Assad Spins His Surrender From Moscow

Summary

Pod Save the World: "Assad Spins His Surrender From Moscow" – Detailed Summary

Released on December 18, 2024, "Assad Spins His Surrender From Moscow" delves into the intricate web of global politics, focusing on the evolving situation in Syria, the implications of former President Trump's security appointments, and significant political upheavals across the globe. Hosted by Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes from Crooked Media, this episode offers an in-depth analysis complemented by an exclusive interview with Layla Malana Allen, a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour.

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1. The Shifting Landscape in Syria

Syria's New Government and Assad's Position

The episode opens with Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes discussing the recent developments in Syria. With less than a month remaining under President Joe Biden's nuclear umbrella, the focus shifts to Bashar al-Assad's strategic maneuvers.

• Dissolution and Reformation by HTS: Jelani, formerly known as Abu Mohammed Al-Jelani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), announces plans to dissolve rebel factions and form a unified Syrian army. At [04:59], Jelani states, "Syria is tired of wars and we want to build a state and institutions away from conflicts." This marks a significant shift towards stability, aiming to attract foreign delegations from France, Germany, and the UK.

• Assad's Statements and Alleged Surrender: Assad makes his first public statement post-exile, claiming his departure was at Moscow's behest. However, Ben Rhodes expresses skepticism, describing Assad’s remarks as "pathetic" and doubting his future role in Syria ([16:44]).

Foreign Influence and Military Moves

• Russian Withdrawal: Satellite imagery indicates a potential Russian military pullback from Syria, adding uncertainty to Assad's reliance on Moscow.

• US and Israeli Actions: The US continues operations against ISIS in Syria without broader engagement, while Israel intensifies its territorial claims in the Golan Heights. Layla Malana Allen ([08:26]) highlights Assad’s criticism of Iran over Russia, indicating a nuanced stance in regional alliances.

2. Trump's National Security Appointments and Corruption Concerns

Controversial Nominees

Tommy and Ben critically examine Trump's nominees for key national security positions, highlighting concerns over qualifications and potential misconduct.

• Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence (DNI): Described as "a little shallow" with unattractive qualifications ([19:39]), Gabbard faces significant hurdles in securing Senate approval.

• Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense: Despite allegations of sexual misconduct and alcoholism, Hegseth is advancing in confirmation, pressured by MAGA supporters ([19:29]).

• Cash Patel for FBI Director: Patel's credibility is undermined by documented lies regarding his role in the Benghazi investigation ([24:07]). Ben Rhodes emphasizes the danger of placing unqualified individuals in powerful positions, stating, "These are just the things we all know about. This is not the person you want leading a nearly trillion-dollar enterprise." ([25:51]).

Foreign Corruption and Trump's Real Estate Ventures

• Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia and Riyadh: Eric Trump announces new Trump Tower projects in Jeddah and Riyadh, raising red flags about potential conflicts of interest and corruption ([26:33]).

• Elon Musk's Political Maneuvers: Nigel Farage's meeting with Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago hints at possible financial influence on British politics, particularly concerning the Reform UK party ([29:23]).

3. Gaza Ceasefire Negotiations and Middle East Diplomacy

Hamas' Concessions and Israel's Stance

The podcast explores the fragile ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel, noting Hamas' willingness to allow IDF presence in Gaza temporarily and the potential for hostage exchanges.

• Phased Agreement Proposal: A proposed six to eight-week preliminary ceasefire could facilitate the exchange of hostages and prisoners, alongside a substantial influx of aid ([70:33]).

• Israeli Strikes and Civilian Casualties: Despite ceasefire talks, Israeli airstrikes continue, resulting in significant civilian casualties and further complicating diplomatic efforts ([86:22]).

US and International Involvement

• Biden Administration’s Hesitation: Ben Rhodes criticizes the Biden administration for not engaging directly with HTS leader Jelani, especially given the ongoing US rewards for his capture ([09:58]).

• Layla Malana Allen's Insights: In her interview, Allen underscores the dire humanitarian needs in Syria and criticizes the US and Israel for their obstructive actions, emphasizing the necessity of lifting sanctions and supporting Syria's transition ([85:12]).

4. Global Political Upheavals

South Korea's Presidential Crisis

South Korea faces political turmoil as President Yoon Suk Yeol is impeached following a failed coup attempt. The National Assembly's vote and the Constitutional Court's pending decision could lead to snap elections within 60 days, potentially shifting power to the Liberal Party ([52:40]).

Germany's Government Collapse

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz orchestrates a vote of no confidence, leading to his government's downfall and triggering snap elections. The rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) poses a significant threat to Germany's political stability and its role in supporting Ukraine ([58:16]).

Canada's Political Turmoil

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces internal dissent as Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigns, criticizing Trudeau's focus on political gimmicks over addressing economic hardships exacerbated by potential US tariffs. Leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, calls for Trudeau's resignation, highlighting the nation's growing dissatisfaction ([63:40]).

5. Royal Family Scandals

Prince Andrew's Espionage Allegations

The podcast sheds light on Prince Andrew's dubious association with Yang Tengbo, a Chinese national accused of espionage. Yang's involvement with British officials and his subsequent ban from the UK raise serious concerns about the integrity of the British Royal Family ([67:20]).

• Royal Influence and Intelligence Risks: Ben Rhodes warns of the vulnerabilities posed by such associations, stating, "These countries are throwing their weight around in our politics and our institutions." ([68:21]).

6. Exclusive Interview with Layla Malana Allen

On-the-Ground Reporting from Syria

Layla Malana Allen provides an exclusive, harrowing account of her experiences reporting from Aleppo, Syria. She details the dire conditions as HTS attempts to establish governance, the ongoing search for missing journalist Austin Tice, and the immense challenges in rebuilding basic services amidst political instability.

• Conditions in Sidnaya Prison: Allen describes the inhumane conditions, including torture and mass graves, emphasizing the monumental task of uncovering and prosecuting Assad’s atrocities ([77:26]).

• Hope and Challenges for Syria’s Future: Despite the oppressive history, Allen reports a surge of optimism among Syrians longing for a unified, peaceful state. However, she cautions about the potential for continued abuse without proper justice systems in place ([85:12]).

7. Concluding Thoughts

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes wrap up the episode by reflecting on the complex interplay of global politics, highlighting the precarious balance between emerging democracies and established authoritarian regimes. They express concern over the lack of transparency and accountability in international dealings, urging for more honest and direct engagement to foster genuine progress.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes at [12:30]: "There's no downside." – Referring to why the US doesn’t engage more directly with HTS leader Jelani.

• Layla Malana Allen at [74:43]: "People are selling water and petrol on the side of the street. Electricity is terrible." – Highlighting the dire humanitarian conditions in Syria.

• Ben Rhodes at [25:51]: "This is not the person you want leading a nearly trillion-dollar enterprise." – Criticizing Pete Hegseth’s qualifications.

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Conclusion

This episode of "Pod Save the World" provides a comprehensive analysis of the current geopolitical climate, emphasizing the critical situation in Syria, the questionable qualifications of Trump's national security nominees, and significant political changes in key global players like South Korea, Germany, and Canada. The exclusive insights from Layla Malana Allen offer a visceral understanding of Syria's turmoil and the immense challenges ahead. Through engaging discussions and thought-provoking commentary, Crooked Media delivers an essential narrative for listeners seeking to grasp the complexities of today's world affairs.

Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

POD Save the World is brought to you by the International Rescue Committee. The International Rescue Committee works In more than 40 countries serving those whose lives have been upended by war, conflict and natural disasters. Where war and disaster strike, children suffer the most. Currently, more than 460 million children live in crisis zones, facing conflicts and disasters they should never have to face. All children deserve full bellies, yet every 15 seconds, a child around the world dies of hunger. In 2023, the IRC treated nearly 600,000 children under five for malnutrition. By supporting the IRC, you can help deliver life saving, malnutrition, treatment, critical medical care, psychosocial support, and more so that children around the world can grow up strong and healthy. Please help the International Rescue Committee support children with emergency food, medical care and other life saving support they need to survive just quickly. The IRC is an amazing organization doing work in every conflict zone you could imagine. I highly recommend if you're going to give to charity this year, please consider making the IRC one of the organizations you support because your dollar will go far and it will really help people. Donate now by visiting rescue.orgrebuild that's rescue.orgrebuild. building a business may feel like a big jump, but On Deck small business loans can help keep you afloat. With lines of credit up to $100,000 and term loans up to 250,000, OnDeck lets you choose the loan that's right for your business. As a top rated online small business lender, Ondeck's team of loan advisors can help you find the loan to fit your needs. Visit ondeck.com for more information. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Welcome to POD Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Ben, less than a month until we're no longer under the nuclear umbrella of Joe Biden's administration. How we feel?

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, it feels like it's already here, though. Is Joe Biden still president?

[Tommy Vitor]

You know, he's not out there, but he's still in charge.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's still in charge. I guess we'll find out on January 20th just how much it feels differently.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it could feel right.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's interesting watching Trump, you know, do all these events without any of the responsibility, like, you know, he still can comment on things like drones in New Jersey as if, Right? You know, he's just a guy online offering an opinion, not the president, you.

[Tommy Vitor]

Know, what's so annoying about him and his supporters is they do that even when he's in charge. Like everything he does is great and they're proud of him. But anytime something bad happens, like they blame the deep state, somehow he's not responsible.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, it goes this time around.

[Tommy Vitor]

Drives me absolutely nuts. I know this is our last show of the year. I'm sad about it.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's quite a year. What a year. Who won the year?

[Tommy Vitor]

Who won the year?

[Ben Rhodes]

Not us.

[Tommy Vitor]

Good guys or bad guys?

[Ben Rhodes]

Not us. I would say we did not win the year.

[Tommy Vitor]

Bad guys. Also, Ben, I think you have an important correction you have to make at the top here.

[Ben Rhodes]

This is the most painful thing I've ever done in Ponzi of the world, which is I need to apologize to Mets nation, Mets family out there and my exuberance over the Juan Soto signing.

[Tommy Vitor]

You called him a five tool player.

[Ben Rhodes]

I rattled he's a five tool player. I stand by that. But then I rattled off our growing Dominican Kentuck contingent and mistakenly included Puerto Rican superstar Francisco Landor, hero of my two daughters. So I just want to apologize for that.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think the people will forgive you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I was just so excited about Soto and just got wrapped up in the moment.

[Tommy Vitor]

We just need to get some stock tips from Steve Cohen because he usually pays a guy who's got some info that can help you make some money.

[Ben Rhodes]

I just accept the stewardship of Steve Cohen entirely. And if there's any hypocrisy in that, I'm willing to live with it because I need some nice things in life. And a very expensive New York Mats roster is about as good as it gets right now.

[Tommy Vitor]

You know what they say it's like, you know, everyone hates Congress, but they like their congressmen. Yeah, we hate hedge fund guys, but.

[Ben Rhodes]

You like we hate hedge fund billionaires. Until they buy your sports team and start paying $750 million for five cool players.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's so cool. We got a great show to close out the year for you guys. We're going to talk about the latest from the new government in Syria as well as what Bashar Al Assad is up to. He's sending little notes on telegram, I believe, checking in with everybody. And we're talking about how the Biden team is handling all of this change in the Midd East. We're also going to check in on Trump's national security picks, see how they're doing in the Senate and talk to you guys about some new opportunities for corruption. If you want to bribe someone, they'll do the latest from Gaza and why Israel and Ireland are in a diplomatic spat. More on the fallout from the attempted coup and martial law declaration in South Korea, the official collapse of Germany's government, why things are not looking great for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau up in Canada. And then we'll check in on everyone's favorite member of the royal family, Prince.

