Ceasefire in Ukraine?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pod Save the World – "Ceasefire in Ukraine?"

Episode Information:

• Title: Ceasefire in Ukraine?
• Release Date: March 12, 2025
• Hosts: Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes
• Guest: Glenn Greenwald

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Introduction

In this episode of Pod Save the World, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes engage in a comprehensive discussion with renowned journalist Glenn Greenwald. The conversation spans a range of pressing global issues, including the potential ceasefire in Ukraine, the political shift in Canada, the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada, the dismantling of USAID programs, escalating tensions in Gaza and Syria, and significant developments in free speech both in the United States and Brazil.

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Potential Ceasefire in Ukraine

Key Points:

• Ongoing peace talks in Saudi Arabia have led to Ukrainian acceptance of a 30-day ceasefire proposal.
• The U.S. delegation, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, has resumed intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
• Concerns remain about Russian President Vladimir Putin's commitment to ending the war on favorable terms for Ukraine.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [06:35]: "What matters the most is peace."
• Glenn Greenwald [08:54]: "Putin wants to extract as many concessions as he can from Ukraine, using the ceasefire window to further his agenda."

Analysis: Rhodes and Greenwald express skepticism about the durability and sincerity of the ceasefire, highlighting Putin's strategic advantages and ulterior motives. The discussion underscores the complexity of achieving a lasting peace that ensures Ukraine's sovereignty and security.

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Canada's Political Shift and New Prime Minister

Key Points:

• Mark Carney, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, emerges as the new Prime Minister following Justin Trudeau's resignation.
• Carney's lack of prior elected office experience positions him as a technocrat amid a challenging economic and trade environment with the U.S.
• The Liberal Party's resurgence is partly attributed to backlash against Pierre Poilievre's alignment with Trump's policies.

Notable Quotes:

• Tommy Vietor [15:19]: "Carney's a transitional guy—a bridge to quote Joe Biden—for the Liberals."
• Glenn Greenwald [19:29]: "He's like a bridge... to a more stable governance model."

Analysis: The hosts analyze Carney's technocratic approach as both a strength and a potential weakness in navigating the intricate trade disputes with the United States. They debate the viability of his leadership in quelling nationalist sentiments and managing economic pressures.

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U.S.-Canada Trade War

Key Points:

• The U.S. has imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, while Canada has retaliated with surcharges on electricity exports to several U.S. states.
• Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to shut off electricity to states like Minnesota, Michigan, and New York, impacting American households and businesses.
• The instability in trade relations is causing economic strain and fostering nationalism in Canada.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [25:36]: "We will apply maximum pressure to maximize our leverage."
• Glenn Greenwald [26:29]: "Why are we doing this? What's the point?"

Analysis: The discussion highlights the escalation of the trade war, emphasizing the unsustainable economic impacts and the potential for further deterioration in U.S.-Canada relations. The hosts critique the lack of clear objectives and question the long-term consequences of such protectionist measures.

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Cuts to USAID Programs

Key Points:

• The Trump administration announced the cancellation of 83% of USAID programs, citing inefficiency and the need for reform.
• This drastic reduction threatens global health initiatives, disaster relief, and development projects, potentially exacerbating crises in regions like Sudan.
• Critics argue that the cuts are politically motivated and undermine America's role in international aid.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [32:38]: "Stuff like the truckers occupying Ottawa... protect their own interests over global stability."
• Glenn Greenwald [35:00]: "This is going to devastate global public health... violate the rule of law."

Analysis: The episode delves into the ramifications of dismantling USAID, stressing the humanitarian fallout and the erosion of America's soft power. The hosts advocate for a reimagined approach to foreign aid that emphasizes efficacy and ethical practices without political bias.

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Escalating Tensions in Gaza and Syria

Key Points:

• Israel has intensified pressure on Gaza by cutting off electricity, severely impacting water desalination and humanitarian efforts.
• The Houthis threaten maritime attacks in the Red Sea if aid restrictions persist.
• In Syria, a resurgence of violence in southern regions has led to significant civilian casualties and displacement.

Notable Quotes:

• Tommy Vietor [44:11]: "Do you understand why Netanyahu and others might be upset?"
• Glenn Greenwald [54:31]: "The ADL is applauding anti-democratic actions... that's absurd."

Analysis: The conversation scrutinizes Israel's punitive measures against Gaza and the broader implications for regional stability. In Syria, the lack of economic viability and persistent authoritarian control contribute to ongoing chaos. The hosts critique the international community's responses and the ethical considerations surrounding humanitarian interventions.

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Free Speech Concerns in the U.S. and Brazil

Key Points:

• Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and green card holder, was detained by ICE for alleged ties to Hamas without concrete evidence.
• The Trump administration is perceived as targeting pro-Palestinian activists, raising alarms about the erosion of First Amendment protections.
• In Brazil, the Supreme Court has clashed with Rumble over censorship, illustrating differing global attitudes toward free speech.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [65:25]: "The Bill of Rights constrains the US Government from punishing people for speech."
• Glenn Greenwald [76:11]: "Brazil fears that untrammeled free speech becomes the Wild West."

Analysis: Rhodes and Greenwald explore the precarious state of free speech in the U.S., highlighting legislative overreach and the politicization of anti-terrorism efforts. The comparison with Brazil underscores a global trend towards state-controlled narratives and the suppression of dissenting voices, threatening democratic foundations.

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Arrest of Rodrigo Duterte by the ICC

Key Points:

• Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on charges of crimes against humanity related to his brutal "war on drugs."
• Duterte's arrest by the International Criminal Court marks a significant move in international justice, despite his family's political influence in the Philippines.
• The ICC's actions are seen as a statement against impunity for human rights violations by authoritarian leaders.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [99:37]: "The ICC is standing up and enforcing the law... sending a message to authoritarian leaders."

Analysis: The episode highlights the significance of Duterte's arrest as a deterrent against human rights abuses and the role of international institutions in holding leaders accountable. The discussion reflects on the complexities of enforcing justice in politically entrenched environments.

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Final Remarks and Future Discussions

Key Points:

• The hosts preview an upcoming interview with Glenn Greenwald, where they will delve deeper into the attack on the First Amendment in the U.S., censorship in Brazil, and other critical issues.
• They also promote other Crooked Media content, including the Shadow Kingdom: God's Banker series and collaborations with think tanks like the Eurasia Group.

Notable Quotes:

• Tommy Vietor [101:56]: "We'll come back next time and fight more."

Analysis: Tommy and Ben conclude the episode by setting the stage for future discussions, emphasizing the ongoing struggle for free speech and democratic integrity in the face of authoritarianism and global conflicts.

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Conclusion

This episode of Pod Save the World provides an incisive analysis of current international tensions and internal challenges within major democracies. Through insightful commentary and expert perspectives, the hosts and guest underscore the fragility of global peace efforts, the dangers of escalating trade wars, and the critical importance of safeguarding free speech against governmental overreach.

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Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

And.

[Tommy Vitor]

And 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com world to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com world welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Ben, we just watched a press conference where the President of the United States was hawking Teslas on the south lawn.

[Glenn Greenwald]

My favorite part of that is he gets in this red Tesla and he's like, wow, it's all computers in here. And clearly this man has not driven a car in about 20 years.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I was just thinking to myself, like, we Try not to do this too often, but the imagine if Obama did it or Biden did a thought experiment. Just imagine Obama doing a showcase of financial products being offered by George Soros. Or if a dreamworks movie got a bad review, he brings in Jeffrey Katzenberg and they make the press do a screening of like, like Kung Fu Panda.

[Glenn Greenwald]

4 or some shit.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I mean, the closest we got was the hip hop barbecue that didn't create jobs, according to Fox News.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's a good deep cut. That's a good deep cut. We have a great show for you today. There are some reports of a potential ceasefire deal in Ukraine that came out of the talks that are happening currently in Saudi Arabia that we'll tell you all about. We're going to introduce you to the new prime Minister of Canada. And the latest on our trade war with our foreign friends to the north. Then we got a sad update about the gutting of usaid, a huge Trump policy change when it comes to Gaza and Hamas. We'll talk about what we know about this outbreak of violence over the last week in Syria, why the former president of the Philippines is in some deep shit. And then, Ben, I did today's interview with Glenn Greenwalt that might surprise some.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Stirring the pot here on Pot Save the World.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. So what we talked about was free speech in the US Free speech in Brazil, Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to be Director of National Intelligence, Ukraine policy, and the new FBI leadership. I think for those who don't know Glenn during the Snowden stuff and probably during WikiLeaks as well, hated our guts.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Really hated me.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, well, he wrote, he once wrote a 1,000 word takedown of just me.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Okay, okay, that's fair.

[Tommy Vitor]

Based on my job at the time and stuff. And so I had him on Podcast of the world in 2017. And shocker, when you aren't interacting with someone on the Internet and on Twitter, they're much nicer. And we found a lot of places where we agreed. And I think Glenn is one of, I think probably a lot of listeners are like, how dare you? And you know what? I, we don't agree always on politics, but I think he's one of the most principled people on freedom of speech out there. And I also thought it was valuable to try to, you know, push each other a little bit on areas where you might disagree.

[Glenn Greenwald]

The funny thing about the journey that we've all been on for 15, 20 years is I remember on the Obama campaign in 2008 when Glenn was this civil liberties blogger, essentially. I think he was at NYU or something. And when Obama rolled out his policy on how to protect metadata under section 215 of the Patriot act or something, me and Danielle Gray, our friend, basically briefed Glenn for like an hour. We were like desperate to get Glenn Greenwald's approval. And we got like a, you know, we got like not half a loaf, I'd say like a tenth of a loaf from him. And then, you know, within four years. Yes, he's lighting us on fire and publishing Snowden documents and the rest of it.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think, like, what people? I think it's really important to have a space where there are people on the left and the right like Glenn, who are like, just very, very anti government, anti.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Like anti US Government.

