in Bulgaria from over the weekend?

Ben Rhodes (60:23)

I think first of all, in Hungary, Peter Magyar has been as aggressive as you could possibly have wanted him to be in signaling that he's going to go after urbanism. And people may have seen these videos of him literally going on state television, which did not allow him to appear the entire campaign. And being like, my first fucking thing to do is going to be shut your ass down. You know, like, I mean, it takes some guts. It'd be like, you know, going on, you know, CBS News, Barry Weiss and being like, yeah, we're shutting you guys down.

Tommy Vietor (60:49)

Yeah, I'm not like a big fan of like censoring the media, but like walking into state TV and saying to your face, live on air, this woman, like, you're full of shit. And now it's time to pay the piper. It's kind of funny.

Ben Rhodes (60:59)

And by the way, it's hard to overstate the extent to which Orban turned this. I mean, he literally would not allow Peter Magyar as an opponent of his to appear on. You know, so this goes beyond Fox News. This was literally state media. So I think Magyar is fully justified in doing what he's doing. He signaled he's going to go after the corruption, including Orban's family members. He signaled that he would arrest Bibi Netanyahu as a war criminal if he traveled to Hungary. I mean, everything the guy says sounds like he's going to take a sledgehammer to urbanism and the corruption that undergirds it. That's good. You know, the, the potential bad is there's a bit of a strongman Persona in Magyar in doing this and I don't know what he's going to build in his place.

Tommy Vietor (61:40)

Yeah, so he was a Fides party

Ben Rhodes (61:42)

member until recently, so we'll see. But so far is so good. But I think what we're seeing in Bulgaria is a broader problem. There's two issues. One is just like whether the far right do they have the momentum or not. And you can find now evidence that they don't. Orban lost, Maloney's backtracking away from Trump. Or you can find looks like they're maybe getting a foothold in Bulgaria, Slovenia, which we talked about that election where the progressive actually got the most votes. It appears that the creepy far right guy Jansa is the one who's gonna be able to form a government. And I think the problem for the EU is all Russia needs is one spoiler. I mean, and they have that in Slovakia. This guy Fico said that too. One country where people are probably just pissed about prices, cuz people are pissed about prices everywhere. And so they vote out the incumbent progressive party and then the kind of pro Russian party gets in and then all of a sudden they're like putting sand in the gears of the EU on sanctions on Russia. It speaks this is not sustainable. Like if all Russia has to do to like fuck up the whole EU is just find one relatively small central Eastern European country where there's an anti incumbent mood and kind of surf it into having obstructionists. Now none of these people can. It's Important people to know this. None of these people can take the role that Orban did. Like Orban was an absolute hub for far right activity, for corruption. There's rumors that the Russian money was going to the Hungarians and then going to cpac. You know like he was, he was bigger than just like a vote for Russia's interest in the eu. But I, I do think that this speaks to a problem where the, the EU has to get away from like unanimity of decision making because they're always going to have some pain in the ass leader in some country.

Tommy Vietor (63:24)

Definitely, definitely. But yeah, I, I agree with you. It does look like a bit of a mixed bag in those recent elections. But there's also like interesting soundings like Nigel Farage was, was asked about his relationship with Trump last week and he said I happen to know him but that's by the by trying to walk

Ben Rhodes (63:40)

that basically lived in the lob Trump Hotel.

Tommy Vietor (63:42)

Oh, he's just kissing his ass non stop. Lord David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator was more critical. He said Trump was heedless of the moral element of leadership and undeserving of support. He said a moral line has to be drawn somewhere. And this week Trump went beyond it. That was in an op ed in Germany. We've Talked about the AfD party, the Neo Nazi party. They're distancing themselves from Trump, especially the Iran war. And then Marine Le Pen, who's like a longtime ally and supporter of Trump, told the French media that Trump's moves in Iran were erratic and the consequences would be quote, catastrophic. So again, like it's just this weird place where the far right is willing to be critical of Trump on Iran in ways that inexplicably Keir Starmer, the Labor Prime Minister in the UK with a 50 point underwater approval rating will not. Even though every time he does it seems to benefit him politically, I just can't make sense of it.

Ben Rhodes (64:37)

It tells you, and we said this last week, but it's that Trump is the best thing going for anti far right politics cuz he's such an albatross on these people that they're running away from him. But to your Keir Starmer point, if the fucking AFD can figure out that one way to boost your numbers is to stand up to Trump, it's pretty extraordinary that Keir Starmer can't seem to draw the same lessons.

Tommy Vietor (65:00)

Yeah, look, I guess in fairness it's easier to be in opposition and when you actually have like government to government relations and you're managing this special relationship. Like, sure, there's some way Trump could punish you. Georgia Maloney, political malpractice. I think I've tried to be charitable. I don't believe what I'm saying.

Ben Rhodes (65:15)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (65:16)

Tell the fucking King not to go on the trip. That would send a message.