[Ben Rhodes]

Andrew, the pillar of integrity there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Integrity, upstanding, some lists there.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, there's no shortage of events.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I cut a couple things, too. We had a Georgia thing all prepped the country, and I just, like, I.

[Ben Rhodes]

Realized we'll be back at it.

[Tommy Vitor]

We'll get back to it. And then, Ben, you're gonna hear my interview with Layla Molana Allen. She's a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour. The last time listeners heard her on the show, she was reporting from Beirut as it was being bombed by the Israeli military. Today, she called in from Aleppo, Syria. She'd been all around Syria over the last week or so. We talked about what she's been seeing and hearing. We talked about the new government, what an accountability and reconciliation process might look like in Syria. She's actually been to some of these prisons and intelligence detention sites where people were tortured and seen dead bodies of anyway. And we also talked about what the average Syrian person wants to see and expects to see from the west in terms of support for Syria going forward. So really powerful, amazing reporting from her and great conversation.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. One serious point I'd just make, because I've been consuming a lot of the reporting from people like Laila the last couple days. And with Trump suing Ann Seltzer, abc, it's easy to shit on the media. But, man, these are the people that are showing us what's happening in the world at great risk to themselves. So remind yourself that the quote, unquote, media isn't just podcasters and pollsters. It is people like Layla that are out on the ground telling stories that we would have no idea about if it weren't for journalists.

[Tommy Vitor]

At great personal risk, you could run into the wrong person in Syria at any time, anytime. Things could happen in Beirut. But she's a total badass, and I'm really, really grateful for the time because she was talking to us like 11:30 via 3G WhatsApp connection, and you're like, you know, I'm just a pamper little shit in la and these people are doing the hard work and we're grateful.

[Ben Rhodes]

For them, but my Amazon arrow's not working well enough on my speed Test on my Internet. Where's my postmates?

[Tommy Vitor]

All right, Ben, let's talk about the latest from Syria. So the rebel leaders there continue to do and say all the things that, you know, people in Washington and think tanks and also, as you mentioned last week, like minorities in Syria, want them to say. Jelani, the leader of hts, who has dropped his nom de guerre, as one does, and is now going by Ahmed Al Shara, but we'll call him Jelani for ease. He said they are going to dissolve and disarm rebel factions in Syria and create a real army. The interim prime minister said they're taking applications for a police force. Jelani is taking lots of meetings with foreign delegations. According to the ft, officials from France, Germany and the UK all have visited or will visit Damascus this week. The former HTS leaders have ditched their military uniforms in favor of civilian clothes when they're doing meetings with foreign journalists. Jelani did a big sit down with, I think, eight or nine reporters, and during that conversation said, quote, syria is tired of wars and we want to build a state and institutions away from conflicts. He also tried to reassure minority groups. He criticized Israel for taking more territory in the Golan Heights. But the New York Times, which had a reporter in the meeting, made the point that they characterized his comments as, quote, not a tirade against Israel, but by calling the moves a violation of the 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries. So we didn't go on some, like, diatribe against the Zionist oppressors. He was just like, hey, we got an agreement with these guys. They're violating it.

[Ben Rhodes]

And his family is from the Golan Heights that Israel annexed.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

So, you know, he's showing some restraint there.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think Abu Golani means from the Golan. Yeah, yeah. So in this conversation, he was also critical of Iran, less critical of Russia. Interesting tea leaves there. That said there's recent satellite imagery that shows the Russian military packing up their equipment, withdrawing staff and equipment from its base in Syria. So who knows what that Russian presence will look like going forward. But interesting to see them leaving, but also the HTS guys being a little less hard on Russia. Jelani called on the US and other countries to remove sanctions on Syria and to delist HTS as a terrorist group. Assad also made his first public statement since getting toppled and pushed out of Syria. In it, he claims that actually he only left Syria after Moscow requested that the base he was at be evacuated back to Russia. But then he goes on and talks about how brave he has been for all these years. That's quite pathetic. Ben. Last week we saw.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

We were recording. You and I were talking offline, I think, about how Biden's Secretary of State and National Security Advisor were going to the Middle East. I figured one of them was going to dip into Syria for some meetings. It doesn't seem to have happened. The State Department says they've been in contact with hts, but there's not been an in person meeting. They also haven't relaxed any sanctions. I guess just my question again to you is why not? Why not have Biden lob in a call to Jelani? Like there's this historic opportunity now to shape what's happening in Syria, to stick it to the Russians, to stick it to the Iranians. Lob in a call like, Trump would do it. Trump would do it in a heartbeat. What is the downside?

[Ben Rhodes]

There's no downside. And there's an absurdity to the current situation. There is currently still a US $10 million rewards for justice, bounty, bounty on Jelani. So what if the UN official or the British official makes a citizen's arrest? We're gonna give that person $10 million.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, well, those reporters in the roundtable, just grab them.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I mean, it just, if you want to win on the stupidity of American foreign policy, it's that that still exists and someone didn't just get rid of that. And the reality is these people are, you know, we talked about this last week, so I don't harp on it, but essentially all we're doing is obstructing a transition that can take place, obstructing assistance getting in. We are designating people as terrorists who, whatever their roots, if you listen to anybody in Syria and you look at the scale of the disappearances, just saved tens of thousands of lives by emptying those prisons. Like these people, whatever we think about them, and it doesn't mean that they're not gonna do things we don't like. It doesn't mean that they don't have associations that are troubling, that we may need to kind of monitor with time. But let's wipe the slate clean. You have to account for changes in circumstance. And if ever there is a change in circumstance, this is it. To delist HDs, to lift sanctions, and to try to make this transition work. The other thing that is painful to watch is that Syria, the biggest conflict risks it faces are from external actors. So you've got Israel still bombing things in Syria, claiming territory. You've got the Turks threatening the Kurds in The north. The US Trying to broker an agreement there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Leave us out. We're bombing Syria, too.

[Ben Rhodes]

We're bombing Syria with isis. I mean, at a certain point, it's just. You got to. What you'd like to see is these external forces withdrawing from Syria, making agreements to not target each other's proxies and to kind of let a transition actually take place. And all the US Talking points are we want a transition. That is Syria owns Syrian led. Well, they can't own it and lead it if they're sanctioned and designated and multiple countries are fighting in their territory. Territory. So again, there's reason to be careful. There's reason to reserve some enthusiasm. There's reason to say if we see a return to any kind of extremism, there's designations that can come back. But I'd be wiping this site clean. These guys just compare how these guys are acting to how the Taliban acted when they got into Kabul. It's night and day. And so we have to allow for that.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And let's just then. So obviously this is going to be Trump's problem pretty soon. He weighed in on the situation in Syria during a press conference on money. Let's listen to a clip.

[Ben Rhodes]

Now that one of the sides has been essentially wiped out, but nobody knows.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Who the other side is.

[Ben Rhodes]

But I Do you know who it is?

[Tommy Vitor]

Turkey.

[Ben Rhodes]

Okay. Turkey is the one behind it. He's a very smart guy. They've wanted it for thousands of years, and he got it. And those people that went in are controlled by Turkey, and that's okay. It's another way to fight. But, no, I don't think that I want to have our soldiers killed, but I don't think that will happen now anyway because the one side's been decimated.

[Tommy Vitor]

Like, he's like Turkey, you, like, talk to, like, a kid who learned about something for the first time and is excited to show off to the teacher about it.

[Ben Rhodes]

I assume he's getting intelligence briefings.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And it is an entirely overly simplistic thing to just say Turkey, you know, I mean, yes, Turkey has a lot of influence with hts. They support them in Idlib. They have ambitions to, you know, have influence in Syria. But if you think that's all that happened when you're watching the scenes out of Syria, these guys, you know, are Syrian, and they clearly want to govern Syria. And this is what. This is what's coming. Like, a very simplistic view of the world as this kind of chessboard between some big powers and not a lot of nuance in the understanding of different factions inside of Syria.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, he was excited that he knew the answer. He was excited that he knew that Turkey shared a border with Syria. But also, it was weird the way he framed it. He's like, yeah, I don't want US Soldiers dying in Syria, but now I don't think they will because Turkey is controlling this faction, and I don't think they'll attack us. I don't know. It just made me once again feel like I don't really know what he's going to do with US troops in Syria or how he's thinking about this. Obviously has this kind of like, nationalist America first, bring them all home. Not our problem mentality towards almost everything, including Syria, because he tweeted as much the other day. But I don't know, there was a little ambiguity there.

[Ben Rhodes]

I thought, well, I think he's always shaped by something that happened before that involves him. Right. And he wanted to take these troops out of Syria the first time. And there's a lot of uproar in the Republican Party, and you didn't. The challenge is right now, those US Troops are kind of the last thing standing between Turkey and what could be a massacre of Kurdish forces that have helped us fight isis. And so what he needs to be doing is negotiating with Turkey to have a place for the Kurds inside of Syria. And there's been these negotiations between HDS and the Kurds about how could the Kurds have some autonomy within a new Syria and how could they feel comfortable being a part of a new governance structure? And that should involve diplomacy with Turkey. Yeah, we don't want the US And Turkey to get in a shooting war over northern Syria. That should require diplomacy. It's just. Do we think Trump is going to do that? And we don't know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I don't know. So I wonder if some advisors would be like, sir, you have an unbelievable opportunity to permanently take a whack at the Iranians and the Russians and keep them down and solidify our power in the Middle East. Sir. Beecher Chest. Sir. Sir. Sir. We'll see if he'll take it. Ben. We wonder produce of.