[Tommy Vitor]

Anti US Government, Anti surveillance authorities. Because I think, look, for me, I've had an evolution on all this stuff. I think when you're in government and you work with the people at the CIA or the nsa, you know them personally, you kind of like, trust them, you believe them, they think you believe.

[Glenn Greenwald]

In their good intentions. Yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

And now we're in a situation where I do not trust the intentions of the people in charge at all. Top down. Right. And so you have to think to yourself, what kind of authorities and precedents, et cetera, are you handing them Now? I think Donald Trump would do whatever he wants, no matter what president was handed to him. But it is just like. It's a good way to think.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah. I mean, well, good. I mean, free speech can't just be the kind of speech that you like, right? No. Or as we've dealt with on this podcast, with Gaza, rooting for the underdog can't just be one kind of underdog. And so there's something to be said for a degree of consistency on these matters.

[Tommy Vitor]

Absolutely. We'll get to more of that on Gaza and this horrible detention of a Columbia student in a minute. But let's start Ben in Ukraine, because there was some major news out of these peace talks. They're happening as we speak in Saudi Arabia. The parties are the us, Ukraine, Russia, mbs. Mohammed bin Salman, for some reason, notorious.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Peace negotiator, Peace seeker. Yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Ask everyone in Yemen. Ukrainians have reportedly accepted a 30 day ceasefire proposal. Here's a clip of kind of Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about it.

[Glenn Greenwald]

What's back on track here, hopefully, is peace. That's what matters the most. I know everyone's looking for who likes this is serious stuff. Okay. We're not. This is not Mean Girls. This is not some episode of some television show. This is very serious. People are gonna. Today, people will die in this war.

[Ben Rhodes]

They died yesterday.

[Glenn Greenwald]

And sadly, unless there's a ceasefire tonight, they'll die tomorrow. The President wants that to stop. Cogent, I had not heard that clip, and I was deeply triggered by this Mean Girls reference.

[Tommy Vitor]

What is he talking about?

[Glenn Greenwald]

What he's talking. Trying to be relatable or something.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't know. I bet. I wonder if it was a. I honest genuinely don't know. I wonder if it was a question about, like, infighting between the parties or whatever.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I don't know.

[Tommy Vitor]

He's a loser. The US also has reportedly agreed to resume intelligence sharing and military assistance to Ukraine. Both have been halted after the contentious White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky that we talked about a couple episodes back. Cutting off intelligence sharing to Ukraine is utterly indefensible, by the way.

[Ben Rhodes]

We'll.

[Tommy Vitor]

We'll get to that in a minute. The U.S. delegation was Rubio, who again, is sort of the Secretary of State. Steve Witkoff.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Secretary, who is the Secretary of State.

[Tommy Vitor]

Trump's buddy, special envoy. Then the National Security adviser. Mike Waltz is just happy.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I don't know what that guy's doing.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't know either. Zelensky, I think, was in Saudi Arabia on Monday, met with mbs, but then his staff did a lot of the negotiating afterwards. Last week, Trump threatened to put more sanctions on Russia because they had been, quote, pounding Ukraine on the battlefield, end quote. Ben, that made me wonder if Trump had just started reading the newspaper. That's been happening for better part of three years. And they picked up the pace of the bombing during the US fight with Zelensky. Putin also didn't slow down after Trump's threat, but never mind. And in more bad news to the Ukrainian side, Ben, there's lots of reports that Ukrainian troops who are fighting in Russian territory, they're occupying that Kursk region, are close to being encircled by Russian forces. I guess these Russian special forces literally walked inside, like a natural gas pipeline to get behind them and flank them. And so the units are in trouble. But, Ben, Russia has not agreed to this ceasefire proposal yet. It's just the Ukrainian side. How do you think Putin's going to play this? I don't have a lot of faith that he's going to try to end the war right away. I bet he plays it out for a benefit to him.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

How do you think this goes?

[Glenn Greenwald]

No, that's right. Look, let's all start from the position that we would like this war to end. The question is on what terms and whether it's durable and this will now go to the Russians. I think what Putin has an incentive to do is to perhaps, perhaps accept this 30 day ceasefire and then use this window to just try to get as many of the concessions that he wants to extract. And when you think about what those are, that's his full capacity to annex the four regions of Ukraine that they occupy and that he's identified as literally part of Russia. According to Putin, even though that's clearly not the case, he will not want European troops stationed in Ukraine, as we've talked about, as a potential kind of peacekeeping force or security guarantee for Ukraine. He will want Ukraine to agree to not have a certain sized military. He may want an election to get Zelensky out and to sow chaos there.

[Tommy Vitor]

I assume he's going to be hard against this mineral steel because that is the only thing that's going to keep the peace. It's such a security 10 year agreement that we're going to steal all their lithium.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Well, he'll also want, you know, he'll want sanctions released. Right. And he'll want in on the mineral rights in Ukraine too, presumably in the places where they are going to annex parts of Ukraine. And, and then on and on and on. I mean, he will want to push for as much as he can extract from the Ukrainians and try to make it look like if Zelenskyy won't agree to all these things that essentially give away his sovereignty with no security guarantees and maybe even end his own presidency, that somehow he will try to get Trump to make Zelenskyy the bad guy for that. Also, it's possible that the 30 day ceasefire doesn't hold and we're in a blame game is who broke the ceasefire. And so look, before everybody rushes to anoint this as some peace deal, there's a lot to be seen about whether the Russians accept it, what their conditions are, what happens, and then what the ultimate terms of the deal are. Because all this does is kind of try to push the hard questions forward.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, there was a peace deal before the Russians invaded.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, that was exactly. That's exactly right.

[Tommy Vitor]

Then there was no longer peace. Yeah, look, I'm with you. I don't mean to sound so cynical. I would love to see the negotiations that end to this war. I would love to, but. But only if it like leads to a Ukraine that can defend itself going forward. That doesn't make them a sitting duck. That doesn't Lead every other country in Europe to rush to get as many weapons as possible, potentially even nuclear weapons. I mean, you started to hear these. The Germans and the French in the UK talking about working together to create a nuclear deterrence. Like, we want to see this thing, the war ended, and also NATO kept together and not this fractured outcome that has everybody just arming as fast as.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Possible or, you know, Ukraine getting further cannibalized going forward, or Putin being emboldened to do things in the Baltics or in Dover or other places. I mean, my cynical take, Tommy, that I was sharing with you is one way to understand what this deal might be analogized to is the Abraham Accords. Because think about what the Abraham Accords were. It was like the. The stronger party, in that case, Israel got everything they wanted. The weaker party, the Palestinians basically got nothing. And some rich people made some deals in the Gulf and Israel and the United States. And in this kind of world of transactionalism, the Trump lights. And it got presented as a peace deal. And we saw on October 7 that this did not bring peace to the Middle East. And that's both the cynicism of how Trump can dress something up that is kind of dictating the terms of surrender to Ukraine as a, quote, unquote, peace deal, when, in fact, it's not going to resolve Ukraine's status unless they have security guarantees, unless they have meaningful sovereignty, unless they have meaningful connectivity to Europe. And so there's a lot that the Europeans and the Ukrainians, I think, will need to push into the negotiation if Russia does indeed accept this. And again, does Putin try to pocket some of those things he wants before accepting the 30 days, or does he accept it and then try to use the 30 days to pocket those things? What you know is he's going to try to get all those things because that's how Putin negotiates. He wants everything. And he will do anything to make the Ukrainians look like the bad guys so that he can blame them and make Putin, Trump, take his side.

[Tommy Vitor]

He has all the leverage in the.

[Glenn Greenwald]

World, including the support of the President, Donald Trump.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. The only thing not making this a full Abraham Accord is we would have to bribe somebody.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

In this case, like the uae, we have to give them a bunch of weapons or something. In this case, we're trying to extract things from other countries.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Well, let's just extend the metaphor because we'll kind of bribe the Russians of sanctions relief. And who's the common thread? Our friend mbs.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Like the hidden hand behind the Abraham Accords and behind, I guess, Ukraine. I mean, it was really interesting. This is an interesting subplot to the Trump years in this new transactional world, the increasing power and relevance of the Gulf countries. I mean, Zelenskyy had to go to Saudi Arabia. He was praising the statesmanship of mbs. That's kind of what you have to do these days. And I do think whether it's the role Qatar played in the Gaza ceasefire, the role the UAE plays in a lot of things that are Trumpy and this role MBS plays, those Gulf states are going to be big players in this transactional world we're moving into.

[Tommy Vitor]

And they got the money. Let's look at our own hemisphere here, Ben. We wanted to start the show with a shout out to our friends in Canada who have a brand spanking new card carrying globalist prime minister. How do you think globalists clap? Do they do the snapping? That's probably more like the lefties. So Mark Carney, he's the new. He was selected to be the Liberal Party's new leader, de facto prime Minister. He got 85% of the vote in an election that was just between 152,000 Liberal Party members. Carney takes over in a very difficult moment for Canada as Justin Trudeau leaves office with his poll numbers in the tank and in the midst of a trade war with the United States, as I mentioned, at the top. So Carney was, he's Steve Bannon's worst nightmare. He ran the bank of Canada during the financial crisis. He oversaw the bank of England during Brexit. Before that he worked at Goldman Sachs for 13 years.

[Glenn Greenwald]

So did Steve Bannon, though, by the way, that's true.

[Tommy Vitor]

He did work.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Not for 13 years, not that long.

[Tommy Vitor]

But yeah, him, the mooch, Mark Carney. So Carney's never held elected office before. I think that he makes him the first kind of political rookie PM in Canadian history. The New York Times called him a centrist technocrat. Carney ran hard on fixing Canada's sputtering economy. He cares a lot about climate change, but he opposes Trudeau's carbon tax plan. But mostly, Ben, I think the near term is going to be the near term focus for Carney is going to be this trade war. Here's a clip of Carney speaking on Sunday after the election.