Ben Rhodes (65:18)

Yeah. Georgia Maloney had no problem saying Trump. Yeah. Like, why is King Charles, like, you know, don't come here. You know, like you, you're pissed about this war. I mean, Britain gets a significant amount of its energy from Qatar that's now offline. Like, that's going to screw over a bunch of people. Like, I just. There's no. What are you getting? I mean, actually, one. Let's just look at from the other standpoint. Like, what is Keira Starmer getting from being kind of getting called.

Tommy Vietor (65:43)

Not Winston Churchill.

Ben Rhodes (65:44)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (65:44)

Getting called Neville Chamberlain on the reg.

Ben Rhodes (65:47)

Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (65:48)

It's going great.

Ben Rhodes (65:48)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (65:49)

Trump's gonna take the King to like a monster truck rally or something.

Ben Rhodes (65:53)

Oh, my God.

Tommy Vietor (65:54)

I wonder if he'll go to the Ultimate Fighting event. That'll be fun.

Ben Rhodes (65:58)

Maybe he can be a part of Joe Rogan's like pilot psychedelic program.

Tommy Vietor (66:02)

Take a little ibogaine.

Ben Rhodes (66:03)

Yeah. Take a little iag. Take a little psilocybin, MDMA journey.

Tommy Vietor (66:06)

That sounds like more fun. The ibogaine shit.

Ben Rhodes (66:09)

No, no, I think, you know, let's. I'll be in the other clinical trials. I'll be in the MDMA one.

Tommy Vietor (66:14)

I will take you and I can take King Charles. Is Camilla gonna come?

Ben Rhodes (66:18)

I'm sure she's gonna come.

Tommy Vietor (66:19)

We'll take them to the sphere.

Ben Rhodes (66:20)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (66:21)

We'll see if like Dead and company will kind of run it back.

Ben Rhodes (66:23)

Just run it back.

Tommy Vietor (66:24)

Have a good ass time. Yeah, okay, we solved that one. So let's find two more things. We're gonna talk about the latest from Cuba. I don't. The New York Times and Axios reported that a senior delegation from the US had visited Cuba for negotiations. It's like the highest level talk since the Obama administration. Those talks were reportedly about like economic reforms, getting them to a market based economy, some releasing some political prisoners, not regime change. The talks have been primarily with President Raul Castro's family, not with the President of Cuba. Castro is 94 years old, so again, he's going to regime change himself pretty soon. But his kids are included, including his grandkids, his son, Alejandro Castro Espin, who is known as the One Eyed man because of an eye injury from when he was in Angola. Ben, I know you know, this guy, he's been part of them. Then there's Raul Rodriguez. Castro is supposedly Raul's favorite grandson. He was like his bodyguard, his body guy. He's like the keeper of Castro's phone and controls, like messages that come to and from him. He's also known as the Crab because he was born with a six finger on one hand. These guys have awesome nicknames. Imagine if like the Obama kids were known as like, the Crab, like the one eyed man.

Ben Rhodes (67:32)

I would say I probably spent, I'm not kidding, over a thousand hours with Alejandro Castro because we'd have these marathon multi day negotiating sessions or at least hundreds of hours. Several. And, and I, I look, I'll say, like, yeah, he lost an eye in Angola. You kind of notice it. I mean, there's something in there, you know, but there's a fundamental unseriousness to how they, you know, I never was like, I'm off to meet the one eyed man. You know what I mean? Like, these people seem like they're fucking kids in a movie. It's like, it's the same way that Caspitel likes to, you know, work out at Quantico. Like there's a fantasy camp element to them giving these nicknames of the Crab and the one eyed man. That's the first point.

Tommy Vietor (68:15)

The Crab is not a nickname that I would want.

Ben Rhodes (68:17)

No, no. Or the one I'd ban, for that matter.

Tommy Vietor (68:20)

No, Crab's got an continue insinuation. What are these talks? What is happening? What's happening here?

Ben Rhodes (68:25)

So I think what's happening is that

Tommy Vietor (68:28)

Iran is making them pump the brakes on this shit, as I guess by threshold question, because, yeah, like, they know it's not going well. No one has any bandwidth to do another regime change, at least not militarily. So, like, what, what is the path? How do you slow the roll?

Ben Rhodes (68:43)

I assume that what they want is some. So what's interesting is they clearly think Venezuela was a huge success. Trump talks about it a lot. And look, the problem for Trump is sure, he got Maduro. Delsey Rodriguez is in there. She's cracking down on all her opponents, purging all the Maduro lawyers, including Maduro people. She's still a socialist, strong woman. And, and I guess we get some oil occasionally from them or something. But here's the problem. Like, most Americans just don't give a shit. Like, no American's like, you know what? My life is demonstrably better because we depose Maduro, right?

Tommy Vietor (69:26)

So few people in Miami.