[Ben Rhodes]

Sir. By the way.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thank you. We talked in the last couple episodes about Assad in our hope that he's living somewhere really horrible in Moscow. That's probably not the case. The Financial Times reported that Assad's central bank airlifted $250 million in cash to Moscow in 2018 and 2019. They said that Assad's extended family bought at 20 luxury apartments in Moscow during that time, using a complex set of companies and loan arrangements. And as recently as May 2022, Assad's maternal cousin and sort of a member of the Syrian intelligence established a property company in Moscow established by some other relatives. So that's probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the money that Assad has looted from the country and repositioned in Russia. Now, the question, I guess, is whether Putin says, oh, that's actually mine, or lets him live off it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I just don't know if you're betting on the over under and for how long Assad is around. I'd be taking the under because he's not going to be able to go anywhere else other than Russia, pretty much. And what use is he to the Russians? I mean, that's the thing. I mean, sure, they took him in like the US Took in the Shah or something, but I can't imagine what Yusi is, because he's. He has no popular support in Syria. So it's not like he could rebuild a base to return to Syria and restore Russian influence. He's the most loathed human being in Syria, So, you know, he's just going to be cooling his heels, I guess, in Moscow or wherever the.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, some. Some parody account of RT announced that he was starting a podcast. Yeah, that was very funny. That's it for the Ben and I on Syria. But later in the interview, you're going to hear me and Layla talk a lot more about this. We also talk about the search for Austin, the US journalist who's been missing in Syria since 2012, and his parents. Austin Tice's parents request to the Israelis to Netanyahu to stop bombing parts of Damascus, where they think that Austin Tice might be held. They're worried that, like, the Israeli could be killing.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, no, they could. They're bombing military facilities. And that is if he's alive. That's a place that he could very well be held.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, my God. All right, let's check in on Trump's national security nominees. Ben. So the Hill had a good piece about Tulsi Gabbard's struggles to woo senators on Capitol Hill as she tries to secure votes to become the Director of National Intelligence. One source described her as, quote, a little shallow. And an anonymous Republican senator described her meetings as BS sessions. These are people who ostensibly may support her. Tulsi, she had a challenging path for this job, given her fondness for Assad and her total lack of qualifications for the job. But we'll see if Trump could kind of bully her. The votes on Monday, he not at all subtly suggested that he would support primary challengers for senators who oppose his people. I assume she's among the list of folks he would fight for that way. Pete Hegseth, the nominee to be Secretary of Defense, he seemed to be in very big trouble until the MAGA bays started intimidating Republican senators. New York Times had a great story about the pressure campaign against Iowa Republican Joni Ernst. She's a combat veteran, she's a survivor of sexual assault. Who dared to suggest that Pete Hegseth's lack of experience and the allegations of sexual assault and basically near constant drunkenness might be a problem for him as Secretary of Defense. But, you know, it seems like Pete's very much on track to get confirmed. Now, the crew over at Morning Joe did a segment where they looked at some of what Pete Hegseth wrote in his book about the military. Let's listen.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Ben Hegseth writes, America will decline and die. A national divorce will ensue.

[Tommy Vitor]

Very patriotic.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back. The military and police, both bastions of freedom loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice. It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war. In another section, Hegseth writes that our present moment is much like the 11th century. We do not want to fight, but like our fellow Christians 1,000 years ago, we must arm yourself metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.

[Tommy Vitor]

Little Civil War crusade, huh?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Excited.

[Ben Rhodes]

This is clearly the most problematic of the nominees. I mean, if I were to focus on one out of all of them, it would definitely be Hexaf. It is, you know, the most important of the agencies. And let's be clear, Trump is going to do a lot of things that are going to trigger a lot of us. Two of the kind of existential things are the transformation politicization of the US Military and the transformation politicization of the Justice Department. Those are different order threats than even a weirdo like Tulsa Gabbard being dni. And so having a guy that has had these credible claims of sexual assault, credible allegations of being drunk all the time is writing openly about civil war defended war criminals. These are just the things we all know about. This is not the person you want leading a nearly trillion dollar enterprise that is in the chain of command, that has to respond on a dime to international crises at a time of great power conflict that is in the nuclear chain of command. It's just totally irresponsible to even be entertaining this. And the fact that somebody like Joni Ernst, who clearly didn't want to support Hex and you know her, if she withdrew support, it might have been existential to his nomination. Well, that Steve Bannon and some people can, you know, go Charlie Kirk, give.

[Tommy Vitor]

These little right wing nuts. Podcast.

[Ben Rhodes]

Can scream on podcasts. And all of a sudden, like, she's in line should be terrifying to people.

[Tommy Vitor]

And they target her. Right. While a bunch of male senators hide behind her. Right. She's a combat veteran, she's a sexual assault survivor. And these fucking cowards hide behind her. Being kind of the public face of concern about things you should be concerned about. Like this guy has credible sexual assault allegations. He's drunk all the time. He has no relevant experience. He's never managed an organization of more than like 10 people. And he's going to run the Department of Defense and oversee what, 3 million. Nearly 3 million employees.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And this is the. What Bannon does understand is that the reason they want to get him in is to prove that they call all the shots, that the Senate Republicans, John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, are meaningless, that they're just, they're just rubber stamps for Trump. So this is a proxy for how the Senate Republican caucus will operate in national security and politics generally.

[Tommy Vitor]

And Bannon says that.

[Ben Rhodes]

He says that because he knows that.

[Tommy Vitor]

I listen all the time.

[Ben Rhodes]

And one of the things, there's that Utah guy that was in the right place on Gates. I don't even know his name. The new Utah senator. Republican senator. So this is the guy who was elected to replace Romney. I mentioned this guy for the simple reason that this guy doesn't come up for election until two years after Donald Trump's term ends. Like Trump is, not forever. And if these Republicans are willing to basically risk the entire United States military and the Pentagon and a trillion dollar budget because they're afraid of being criticized on Charlie Kirk's podcast. Why are you in public office?

[Tommy Vitor]

That's the point.

[Ben Rhodes]

We've said this before, but you have real power here as Senate Republicans. And ultimately it's on them, it's on the Republicans to see how much they're gonna allow Trump to crash the car, drive the car drunk, quite literally in Hegseth's case, versus whether they have any institutional prerogative. So watch that. Of all the nominations, I'd like to think that Cash Patel would be raising these concerns, but it doesn't seem to be. Cash seems to be coasting through.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, let's get to Cash, John Curtis is the new incoming Republican from Utah. I did Google it. Don't apologize.

[Ben Rhodes]

Household name.

[Tommy Vitor]

Adios, Mitt Romney. Yeah, so we've been watching Cash. Like you said, he's been named to lead the FBI. As you said. It doesn't seem like he's facing any real headwinds. The New York Times dug into some of the lies he told about Benghazi. They are as follows. Patel has repeatedly said, both verbally on podcasts and in print in a book, he wrote that he was, quote, leading the prosecution's efforts at main justice in Washington, so leading the prosecution of the Benghazi suspects. However, that's not true. He was a prosecutor in the counterterrorism section of doj. He did work on the Benghazi investigation, but only in support of the prosecutors who were leading that prosecution at the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office. The Times also notes that Patel left DOJ six months before the first Benghazi case went to trial. So tough to lead that effort if you're not there. He also reportedly lied about being asked to join the trial team. Cash has complained that Obama's DOJ only prosecuted one guy and it took a pass on the others for political reasons. The Times says in fact, the prosecutors had filed sealed complaints against over a dozen militants that were just kept secret. And then, weirdly, Cash has said on podcasts that the military had rolled up 19 attackers when even today, the US government has only been able to capture two of them. And I think they prosecuted one, at least maybe both, just because it's very tough to operate in eastern Libya. So we could keep going about all the kind of fabrications here, but this, at a minimum, raises questions about his credibility.

[Ben Rhodes]

And when you hear things like that, I don't know what's more alarming, Tommy. Is it more alarming that he just makes stuff up or that he might actually believe these things that he says that aren't true? Because he seems like one of those guys that may actually talk himself into grandeur. Either way, you're putting this person who's not at all qualified in charge of the entire law enforcement apparatus of the United States of America. And it doesn't seem to be raising any red flags. And just because Pete Hegseth there's alcohol and women involved, it seems like that's.

[Tommy Vitor]

More easy to report on.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's easier to report on, but the complete lack of qualification to see. Seemingly some of the more normie Republicans like Tom Tillis from North Carolina, who's up in a couple years being like he's gonna reform the FBI. What does that even mean? Reform it to do what?

[Tommy Vitor]

How?

[Ben Rhodes]

There's nothing here about making the FBI more effective in prosecuting, doing counterterrorism or counterintelligence or counter narcotics. It's wholly about making the FBI an extension of Donald Trump's political interest. There's no other reason to select Cash Patel but that one. Like I said, I think Hegseth there's a chance he's not confirmed. Cash Patel. It seems like that ship is getting ready to sail.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's sailing, that's for sure. Also, listeners know we try to keep an eye on current and future foreign corruption opportunities by the Trump regime. It is a full time job. Along those lines, last week, Eric Trump announced a new Trump Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. During his first term, Trump said he would avoid foreign deals such as this to avoid conflicts of interest. This time, apparently that no longer matters. There's also plans for two Trump developments in Riyadh. They're eyeing a project in Abu Dhabi. This is all in partnership with this real estate company called Dar Global, which Reuters reports is the international arm of Saudi Arabia's Dar El Arkhan real estate development company. So again, our Gulf listeners are probably wondering, who do I bribe? Is it Jared Kushner? Is it Steve Witkoff? Is it Tiffany, Trump's father in law? Is it Don Jr? Is it Eric? Do I just buy the Trump crypto or do I buy the DJT stock? And the truth is I don't know anymore, Ben. It also sounds like they're trying to. The Trump Org is trying to get back the Trump hotel in D.C. and lease that back so they can do the rent 50 hotel rooms grift. Again, I just, I don't have great advice for all our listeners in the UAE now.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's just going to cost a lot. Did you see Eric Trump in the UAE a few days ago for some crypto conference? No. And you know he's literally there hawking Trump family cryptocurrencies. Of course they're going to invest in that. Do you think that the missing piece and the Jeddah skyline is a Trump Tower? Yes, but the point is this is just rank corruption of a sort that we've never seen. I mean, we've never seen. And again, we spent four years doing a proctology exam on Hunter Biden's pretty hackish influence peddling. Did he try to get something for the big guy or whatever? This is just the President of the United States sons going around the world doing deals that are entirely rooted in the fact that he's the president's son. That are gonna tally up to billions and billions of dollars. And it's just like the sun rising and setting, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

And I believe the FBI informant who lied about Biden taking bribes actually pleaded guilty to lying yesterday.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

So there's that. Also, Ben, you flagged this one for me. Trump announced his next ambassador, Uruguay, Lou Rinaldi. And noted in the announcement the tweet that Lou was a great golfer and will be in a country centrifuges. I like that. Did you see, though, that Nigel Farage was at Mar a Lago on Monday and he met with Elon Musk? And that is significant because Elon has decided that he hates Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the uk, The Labour Party leader. And there's concern that Elon could just decide to do what he did in the US and just dump like a couple hundred million dollars into the reform UK party coffers over in the UK and all of a sudden you have this, the rise of this super right wing party.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, well, you've already seen Trump and Elon trying to kneecap different people. So they humiliated Trudeau. Seems like that worked.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'll get to that.

[Ben Rhodes]

But this is really interesting because he's made these noises about giving 100, $200 million to the reform Party, the crazy right wing party of Nigel Farage. First of all, that's kind of complicated.

[Tommy Vitor]

They have different laws.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, technically, British political parties are not supposed to receive foreign donations. I think what people have seen over the years, including perhaps from some Russian oligarchs who gave money to the Tories, that they create these shell companies. And if Elon really wants to get $100 million in the hands of Nigel Farage, he could probably figure out a way to do it. Boris Johnson is in this mix too. And the question is, Boris wants to be Trump and Elon's friend too. Does this money go to the Tories and Boris? Does it go to Nigel Farage and the Reform? Either way, the notion of an American oligarch just trying to select the leadership of various democracies of a far right flavor. Again, this is something we'll have to watch. But the early indications are this crowd is going to throw their weight around maximally. And the longer Elon stays tethered to Trump, the more Trump has an unlimited, just like the Gulf, sovereign wealth funds or unlimited sources of wealth for him. Elon's an unlimited source of funding for politics in other countries.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, final Trump Thing he's gonna do.

[Ben Rhodes]

By the way, to foreign politicians, what he's doing to Republicans, threatening primaries. Same thing like the Tories. I'm gonna promote Nigel Frost. He's basically trying to do on a global scale what he's done the Republican Party.