[Glenn Greenwald]

The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country. Think about it. If they, if they succeeded, they would destroy our way of life. In America. Health care is a big business. In Canada, it is a right. America, America is a melting pot. Canada is a mosaic. America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever will be part of America in any way, shape or form. We didn't ask for this fight. We didn't ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves. So the Americans, they should make no mistake in trade, as in hockey. Canada will win.

[Tommy Vitor]

Electric. So Canada has to hold a general election honor before October 20th. Until recently, everybody thought the Liberal Party would be forced by the opposition to hold an early snap election and that the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poliev, would win by double digits. But thanks to Donald Trump and the trade war, the whole political dynamic has changed. The Liberal Party's poll numbers are back up. The Liberals up there are hammering Pollyev for just being a Trump light, for bringing Trump's culture war to Canada. Canadians are booing the national anthem at hockey games. Everything's different now. So, Ben, viewed one way, I could see Mark Carney as the perfect guy to inherit an economic crisis because he's a technocrat. He's got this experience. He knows how to manage a trade war. Viewed another way, if I squint at it, I kind of think, I don't know about someone with no political experience taking on this fight, taking on Donald Trump. What do you make of this guy? And there's also a debate whether the Liberal Party should call early elections and try to capitalize on the bit of momentum they have or maybe wait it out until October. Where would you land on that?

[Glenn Greenwald]

If I'm the Liberal Party, first of all, I'd call elections as soon as possible. They are at the highest point that they've been in a while after being extremely unpopular. Justin Trudeau ended pretty strong, as we reviewed.

[Tommy Vitor]

He went out fighting.

[Glenn Greenwald]

He went out fighting. And look, Pierre Paglia really is magalite. He's brought culture wars to Canada. As you said, they've had this kind of magle infiltration. Remember the truckers occupying Ottawa or something, you know, kind of anti Covid mandates. And I think Canadians saw. Pierre Poliev cannot hide the fact that he was pretty Trump adjacent. And it's gonna be very hard. I mean, he's been talking tough on the US Too. He's been talking tough on Trump, but it's been very hard. It's gonna be very hard for him to kind of rebrand the Conservatives as somehow not tied to this global right wing populism movement for sure, that does now threaten to cannibalize Canada. And so I think they should press ahead and sees this kind of moment that they Have. They're the ones, too. It's not just Trudeau, like Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario that we've talked about. He's out there threatening to cut off electricity to US states. I mean, the Liberals are fighting here. Mark Carney is. I've met Mark Carney. He's the kind of guy that you'd see at the panel discussion on climate finance at the Sustainable Development Conference.

[Tommy Vitor]

Talking public private partnership.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, talking public private partnerships. But to be clear, I mean, you know, deeply experienced guy, you know, bank of Canada, but also bank of England, you know, as you said, showing the kind of. In two major crises and two major crises. So you can see why he seems like a steady hand when they're going to be weathering probably some form of financial turmoil, if not financial crisis. He is not the most charismatic guy, but in a weird way that makes him a useful contrast to Trudeau. You know, Trudeau was the charismatic guy who kind of rebuilt this party and was kind of all values driven. A technocrat with a lot of experience who's older might make a good contrast for the Liberals to Trudeau. I think that Chrissy Freeland, who we talked about, who is also running when she basically knifed Justin Trudeau in a party where, let's remember, this isn't an open primary. This is party members who probably like Justin Trudeau. They were gonna go to Mark Carney, who's been positioning himself for this job for a while. And look, he's kind of a transitional guy. A bridge, you might say, to quote Joe Biden, for the Liberals.

[Tommy Vitor]

And the last thing I'd say, their bridge is 59.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Their bridge is 59. Ours is like, I know our bridge is 80, whatever, but you can hear. I never in my life could I have imagined six months ago hearing any Canadian, nevermind a pretty mild mannered moderate technocrat, like using hockey fight methods, threatening.

[Tommy Vitor]

To beat the shit out of us. That's when you drop the gloves when you fight the guy.

[Glenn Greenwald]

And it just shows you how much Canadians feel this existential threat. And I think, as we said, they're right to. I mean, they're right.

[Tommy Vitor]

These are crushing sanctions. This will destroy their economy.

[Glenn Greenwald]

And you can't just have Trump. Trump's now talking about 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. And you can't just repeatedly talk about making some place the 51st state and not get people's nationalism up. So this is just. I don't know where this ends. It's like the whole Trump presidency, but I know that it ends with a different kind of relationship between the United States and Canada than we've ever had before.

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating. And so, as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud. It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay.

[Tommy Vitor]

When we learn the power of hope recovery is possible, find out [e-mail] brought to you by the National Council for Mental well Being Shatterproof and the Ad Council. Well, let's dig into the trade war. I mean, just for folks, just so folks know, Trudeau still has to officially resign. Carney will have to form a cabinet. Carney will then have to seek a seat in Parliament either by running in a by election or by running in the general election. So there's a lot more sort of technical steps to go. But he will be the next prime minister handling this trade war, which is not going great. The stock market here in the US has been getting crushed. Trump looks totally indecisive when it comes to actually implementing his tariffs. So so far he announced all these tariffs, then he put in place a one month exception for automakers. Then he announced an exception for all the goods covered by the usmca, which is the updated NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada that Jared Kushner negotiated in the first Trump term. So as of now, there's 25 tariffs on steel and aluminum products that's supposed to go into place at midnight tonight. Recording it on Tuesday, March 11, on April 2, Trump is going to introduce reciprocal tariffs, which means we match the tariffs other countries have put on us. But in the interim, like you said, Trudeau slapped tariffs on like $21 billion worth of goods and they kept them in place even after the USMCA carve out. Mark Carney says the tariffs are going to stay in place until, quote, the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade. So amping up the rhetoric too, regional leaders in Canada are going a little harder in the paint. Ontario Premier Doug Ford canceled $100 million Starlink contract and slapped a 25% surcharge on electricity that Canada provides to Minnesota, Michigan and New York. Here's a clip of Ford talking about his response.

[Ben Rhodes]

We will apply maximum pressure to maximize our leverage. That's why today we're moving forward with a 25% surcharge on electricity exports for the 1.5 million American homes and businesses that Ontario powers. Homes and businesses in Minnesota, Michigan and New York. This surcharge will cost families and businesses in these states up to $400,000 each and every single day. On an average, this will add around $100 per month to the bills of hard working Americans. Let me be clear. I will not hesitate to increase this charge if necessary. If the United States escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely.

[Tommy Vitor]

I love the Iran formulation.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, maximum pressure. We're now the rogue state, you know.

[Tommy Vitor]

So Ford Walked back that surcharge when Trump threatened to double the tariffs on steel at aluminum 50%. And then also Trump threatened to permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada. So, but this is crazy.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Why are we doing this? What's the fucking point of this?

[Tommy Vitor]

So this is my question for you. But like, we got nationalism in Canada spiking. They're boycotting our stuff. They pulled a freedom prize on us. They're now calling the Americano coffee the Canadiano. No one tell them that the original Americano name was Italians mocking Americans in World War II for drinking weak coffee. But then in Mexico, Ben, Claudia, Shane bombs like holding huge rallies and running against Trump approvals at 85%. I mean, like, what, what, what is the end game? Maybe neither of us know, but that is my sincere question. Like, what is the end game here?

[Glenn Greenwald]

There is no end game. Trump cannot articulate what these tariffs are for because his stated reason, fentanyl, clearly doesn't apply to Canada. And even in Mexico, there's not like a one to one causation. You put a tariff on people and suddenly the fentanyl stops coming across the border. I think there's two ways to think about why these are so bad, these terrorists and so stupid and self defeating. The first is we've already seen the economic impacts. The market hates them. The market also hates the unpredictability of Trump putting them on, taking them off and not being able to adjust to it. But more importantly, the price increases that will come with them to Americans and to people in these countries as well. And as Trump kind of is like a machine gun that's been dropped on the ground, there may be tariffs on Europe. I mean, this could just kind of keep spreading everywhere. And also what it'll do over time is, you know, Canadians are going to start to try to be insular and protectionist and so will Mexicans and so will Europeans. And so we lived with the decoupling right of supply chains between the US And China after Trump's first trade war. And a lot of people said, oh, that wasn't so bad. And oh, we actually had leverage on the Chinese. Well, guess what? Where do you think some of that inflation came from that people were so angry about in the Biden years? Part of that started with the China trade war. It just did. And this is going to turbocharge inflation for everybody. So that's bad. But then the second piece that I just want to keep our eye on here is that tariffs in this degree, what they do is they spawn this kind of Nationalism. Right. For understandable reasons. Because people get pissed. Why are you trying to punish me? I'll punish you. And this can lead to weird places, including wars. I mean, literally, you know, I mean, that's part of what happened in the Depression. Countries got super protectionists, they started putting tariffs on. And so I think we have to realize that when you have this kind of nationalism escalating everywhere, it can lead to kind of other conflicts.

[Tommy Vitor]

Totally unforeseen.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Unforeseen conflicts and counterproductive globalized culture wars. And this is just. Why are we playing with this fire when we absolutely don't need to?

[Tommy Vitor]

Speaking of nationalism, do you think Gen Z knows what Freedom Prizes are? I think they know that story.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I mean, as a fellow Gen Xer.

[Tommy Vitor]

To you, I don't like. Yeah, I don't know, a little older, but you know, I go with the geriatric millennial.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I know.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Try to, try to launder yourself in there. Yeah. Freedom Prize were kind of the Canadiano of.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, for those who don't know.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Okay, so one of the dumbest things.

[Tommy Vitor]

That'S ever happened, 2003, Bush is trying to lead us into Iraq. A bunch of other countries like the French and the Russians actually are like, hey, this is a really bad idea. The Germans? Yeah. Was that Schroeder?