Ben Rhodes (69:27)

So then I think they look at, at Cuba. And they're like, well, we could do that, right? Like, we could, you know, get rid of the leader. And. But here's the problem. Like, they don't have oil in Cuba, you know, and so I imagine the potential deal could be. I'm sure the Cubans would be willing to open up their economy. They were before with us. And what, what you might, what Cuba has is real estate, right? So they have beachfront property, quite literally like the whole north coast of Cuba facing Florida, beautiful beaches or beautiful keys. And you could say in a very corrupt way, hey, the Miami Cubans can come in here and own this land and develop hotels on it, maybe throw in a Trump Tower or two and a golf course and maybe Miguel Diaz Canal, the President of Cuba, he goes, he's the Maduro in this scenario. And they try to find some Delsey Rodriguez type person that Raul Castro is okay, kind of taking the place. The problem with this is, first of all, Diaz Canal doesn't run Cuba. I mean, that's evident by the fact that they're not even talking to him. He's not, not even in the way that Maduro ran Venezuela. Like he was never. Rao's been the kind of, you know, emeritus leader of the country. The, the military's got a deep interest in the economy because it's a sanctions economy and they control a lot of stuff. And Diaz Canal is kind of an apparatchik who's kind of the front man. So I think that the Eli Lakes of the Cuban hardliners know that just getting Diaz Canal out doesn't change that regime at all. Like, it just means musical chairs in the president's seat. For what? A real estate deal. And it's kind of like, why did we go through all this? What we like.

Tommy Vietor (71:13)

Yeah, to what ends?

Ben Rhodes (71:14)

We did a fuel blockade. We killed Cubans literally because there were power shortages at hospitals. Like we've killed Cubans with our sanctions in the recent months so that like some Miami Cubans tight with Marco Rubio can like invest in real estate because I don't know what else Cuba can concede, you know, if they're not becoming a multi party democracy tomorrow, which they're not gonna regime change themselves, there's not much for them to concede. They can release political prisoners and, you know, again, like give property to Americans. But like, I, I just. What is this all about?

Tommy Vietor (71:48)

I don't know how to help Americans. And once again, like, it seems like through these talks, the administration is further empowering the next generation of Castros.

Ben Rhodes (71:57)

The crab.

Tommy Vietor (71:57)

So we're just empowering. Yeah. This six finger guy and the one eyed guy. And rinse, repeat. I don't know, man. I guess. Hurry up and wait and we'll keep watching. Final story. Ben. So longtime listeners to the show know that we have issues with some of the people in the administration, but that we're huge fans of FBI Director Kash Patel. Yeah, he is eminently qualified for the job.

Ben Rhodes (72:17)

Very competent.

Tommy Vietor (72:18)

He's a great leader. He's an expert in all facets of law enforcement. And so it was shocking to me personally to learn via a recent report in the Atlantic magazine that Cash is not nearly as popular within the FBI itself as he is with us on this show. So according to this report, Cash Patel, the FBI director, he's routinely drunk on the job. And by the way, this is a 24, 7 job. He is. The piece says that on multiple occasions his security detail had trouble waking Cash up because he was so shit faced. And in one instance, they had to make a request for equipment used by SWAT teams to break down doors. So that is. That is drunk. I don't know that I've been that drunk in a long time.

Ben Rhodes (72:58)

I guess he didn't have. What's a proctor you guys see by. Yeah, you just didn't have the ZBiotics

Tommy Vietor (73:02)

like the 400Z biotics.

Ben Rhodes (73:04)

Next time you could help them out, we could ship them some.

Tommy Vietor (73:05)

I'm happy to help them out because again, I'm a big fan. The Atlantic piece reported that meetings with FBI staff have been have to be scheduled around his hangovers and that he is, quote, erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has a necessary evidence. Seems like bad tendencies for the FBI director. He's also incredibly paranoid about getting fired, to the point where he flipped out about some random IT issue and thought it meant that the White House had locked him out of his accounts. Now this paranoia might be justified. The article says that senior White House officials have had conversations about who might replace Cash. We also saw Minecraft head Dan Bongino leave his job as deputy to go be a podcaster again. So, Ben, I mean, this is not the first report that outlines all the ways that Cash Patel is kind of a joke and treats the job like it's fantasy camp. There was his request to go jet skiing at a conference of our closest intelligence sharing allies, the Five Eyes. We know that Cash uses the FBI's private jet to fly to Italy for the Olympics, to fly to Pennsylvania to watch his girlfriend sing at some low rent Wrestling contest to fly to a place called the Boondoggle Ranch. I love that.

Ben Rhodes (74:13)

You always include that one.

Tommy Vietor (74:14)

I love the Boondoggle Ranch. Can we go?

Ben Rhodes (74:17)

I'd like to go to the Boondoggle Ranch.

Tommy Vietor (74:18)

If I can get us a ticket. Will you go?

Ben Rhodes (74:20)

It sounds like the kind of place where that guy shot Dick Cheney in the. Or Dick Cheney shot that guy in the face.

Tommy Vietor (74:24)

If you and I go, that'll be us. But, like, this is the first time I've seen the argument that. That the people in the FBI think Cash Patel is a threat to national security because of his mismanagement of the role. Now, the counterargument you hear is, like, look, every minute Cash Patel is designing his, like, FBI Punisher logo challenge coin is a minute he's not, like, up ongoing FBI operations. I'm not sure I buy that. I see a pretty big opportunity cost here, but what did you make of this, this article?