[Tommy Vitor]

Wonderful. Last thing Trump related. I don't know if we talked about this, but Trump invited Xi Jinping to his inauguration, which I read, and I was like, it's not going to happen. I guess, kind of, who cares? It's weird to only invite, like, the Chinese dictator to your declaration and no other heads of stable.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, he was asked if you'd invite Zelensky, and he's like, no, but he can come if he wants. You just won't have a ticket.

[Tommy Vitor]

He'll be in the purple tunnel with doom, like we were in 2008. But I was talking to a China expert today who suggested that actually in Beijing, this might have sounded really insulting because, like, Xi Jinping's like, I'm Xi Jinping.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'm like, up your peer. And the idea that I'm going to sit in the crowd like a plebe next to Peter Navarro and Marco Rubio while you get inaugurated, and I'm going to clap for you. Get out of here with that shit.

[Ben Rhodes]

And here's the other thing, and maybe this can be comfort to some of our listeners. This is not forever, you know, like, Trump has got. This is his last inauguration. He's got four years in office. He'll probably really have two years until hopefully knock on what he loses the House of Congress. Xi Jinping, guess what? He's gonna be there in four years, barring a health, might be there in 40. He might be there in 10 years. They're not that impressed. That's the thing, is that everybody in this country seems to be caving, whether ABC News or whatever. But these leaders, like Xi Jinping are like, why would I fucking fly to Washington in middle of January to watch Donald Trump give a speech?

[Tommy Vitor]

And in 2016, everyone was shocked that Trump won the election. And every country everywhere was scrambling to figure out who he was, what he believed, and how to get to them. And a lot of them found a useful idiot in Jared Kushner. I guess Kushner was actually pretty close or wanted to be close to Henry Kissinger. And so the Chinese would go through him, or they'd go through Steve Wynn or other businessmen to pass along messages, and they would just kind of like, forum shop to manipulate Trump. Now, he's a totally known quantity. All the Tariff threats are out there. The Chinese are ready. They just put a huge trade embargo on the export of these four critical minerals like gallium, germanium, things that our listeners have never ever heard of, but are absolutely critical to high tech industries. Including I saw a report that the Chinese export ban on critical minerals to the US could disrupt more than a thousand US Weapons production systems. Like, these guys are ready to play hardball.

[Ben Rhodes]

You want to talk about ready? They literally are listening to all of Donald Trump's phone calls. I mean, this is a thing that is happening that is not getting that much attention. But the Chinese hack of the US Telecommunications means they have the capacity to listen to all phones in the United States. We know from reporting that Trump and Vance were two of the people targeted. We know that Donald Trump is always on his fucking cell phone. He doesn't need to travel all the way to the United States when he can just listen to the guy's phone calls and get transcripted phone calls. Trump acts like he's the only one with leverage with these tariffs. The Chinese have had eight years to plan for this trade war. They can fuck with supply chains. They can fuck. We don't have access to.

[Tommy Vitor]

They just did an antitrust investigation into Nvidia. They're going after our big business.

[Ben Rhodes]

They're going after Nvidia. We don't have access to these critical minerals. It's not like we can go find other sources. The Chinese have kind of monopoly level control over a lot of things that are fundamental to supply chains. Elon can't make a lot of Teslas without China. Right. Apple can't make iPhones. So this is not child's play. I think what will be interesting over the next year is if Trump does push the envelope on things like tariffs, how much are we going to feel it in return? And I think a fair amount.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I think they're ready to counterpunch. Before we move on to a couple of foreign issues, Ben, you have a piece out in Foreign affairs this week about where Democrats should go in foreign policy. What can we learn?

[Ben Rhodes]

What should we look for? Definitely check it out. I wanted to write about what lessons we should take away from this election. Where we should go. You know, I talk about essentially, as we've discussed in this podcast, the rules based international order that the Biden people were upholding and talking about all the time doesn't exist anymore. There's no going back. Like the first time around, it was like, make Trump won term president and kind of restore leadership of this rules based Order, the rules based order is gone. America is not coming back as it used to be. The rest of the world is moving on and Democrats have to adjust to that reality. I talk a bunch about what that means in terms of broad policy and kind of coming back with plans to deal with big issues like climate and technology and great power conflict and putting more diplomacy forward. A couple of things that you might like, Tommy, on these contentious issues like Gaza or like Cuba. And this is the 10th anniversary of the effort to normalize relations with Cuba. Maybe the Democratic Party should do something radical, Tommy, and actually adopt policies that reflect the views of its own constituencies.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't know about that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Instead of tailoring their views, popular things, to a small number of pundits and interest groups in Washington. That's one thing. And then the other thing I talk about is maybe people who work in foreign policy should talk like human beings.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, I like that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Should not use a bunch of jargon. Should not be deeply concerned about things we do nothing about that. The way we talk about foreign policy, the people that run it, it seems designed to exclude people. And the Trump may sound stupid or like he's lying, but he sounds like a real person. A little more candor, a little more blunt language about world events would be in order. But check it out. I tried to cover a lot of ground and probably the first of many Creed corps in the years to come.

[Tommy Vitor]

I like that. Ditch that jargon. I will, definitely.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, thanks.

[Tommy Vitor]

Good hit.

[Ben Rhodes]

Good hit.

[Tommy Vitor]

Good detente. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but you guys might have noticed that last week Saudi Arabia was named the host of the 2034 World Cup. Very exciting. Ben, season two of World Corrupt, Roger Bennett and I, we explored how a.

[Ben Rhodes]

Little too on the nose, an oil.

[Tommy Vitor]

Rich nation like Saudi Arabia with a grim human rights record could buy its way to global influence. And boy, did we nail them to the wall and prevent this from. No, actually exactly what we feared would happen happen. So if you want to hear, listen to that and the backstory there. Check it out also.

[Ben Rhodes]

And you can stay at the new Trump Tower when you go to watch in Riyadh.

[Tommy Vitor]

You could say it's a great place to stay. Also, if you want to dig into some more cool mysteries, Ben, check out Killing Justice. Fascinating story about the murder of a judge in India and Narendra Modi's India. Narendra Modi's India and what it tells.

[Ben Rhodes]

Us about the state of politics in India today and the state of the law in India. It's a great podcast.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's a great podcast. Also continuing on the International Angle Band, you can listen to Dissident at the Doorstep, which is the amazing story of this Chinese civil rights activist who turned into a MAGA Trump supporter who was there at the Capitol on January 6th.

[Ben Rhodes]

I think he may be Deputy Secretary of Commerce by the end of the week.

[Tommy Vitor]

He's angling for a White House job. Finally, if you want to understand how the NYPD came to be, listen to Empire City the Untold Origin story of the NYPD. It's named one of the top podcasts of 2024 by the New York Times, the New Yorker, and lots of other places. Lots of the great outlets. So check out these stories and [e-mail] limiteds or wherever you get your podcasts. Pod Save the World is brought to you by SimpliSafe. If you ever worry about the safety of your home and family, there's no better time to act. Right now Simplisafe is extending its massive Black Friday deal for our listeners. Get 50% off today just by visiting SimpliSafe.com Crooked World this is your last chance to protect your home at Simplisafe's lowest prices of the year. You guys know we love SimpliSafe. John Lovett set one up himself this top of the line technology and sensors, but you can still turn it on and off from your own phone. 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Head to simplisafe.com crookedworld that's simplisafe.com crookedworld there's no safe like Simplisafe Pod Save the World is brought to you by Selectquote the world's an uncertain place, but the one thing we know for sure? We're all going to die. That's why we need life insurance. It feels like most of the news we're subjected to 24. Seven is bad or downright depressing about the future. With so much out of our control, the future can feel overwhelming. Regain control with life Insurance Policies from Selectquote Selectquote is one of America's leading insurance brokers with nearly 40 years of experience helping over 2 million customers find over $700 billion in coverage since 1985. The licensed insurance agents at Selectquote work for you to tailor a life insurance policy for your individual needs in as little as 15 minutes. 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That's the number 3D a Y blinds dot com world so in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Hamas has made a major concession in ceasefire negotiations by saying they would allow the IDF to remain in Gaza on a temporary basis after the fighting stops. According to the AP, what's on the table is a phased agreement. Phase one would be a preliminary ceasefire lasting six to eight weeks. That would allow for the exchange of approximately 30 hostages, three or four of whom are dual Israeli US citizens, and up to 100 Palestinian prisoners. Then there would also be a massive influx of aid into Gaza. The IDF would move out of some parts of the strip but remain in strategic areas like the Philadelphia corridor, that border region between Gaza and Egypt, and the Netzarim Corridor, which divides north and south Gaza. Israel's defense minister said they are, quote, the closest we've been to a hostage deal since the last deal. That deal very early on that allowed for a limited release of prisoners. And Haaretz quoted a Lebanese newspaper, Al Akbar, as saying, quote, there is unprecedented willingness to get the deal done on both sides. So, Ben, there's a few reasons why that might be right. The Washington Post noted that Hamas is under pressure from Gazans to end the conflict after 14 months and just untold suffering. And as the AP notes, Hamas is more isolated than ever since Israel's ceasefire with Hezbollah was reached and Iran has been weakened after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. I should note after reading all of that, I saw Axios had a report shitting all over this optimism and quoting a bunch of Israeli officials saying the gaps are still very wide. So who knows? CIA Director Bill Burns is either in Doha or headed to Doha to negotiate as we speak. Over the weekend, though, Israeli strikes hit several schools as well as a camp in central Gaza. Among those killed was a cameraman for Al Jazeera. There were videos on Twitter from these strikes that were absolutely horrific, like the worst things you can ever imagine. And those deaths put the Gaza Health Ministry's death count above 45,000, which, as we've discussed, I suspect is another count. Ben, on Positive America Monday that came out Tuesday, we talked about things we'd like to see Biden do in these last months. I said I'd love to see Biden just cut off aid to the war in Gaza, even if Trump turns it back on, because why not just try to end this horrific nightmare? But a more limited thing he could do is say to Netanyahu take this deal, or I will start unilaterally negotiating with Hamas to get out the Americans by the end of my term. And I don't give a shit what you say about it. I mean, the fact that we're not negotiating on behalf of just these Americans after 14 months is crazy to me.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. So there's a lot of things related to this Gaza policy. I think one reason that there is cause for actual optimism is that Bibi wants us. He's fair enough. He was clearly as big, if not a bigger impediment to a deal than Hamas at times over the last few months. But now that Trump is coming in and Trump wants this loose end tied up now, Bibi has a real incentive to deliver this for Trump. In a weird way, it's one more humiliation to Biden on the way out the door to kind of wait till the very end of his presidency to say, okay, now we'll do this deal. And so I think the combination of Hamas, yes, being more isolated with what's happened to Hezbollah, and obviously Gaza wants this conflict to end, but also Israel wanting to do this for Trump because they're getting this message over and over publicly and I think privately from the Trump people, like, we want this thing wound up by jail.

[Tommy Vitor]

Let's wrap it up, basically.