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

We're like, no, this is really stupid. So in response, I think some random dude in North Carolina changed the name of the french fries at his restaurant to Freedom Fries. Then Bob Ney, this dumb fuck Republican in Congress, so I believe, like went to jail because of the Jack Abramoff scandal.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, but now he'd be like the most moderate Republican in Congress.

[Tommy Vitor]

Like a blue dog. He changed the name of the French fries in the House cafeteria to Freedom Fries. And that was how he stuck it to the French for not opposing the.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Worst foreign policy decision who ended up looking pretty smart. I mean, maybe we should have listened to our French friends on that one, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

So, yeah, I guess I'll drink a Canadiano anytime. This is.

[Glenn Greenwald]

But that's what this stuff does. It just makes everybody dumber.

[Tommy Vitor]

Just so stupid. Speaking of stupid, Ben, after six long weeks, USAID appears to be officially dead. The cause of death is Doge. The announcement was made via a pathetic tweet by Marco Rubio, who said the following quote, After a six week review, we are officially canceling 83% of the programs at USAID. In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18 of programs we are keeping to now be administered more effectively under the State Department, thank you to Doge and our hard working staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform. First of all, Marco, 83 plus 18 is 101. You dumb. So you can't even get that right. Second, Ben, if Congress just passes a continuing resolution, I don't really see how there's a cut to any of these programs because we're still going to be funding the USAID money at the same level. So don't ask Marco to explain the details. But if, when it happens, we're going to see massive increases in the spread of diseases like malaria and polio and tuberculosis, as well as some fun new ones, some hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola and the Marburg virus. We'll have more malnourished kids starving to death. The BBC reported that 1100 emergency communal kitchens serving people fleeing the civil war in Sudan will just be cut off. There are literally USAID employees and contractors who are still stranded overseas. So it's just a disaster. And I just wanted to point out a couple things. Ben, you and I were talking about this before the show. I bet you if like Rubio and the Doge bags had said, you know what, we're going to get rid of all the democracy promotion funding at usaid. It's going to be only humanitarian relief. We're going to like do health care stuff and feed starving people. It would get like 90% approval. Yeah, right. But Trump didn't want to do that.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Or, and, or we're going to go through all the budget in USAID to cut what seems like excessive fat.

[Tommy Vitor]

Anything silly.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, we're going to cut the opera in Ireland about whatever the fuck that was about.

[Tommy Vitor]

Which, by the way, the way that stuff happens is like, I think there are contracts over a certain level that go through an approval process and then there's low level stuff that like, I think the ambassador often just has some discretion. So you have a random, you know, ambassador in Belize who's trying to do a solid for the Prime Minister who really wants us to study some certain crustacean and it costs 500 grand. And it sounds very silly when read aloud at the State of the Union, but like, it's just kind of soft power in politics.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Well, two things on this. First of all, what people also need to understand is a lot of the USAID funding is out of the executive branch's hands. Congress loves to put its own pet thing in the USAID budget, including guys like Marco Rubio. So when I was negotiating The Cuban normalization, for instance. There were all these crazy USAID appropriations for, you know, quote unquote, Democrats Twitter thing in Cuba, including this weird scheme to try to soak chaos in Cuba via USAID tweets. There was like money going to like post office boxes in Miami. Like that wasn't. That was people like Marco Rubio using USAID as their like pet vehicle for their cubic regime change. So put that aside. But I mean, people should know that part of the reason this looks so weird is people like Marco Rubio over the time, you know, were doing stuff like that, I think we need to be very diligent in tracking what the effect of this is, because already we've seen that the more Americans learn about the effects. They may not like foreign aid in principle, but when you tell them, you know, we're losing the Ebola team or kids are going to die because we remove this funding, they care. And this is going to happen like this is going to devastate global public health. This is going to devastate efforts to combat famine. This is going to lead to the migration of people, lead to conflict, lead to instability. And so I think it's really important that there be kind of a tracking of the impacts of this so that it's not just like a, a four week Doge story, but it's the kind of thing that people are connecting dots. When we start to see conflict flare up, or we start to see thousands of people dying of preventable disease, or we start to see kids starving to death, that it is laid on the doorstep of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Elon Musk.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yep. And in four years when hopefully we have a Democrat back in office, I think we need to make sure that we are not as Democrats, advocating for just like running, running right back, running the same usa. We need to think for the next four years about how you would build USAID differently, smarter, more efficiently, better, with all the fucking baggage that came from like the 1960s, which is a very interesting challenge. Yeah.

[Glenn Greenwald]

What is it? What is a 2029 development agency look like?

[Tommy Vitor]

Totally.

[Glenn Greenwald]

That's, that's actually a very interesting project for people to be focused on.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, some think tank should just be Project 2028 in that right now.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Also.

[Tommy Vitor]

I just, I just want to say, Ben, again, this is a theme here for me. I'm just being a petty dick. Marco Rubio is Secretary of State in name only. He has no say about these cuts, apparently. Then he has to tweet it out. His own staff hates him. I don't know if you saw the dude, Darren Beatty, who is like the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, this crazy right wing dude who got fired from the White House for going to a white nationalist rally. He tweeted, he deleted these tweets, but he had once tweeted that Marco Rubio was a low IQ individual and he was propagating that lie that Rubio attended gay foam parties in Miami. Deleted all that. It's not true, but he deleted all of it. And then again. Yeah, you joked about it. Steve Wykoff is the real Secretary of State. He's doing the real negotiation.

[Glenn Greenwald]

He's going to meet with Putin. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

He's going to Moscow. Yeah, yeah. Clearly, Trump trusts him more than Rubio.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah. Because he's like a Florida real estate developer. Can I be petty, too, please. Which is, I actually think, you know, I saw Maloney's pissed at Elon.

[Ben Rhodes]

Giorgio.

[Tommy Vitor]

Maloney?

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Italian.

[Glenn Greenwald]

And she was threatening to cut off a Starlink contract or something. And Elon was like, you know, trying to. Trying to make amends with her because she actually supports Ukraine despite her politics not being mine. I think boycotting Tesla, boycotting starlink. Elon Musk has gotten away with just getting richer while being an asshole for a long time, and now he's just playing with people's lives. And I think if you look at history, we're in California. How did we get a farm workers union? They boycotted the table grapes. This is a way of registering that, like, you know what? If I'm a foreign country, I don't need a Starlink contract. There's other competitors. You don't need to buy Tesla. There's other electric cars. Elon Musk, if he wants to destroy things that people rely on, people should use what they can to register their disapproval.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. I mean, look, we joked at the top about this insane showcase of, yeah.

[Glenn Greenwald]

They'Re gonna try to juice Tesla. Well, guess what? I mean, people couldn't register a.

[Tommy Vitor]

That happened is Monday, the Stock was down 15% over the last three months. It's down 50%, 5 0%. And also, like, like Tesla, people should boycott it. The cars aren't that great. Elon, like, he gets by every earnings call by lying and pretending he's rolling out, like, autonomous driving the next year. He's been doing that every year since 2016. It's like, well, it's coming next year.

[Glenn Greenwald]

SEC was coming after him for this. Like, remember when he tweeted that he might take, like, Tesla private or something? And for 420 yeah, yeah. You know, and so, you know, he's been playing these games. It's like, you know, at some point there is such a thing as gravity. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, like maybe. Look, what he's trying to do is self driving on the cheap. Because these Waymo cars are all around.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Los Angeles, by the way.

[Tommy Vitor]

But you'll notice it's different about them is they have radar and lidar on. It was like laser radar on them.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

And Elon is trying to do it with just cameras and just AI, like self driving on the cheap. And I don't know, maybe he'll succeed, but it seems far more likely he's going to crash a lot of cars.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, Yeah. I wouldn't get in that one. I'm already like, read a little reticent about Waymo.

[Tommy Vitor]

I've never taken one of you.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I have a friend who swears by Waymo.

[Tommy Vitor]

Now I want to try it because it seems cool. There was a hilarious story of someone who was trying to get to the airport and they got stuck. I think they missed their flight because the Waymo just kept driving in circles around the parking lot and they wouldn't let them out.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I know I'd be nervous to be in a car that there's no human can, you know, I don't know. I just.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. I was at an intersection the other day and one got stuck. Like the Waymo just like couldn't figure out how to go and people were fucking with it and it. It blew up like all of Larmont for however long. It's.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I just also feel bad for Uber drivers and taxi drivers.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know.

[Glenn Greenwald]

You know?

[Tommy Vitor]

I know. So Elon's coming for you. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. But Ben, we got a new podcast from Crooked Media that I know you're going to love. It's called Shadow Kingdom. God's banker. I didn't know he had a banker. God would just have a lot of cash lying around. In the summer of 82, 1982, the Vatican's top money man was found dead. Roberto Calvi was at the center of a prolific money laundering scheme that put him in the crosshairs of the Sicilian Mafia, a secret far right chapter of the Freemasons and the Catholic Church.

[Glenn Greenwald]

That's not a lot going on. There's not a crew you don't fuck around with. I'm still scared of the Freemasons.

[Tommy Vitor]

Me too, man. I don't know what they do. Where that giant building? Yeah.

[Glenn Greenwald]

You ever looked at it? This is the craziest building in Washington D.C. on 16th Street. If you're ever there, walk by it. It's this giant bank looking building and nobody ever sees anybody go in and out and yet it's immaculately kept perfect.

[Tommy Vitor]

Anyway that, that it's got I think.

[Glenn Greenwald]

There'S like some Eyes Wide Shut shit going on in that place.