Ben Rhodes (74:56)

Oh, God. I have some thoughts, man. So, first of all, I love that he's suing The Atlantic for $250 million.

Ben Rhodes (75:03)

$250 million.

Ben Rhodes (75:04)

When Lorian Jobs owns the Atlantic. So I think she can cover the legal fees.

Tommy Vietor (75:08)

Dig it in the couch for that.

Ben Rhodes (75:09)

Also, what's interesting about this is that we saw the guy, like, shotgun a fucking beer at the Olympics with the hockey team, and he looked like Will Ferrell in old school. Like, remember when Will Ferrell shotguns for a spear? And he was like, oh, yeah. Like, that's exactly how Cash is acting. It's just like it was activating. Oh, all the, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And so it is completely believable that this guy. I mean, we know he was at, like, Rouse. Remember the. I think maybe when Charlie Kirk got killed or something, he's at, like, you

Tommy Vietor (75:39)

know, tweeting out wrong information. He's always in. In Las Vegas, something called the Poodle Club.

Ben Rhodes (75:44)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't go there to drink seltzer. You know, he's not the kind of guy orders a club soda on the plane. He's the kind of guy's getting the two, you know, bottles of. But so it's eminently believable that he's a drunk and to be serious about it. Like, you remember Tommy, like, when shit happens, like the FBI director, Remember the Boston Marathon bombing? I just left, but yes, okay, so you just left. So Bob Mueller was. I mean, rest in peace. Was in the fucking Situation Room for, like, hours, you know, and he's briefing Obama and he's on the phone with agents in Boston, and he's managing up and down and around, and he's briefing Congress. Like, shit happened on the regular where.

Tommy Vietor (76:27)

And there's stuff like that we never learned about, like, ongoing investigations that were so sensitive that, like, the White House people were never brief that they're managing.

Ben Rhodes (76:35)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (76:35)

Like, that is a.

Ben Rhodes (76:36)

That is a 24.

Tommy Vietor (76:37)

7 job.

Ben Rhodes (76:38)

Literally, you will get woken up in the middle of the night and asked a question like, who do we have to notify about this? Or can you call your counterpart in this other country? Because there's a terrorist plot and we need someone at the FBI director level to call the head of MI5 or something like, shit like this happen all the time. So if he can't function on the job because he's hammered for hours at a time, like, that's dangerous. I'd also say, like, what is Kash Patel even doing in this job? Because, like, what is his vision of the FBI? Because all that seems to get him geeked is to have, like, Ultimate Fighting people come and train agents or to change the logo. Like, he has no vision of, like, how to reform the Bureau. Like, he's not even so incompetent and people are so innocent that he's not even persecuting Trump's opponents because he's too incompetent to that. I mean. And then the last thing is, I read the piece and it kind of explains to me, Tommy, I don't know. Remember when he was, like, posting, like, through the Charlie Kirk investigation? Like, we got the guy, he's in custody. Like, it felt like drunk tweeting.

Tommy Vietor (77:43)

Totally. It was.

Ben Rhodes (77:45)

We've all been there.

Tommy Vietor (77:46)

Absolutely.

Ben Rhodes (77:46)

When I've done it, it's usually been like, I'm at the end of a dinner that's not that interesting. So I started looking at my phone. I've had a few, and I'm like, ah, I'm gonna tweet about this. I'm not the FBI director.

Tommy Vietor (77:55)

No. Usually for me, I'm walking back to the main stage at Coachella. The Molly's wearing off, and I just want to weigh in on the Hungarian election, you know?

Ben Rhodes (78:04)

Yeah. You've run out of things to talk to Katy Perry about. So you're just going to weigh in on the Hungarian? Katie does want to hear your takes on the Hungarian. Yeah. So you're going to share with.

Tommy Vietor (78:12)

Your honeymoon phase is over. All she wants to talk about is Bieber. All I want to talk about is Orban. And just, like, I got to tweet it out. One group, one Organization that seems to have kind of grasped who Cash is is whoever made this Lego movie about him. I don't even know if it's Iranians anymore. They're all getting credited. Entirely a meme. But whoever made this one had a good ass time with it. Let's watch Crazy Eyes. Let's go cast the tell Crazy Eyes

Ben Rhodes (78:40)

Epstein files cover up lies Trump name

Tommy Vietor (78:43)

Rebecca Congress stonewall for you Drop him. But you crawled Charlie Kirk shock wrong guy in cuff.

Ben Rhodes (78:49)

We got him.

Tommy Vietor (78:50)

Oops. Total bust.

Ben Rhodes (78:51)

Olympic Saki locker room champ.

Tommy Vietor (78:53)

FBI jetp Milan, you absolute tramp. My side honey pot girlfriend. Trust me, Alexis Wilkins is where you clap back. Iran Hexer Gmail pics go viral. Family shots and hockey spiral freaking blackouts. Paranoid freakouts. Am I fired? Meltdowns. What a leak. Out.