[Ben Rhodes]

Now, that said, even if this deal happens and hope it does, and hope as many hostages get out as possible and hope as much aid gets into Gaza as possible, it's not like that's the end of anything. I mean, what's the future of Gaza? Who's going to run Gaza? What's the Israeli presence going to be like? Are they going to resume strikes in Gaza? Are they going to settle northern Gaza? Are they going to reoccupy the Strip? What happens to the West Bank? I mean, this idea that this is a scorecard and you check it off when this ceasefire for hostage thing happens is not the kind of reality of what the conflict is on your list of things that he could do in addition to what you said. I mentioned this, I think, last week, but just to expand on it, the more I think about this, Trump has no incentive to release any information about what the conditions are like in Gaza. Israel has every incentive to suppress the reality of what's happened in Gaza. Things like US Assessments of casualties, things like US Assessments of the scale of destruction in Gaza, whatever the United States government knows. I would like to see transparency, because otherwise, I don't know, we may never get the truth of what has actually happened in Gaza. Because Between Netanyahu and Trump, there's not a lot of incentive for transparency. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, why has there not been any access to international journalists to Gaza since October 7th?

[Tommy Vitor]

I think it's a great idea. I would love to see them do that. My concern is, for similar reasons, that the US Wouldn't push forward because we're complicit in this.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you're pointing the finger yourself because there's this question of has the US violated laws in providing arms to Israel despite credible concerns of both war crimes and restrictions on aid getting into humanitarian populations? And. Yeah, I mean, that reality is staring you right in the face and it's hard to see that that wasn't the case.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And diplomatically, I mean, Israel is getting increasingly isolated. The Israeli government is about to close its embassy in Ireland. Israel's Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar said that was because of, quote, the extreme anti Israel policies of the Irish government. And, quote, his statement cited Ireland's decision to support the case at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Here is the Taoiseach, Simon Harris, reacting to the closure.

[Ben Rhodes]

Ireland is not anti Israeli, but Ireland.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Is absolutely anti the starvation of children, is absolutely anti the killing of civilians, and is absolutely pro peace, pro international.

[Ben Rhodes]

Law and pro human rights.

[Tommy Vitor]

And we have been consistent in relation.

[Layla Malana Allen]

To our foreign policy position that there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Needs to be an immediate ceasefire, that.

[Layla Malana Allen]

The hostages need to be freed, and that there needs to be the flow of humanitarian aid into the Middle East.

[Ben Rhodes]

What we're seeing unfolding in Gaza and.

[Layla Malana Allen]

In the west bank is absolutely appalling, extraordinarily concerning.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, no one should be surprised by this. There's a lot of historic solidarity in Ireland for the Palestinian people because the Irish were occupied for so long by the British government. That response, though, from the Irish intensified the diplomatic row. And the Israeli foreign minister issued a statement calling him anti Semitic for those comments.

[Ben Rhodes]

Why people need to call this out as complete and utter bullshit.

[Tommy Vitor]

Cynical.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, first of all, the Irish solidarity with Palestinians is long established, and by the way, it's not reserved any one political party in Ireland. What the Taoiseach is saying is a pretty widely held view in Ireland because they were colonized for hundreds of years and have a natural sympathy and solidarity with people who they see as being occupied, as is the case in Gaza and the West Bank. And if you hear his language, it's about actions, it's not about religion or identity. And this kind of performative outrage over and over and over again, really think that guy sounds like a raving antisemite. No, he's talking about their genuine concern about what's happened to children in Gaza. And if your reaction to that is to close your embassy, I mean, part of what is so maddening about this is what you hear. We used to hear a lot out of Israel is the desire to be a normal country, to be kind of normalized. That's not the behavior of a normal country. That. That I'm just going to shutter my embassy because I don't like what the prime minister of this country said or did and point me to the thing that is actually anti Semitic. They don't like that they recognized a Palestinian state. They don't like that they criticized him over Gaza. But again, as the Taoiseach said, this is a kind of a diplomacy of distraction and obfuscation and name calling. And it does nothing to advance anything other than it plays to a certain politics in Israel and maybe in the United States. I mean, I thought we used to like the Irish. There's a lot of Irish people in this country, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I think we love them.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I like that accent. I hear that accent and I get happy. Like, it makes me think of my Irish friends, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. There's a lot of politicians here, elected officials even, who used to support the IRA.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Well, they like to wear green ties on St. Patrick's Day, but they probably won't say anything about this or the Palestinian people.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, very cool. Okay, Ben, let's turn back to South Korea, because the last few weeks we've been covering the political crisis there after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and seemingly tried to stage a coup, albeit a self coup, because he was in charge at the time. This past Saturday, President Yoon was officially impeached by the National Assembly. An earlier vote had been boycotted by Yoon's party, the ppp. But this time, the PPP allowed their members to vote, and 12 PPP lawmakers voted to impeach President Yoon via secret ballot, which got you over the 2/3 threshold that you needed to actually impeach. Now, Korea's constitutional court has 180 days to decide whether Yoon is guilty and to formally remove him. I was talking to someone today who said that could take like a month or it could take, you know, several months. We're not really sure yet. However long it takes a court to ascertain guilt or innocence, the vote will require six of the courts, nine members to support impeachment. But as we Discussed last week. There are currently three vacancies on the court, so there's only six judges total. And three of them were put in place or have ties to President Yoon. So it's not clear how that vote will go. If Yoon is removed, there will be a snap election in 60 days, and it's likely that the Liberal Party will take power. If not, Yoon is restored as president, and God knows what happens next. Actually, we know what happens next.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Yoon gets reelected.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's Donald Trump, baby. Yoon has declared that he's going to fight to the end, but some of his allies have already gone down. The former Defense Minister and two former police chiefs have been arrested for their roles in the insurrection. The Defense Minister attempted suicide and custody. This is very ugly stuff. PPP's leader Han Dong Hoon resigned amidst a backlash for supporting the impeachment. Good for him for doing the right thing. The Prime Minister and acting president is a man named Han Deok Su, who is Korea's ambassador to the US from 2009 to 2012. So we probably ran across.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, no, I met that guy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Pretty well known quantity in Washington. Yeah, technocrat, like, kind of has things handled. But I was again, I was talking to a career expert today, Ben, who said he kind of heard two theories about what could happen next. The first is the coup attempt was so egregious that this court, even if it's just six of them, even if they have ties to Yoon, they got to toss them out. The second theory, though, is Yoon's a former prosecutor. He knows how to play hardball. He knows how the process works. He's rejected a bunch of off ramps that could have made this easier on himself. And he keeps saying he wants to fight it out. That might suggest he knows something, which is that he has the backing of at least one of these six judges, which means he'll be president again. Either way, U.S. korea relations seem likely to get a lot more complicated for the Trump administration.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, let's not send Merrick Garland over there to give them advice on how to deal with these circumstances. No, the other dynamic here, though, is if he does try to pull some judicial maneuver, there's someone who will do his bidding. What you've seen is that there'll be huge street protests and huge unrest. I mean, any effort to kind of reinstall Yoon just feels like that place goes berserk.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think his approval's at 11%.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. So it just feels like you would hope that they just kind of finish the work here of getting past this. Yoon era and this huge excessive power grab. To your last point though, again, if you look around the world, Korea is clearly going to be divided and internally focused for a period of time here. Japan has had some bumpy politics of late. Germany, their government just collapsed. Macron is a lame duck with, like, what its fourth prime minister. Trudeau will talk about. The G7 is not doing that well. Or you could actually the tectonic shifts.

[Tommy Vitor]

Part of the podcast. There's a lot of major power, a lot of shit happening with big changes coming.

[Ben Rhodes]

And maybe Trump doesn't give a shit about those countries, but I gotta tell you, there's a lot of consistency at the top in Russia and China and some of those types of countries. And this is gonna be a very uncertain year ahead of us because you've got all this turnover and all these democracies, all these people inwardly focused and a lot of instability and I don't know, we'll see how that goes. That G7 family photo is gonna look a little different than it did a year ago.

[Tommy Vitor]

Very different. Yeah. Well, let's turn to Germany, where you have basically the opposite situation in South Korea because you've German Chancellor Olaf Scholz calling for a vote of no confidence on himself in the Bundestag Monday, knowing that he would lose it. 394 members voted no, 207 voted yes, 116 abstained. He needed 367 yes votes for the vote of confidence to be successful, so he got destroyed. But Schultz called for this vote on purpose because he was out of options. He has been floundering since his coalition fell apart in November after he fired his finance minister, who was part of the FDP party. That led that whole party to withdraw from the coalition and left Schultz in charge of a minority lame duck government. Germany's elections were not supposed to happen again until September, but per the BBC, Schultz feels that his party would fare better in an earlier snap election. So he called for. The only way to call to trigger a snap election was to lose a vote of confidence. So he called the vote face planted, and now there's an election in late February. This election will be huge for Germany, huge for Europe. The big fear is that the far right AfD party could make substantial gains. They're currently polling at around 18%. But my, like, scared little American brain is worried about far right parties outperforming their polling here and abroad. The major parties all rule out working with AfD, but who knows? Friedrich Mertz of the center right CDU party is leading the polls at 32%. He describes himself as socially conservative but economically liberal. He's a longtime rival of Angela Merkel's, but lost her in a leadership election so badly that he ended up leaving politics for decades. But he's a big supporter of Army Ukraine against a Russian invasion. So ban. Again, this didn't happen because of a failed coup attempt like in South Korea. But it's another. It's a huge variable for Ukraine, it's a huge variable for Europe. Germany's got all these economic challenges and we got a US leadership change happening right before this one.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And you know, Mertz seems like the most likely outcome. But again, what does the coalition look like? How well does the AFD do? I mean, part of Schultz's problem is having a Social Democratic Party in a coalition with a hawkish Green Party and a Libertarian Party was kind of a strange mix, you know, and hard to get things done. And the reality too is that anytime you have a turnover in one of these big European countries like say France and Germany, it takes a while to set up your coalition to figure out the fucking eu. How are you going to work with the French and how are you going to work with these other European powers? And how are you going to work with the EU and how are you going to deal with Ukraine? It's just disruptive to have all these transitions. Macron's got an election coming down the pikes, so there's just a big void of leadership in Europe right now. Weirdly, Meloni in Italy, because she's maybe in the kind of far right zeitgeist these days, is like the most stable government. Tusk and Poland to some extent. But Meloni now is riding high. She's meeting with Elon. She's got her buddy Trump coming in. So the Italians, unusually for them, are the stable political force in Europe. But boy, there's a lot of vacuums out there.

[Tommy Vitor]

No questions. Yeah, the Brits are not EU anymore, but yeah, I mean, the Labour Party went in, they were riding high and they just kind of tripped right out the gate and now they're already kind of like resetting things. So you're right, there's not a lot of stability.

[Ben Rhodes]

They're resetting things. And they're also again, likely to be the only center left leader left in the G7 by the time all the dust settles, you know, so it's a different world for them in the next few years. And they may be imagined if it was a Democrat in the US and a Social Democrat in Germany and Trudeau and Or a liberal in Canada.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. It's also just an interesting kind of lesson in leadership style. I mean, like, Mirka was buttoned up and serious, but I don't know, she just had some sort of charisma. She had a lot of leadership abilities. I mean, Schultz was. They called him the Scholzomat because he was so boring and mechanical. There's this great quote. I saw Ben on the evening of his election as mayor of Hamburg in 2011. He was being interviewed by a TV interviewer, a reporter, who said to him, today's essentially Christmas and a birthday and one for you. And yet you seem about as euphoric as an English butler at tea time.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah. Not a lot of charisma there.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's like, come on, man.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And there was an opportunity after, like, 15 years of Angela Merkel, the pendulum was going to swing to the Social Democrats, but they didn't. They didn't exactly seize that pendulum.