[Tommy Vitor]

So 40 years after Roberto Calvi's death was rolled a suicide, Shadow Kingdom host Nicolo Minoni got a tip that there was more to the story. So who killed God's Banker? Check out the trailer for Shadow Kingdom God's Banker right now, wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe for episodes starting on March 17th. Or better yet, join our Friends of the Pod community to binge all the episodes that same [e-mail] friends or on the Shadow Kingdom Apple Podcast feed. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. From consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Get paid on time with professional on brand invoices and online payments, plus streamline your workflow with built in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. With Squarespace collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits with their brand or business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI Enhanced website Builder to get fully custom website built in just a few steps, using basic information about your industry goals and personality to generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations. Squarespace also offers a complete library of professionally designed and award winning website templates with options for every use and category. No matter where you start. Your website is flexible to what you need with intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, and on brand AI content with more ways to list what you offer. No experience required. Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace Domains makes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all inclusive price. No hidden fees or add ons required. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure your domain remains online and protected. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life. Whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service, don't wait to claim your name. Invest in your dream domain today. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.comworld to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

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[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, we'll talk about Gaza for a minute. So, Ben, we talked last week about the Israelis cutting off the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza as a way to put pressure on Hamas to accept revised cease fire terms. We are now learning that they're amping up that pressure further by cutting off Gaza's supply of electricity. Now, in practice, Israel wasn't giving Gaza much power since October 7, but it is still this move is still expected to severely cut the ability of this water desalination plant in central Gaza to operate. AMC International says the plant's capacity to produce drinking water will be reduced by 85% if they do this. So that is could be catastrophic. Also, Ben, just to bring back some old stories, the Houthis are now threatening to restart attacks against ships in the Red Sea if Israel doesn't allow aid into Gaza. So that's terrible. But Ben, I think the biggest news of the week has been this revelation that Trump's envoy for hostage affairs, this guy Adam Bowler, was having direct talks with Hamas officials in Doha about the five Israeli American hostages who are being held in Gaza, one of whom is alive. Four are dead. The Israelis are reportedly furious about this. There was this Netanyahu advisor named Ron Dermer who sucks, by the way.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, just one of the worst people.

[Tommy Vitor]

Who apparently chewed out Bowler on the phone. Here's BOLLER Talking with CNN's Jake Tapper about the Israeli reaction to these direct talks. Do you understand why Netanyahu Dermer others might be upset?

[E]

I do understand. I spoke with Ron and I'm sympathetic. He has someone that he doesn't know well making direct contact with Hamas. Maybe I would see them and say, look, they don't have horns growing out of their head. They're actually guys like us. They're pretty nice guys. So he doesn't know me. And there are big stakes. He lives in a country where if it sets certain precedents, then it will hurt or help a lot of other people. So I understand the consternation and the concern, and I wasn't upset. At the same time, we're the United States. We're not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play. And we did communicate back and forth. We had very specific parameters by which we fell. And the reality is, what I wanted to do is jumpstart some negotiations that were in a very fragile place. And I wanted to say to Hamas, what is the end game that you want here? Not the dream endgame, but what do you think is realistic at this point? Because until we know that, it's very hard to reach some sort of truce or some sort of end to hostilities.

[Tommy Vitor]

Wow. Sounds entirely reasonable. Ben. Marco Rubio, who I.

[Glenn Greenwald]

This will be a theme today. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Again, is a loser.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

He said that the Hamas talks were a one off that didn't bear fruit. So I have to say, like, I saw those reports and I was like, good for Trump. Like, what are we doing? Fuck you, Ron Dermer. There's American people.

[Glenn Greenwald]

How is Ron Dermer gonna fucking veto on who the United States talks to? You're crazy. And Marco Rubio, when we in the Obama administration talked to Iran or talked to Cuba, they all lit themselves on fire. And now Mr. Trump does it and they're a little quieter about it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, they love it.

[Glenn Greenwald]

I mean, the reality is it's the dumbest fucking debate in the world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Why are we talking to them through Qatar? Well, that's the thing.

[Glenn Greenwald]

We are already talking to them. We're just passing notes and playing games of telephone through Qataris, through the Egyptians. What is the difference between talking to them through the Qataris or the Egyptians and just talking to them?

[Tommy Vitor]

Do you like anyone, like, who'd as more than a friend?

[Glenn Greenwald]

And it doesn't mean Sinwar, what are we doing? It doesn't mean you grow up, you agree with Hamas at all. It means actually you disagree and you need to talk to them to try to get American hostages home. Right. I mean, I'm sure that this is the hostage guy. He's trying to get the American hostages out. And that's something you would expect the American government to do, you know, so, yeah, this is a taboo that, you know, needs to be broken. Not again. Not because Hamas are good guys. The opposite. You talk to your enemies, you know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I guess what makes, like, what makes me so frustrated about this is the taboo was broken in the Trump first term. Right. He like, remember, he like invited the Taliban to Camp David. He did the whole Thing with Kim Jong Un. And Democrats are still fucking pussies about it. Like, we can talk to people directly if we want to. Just do it. Just do it. Advance US Interests. I'm not saying call up guys in ISIS and just, like, see how they're doing. But no, if, like, if diplomacy can advance a core US Interest, do it.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

What's the problem? What's the downside?

[Glenn Greenwald]

You're talking to someone who I'm yelling at you. Secret negotiations with the Cuban, with Alejandro Castro. Were you okay for a year and a half? Yeah. And did you emotionally recover for America? I think so, yeah. The problem here is that Trump, all he cares about is getting, which is an important objective, don't get me wrong. But this is about getting the American hostages out. It's not about Middle east peace. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

That said, I do think Joe Biden should have been considering having direct talks with Hamas when the Israelis were blocking a cease fire at hostage release.

[Glenn Greenwald]

And our hostage. American hostages died.

[Tommy Vitor]

Americans died. Also, Ben, later in the show, I talk with Glenn Greenwald about ICE detaining this Columbia University student named Mahmoud Khalil without charging him for any crime. He was a pro Palestinian activist who helped sort of, like, facilitate talks between pro Palestinian activists and the administrators at Columbia during the occupation of, like, the Columbia campus. The ICE said that they detained Khalil for, quote, activities aligned with Hamas, whatever that means. So this is like a massive assault, an unconstitutional assault on free speech and part of this broader effort to police speech around Israel generally. But, Ben, I knew you were particularly eager to discuss a response to the arrest or sort of the detention of this young man by the ADL because you're a big fan of the organization.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah. So let me try to connect a couple of dots here. I mean, the first thing is this is should be seen through the prism of, like, the Authoritarian watch, right? Because it's not just about this one guy. It's about breaking another taboo, in this case, a very bad one, of saying we can deport someone who did not commit a crime, who is a legal resident. Right? And that's not just about this guy or even just about people that protest on behalf of the Palestinians. It's about sending a message of governmental power that is totally unchecked by the rule of law, by permanent residency, that free speech is a selective subjective thing determined by Donald Trump. And that's a scary fucking world to live in. Now, on the ADL piece of this, the ADL put out this statement in saying, we firmly believe there should be swift and Severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations and blah, blah, blah. Basically, the Trumpian frame that if you protest on a college campus against what Israel was doing in Gaza, you're basically in Hamas. You know, I mean, that's essentially the framework.

[Tommy Vitor]

What does aligned with Hamas mean? If Hamas wants the war to be over and I want the war to be over, am I, am I in Hamas now?

[Glenn Greenwald]

Well, and this is, this is exactly where I wanted to go with this, Tommy, which is. Let's take it back to your Gaza update. Israel cut off electricity, they cut off food and aid going into Gaza. In my, as I look at this, objectively speaking, I think Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. The International Criminal Court clearly believes that they've put out. Now, the ADL has been working for years now to expand the definition of antisemitism to essentially encompass criticism of Israel.

[Tommy Vitor]

You know, anti Zionism in particular, anti Zionism, they say, like, if you don't believe that this Israel should exist, then they're taking away the right of self determination.

[Glenn Greenwald]

But what is it? Which again, some people might hear that and say like, well, that sounds reasonable. Right? Well, what is the Anti Zionism is in the eye of the beholder. Some kids chanting Free Palestine can be seen certainly as anti Zionism because do they mean an independent Palestinian state in the west bank in Gaza, or do they mean Israel shouldn't exist? Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the adl, if you look at his pattern on this, he has a pretty broad definition of what constitutes anti Zionism. Right, right. And what is so troubling about this is the ADL's Anti Defamation League. It's actually supposed to be about not just Israel. It's supposed to be a civil rights organization protecting the rights of minorities writ large. And we are currently living through a time where there's like a fascistic president of the United States operating in incredibly authoritarian ways targeting marginalized people. And an organization that is supposed to defend marginalized people is applauding him just because it aligns with this effort to stigmatize and delegitimize any speech that is against Israel and that is totally antithetical to what the ADL is supposed to be about and to how we should be behaving as liberals, if that's still a term we can use in an authoritarian wave crashing over us. And so I was obviously triggered by this statement. I couldn't tell because it's just illustrative of how crazy this debate has gotten about what is appropriate speech on Israel, you don't need to agree with me or you or certainly this guy about what he said about Israel and Gaza to know that, like deporting somebody who's a legal permanent resident, who committed no crime, just to send a message to any college kid in this country that if they say anything about Israel and its war in Gaza, who knows what'll happen? You could end up in a detention center in Louisiana. So, no, I went on a little longer than I thought.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, no, no, because I think it's really important because there is this. There was the debate. I think it started in 2016. It was the International Holocaust Remembrance alliance or the IHRA. Yes, they put out this definition of anti Semitism and some of the examples are just absolutely clear cut. Yes, that's anti Semitism. But then some of it is like denying the Jewish people the right to self determination by opposing the existence of Israel or applying what they call double standards to Israel or comparing Israeli policy to the Nazis, which is anyone who says Gaza is a genocide. And I think, think again, what pisses me off so much about the ADL and people like Jonathan Greenblatt is they're smart people who are experts who flatten the debate. Right. They remove all they know what they're.