Ben Rhodes (79:11)

Purging the pros, installing the bros.

Tommy Vietor (79:13)

The whole bureau's burning. We didn't start the fire.

Ben Rhodes (79:17)

It was always burning since the world's been turning.

Tommy Vietor (79:22)

We didn't start the fire.

Ben Rhodes (79:24)

No, we didn't start the fire.

Tommy Vietor (79:26)

But ca. You're the one who's torching the whole damn thing. Maybe AI is good.

Ben Rhodes (79:38)

It is. I mean, we found a good use for it. Yeah. I mean the amazing thing about that is that there's every single narrative about Cash because we've been covering them all on this podcast is somehow in like a one minute video.

Tommy Vietor (79:50)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (79:50)

How did he do it from. I mean, he does have crazy eyes. Him getting hammered.

Tommy Vietor (79:56)

The flavoring podcast guys call him Cockeyed Cash.

Ben Rhodes (79:58)

Yeah. Him posting the wrong guy was caught and Charlie Kirk, like every thing that this guy's done, like they can just grab that and within like an hour, like churn out like this AI video. That's honestly like pretty interesting. Watch now they always have the Israel control thing.

Tommy Vietor (80:14)

They always have.

Ben Rhodes (80:15)

So they always have. You know, Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend is Mossad honey pot. But yeah, man, it couldn't happen to a better guy than Cash. I have to say, I wonder if

Tommy Vietor (80:24)

there'll be a Kalshee market on how long it takes her to dump him after he's fired.

Ben Rhodes (80:28)

I guess we'll find out if he can't have a SWAT team guard her. Actually, notes on the IRGC Lego video

Tommy Vietor (80:36)

work that in there.

Ben Rhodes (80:36)

They left that out that there's a SWAT team that basically provides security for his girlfriend. Come on, guys, do better, do better.

Tommy Vietor (80:42)

Irgc. Whoever made this. Wow, good stuff. Anyway, hopefully Trump fires Cash Patel. Yeah, he's on a firing spree lately. It's just self evident.

Ben Rhodes (80:54)

By the way, maybe the point is, it just. Things just haven't been the same since Bongino left. Yeah, he's holding the whole place.

Tommy Vietor (81:00)

Bongino was holding the place.

Ben Rhodes (81:01)

Holding it up on his shoulders with

Tommy Vietor (81:02)

his gigantic Minecraft square. Minecraft head. Okay, that's it for the news portion of the show, but please stick around for my conversation with Nick and Rich. We talk about his book into the Wood Chipper. It's a whistleblower's account of what it was like when the USAID got doged by Elon Musk, his idiot friends, and presumably reportedly allegedly a whole bunch of ketamine. So stick around for that. This podcast is brought to you by wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond. Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio. The wise travel card gives you the mid market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig. Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time.

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Tommy Vietor (83:07)

And we don't just service Subarus. We work on all makes and models, old and new. Our newly remodeled service apartment is ready when you are. McCurley Subaru your way home. Book your service appointment today@mccurleysubaru.com. My guest today is the former Bureau of Global Health's Director of Policy, Programs and Planning for usaid. His new book is into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded usaid. It's a very evocative title, and I assume one where you needed much less ketamine to come up with it than Elon did for his famous tweet. Nick Enrich, welcome to the show.

Ben Rhodes (83:44)

Thanks for having me.

Tommy Vietor (83:45)

Great to meet you. So let's start by just, you know, kind of talking about a bit about your time and work you did at USAID. Pre Elon, you were there for over 12 years across four administrations. What did you focus on and what was your proudest accomplishment?

Ben Rhodes (84:00)

Yeah, so I was, as you said, the Director of Policy, Programs and Planning for the Global Health Bureau, which was essentially the CFO CEO position of that bureau. My job was to make sure that we had the resources we needed for Global Health and that we were using them as efficiently as possible to achieve our health goals. And, you know, my job was to come up with ways to make things better. And I think that's. That's where I was the most proud. One of the. The last things, sadly, that I did in the last administration was come up with a new global health policy for the agency. We had actually never had one before for our whole global health sector. And we thought that this would be a great way to get a little bit more efficient in the way that we would administer our programs. I also had a list. When I heard DOGE was coming in, I had a list of things that I wanted to do to improve the agency that I thought would be the kinds of things that DOGE would be excited to hear about. Obviously, quite naively, because I never actually got a chance to share any of those ideas.

Tommy Vietor (85:04)

So, like, far from battling these guys, you were like, oh, I got some ways to make this place more efficient. Here's my literal list of things we could do to make money. Go further.

Ben Rhodes (85:12)

Yeah. They were called the Department of Government Efficiency. And in the abstract, it sounded like a good idea, but the reality was it was no such thing.