[Tommy Vitor]

No pendulum is swinging back.

[Ben Rhodes]

Kind of like.

[Tommy Vitor]

Kind of like here. Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Kind of like here.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Speaking of which, also, things are looking a little dicey for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau up in Canada. On Monday, Christa Freeland, as finance minister and deputy prime minister, left his Cabinet writing a rather pointed resignation letter. She said that while they should be preparing for Trump's threat of 25% tariffs, Trudeau was instead preoccupied with, quote, costly political gimmicks like a sales tax holiday. Long considered one of Trudeau's loyal ministers, her timing was very tough. She left the day she was supposed to deliver the government's fall economic statement, meaning he was left scrambling. Trump helpfully weighed in on truth. Social waited on her resignation, writing, quote, the great state of Canada is stunned as the finance minister resigns or is fired from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed. 1, 2, 3, exclamation points. She's really riding with this Governor Trudeau thing. The knife was twisted further by Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the lefty New Democratic Party, the kind of Bernie Sanders Party up there who, up until September, had an agreement with Trudeau's Liberals that helped keep them in power. Singh called for Trudeau to resign yesterday. Here's what he had to say.

[Ben Rhodes]

Right now, Canadians are struggling with the cost of living. I hear it everywhere I go. People cannot find a home that they can afford. They can't buy their groceries. And on top of that, we Have Trump threatening tariffs of 25%, which put hundreds and thousands of Canadian jobs at risk. And instead of focusing on these issues, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are focused on themselves. They're fighting themselves instead of fighting for Canadians. And for that reason, today I'm calling on Justin Trudeau to resign.

[Tommy Vitor]

He has to go.

[Ben Rhodes]

Will you declare no confidence in the Liberal government as soon as possible.

[Tommy Vitor]

All tools, all options are on the table.

[Ben Rhodes]

People are hurting, people are struggling. And so all options are on the table.

[Tommy Vitor]

All options are on the table. It makes me sound like you're gonna nuke him. I guess he is politically. So, Ben, elections are scheduled for next September. Some people are saying Trudeau should resign early. Maybe put the party in a better place in advance of the election. I don't know. Do you have thoughts here? I mean, maybe just see if you can improve things in seven months, nine months.

[Ben Rhodes]

I think it's hard. I mean, the reality is we've talked about how in 2024, Tommy, I saw a wild graphic. This is the first time in history that every single incumbent party in a democracy lost vote share. So even the ones that won, like Modi lost. Vocure.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Trudeau has been an incumbent for a decade. So when you take the accumulative, you take the anti incumbent mood everywhere and you stretch that out over the course of a decade, you add in a cost of living crisis. Trudeau's got huge political headwinds, big time. I call them political hurricanes. Then you have this question about he's dominated the Liberal Party and we should say, like kind of brought them back from the wilderness. But, you know, you start to get tensions as we've had in the Democratic Party. Well, who's next? Chris G. Freeland is someone that people have long thought could be a natural successor to Trudeau. She could be making her play there. Melanie Jolie, who's the foreign minister, another person who's talked about there, I think Trudeau, candace, hosting the G7 again this year. I think he wanted to do that again. I'm not sure that's as fun a party as it may have seemed like it would have been once. So, look, there's not really a good path for Trudeau here. It does just seem like he's got a choice between, do I step aside now and let a leadership fight take place so that someone else can lead this party into the next election? They will probably lose, frankly, even with a different leader. Or do I kind of play out the string here, kind of go through the tape at the end of My term. And if I lose, I lose. And then the party regenerates. And that choice may not. He may not get to make it because there could be enough liberal defections to challenge his leadership. But it definitely looks like shaky ground for Trudeau.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't know what the right answer is, but he's gotta figure out a response to this Governor Trudeau bullshit. You can't let this asshole bully you and kind of turn the other cheek in. Grin and bear it. I'm not saying that you have to be caustic back, but you gotta figure out something. And again, they're not trying to be all, like, love, actually. And, you know, this is Hugh Grant kind of slapping around the Billy Bob Thornton, George Bush character. But, I don't know, it's just. He's not gonna stop doing it. He's trying to run you out of office. This guy's not. It's not like a good natured ribbon.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. So go out. You're one of the longest, you know, together with your father, you're the longest serving prime minister in Canadian history. You're a younger guy. Take some swings back. I mean, and he tried flying down there to Mar a Lago. I mean, Freeland. What's interesting about what she did is she seems to be sticking out a harder line. I'm not gonna go kowtow at Mar a Lago. And we can debate whether that's the right strategy or not. But the reality is Trump's gotta feel some pushback, and maybe there could be an unplugged Trudeau. If he's on his way out the door, he can take some swings back. But as we've talked about, and we'll keep saying, Tommy, like, the charm offensive thing does not work with Trump if he doesn't like you or if he doesn't like your brand of politics. And, yeah, I think for the sake of Canadians, it probably be a good thing to do a little more pushback to the. I mean, the government. Just think of that like, that's. We may, you know, people may chuckle about it, but it's like a country that is, like, one of our closest allies and trading partners in the world. They're in NATO. They fought with us in places like Afghanistan. Like, I don't know. I don't think that's that funny.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, it's insulting. And I think a lot of. I mean, I kind of wondered a lot what Canadians think of those kind of comments. On a pod a week or two ago, and I got a bunch of texts from friends or notes in the discord being like, you know, we kind of think of these buffoons. We don't really notice it but there's other people who are like we notice it and it's insulting and it sucks.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well the sad thing is they probably don't notice it because they think that that's how Americans think in general.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, they were just assholes.

[Ben Rhodes]

They were just assholes. So that may what he's counting on. But yeah, it's tough to watch but I mean again you have to see it from the prism of this anti incumbency and like the right wing guy in Canada, what's his name?

[Tommy Vitor]

Pierre Poliver.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. If he gets in like good luck because guess what, Trump's not going to do you any favors either with those tariffs.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, no. Finally, Ben, we're going to check in on everyone's favorite member of the Royal family. Prince Andrew perhaps missing his old friend Jeffrey Epstein. Prince Andrew, King Charles 64 year old brother, if you were not familiar with him, decided to make some new friends. Andrew started hanging out with a guy named Yang Tengbo. Yang went to Andrew's birthday party in 2020 and according to the BBC, quote was told he could act on the Royal's behalf when dealing with potential investors in China. This is not a great decision because now Yang has been barred from the UK for allegedly being a Chinese spy. According to a High Court judge, Yang and Prince Andrew had quotes, an unusual degree of trust. And Yang is also accused of trying to build relationships between prominent British officials and then leverage them for political purposes for the Chinese state, for Chinese intelligence. We're not exactly sure. He didn't have like a clear instruction manual from his spy handlers, but he had lots of connections to various sort of carve outs for the Chinese Communist Party and just some sketchy ties. Yang denies all these allegations. Either way, it's another embarrassment for Prince Andrew who had already been stripped of his charity roles and royal duties by his mother, Queen Elizabeth. Now to add insult to injury, he's reportedly been uninvited to the family Christmas celebration to avoid being a distraction. Ben. So down another friend.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean the thing about Prince Andrew is that a lot of this, you know, in this world of espionage and influence peddling, you know, your vulnerability is that you could be blackmailed.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean this guy is such a fucking utter train wreck that maybe he's unblackmailable, you know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean literally flying around with Jeffrey Epstein on his plane and doing God knows what. It is kind of time to Rethink this institution. I mean, like, narrowing the set of royals that are, I don't know, allowed.

[Tommy Vitor]

Out of the house.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, what is going on here?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes they use them deftly. Like they sent William to Notre Dame. Yeah, that's a good use of ceremony. And they had him spend a bunch of time with Trump. And Trump is obviously in love with the royals. Love the trappings. Love to feel respected by the queen and king and prince. But you're right. I mean, Prince Andrew, I don't know. I'm so worried about the fact that he got his mom's corgis when she died. Hope those dogs are okay.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I hope someone's feeding those dogs other than Prince Andrew.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, me too.

[Ben Rhodes]

It does raise this other question too, of the extent to which, I mean, we talk about the Chinese hack here. Like these countries are throwing their weight around in our politics and our institutions, and we don't seem to have a theory of how to deal with it because we're so wealth obsessed that, you know, Mr. Yang shows up and suddenly you're like, oh, sure, whatever you want. This great institution, the British royal family, is basically for sale.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And he was part of some club where he came in contact with all these other senior officials. I think Theresa May was on the list. High powered members of kind of like the British elite class were just kind of bumping into this guy everywhere. And it just, it seems like from some of the reporting that British intelligence thinks this is kind of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese efforts to establish these kind of ties or conduct espionage in the uk we know that London is just a wash of money.

[Ben Rhodes]

London is a wash of money, Russian money, Gulf money, Chinese money. You know, it is just going to.

[Tommy Vitor]

Washing around thanks to very pliant laws.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I will say the labor people have tried to take some steps to come back. Kleptocracy. David Laming's had a couple announcements. It's just going to take a lot of work.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. A long time.

[Ben Rhodes]

And it's part of what's so complicated is part of London's comparative advantage is that is this kind of financial capital and this haven essentially for rich people from around the world. But that cuts both ways.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Okay. We are going to take a quick break. When you come back, you're going to hear my interview with Leila Malana Allen. She is a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour. We talked from wherever she was staying in Aleppo, Syria. She'd been all over the country talking with people, going to some of the horrific prison sites and the intel gathering torture chambers. It's an amazing conversation. So please stick around for that. The credit card companies are ripping you off and you don't even know it. Every time you use your credit card, they charge a hidden swipe fee. It costs the average family more than eleven hundred dollars per year. Really? $1,100. That's because the credit card companies organize banks into pricing cartels. It's like OPEC for credit cards. That's terrible.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Awful organization with no competition. We have the highest credit card swipe fees in the world and that is just wrong. Thankfully, the House and Senate have a bipartisan bill to fix this problem. It's called the Credit Card Competition Act. It would finally make credit card companies compete like every business across the country is supposed to. So call your senators and representatives and tell them to pass the Credit Card Competition Act. Posse of the World is brought to you by Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere. From self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or oci. OCI is a blazing, fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for computing and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a ton of money. Right now. Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends December 31, 2024. See if your company qualifies for this special [e-mail] world. That's oracle.com world. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Holiday season is, as they say, the most wonderful time of the year. It can be filled with joy and happiness, but it can also be the most stressful time of the year. Scheduling conflicts, added expenses, family dynamics and drama can all take a toll. So it's important to slow down and not lose sight of your mental well being. Therapy is a great way to do just that. Not only during this stressful time of the year, but all year long. And BetterHelp online therapy is a great way to get into therapy. BetterHelp is designed to be convenient, flexible and built around your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist that fits your needs and preferences. Once matched, you can connect via phone, video, text or chat. Whatever works for you. It's surprisingly affordable, too. So this season, give yourself a gift you can appreciate all year round. It's a stressful election we just had. Yeah. A lot of people are in their feelings. Understandably. Not a bad time to start therapy. Talk it out. Do not let these bad feelings explode on your loved ones at the dinner table or on Twitter. This holiday season, better to just talk to a therapist. That's right. Visit betterhelp.com crookedworld Go today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.com crookedworld I am excited to welcome back to the show Laila Malana Allen. She's a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour. The last time we spoke, she was in Beirut and now she is in Aleppo, Syria. Great to talk with you again.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Great to be back with you.