[Glenn Greenwald]

It's very. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

So if I say, if, if you say you're denying the existence of Israel, if you're telling. Okay, if you're, if your position is we should eradicate Israel, rip it down, dismantle it. Yes, that, absolutely. That involves killing a lot of people. But if you're like, you know what, like I think that actually this is stolen land and it was immoral or illegal the way it was founded. And I don't like that my taxpayer dollars are going towards Israel and therefore I oppose Zionism. That's an entirely different thing. But to equate those two is so fucked up. And then on top of that, Ben, I mean, I don't know if you saw this. There's this insane Zionist group called like Betar B E T A R. They have prepared a list of pro Hamas kids they want expelled. This, this same group was running around going after Peter Beinart by name. They put out, they tweeted, we urge all Jews on the Upper west side to give Peter Beinart a pager. He's a traitor, a capo, and we must oppose him.

[Glenn Greenwald]

And the thing that really also bothers me about this is precisely that antisemitism is an absolutely horrific, corrosive force. And the kind of anti Semitism that Literally killed members of my family, like many members of my family. Was the antisemitism of the far right flavor, right? I mean, it was the anti, Semitism, the racialized antisemitism, the, you know, Nazi theories and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the conspiracy theories and all that. And at the same time that we've got people like giving Nazi salutes in this country, like, get a pass, getting.

[Tommy Vitor]

A pass from adl, Netanyahu, we're picking.

[Glenn Greenwald]

On kids, like, let's stand up to the powerful people that are revisiting the very tropes and conspiracy theories that like, led to things like the Holocaust to begin with, instead of like, you know, trying to find kids to expel from college. It's precisely because they care about antisemitism that I think this is such an absurd debate. Well said or not debate, absurd position to take.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it is. It is a grown debate.

[Glenn Greenwald]

It's an important debate.

[Tommy Vitor]

It is gross. The ADL has not covered itself in glory. We're going to do a quick update on Syria because we spoke with Natasha hall last week to get an update on how the transitional government is doing. And since then there's been this awful outbreak of violence in the country's southern regions that we wanted to just touch on. So it started with the news that Assad loyalists had attacked government checkpoints, which led to fighting between these groups that then turned into these field executions by those loyal to the new government, something that CNN said they'd verified through video and eyewitness testimonies. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that over 1300 people have already been killed, including at least a thousand civilians. The UN says it's documented over 100 civilian deaths for now, most of them targeting Alawites, who are the ethnic minority group in Syria that Assad was part of. There are also now hundreds of civilians sheltering at a Russian air base, fleeing the violence. So the interim government, the HTS government, is promising to form an independent committee to investigate all that's happened. They're supposed to submit a report in 30 days. And then Ahmed Alshara, the leader, promised justice. This kind of violence ban, it's like awful and unacceptable, but it's unfortunately not at all surprising for a country like emerging from, you know, decades of authoritarian rule. Also on Monday, the interim government signed a deal with the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces, or sdf, which will formally recognize the Kurdish community and give them citizenship and incorporate them into the national army. So, Ben, I was talking to a Syria expert about all this who again said like, it's not at all surprising this is happening. Like this is a country that's been wrenched by violence. You have these Turkish kind of backed units that were never disciplined in the first place. Nor is it surprising that Assad loyalists would like stash some arms somewhere and try something at some point. Thank God they didn't have like chemical weapons. My concern reading about all this is like my kind of instant reaction was like, oh man, maybe, you know, relaxing sanctions is too risky. And I actually think that's exactly the wrong thing because, you know, you sort of have a scenario now where you have this country full of people who are trying to figure out a new normal, but there's nothing to do, there's no way to make a living, there's no money. And if we just go through full Iraqi style de Ba'athification with no economic lifeline for people, of course there's gonna be violence.

[Glenn Greenwald]

This will keep happening. I mean, the sanctions are so severe that the government can't pay salaries. Right? I mean, Qatar wanted to pay some salaries and they couldn't because they were worried about getting caught in sanctions. So imagine a country where you can't really have any economy, you can't even pay the police, people with guns. And then you've got people stirring the pot, right? Whether we talked to Natasha about Israel being in southern Syria and kind of stirring this up and wanting a weakened, decentralized Syria, you've got Iran and Russia, some incentive to stir the pot obviously there. Who else might get in the mix? Turkey obviously has a lot of influence and so the place remains kind of weak and incapable of rebuilding. And then you've got the geopolitical actors all picking their 31 flavors. The place is going to descend back into kind of failed state status. And so I would much rather lift the sanctions, try to establish at least a viable state structure and yeah, like solve problems as you go rather than trying to design everything. And nobody's actually even trying to design.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, it's like, good luck.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, it's just like good luck. You have no money and you're cut off from the world. And don't sell that capture. Part of your territory is being occupied by different countries and you just got to deal with it. You know, that's not going to work.

[Tommy Vitor]

Best of luck, Shara. One thing just worth noting is there was all this disinformation on the Internet that there was a mass execution of Christians. I think there's reports that like three Christians have been killed, but. Which is awful, but it wasn't some sort of.

[Glenn Greenwald]

It's a lot of disinformation, too.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know. It was so frustrating trying to figure out what was going on.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Can't figure it. Please don't try to figure this out. Just an X. Go to people like Natasha who can actually explain it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Really smart. Final story, Ben. So big, big news today for fans of international justice. Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, was arrested and sent to the Hague. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. He was arrested on charges of crimes against humanity that stem from his time as mayor, then as president of the Philippines from 2016 through 2022. So while in office, Duterte led what he called the war on drugs. That was really just the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of people, mostly poor young men. The ICC warrant says he oversaw death squads, gave them weapons, promoted and paid cops that killed suspects and then would block any effort to have accountability or. Or prosecute them. The other day, though, I can't remember where I read it, there was this long interview, actually, with a former leader of one of the Duterte death squads that I found found on the Internet somewhere. It was remarkable. I'll find it and send it to you. So Duterte pulled the Philippines out of the ICC in 2019. I'm sure you saw this coming. The court says it still has jurisdiction over any crimes committed before that date. Duterte's daughter Sarah is the current vice president. The Duterte family allied with current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. During the last election. Marcos is the son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. I think everyone assumed that political dynasty would shield Duterte from accountability, but now the two families have had a falling out. Sarah Duterte has been impeached over saying she wanted to kill the president.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Filipino politics.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Not fucking around.

[Tommy Vitor]

So, Ben, like, gutsy move here by the icc.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah. I mean, I think the interesting takeaways for me are, first of all, you know, we should be clear. This guy, you know, seemed to extraditially kill tens of, you know, potentially tens of thousands of people. Right? So horrific violence, like 6,000 of them in catalogs.

[Tommy Vitor]

So it's probably way more.

[Glenn Greenwald]

It's probably way more. And kind of bragged about it. So he wasn't exactly trying to hide the evidence here. It's interesting that this political divorce between the Marcos family and the Dutertes, because this wouldn't even. The ICC is the one arresting the guy. It takes, you know, the national authorities, allowing them presumably, to come there and Arrest Duterte as soon as he landed, I think from coming from China. And then the most interesting piece is where you ended, Tommy, is that the icc, you know, has been sanctioned by Trump. They're pretty fearless. Cuz this guy's in the kind of Trumpy group, right? Trump loves each other, far right populist. And so for them to basically, as their first high profile thing after getting sanctioned by Trump, to be like, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna. He's in the Hague right now, by the way. He's not just like under arrest in the Philippines. Like they, I think they already have him on a plane to the Hague. Like, this is people standing up and saying, you know what, we're not gonna be intimidated. We're gonna enforce the law, we're gonna interpret the statute that we have, which is that the Philippines was in this court before when he committed these crimes, and kind of send a message that there's a bunch of right wing autocrats that, you know, you might be at the Hague one day too, you know, and Duterte, I'm sure, never expected that he would end up in the Hague.

[Tommy Vitor]

No.

[Glenn Greenwald]

So, you know, this is an interesting power move really, by the ICC to say we're still here, we're not intimidated, and this is probably the most high profile person that they've actually arrested in a long, long time.

[Tommy Vitor]

Long time. Very impressive. Good for them.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you're gonna hear my interview with Glenn Greenwald. We're gonna talk about the attack on the First Amendment here in the United States, censorship in Brazil. We'll talk about Tulsi Gabbard, the new FBI leadership, Ukraine, all of it. So stick around for that. Our friends at the Institute for Global affairs at Eurasia Group are out with a brand new limited series 90s rewind. This season on their none of the above podcast, they're turning back the clock to the 90s to bring you 10 episodes on the most pivotal moments of the decade. You'll hear all about how US Policymakers shaped the post Cold War moment, from Russia's brief flirtation with democracy to the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan, to the rise of China's economic star. Host Mark Hanna is joined by experts, journalists and former officials like Harvard's Stephen Walt, NPR's Deborah Amos, and retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering as they unpack a decade that continues to shape the world today. And Ben Rhodes is on season three of the pod. Love it. Oh, really? So Skip right to that one and then listen to the rest. But really, the Eurasia Group is full of some of the smartest people. It's an amazing think tank. I call over there all the time to talk to smart people about what's going on in the world. So this is a great podcast. You will love it. You can find none of the above on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Go listen to the first four episode of 90s Rewind now and make sure you subscribe so you never missed an episode.

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[Tommy Vitor]

My guest today has been a part of some of the most consequential journalism of really the last two decades, including the release of Edward Snowden's files and a massive expose of corruption in Brazil. He is the host of System Update on Rumble, which you can also listen to as a podcast. Glenn Greenwald, it's great to see you. Welcome back.