Tommy Vietor (85:21)

Yeah. So let's talk about that reality. So by now, I imagine everyone listening knows how this story unfortunately ends. It's Elon Musk and a bunch of, like, young arrogant kids from the Tech World just rampaging through USAID and destroying it. That decision alone is estimated to have already led to 750,000 deaths. Just so far. So. But I think listeners might not fully grasp just how careless and ignorant the people in charge of this process truly were. Can you recount for listeners a story you tell in the book about what a couple of DOGE staffers said to you after most employees at the agency had been placed on administrative leave?

Ben Rhodes (86:01)

Sure. That it wasn't until after most of the employees were placed on administrative leave or fired that I was given the opportunity to explain what we even did in Global Health. So I just gave a quick overview, talked about the infectious diseases that we work to stop, our work to help save newborn babies and mothers, and a few other of the just top line highlights. And it was, I was kind of met with a stunned silence from the leadership of USAID at that point. And the chief of staff of the agency kind of like looked at me and said, wow, I had no idea you did all that. When I think of what USA did in Global Health, I just assumed it was, you know, abortions.

Tommy Vietor (86:40)

What is your reaction in that moment? How do you even address a comment that ignorant by someone who's supposed to be the chief of staff at the agency?

Ben Rhodes (86:49)

It was very difficult to decide whether to laugh or cry. I knew I didn't want to argue with him because I knew that wasn't going to get me anything, get me anywhere. But it just betrayed this extraordinary level of ignorance. And to think that these were the people that had made the decision to get rid of all of our staff before they had any idea what the work was that the agency even did was shocking.

Tommy Vietor (87:13)

Yeah, truly shocking. So there was this moment where Elon and the boys come in to usaid. It's clear they're going to destroy some parts, but it's not clear yet if they're going to like completely upend the entire, you know, agency. I mean, ultimately they got rid of what, like 83% of all programming and folded that into the State Department. And so before USAID was, was fully gutted, you decided to author and then release to the media some memos about the impact to become a whistleblower. Can you tell listeners what you put in those memos and how you made that decision and whether you think it made any like. Did anybody read your memos? Did anyone rethink what they were doing?

Ben Rhodes (87:50)

Well, so what I put in the memos that there were three memos. The first was to describe everything we had tried to do to restart our life saving programs, which was something that Secretary of State Rubio had promised was going to happen as they tore down usaid, but yet they didn't let us restart any of our programs and in fact they stopped us at every possible turn. So that was the first memo. The second was about how they decimated our staff and really just traumatized the workforce for the about six week period in which I was responsible for global health. And then the third memo documented what the impacts were going to be of the cuts to USAID, including potentially up to 2.6 million lives lost per year and tens of millions of mothers not being able to receive emergency life saving care and numerous other issues. Did it make a difference while USAID was still destroyed? Some of the contracts that had been terminated that were necessary to do our most life saving projects were actually restored in the few days after my memos were released. But that was about it. I had kind of hoped that this would light a fire under Congress or others to be able to like shed some light on exactly what was happening there. But unfortunately, the end of the story is not a happy one.

Tommy Vietor (89:11)

Yeah, Marco Rubio is real villain in my view because, you know, he was once a huge supporter of USAID and its work. In fact, I've heard you say in other interviews that people at the Agency were a little bit relieved when he was named Secretary of State because his record suggested that he understood usaid, he understood the value, and that he might support it or protect it. Why do you think he completely turtled on this and reversed himself and like, what's your take on Rubio now?

Ben Rhodes (89:37)

Yeah, I mean, he did certainly did not live up to the estimation that I and other staff at USAID had thought we were going to get, which was a longtime staunch supporter of foreign aid and development. Instead, we got lies. We got Rubio saying that no one has died as a result of, of the cuts to usaid, which was just blatantly not true. And he went further and blamed the USAID career officials for being insubordinate, for not restarting programs that his own team was preventing us from doing. And look, maybe, you know, he got lost somewhere in the connection between the, the waiver that he allowed to, to restart life saving programs and when that was not allowed to actually be implemented by, by doge. But this is the problem when you hollow out an agency of all of its expertise and replace it with completely, you know, incompetent and unknowledgeable and unqualified buffoons.

Tommy Vietor (90:38)

There was this chaotic Period.

Ben Rhodes (90:39)

Right.

Tommy Vietor (90:39)

Where, like Trump takes over, Elon comes in, Doge goes to usaid. First there's like a freeze on programming. Then they say, oh, life saving stuff will continue. Then it's clear that that's not happening. Like, now that you have some time and space from that period of time, was the chaos lying? Was it people not really knowing, like, what the left hand was doing to the right or like what was happening there? Like, what was all the competing statements and the confusion and the kind of bullshit that was coming out of the Trump administration's leadership in the, in that period?