[Tommy Vitor]

So first question, just what is it like? I know you've been all across Syria. What are you seeing and hearing from people?

[Layla Malana Allen]

Well, I think something that's made this a particularly powerful reporting experience for me is that I managed to get in undercover a year ago. So unlike most of the reporters who here at the moment who haven't been able to get in for years, I did. And the difference is just utterly jarring. You know, having previously had to kind of whisper everything and be constantly terrified of protecting everybody who dared to speak to you, this is people running up to you on the street, asking you where you're from, desperate to speak to you, wanting to take photographs with you. The level of shock and joy at this very, very sudden freedom that no one expected is really overwhelming because of course, people who lived in the rebel held northwest knew this offensive was coming, but nobody in regime held Syria did. So it really came out of nowhere. And it's almost like the curtains have been opened and the light has come in and people still adapting to how to see in that light.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's incredible. I mean, I know that I've seen some of the clips you've posted of these groups of young people just like filled with joy and excitement. But obviously that that sentiment can curdle pretty quickly if people don't have the basics, you know, food, water, electricity, other services. How is HDS moving to take care of those basics for people in these early days?

[Layla Malana Allen]

Well, that's exactly it. Now, of course, there have been issues with all those services here for a very long time. But that does mean that people Struggle. You know, electricity is terrible. There's often no petrol available. I mean, people are selling water down petrol on the side of the street. A lot of it's being smuggled in from Lebanon. Now there's a lot of problems with basic road infrastructure. You know, one of the issues is that the roads haven't been that much used, particularly between areas that were held by different groups for a long time, except for by military vehicles. So they're shredded to pieces. You know, road signs are terrible. So all of these things now that people are free to move around are things that they want to start to work. And of course, connectivity is a huge issue because when you were under such oppression and you couldn't speak to your family members and you couldn't contact people in the outside world on the Internet, that was almost less of an issue. Now that people suddenly can. They want to be able to use that. So there is a grace period. Of course, you know, people are delighted that the rebels have come down and liberated them, as they keep saying, but they are going to need to fix that soon. At the moment, there's not a huge amount of work happening on basic services. Really what they're trying to figure out is road safety, for instance. So checkpoints have started to come up, checking both whether stolen vehicles are being moved around, whether there are people who are complicit in the horrific crimes that we're discovering conducted by the Assad regime trying to escape. There's a lot of checkpoints coming up. There's also now reinforcement of the borders. The borders have been sitting wide open. When I came in from Lebanon a week ago, we sailed through, there was nobody there except a smiling young Free Syrian army soldier with a gun. Now they are sending people down there. The reality is, is at the moment, they don't have enough fighters and manpower because all they've had in terms of administrative people is those people who are running the salvation government up in Idlib. Suddenly they need politicians for the entire country. So they're going to have to make decisions pretty soon about whether they're going to forgive and move on with the people who ran municipalities with local politicians to get their expertise on board, or whether they're going to try and really staff all the ministries and all the municipality building with HTS fighters and other rebels. That's not clear yet, but they are going to have to make some deals and bring some other people on board if there's any way they're going to run this country effectively. At the moment, there has been a temporary government Put in place, run by Mohammed Al Bashir. He's been appointed by Ahmed Shara. That's the name of Abu Mohammed Al Jelani, who took away his jihadi name. He lost that jihadi name and went back to Bina Ahmad Al Sharad to kind of prove this liberalization agenda that he's got. So he's assigned Mohammed Al Bashir as prime minister. He was the man who was running the show up in Idlib. And they've got till March 1, essentially, to try and get basic services back on the road. Then they're going to need to think about whether they're going to have elections and who's going to be involved in those.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's just an enormous task. You mentioned the horrific things we're seeing coming out of Assad's prisons and torture chambers. I know you visited one. I know that human rights groups are starting to exhume mass graves and take other steps to find missing people, even if they're dead or otherwise, account for Assad's atrocities. Can you just talk a little bit about what you saw and whether there are conversations happening about some sort of process, a truth and reconciliation process, maybe, that might lead to accountability?

[Layla Malana Allen]

So the first prison I went to here was Sidnaya Prison, and this is the most infamous of the network of prisons that the Assads ran in this country. For years now, through so many years reporting on Syria, it has been a theme of almost every conversation. You know, desperate family members wondering whether their family members might be there, sometimes having been told they were, and being manipulated by the authorities into kind of, you know, getting information from other people going there and potentially being tortured themselves while trying to free their family members. And many people who didn't know where they. Their family members had been detained, too, assumed it was Sednaya, partly because it was the biggest. It's this huge complex of multiple floors, and also because, as I say, it's the most infamous. Now, a lot of the torture was also conducted in the intelligence branch offices across the country. But eventually people would be moved to these prisons and going inside. We have heard so many stories, but you really can't understand the full reality of it until you enter this space. You know, floors high, enormous rooms that evidently had 30, 40 people at least, packed inside. There are blankets everywhere, the debris of human beings packed in closely together, video cameras monitoring their every move. And then you go downstairs underground, and it's truly terrifying seeing these tiny little cells with marks etched on the wall as human beings tried to keep track of the days, tried to essentially interact with themselves in some ways. There are even things like noughts and crosses, you know, as people just tried to keep themselves going. Tiny little cells that stink, obviously because people weren't allowed out. And then you see the torture that was being implemented from there was a hole in the floor that prisoners told us that the guards used to fill with human feces and submerged them in it to humiliate them and even simulate drowning. A wall full of nooses where public hangings would take place. Various machinery that seems to have been used, I'm talking about industrial machinery, to talk to human beings and potentially even to dispose of their bodies. And then you start to track where those bodies have gone. And we went to several local hospitals trying to track down bodies that had been discovered in a military hospital and quickly moved. These bodies were stacked on top of each other in various states of decay, some with limbs missing, all bearing the signs of torture. We managed to track them down at a hospital where family members were coming to try and identify them. And it's a real race against time because as bodies decay, their features change. And so few of these people will have DNA on record. They are trying to do DNA tests that really they're desperately sending these photographs around, trying to trigger any kind of recognition because so many tens of thousands of people still have family members missing. Unfortunately, as you say, many of those people, it does now seem clear, will be in mass graves. There are multiple sites that people have suspected for years and now they're going to start looking at them. I would at one of the first exhumations today of a small mass grave just outside Damascus. Body parts found in flower bags, old bags of flour that they had put these body parts in. They didn't even have names on them, they were labeled with prisoner numbers. And so having to remove these body parts and then start to think about how you can identify these people while also wanting to give them a respectful burial is a huge challenge. The people currently doing that are the civil defense, those are the very famous White Helmets who for many years families have conducted rescue operations in northwest Syria, rebel held Syria, after Russian airstrikes and Assad regime bombardment. They've now come down and across the country are trying to help with this. And one of the massive issues is that families are starting to go to these grave sites where they think their family members might be buried and dig through them. Of course, that both disturbs the grave and contaminates evidence. The only evidence that could be used to try and prosecute the people who are responsible for these crimes. So if there's any possibility of being able to get this evidence on file, those graves have to be exhumed properly, cleanly, with great attention to detail. And the thousands of documents that we're finding in these prisons and in these interrogation cells in the intelligence branches have to be properly documented and preserved. At the moment, they're being walked across, they're being thrown in the air, There's a real danger that all that evidence just disappears because there isn't a process in place.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, see, I've seen some of those images and those concerns as well, on social media. I mean, presumably there are lots of people who worked at these facilities still in the country. I mean, they would probably tell you that they were, you know, captives of a system that forced them into doing these evil things. But I imagine those excuses are not going to go over very well with the relatives of the people who are disappeared or murdered. I mean, what is happening with the people the. That used to work at Sidnaya Prison, for example?

[Layla Malana Allen]

It's a huge challenge, as it always is in these situations, particularly where we are now, which is that there does seem to be, without being too naive about it, a golden opportunity right now where HTS is feeling quite benign, certainly behaving very benignly to the majority of people. People are overwhelmingly keen to reunite and have a Syria for all Syrians. And that does mean some forgiveness. I was speaking to one of the most famous Sednaya detainees who managed to get out the other day, and he said, look, you know, these people did the most horrifying things imaginable, but there are so many of them who were involved with this regime. The reality is we're going to have to forgive some people, otherwise we'll have hate in our hearts forever and we can't move forward. You know, you can't prosecute and imprison however many thousands of people in the country, so you've got to make a decision about what level of involvement and decision making makes you complicit. Now, of course, the people in the highest echelons, many of them have managed to escape. You know, multiple Assad aides have been seen fleeing to different airports. We know the Assad family themselves are in Moscow now. They've been given political asylum. The other day, the governor of Sednaya prison was found, and he was dragged through the streets and beaten to a pulp. And there were a lot of concerns from Syrians on social media saying, look, no matter what this man did, we need to set an example and we need to take him to a doc and convict him in a court, not have mob justice. But of course, if there isn't a methodology in place, if there isn't a system for trying these people, then this is exactly what's going to happen. They're going to be hunted down. And of course, that in itself means that there'll be a whole new round of crimes that people are concerned about. So one of so many challenges that these very new authorities have is to try and figure out quickly how to do that and make people feel that there will be some form of justice and they don't need to implement it themselves.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, man, what an enormous task. I mean, just stepping back on sort of like a DC Perspective. And there's this debate in Washington, a debate in European capitals about whether to recognize the new government, whether to lift sanctions, whether to remove the terrorist designation from hts. Do you have a sense of what kind of the average Syrians you're talking to want from the west want from the United States?

[Layla Malana Allen]

I would say they want a lot and they expect very little. You know, the majority of people I've spoken to say, look, you abandoned us in 2014 after the first chemical attack. I was with families who were victims of chemical attacks the other day. And they were saying, you know, you stand, you in the west stand on your morals and you say that you have these red lines and that there are certain things that aren't allowed and does it really matter how we're murdered? But okay, you say it does matter which way we're murdered. So at least are you going to look after us if we're murdered the way that you don't like? Oh, no, actually, you won't look after us then either. So they really expect very little at all as far as they're concerned. You know, unless there's money to be made for the west here, not much is going to happen. But they are asking for at least a little help. You know, somebody said to me the other day, they said, we can never forgive you for abandoning us and watching us be killed in this way for over a decade. But what we can ask is that right now you can do just a little bit to make up for it. You can lift sanctions and allow this country that is collapsing. And these sanctions have only ever affected everyday people. They've never affected the government. It's just everyday people who can't rebuild their homes, who can't have businesses, who can't have communication with the outside. You can lift those sanctions. You can send us proper aid money you can send in teams to help us with these huge challenges, like the mass graves, like our justice system. And you can, in this window, as many experts on Syria as well are deeply frustrated about. They're deeply frustrated about the Biden administration's attitude that we're going to wait and see, and it's too soon, as they said the other day, to recognize this new government. There is this window right now where if Western support comes in, it's possible that an actual liberal government can be installed. And of course, the reality is that when people have prosperity, there is much less likelihood of fermenting discord and the old divisions breaking apart, of which there are so many in Syria after so many years of different conflicts, all of which have mixed up with the civil war. So that's what people feel right now, is they desperately just want some support and a chance to make this work. And they feel that the west turning their backs on them is the most likely thing to make that implode. Because of course, if they have no money, if HTS is still a terrorist designated organization, it's going to be incredibly hard for them to function. So that's their main concern. There are some countries who are starting to make noises already. France has said that they are sending a delegation now to interact with the leader of HTS and HTS as a new authority, the salvation Government, to see what they can set up, potentially even open diplomatic services here again, that's a real start in terms of at least opening a conversation and treating the people who are now planning to run the country as though they're friends, because otherwise the likelihood is that they'll look for other friends and they will probably be friends that the west is not friends with.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right. And look, I say this with humility, having worked in the Obama administration, but I think it's actually kind of worse than not just recognizing the government or removing sanctions or removing the terrorist designation. The US Is, as we speak, hitting ISIS targets in Syria. The Israelis have blown up most of of the Syrian military's big weapon systems. They're taking more and more territory in the Golan Heights with seemingly, I don't know if it's support from the US but we're not condemning it or stopping them. Are people in Syria hearing about those events? Does that, does it anger them?