[Ben Rhodes]

Always good to see you, Tommy. Thanks for having me.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's funny, I pitched you to come on to talk about censorship in Brazil, and I want to get to that. But man, then America was like, hold my beer if you want to go after the First Amendment. So I think we should probably start there. So let's start with this story of this student at Columbia University named Mahmoud Khalil. He was arrested by ICE agents who initially claimed his student visa had been revoked. But he was then the ICE agents were then told Khalil is a green card holder and they just didn't care and they plucked him up anyway and sent him down to Louisiana. The Trump administration said he was part of, quote, activities aligned to Hamas, which is a very vague and dangerous formulation that we can get into now. The good news is the judges blocked his removal from the US but there's still these massive free speech implications, and the Trump administration keeps saying that this is going to be the first of many such removals of pro Palestine activists. So Glenn, in addition to being a journalist, you're A First Amendment lawyer. Can we start with some basics, like what protections do green card holders have when it comes to free speech in America, and how significant do you think the threat is from this move?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it's a great question. I think there are a lot of misconceptions in general about to whom the U.S. constitution applies. And I think it's worth noting in this case that he's a green card holder in large part because he's married to an American citizen. So generally, if a foreign national married. If an American citizen marries a foreign national, you have basically automatic rights to have your spouse become a U.S. citizen. And it takes a little while. And in the process, they have a green card, which is essentially the right to live and work in the United States permanently. So that's his status. He's not a tourist on a visa in the United States. He's not a work visa. He doesn't have a student visa. He is a green card, which by its nature is supposed to be a guarantee of permanent residence. And it's in part because of his marriage to an American citizen, which places him pretty much at the highest level of status that you can be just short of being an American citizen. But it's the road to American citizenship. And I think one of the things I've seen over many years, but especially in the wake of these censorship debates that have happened more intensively after October 7th than ever before, for understandable reasons, which is there's a much more aggressive censorship regime being imposed on the United States after October 7th, is that the US Constitution only guarantees rights to American citizens. And this is not just wrong, but demonstrably and obviously wrong. It has been U.S. supreme Court jurisprudence for more than 200 years that the Bill of Rights, like the whole purpose of the Bill of Rights, when it was constructed, when it was implemented and how it's been applied, is it doesn't just assign rights to particular groups of individual called American citizens. What its real purpose is is to constrain the US Government in exercising its power over the territory in which it's the sovereign, meaning the United States and other places where it's sovereign. And that means its power is restricted not just for threats to American citizens, but to anyone legally in the United States, which obviously includes green card holders. And if you just think about it for a second, that would have to be the case. Like, let's just, let's imagine this world that a lot of people think we live in where the Bill of Rights only applies to US Citizens. That would mean, for example, that Joe Biden could have stood up and said, I'm really sick of being criticized by green card holders and people on student visas. And so I'm ordering the immediate arrest of all student. Of all people here on student visas, all H1B visas, all green cards. They're going to be arrested and thrown into prison with no trial indefinitely. Obviously, everybody would understand, oh, that's unconstitutional, even though they're not US Citizens, because the Bill of Rights constrains the US Government from punishing people for speech. And that's precisely what the Trump administration is doing, notwithstanding the fact that this grad student is not actually an American citizen. And I do think the reason it's so alarming is because every administration violates the First Amendment at some point. Courts have ruled that that's why the First Amendment exists. It's the natural tendency. Tendency to censor. The difference here is that Trump basically campaigned on a promise to do exactly this, to punish critics of Israel, to make it criminal, practically to protest against Israel, to punish institutions that have been permitting criticism of Israel. He had people like Mary Adelson, who gave him $100 million in part to promise things like this. And his administration is filled with people who have very intense loyalty to Israel. And this is not just a campaign promise, but something they were clearly determined to do, prepared to do, and are implementing very early in the administration. And it's very alarming. The idea, obviously, is not to arrest everyone who criticized Israel, but to create a climate where people are afraid to do so. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

And like, even Mahmoud Khalil's worst critics, they haven't really made any allegation of any wrongdoing that I've seen. I mean, it's like. I think you highlighted this on Twitter. It's like videos of him very calmly talking about his opposition to the war in Gaza. If that's somehow criminal, then we're all going to jail. But beyond that, I mean, the Trump White House is now threatening to withhold grant money to these universities. This is money that's usually used for, like, medical research or scientific research, because they don't like a specific conversation happening on campus. And it's just this, like. It's this crazy scenario where the president of Harvard University could be like, fuck America. This place is the worst. Let's talk about the genocide against the Native American people that happened centuries ago. But if you made sort of similar comments about the state of Israel, you could literally get deported from the country and then have them withhold grant money. It's like, how is this. The dynamic that we're living in. How is this free speech?

[Ben Rhodes]

You know, this is. I think the most bizarre part is that American citizens can and constantly do say the most contemptuous, vicious things about the United States, about the American government, about American political leaders. You know that as well as anybody. You worked in the White House. You heard all sorts of things about President Obama. Look at what people say about President Trump. We're all free to say that we can criticize the United States all we want. We can criticize the governments of Germany or China or Iran or Peru or Uruguay or Indonesia or whatever and not fear any consequences. The one country that, if you stand up and criticize too harshly, with realistic fears of criticism, is the state of Israel. And I think that's what's most disturbing. And if I could just let me underline one fact that I think a lot of people have not really been made as aware of as. As they should be. There are 34 states in the United States that have enacted laws that say that if you want to have a contract with the state. So let's say, like, you're a speech pathologist who specializes in teaching, like school children how to overcome speech pathologies, and you have a contract with the state where you work with students that have for many years in 34 states in the country. In order to keep that work, to get any contract with the state, you have to sign a loyalty pledge saying that you do not support and promise not to engage in a boycott of the state of Israel because you want to protest whatever its occupation of the west bank or its bombing of Gaza. At the same time, you're allowed to not only boycott every other country on the planet, but there have been boycott movements toward American states. People boycott at the state of Georgia over voting laws or Indiana, North Carolina, over bathroom rolls that you're totally free to do. You can even boycott states in the United States. The one thing you cannot do is boycott Israel. And so I think everybody knows that this has been one of the most rigorously enforced taboos on a bipartisan basis for a long time. And after October 7, the force of the law has really been marshaled by both political parties. But the Trump administration is far more serious about it, willing to go to far greater lanes, not just to stigmatize criticism of Israel or to make it difficult for you to maintain a job in certain sectors, but really to start to criminalize it, to punish people using the force of the law. And that's why I consider it such a dangerous escalation.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, Look, I totally agree with you. I mean, I wanted to zoom out a little bit and just go bigger picture on free speech. Because over the last, let's call it a decade, conservatives, I think, have been very frustrated at censorship on tech platforms. I would consider you among them. You're not a conservative. You're just someone I think is a very long standing, principled position on free speech. An actual free speech absolutist, unlike Elon Musk. I think there were times conservative critics were right. The censoring hunter Biden's laptop was crazy. There was a ton of overreach when it came to Covid. But I think sometimes what gets lost is a sense of proportion. And I would argue that Elon Musk, I think clearly now is like reverse shadow banning. He's amplifying conservative voices. And then Trump is. He sued Facebook, he's suing abc, now he's suing cbs. And there's all this concern that these big media conglomerates might settle because their corporate overlords have business interests. And I'm just wondering, like, how you stack up the threat to free speech in this moment. You also have Trump talking about opening up libel laws. There's an effort to overturn New York Times versus Sullivan, which is this landmark free speech case. Like, what kind of. What. What is this moment like to you when you look at the totality of that?

[Ben Rhodes]

So, like I said earlier, I do think that censorship is a natural human temptation for people in power. It's one of the reasons why the founders put the First Amendment free speech guarantee in the First Amendment and why it was one of the things that attracted their attention almost more than any other. I mean, and, you know, the context of it was the Enlightenment, where for the first time in human history, we all decided that we no longer wanted to be ruled not just by the governing decrees, but also the epistemological decrees about what truth and falsity is by churches or monarchs or empires or whatever. We wanted the freedom to have our own human reason. And it was out of that climate, that intellectual climate, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created based on the recognition that all of us are fallible that way. Like the power to be able to tell people, you can say this, you can't say this is a very intoxicating one. It's a very tempting one. And oftentimes it's very easy to convince ourselves that it's justifiable. So, of course, it's always a threat. There are always threats posed to free speech. I think my understanding of the kind of recent history of how this has become more intensified is based on the emergence of. Of the Internet, which I think by far is the most important technological innovation in our lifetime. Nothing even really compares. The reason for that is that it threatens and still threatens, and I think in a lot of ways has succeeded to remove an extremely important power from establishment power centers, which is the ability to control the flow of information, probably the most important power that power centers can exercise. And they felt very threatened by that. The freer the Internet became, I think the more threatened they became by that. And so what we've seen is this kind of concerted effort to impose censorship regimes on the Internet, creating new theories for it, hate speech or disinformation, creating this whole kind of industry to create this apolitical face to the censorship. Oh, no, these are disinformation experts who reside above politics. And it created a lot of abuses. So I think the right wing critique of this has largely been valid, as you suggested, at least some of it was. But I think you're also right that this kind of vulnerability that I think has been created by the collapse of faith and trust in the corporate media, much of which there has been their own fault, has allowed Trump and the Trump administration to wage a kind of an attack on the media that previously would have been unthinkable precisely because so many people have turned against the media. And I find that extremely threatening as well.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I agree. Last question. On this sort of topic of censorship. I mean, can you just talk about the legal battle that's happening right now between Rumble and the Brazilian Supreme Court, specifically a justice named Alexander de Maraj? How does censorship and free speech compare in Brazil as opposed to the U.S.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, you know, it's so interesting, I think, you know, obviously I'm somebody born in the United States. I grew up there. I spent most of my adult life there. And like most Americans, I guess I kind of naturally assumed that a belief in free speech was just sort of the unchallengeable, correct way of thinking about the world. And it's not really until you live in a lot of other places, most other places where free speech is not nearly as venerated as this paramount value. And certainly Brazil is one of those countries where there's this idea that untrammeled, unlimited free speech is actually not only not something to aspire to, but actually is something that's very dangerous. And in that climate kind of emerged. And you see this in Western Europe, too, this fear of these kind of right wing populist movements represented by Bolsonaro, but like Marine Le Pen in France and the AfD in Germany and other places. This kind of sense that if we allow too much free speech, if we allow a free Internet, it just kind of becomes the Wild West. There's no more centralized authority to say what is and isn't true. And there's been this crackdown, this idea that more and more, the state needs to be able to determine what is true and what is false and demand what is false. And Rumble was created kind of as a reaction to YouTube censorship, or it was. It was actually created long before that. It kind of grew and became a big platform in light of YouTube's increasing political censorship. It's kind of this based on this idea that it's an alternative to YouTube that won't censor anything. It even allows people like Nick Fuentes and other people like that who have been censored elsewhere. And the idea of Brazil is we don't want what we consider to be extremist views or racist views or views that are anti democratic. We believe we, the government, have the competence to judge what is too dangerous as an idea to permit. And they've been ordering Rumble to censor similar to the way they did with X. And when Rumble refused, the Supreme Court judge in charge of the censorship regime just ordered Rumble banned from the entire country. And it kind of, I think, illustrates this growing tension between the power of the state on the one hand and the power of big tech companies on the other, and how that's going to.