Ben Rhodes (91:12)

Yeah, I mean, certainly there were lies and there was cruelty to an unbelievable degree. But I think the thing that people maybe underestimate the most and maybe what has the most, the most relevance for other agencies perhaps is the level of sheer incompetence that we saw. These were people who were not just unknowledgeable of global health or international development. They had really no idea how government even works. And frankly, they were really terrible managers of people and projects. So, you know, they had been tasked with an unreasonable assignment to dismantle, you know, an agency that delivered foreign aid over six decades. And you can imagine things are going to go wrong with a project like that. And when they inevitably did, the, the people who were in charge just had no idea how to fix those problems and ended up just making things worse. It was a lot of like, table smacking and yelling at each other and not understanding what was happening because they had already gotten rid of most of the experts that would have been able to help them do it.

Tommy Vietor (92:14)

Ah, that's a, yeah, great way to run a railroad there. Get rid of all the people who understand the building and then try to dismantle it. If you had like two minutes in an elevator with Elon Musk and that period to explain to him what he did and the impact it had on the world, what would you tell him?

Ben Rhodes (92:30)

You know, somebody said that the image of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. And I would like, I would love to convey that because I do feel like the destruction of USAID had nothing to do with improving efficiency or fighting waste or realigning foreign aid with some, you know, the, the new President's priorities. This was the, the just destruction of an agency for the sole purpose of satisfying the ego of a billionaire. And it's something that I'm still quite angry about, as you can probably tell.

Tommy Vietor (93:07)

Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, I'm sure Like waking up every day to read these insane tweets from this like, ketamine addled monster who seemed to just take glee in, in harming the agency, upsetting employees, being an asshole. It just must have been horrifying.

Ben Rhodes (93:24)

Yeah, I mean, there was a day where I think he, he tweeted over 40 times between like 3 and 4 o' clock in the morning about USAID. And this was on a Sunday night. And on that Monday morning there were. Some of my colleagues were asking me, should, is it safe for us to come in the building? I mean, he's calling us criminals, he's calling us a ball of, he's calling us evil. And, and you know, I didn't really know what to tell them. I mean, the good bureaucrat I was, I said, well, we haven't gotten guidance to not come into the office, so we should still come. These were kind of the, my, my normal tendencies that, that I had to fight against. And what took me so long to decide that it, there was, there was no way that I was actually fulfilling my oath as a civil servant to be doing what I was being told to do. And that's why I eventually felt like I needed to stand up and say something.

Tommy Vietor (94:15)

Yeah, I mean, it is hard to remember back to those days where he's essentially accusing USA of being like a criminal organization and evil. And I mean, just the, the vindictive nature of the attacks was, you know, shocking and baseless. So let's just look forward a little bit. A lot of voters genuinely don't want to spend US taxpayer dollars overseas, whether that's on a war or development. They think it's a waste. You've probably heard all the kind of isolationist nationalist arguments against foreign aid or foreign spending that can frankly be really convincing. But I do think some of those people could be persuaded by national security arguments in favor of foreign aid. So in your opinion, what are some ways that destroying USAID is hurting our national security now and making Americans less safe?

Ben Rhodes (95:01)

Yeah, I mean, the, the, there's several ways. The first is specific to infectious diseases, and that's the one that keeps me up at night because I think the shortest term threat is from a new disease or an existing disease that we're no longer able to detect coming to our borders because we are currently flying blind when it comes to an early warning system that we had previously set up within USAID to help countries detect and treat and respond to outbreaks before there was any chance of them spreading. And now those systems have been ripped up and we have no idea. We're basically conducting biosafety and biosecurity policy by crossing our fingers and hoping. So that's the thing that scares me most. And what we saw when we would issue these warnings to the DOGE team and the political appointees as they were tearing it down was just, they couldn't understand. So when I tried to explain, for example, that when they froze a, they froze clinical trials testing new drugs for drug resistant tuberculosis, that these were our antibiotics of last resort and when we interrupt treatment of those, it allows for the potential development of new strains of an airborne infectious disease that we no longer have any antibiotics to treat. And when I would say that, I told that to the leadership at usaid and they told me, they asked me if I could make Barney style slides to explain them in a way that non health experts could understand. Barney style Barney, like the children's dinosaur.

Tommy Vietor (96:37)

That's. Who are those for? Trump?

Ben Rhodes (96:41)

I guess I don't know who they are. I mean, it's, it's, it certainly was for nobody that was going to be making rational decisions about national security.

Tommy Vietor (96:51)

Yeah, that's unnerving. I'm trying to imagine what a Barney style briefing about drug resistant tuberculosis looks like. I don't want to watch that show. I could tell you that much. Not with my kids, but. Okay, continue. That's horrifying. That's an awful image.

Ben Rhodes (97:07)

Yeah, so, so that, that's sort of the, the most immediate threat that keeps me up on, you know, USAID was the embodiment of American generosity. And I think it really, it was preserving partnerships in ways that are done so much more efficiently and effectively than you'll ever see from what can be run out of the State Department or the Department of Defense when we try to lead by coercion and the use of force. I mean, I think it was General Mattis under the last Trump administration said that if you cut foreign aid, you're going to need to buy me more bullets. And I think that's really true. President Obama said that for many people around the world, USAID is the US And I think that's right too, because a lot of people, the only engagement that they ever had with the US Was through the generous support that we offered them under the banner of, from the American people. And I'm afraid of what's going to happen in the world where that no longer exists. And they don't have that image of the United States.