[Layla Malana Allen]

Well, exactly that. I mean, the reality is that the US Is supporting it, right? By not engaging their Israeli allies and saying, don't do this right now. They're not just taking out Syrian regime armaments, which of course, remember, means that this is the army of the country. This is all the weaponry they have. So they are removing whatever future Syrian state there is capability of defending itself. They've also, the Israeli Air force has been systematically destroying the ports on the coast in the last few days. Now, that's where the Russians have been based. But those are the only ports that Syria has. So again, not only for defense, but for trade as well. A whole new round of destruction as well as the majority of the suburbs across the country that have been destroyed that they now have to pay to rebuild as well. So Israel using this window of opportunity essentially to sneak in and do whatever they like to bring Syria to its knees militarily is only going to create many, many more issues for this country moving forward. And as you say, similarly, the U.S. the fact that the U.S. with the coalition in northeast Syria, of course, all they're allowed to do under that mandate they have is anything to do with isis. And there are concerns that in that desert in Deir EZ Zor where I have been myself embedded with troops hunting down ISIS captains who are still in hiding there and trying to bring back ISIS dominance to that area, they're carrying out those strikes essentially to try and waylay any opportunity that ISIS might have to take, take advantage of this chaos in the area to come back. But the reality is that's yet more destruction and yet more rebuilding that's needed for people here. So I think what people here are seeing, and of course they know what's happening, they talk about it every day. Syrians are deeply engaged, not only in what's happening on the ground, but what Western countries, international people are doing within their country. They're all talking about it and they can hear the airstrikes. I mean, today Israel was destroying an area of Damascus where a lot of Iranians live. And actually the mother of Austin Tice, the American journalist who was taken 12 years ago, made a statement saying, please stop bombing this area. We know the IRGC was holding him. And if you are bombing this area, this is the most likely place in Damascus that he's being held and you could kill him in doing so. So the fact that essentially Israel is using this opportunity to conduct whatever they like, whatever their long term plans are, whatever will help them in the future, without any thought to what's best for a liberal future for Syria right now is very concerning because it shows people here that there's no chance of them being an ally and that their allies in the United States aren't really interested in the future of Syrians. Either.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Austin Tice in the search for him. For those who don't know, Austin Tice is a journalist who went missing in 2012. He's believed to have been held by the Assad regime or its allies. It would be a miracle if he were to be found alive over a decade later. Is there like a group on the ground searching for him? And you mentioned the ask to pause those airstrikes by his parents. I'm just wondering what that search looks like on the ground.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Well, it's actually mostly journalists looking for him. We got a tip the other day and we went to search this former military base and there was no one there. But it really is journalists who are looking. One of the huge problems with looking for Austin over the years has been that essentially the United States government, successive United States governments, have completely refused to engage with the Iranian authorities on this. Now, we know that Austin was essentially Iran's prize. So even when there were negotiations through Hezbollah officials who were the ones who were holding him for quite a long time through the Syrian government offers outside of the US Framework because they refused to pay for hostages. But there were other possible plans to pay for him, to try and make a trade. Every single time, it would be Iran's IRGC who would put their foot down and say no. So it's very clear that he is being held possibly in Iran, but most probably by an Iran linked group inside the country. And because the United States has never been willing to engage diplomatically on that, they really have no intelligence on it. And the likelihood is that if they send a delegation, it's going to be a delegation of men with guns, which isn't going to be the way to get him out. So what's clear is he's not in one of the prisons that was liberated, so he must have been being held on his own, as I say, as this sort of very particular prize. And there have been a lot of rumors going around. There have been multiple instances where kind of Syrians have said, oh, we found him, and in one case it was a different American who got lost, in one case of someone who has nothing to do with him. But it is clear that people realize what a big prize he is and that it may be that whoever is still holding him, if, as we hope he's still alive, hopes they can trade him for something. But it would also be a fantastic trade for HTs if they're able to liberate him, because they, of course, then have a big bargaining chip or indeed just huge brownie points as a kind of a gesture of friendship towards the US Government if they're able to hand him over. So as I say, no one's really making efforts on the ground except for fellow journalists to look for him right now. But there is hope that there might be some sort of engagement to try and find out where he is. Because we know that as recently as two years ago, based on prisoners who were being kept with him, he was still as alive and well as you can be after a decade of detainment.

[Tommy Vitor]

God just hope and pray that he's okay somewhere, and it would be a miracle. Last question for you. It's been remarkable. It's an unbelievable couple of weeks, but also just more recently seeing HTS do and say all the things that any Westerner or any minority group in Tyria could possibly want them to say. The question just comes down to, do minority sects in Syria believe they mean it? Do folks, folks observing them up close believe that they mean what they say and they're not going to sort of fall back on previous iterations of behavior by hts? I know it's impossible to predict the future, but I'm just curious what you think and what you're hearing from people who might be Alawites or Druze who might not feel protected or safe in a Sunni led future for Syria.

[Layla Malana Allen]

So one of the key issues here, of course, is that this organization, hts, and indeed all the other rebel groups that they are working with, because they're not alone, they're just leading. This rebel movement, is not a monolith. Right? So even though the leader is making these very strong, encouraging statements about being liberal, about protecting everyone, about women not having to cover, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean that the rank and file, all of whom will have joined at different times for different reasons, will necessarily agree with that. And there aren't rules in place or a state in place. So that is one of the reasons why it's so important to get sort of, you know, a new constitution, a new framework written up very quickly. So there are rules to follow. All the minorities I've spoken to thus far, I've been speaking to Alawites, I've been speaking to various sects of Christians, I've been speaking to Druze, they have all said, look, we were absolutely terrified. These are terrorists. Because of course, HTS was Javel Sanousta until 2015. You know, when we heard that they were coming, we thought, that's it, it's ISIS again. We're going to die. And then they arrived, and they were completely benign with us. They let us know that the Assads were gone, that we were free to do as we liked, that we would be looked after. Now, that's been their lived experience thus far. Of course, they are still deeply concerned that things may change. This is all very, very new. But what they have all been saying is, look, you know, Assad said he would protect us. What he did was, okay, we're not dead, but we are utterly impoverished. We've been separated from the rest of the Syrian people and watched hundreds of thousands of our people die. And really, it was all for nothing. He essentially just protected himself and his family and not us. You know, it was incredible to speak to Alawites the other day in the Alawite heartland near the village where Assad was born, saying, good riddance. You know, we were just as gagged as anyone else, and we were simply living on a different side of this divide where we all feared death every day and were threatened every day. And all we really want is for all of us to live alongside each other. So there is a genuine investment and hope in that. You know, a number of people in Damascus have said to me, we were expecting these rebels to come down and shoot us all. And all they've done is come here and help us, you know, try and support us as well. I mean, that there are lots of examples of these individuals, at least individual fighters clearly caring deeply about the Syrian people that they're helping with that. We were driving back today, and there was a family, a car full of a family, all packed in there. Far too many people. But, of course, people are trying to get across the country, back to their old homes with very little in the way of resources. Their car broke down, and, you know, in the pitch black, this HTS fighter jumped off his checkpoint and ran over and helped the teenage boys of the family push the van up the hill until it started moving again. Now, of course, these are just little anecdotal moments. They do not in any way demonstrate how a state's going to work. But at least how a lot of these individuals are interacting with Syrians from all over the country does suggest that they feel very Syrian. And I think this is a key issue is that a lot of people say, look, before 2015, as it was then, HTS was largely foreign fighters essentially coming to Syria to conduct jihad. Because of the chaos, what's changed is that the majority of them are now Syrian. In terms of the recruitment over. You know, it's been very interesting talking to HTS fighters about how much has changed over the last four years. It's four years they've been planning this offensive, how they've managed to convince rebels and normal people in the northwest, men who previously would never have fought with the jihadi groups, that this is the right way to do it and that they do want to accept everyone, and the majority of their makeup now is Syrian. And so they actually do care about and connect with the people in this country as their fellow countrymen. That's what they're trying to demonstrate right now. Thus far, it seems to be playing out. There are, of course, concerns. We've heard reports from all over the place about women being told they won't be allowed to do certain things. There are certain families being held in the northwest of people who spoke out against hts who still haven't been released from prison. So there are certainly concerns. But right now, there does seem to be a lot of optimism. And as I said, really what people are asking for is some support in that optimism to at least give them a chance.

[Tommy Vitor]

Wow, Leila. Well, this is just amazing. Getting to talk to you from Aleppo, not something I ever thought I'd get to do. Thank you so much for your reporting and making time for us for folks who don't know where, you know, connecting at, like, 11pm Syria time via a WhatsApp web connection that somehow worked. So truly, thank you again.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Great to speak with you. And, yeah, I. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to report from Aleppo again, either. So it's. It's such a privilege to be here at such a. An incredible time in Syrian history. And I just pray for the best for these wonderful people who've lived for so long a life they didn't deserve. And I hope they get the life they do deserve.

[Tommy Vitor]

Absolutely. Amen. Well, thank you again and stay safe and look forward to watching all your stuff on PBS NewsHour and everywhere else.

[Layla Malana Allen]

Great to speak to you. Speak to you soon.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thanks again to Layla for doing the show. Happy Holidays to everybody.

[Ben Rhodes]

Happy Holidays.

[Tommy Vitor]

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

[Ben Rhodes]

Christmas.

[Tommy Vitor]

Are we saying Happy Hanukkah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Wait, are we saying Merry Christmas again now?

[Tommy Vitor]

I think we are.

[Ben Rhodes]

Trump got elected. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

I like when every year there's some, like, kind of MAGA dip shit who goes into a Starbucks and tells the barista his name is Christmas, and he's like, I got him. Good for you, pal.

[Ben Rhodes]

You guys win, I guess.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Christmas on your cup.

[Ben Rhodes]

Happy everything to everybody.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And we will be back.

[Ben Rhodes]

Except the haters. Not even the haters. Well, that's what Trump always does. Those messages where he's like, happy Easter to the radical left.

[Tommy Vitor]

And yeah, Happy Arbor Day to my haters, Governor Trudeau. But yeah, we will be off for two weeks. Our next episode is on January 7th, so that's gonna be a long one.

[Ben Rhodes]

Can only imagine what is gonna happen in two weeks.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, if we're doing a bonus episode over Christmas, we got some big problems. But you know, stranger things have happened. But thanks all for listening and talk to you guys soon.

[Ben Rhodes]

See ya.

[Tommy Vitor]

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