Tommy Vietor (98:10)

Well, no, luckily everything else is going really great and we have kicked off this catastrophic regime Change war in Iran. We had a president tweeting, you know, praise Allah on Easter and insulting all Muslims and all Christians at the same time. So I don't, I don't really know what could go wrong there. Okay, so again, looking forward, like you, it. You couldn't put USAID back as it was if you wanted to. Right. Because all the infrastructure and partnerships and expertise, it's gone. And there's just no way of kind of like, like fixing that. But the next Democrat who, who wins the presidency is going to want, I imagine, some sort of reformed, updated version of usaid. Do you have a sense of kind of a back of an envelope kind of sketch of what that might look like? Or also, are. Is there anyone like a group of experts out there somewhere kind of trying to rethink USAID for that next iteration that hopefully we could, you know, get through Congress or get done and get back running?

Ben Rhodes (99:06)

Yeah, I mean, I actually maybe am more optimistic than you. I believe that USA could be rebuilt and not that difficult in, in not that difficult of a way. And I, and frankly, I think it should. Like, again, let's not think that it was torn down because that was a good idea or that it wasn't working or anything like that. The reality was, as I mentioned, it was torn down by people who had no idea what it actually did. The, the, the arg.

Ben Rhodes (99:32)

The.

Ben Rhodes (99:32)

The counter argument is to keep it where it's now being tried to fold into the State Department. That's a problem for several reasons. First, I think it ends up having, you know, for the same reason that we wouldn't just suggest combining the State Department and the Department of Defense, which are two separate pillars of foreign policy. So too is development, which is a third critical policy pillar of foreign policy. And we're already seeing what them trying to run foreign aid out of the State Department is major problems because of that tangle, as they try to kind of shoehorn it into their transactional diplomacy where they exchanged the idea of HIV treatment for millions of people in exchange for access to critical minerals, for example, which is just, it really kind of defeats the purpose of everything that we've learned about how development policy works and builds partnerships over years. So that's one piece. The second is, as I mentioned earlier, having having an independent agency that is the face overseas of American generosity is symbolically important. And that flag and that logo of the handshake and the. For the American people, I think is important for projecting American goodwill and generosity overseas. And, and I think that that on its own has has value for. Personally, I, I find that folks who, who say, well, you know, it's over, USAID is done and nothing's coming back it that it's kind of like a lack of boldness and a lack of creativity that sort of allowed USA to collapse in the first place. And so I'm hoping that the next administration, even the next Congress, is looking forward to boldly taking on the rebuilding of usaid. And I think it's something that is not a hard lift. I think it's very popular overall when people understand what it is. Right. It's less than 1% of the, of the federal budget goes to, goes to foreign aid. And with that amount, we've saved 92 million lives over the last 20 years. So I don't think it's a, it's a hard sell. I think it just does require the political willpower to, to say, look, this is what we want and there are ways to make it better. It doesn't have to be exactly the same. Like, there are some valid criticisms of usaid and there are ways that we can use this opportunity to make it less, less likely to foster dependency over time, more likely to partner more closely with local organizations, have a little bit more flexibility in the, the earmarks that Congress has set for us so that we can address overarching problems rather than kind of stay shoehorned. There's tons of ideas that I would love to talk about for anyone who'll listen, but where I stand is we need to rebuild usaid.

Tommy Vietor (102:20)

All right, well, let's hope that others in Congress share your optimism. The book is into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded usaid. Nick Enrich, thanks for doing the show.

Ben Rhodes (102:30)

Thank you so much for having me.

Tommy Vietor (102:37)

Thanks again to Nick Edric for doing the show. And I have a feeling that we're going to be talking to you before next week, guys.

Ben Rhodes (102:42)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (102:43)

Because Wednesday maybe is a deadline still. We don't know.

Ben Rhodes (102:46)

J.D. vance, peacemaker. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (102:48)

And maybe J.D. will go to Pakistan. That's a long flight for J.D. vance.

Ben Rhodes (102:52)

Also, like, the security requirements. Like, it was dangerous for our diplomats to be in Islamabad. Like, I can't imagine what goes into. I mean, you want to talk about cost of war. Like, the cost of securing JD Vance in Islamabad has got to run into the, the tens and tens of millions at least. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (103:06)

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's about it. And by the way, I love, like,

Ben Rhodes (103:11)

I salute you, Chief of General Staff of Pakistan. Like, it's so cool.

Tommy Vietor (103:16)

War Criminal General thanks for your help.

Ben Rhodes (103:18)

State Sponsor of Terror like you know LT like you know Laskara like.

Tommy Vietor (103:23)

Anyway, sure the Indian government loves that. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Kanter. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groot is our head of Product production. Adrian Hill is our Senior Vice President of News and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and much more. And if you're opinionated like us, leave a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America East.

Guest or Interviewee (Dr. Tien Min Dinh or Nick Enrich) (104:37)

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