[Tommy Vitor]

Be resolved and how shocking it is that just one random Supreme Court justice in Brazil has so much power to pick fights with Rumble. Elon Musk, I mean, you a lot of folks. Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, there's a lot of opposition in Brazil, as you might imagine, to this kind of censorship. The problem is that people who become too vocal critics of the censorship regime themselves end up getting censored or worse. And that's what I said before. It's kind of like inebriating. The more you exercise the power, the more you convince yourself of your own righteousness, the further and further and further you think you're justified in going. And that's what I think the real dangers of censorship is. It always starts off, you know, in a case where kind of everybody agrees the person being censored is a horrible person that we could all do without. And the problem is the precedent gets set, and then it again expands and expands and expands and ultimately expands without much control.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, yeah. All right. We're Agreeing too much. I want to see if I can find some differences.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, we need to fight. That's what I came on for.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know you just got back from Russia. You have some interesting conversations that we can get into about Ukraine, but I want to dig into the Ukraine war. So, like, I just to clear some brush. I would imagine we both agree that, like, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe went too far and made Russia feel threatened, but that doesn't justify invading a country. I know we talked early on in the war that we both, I think, took very seriously the risk of escalation and direct confrontation between the US And Russia and found it kind of fucking outrageous when pundits would like yada, yada, yada, the threat of full scale nuclear war. And so, like fast forwarding to now, I mean, it seems like Maybe there's a 30 day ceasefire that was just reached, or at least Ukraine has accepted it in these talks that are happening in Saudi Arabia. But I think my concern is that I'm worried about Trump pushing Ukraine to a place where they feel helpless against future Russian aggression. And you have a deal that, like, freaks out Europe, you know, causes them to rearm themselves, but does so outside the confines of NATO. So you have these, like, reinvigorated, nationalist, militant governments happening. I mean, so isn't. So I want a peace deal, but isn't there a scenario where a bad peace deal gets us to a really dangerous place, too? But I was wondering how you're thinking about this.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, I think we have to begin with the premise that before Trump won, there were absolutely zero efforts diplomatically to try and end this war. There were some early diplomatic successes at the very beginning of the war where by all accounts, Russia and the Ukrainians were close to a deal before the war really got out of hand, especially these talks in Istanbul. And it was Boris Johnson and Victoria Nuland who kind of parachuted in and said these deals are not acceptable and told Zelensky, no, you can fight Russia, you can win. We'll give you everything you need. Kind of led him down this primrose path of, I think they told him.

[Tommy Vitor]

Not to trust the deal. But. But point taken.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I mean, Victoria Nguyen also says there were parts of it that were unreasonable, but. But they certainly sidetracked it, even if Tully Bennett says they were very close to a deal until that happened. And, you know, we. We can, of course, spend time talking about the evils of Russia and how provocative NATO expansion was into Eastern Europe. But the reality of the war, and I had people on my show early on, like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs and Stephen Walt and other people who are saying, you know, the reality of a war like this is that when one country that's small, like Ukraine, fights against a huge country, which is Russia, and the population sizes is so enormous between the two, inevitably the larger country is going to win. It might take a long time. It might be a war of attrition. Huge numbers of people might die. There might be a lot of destruction. But Ukraine has no chance of winning just on the basis of size alone. And I think they've proven to be very prescient, because despite how much money the United States and NATO has spent, how many arms it's given, Ukraine is. Is almost like a rump country. Russia occupies 23% of it. When there's movement in the front line, the movement is not eastward with Russia being expelled, but westward with Russia taking more territory. And it's been a awful, horrific, I mean, nauseating war with the loss of life, you know, at very inconceivable levels. And I do think Trump deserves credit for saying, like, this war needs to end. We need to engage in real efforts to try and bring about an end to this war. And I don't think we saw any of that from the Biden administration or from NATO over the last three years. They set this kind of definition of victory from the start that was never going to be fulfilled, namely, the expulsion of every Russian troop from every inch of Ukrainian territory as defined in 2014, including Crimea. The Russians would go to nuclear war, I believe, before they ever gave up. Crimea allowed NATO to occupy that critical geopolitical spot with access to the Black Sea. And so NATO kind of set it up itself up for. For defeat. So I think the effort to end the war is something that is highly commendable. Now, if ending the war means forcing Ukraine to just surrender, I would agree with you that it's not a very noble way to end the war. But I don't think the Trump administration has been signaling that that's what they intend to do. They've been putting a lot of pressure on the Russians. Trump has threatened the Russians in all sorts of ways. But in whose interest is it for this war to continue? I mean, even the Ukrainians are at the point having lost almost an entire generation of young men. And you've seen all these videos, and there's been reporting on it as well. You know, they're forcibly, violently dragging people to the front lines who don't want to go because they know they're being used as cannon fodder against the Russian army. It's tragic to watch at this point. And so regardless of fault, I think just the realities of the war are that it has to come to an end. Unless it's a matter of just saying to Russia, here's all of Ukraine, then I think we would end up having to applaud the ability to resolve this war. And just one quick point about what you, about Europe. You do hear a lot of this rhetoric now from a lot of these especially like unelected bureaucrat types in the EU about how we have to redirect huge amounts of money of our budget to increasing the amount of military spending that we have. We have to be independent of the United States. The problem for Europe is that you have the same kind of populist rage toward political establishments as brought Trump to power, as brought Bolsonaro to power. And I don't think European populations with their stretched economy are going to be willing to tolerate watching people in Brussels, elites in Brussels pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of EU arms manufacturers if it means them having to work five more years before they can retire or losing health care benefits or losing, you know, one month vacation, the things Europeans really value. And I think if the Europeans really try to do that, to become a kind of remilitarized state with all their money going into the Boeing equivalent of Europe, you're just going to be feeding that kind of anti establishment populist rage that these EU elites fear so much to begin with. And I think they're between Iraq and a hard place.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I hear that. I mean, I think just to respond to a few things, I mean, to the experts who said Ukraine has no chance of winning, I mean, I understand where they're coming from, but I also think like all of Afghanistan would, would like to have a word with that. Right? There are examples of kind of insurgencies that, that pop up when countries are invaded by another, especially the Russians or the United States, that can lead to the greater power losing. I, I don't really.

[Ben Rhodes]

But do you, but do you think, do you, do you think the Ukrainians are winning?

[Tommy Vitor]

No, absolutely not. And I think the problem is at the end of three years of the Biden policy, the, the policy ended up just being kind of like continuing, like steady state, you know, like continuing to arm them in perpetuity. And I don't think that was politically viable in any way. And so I, absolutely, I agree with you. I applaud efforts to push them to a diplomatic settlement. But I don't think, I think if you compare that whatever pressure Trump may have been put on, put on Russia, and as far as I can tell, it's like one tweet about more sanctions versus what he, the pressure he's put on Ukraine, it does feel imbalance to me. And on the Europe point, I mean, I think what's confusing to me is I think a lot of people will say Trump was right to put pressure on Europe to spend 2% of GDP on defense, but then I think criticized the European reaction more recently to feeling like they have been hung out to dry by the US And NATO and now need to defend themselves from Russian aggression. So I do think breaking out of the sort of status quo where the US is a firm backer of NATO and Article 5 is a real thing, is likely to lead to the kind of outcome you just talked about there where you, you, you do have this big investment in military spending and you do have, you know, sort of populist anger as a result. Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, but, but I think for me, the question has always been, and, and, and I'm interested in your views on this because, you know, you're a part of an administration that I think had this worldview, although you're by no means somebody who just recites every orthodoxy of the Obama administration. It's a while ago now, things have changed. But even then, you, I'm sure you didn't agree with everything he was doing. But to me, the core question about US Foreign policy is this. You know, we sort of had this role in the world, obviously, since the end of World War II, when we were competing with the Soviet Union. But even after the Soviet Union disintegrated and we were told, oh, we're going to get peace dividends now, there's, there's no more Cold War, there's no more, no more wars. And instead, we kind of continued this idea that we're going to project military force all over the world. We're going to involve ourselves in these conflicts, you know, very, very far away from, from the United States in ways that are very remote to the lives of American citizens. And as you know, we've had deindustrialization of the United States and the kind of disappearance of the middle class and all the things, you know, we don't, we don't need to go through the things that have created a lot of dissatisfaction in the United States. There's very much this perception that the bipartisan elite class in Washington seems very focused on issues and places that have very little to do with the lives of the American people they're supposed to be representing. And at the end of the day, while I get all the kind of domino theories that were used in Vietnam, like, oh, if Vietnam falls, communism is going to go all throughout Asia. If we, you know, if we don't win defeat in Ukraine. Yeah, he's going to go to Poland and even to France or whatever. If you got to leave those disproven theories to the side. I do think there is a very valid question that a lot of people have, meaning a lot of American voters have, which is why should we consider the fight over who rules various provinces in eastern Ukraine or what kind of status the Donbas has? Are they semi autonomous? Do they have more loyalty to ma? These are, you know, very complex, long standing historical, you know, ties that, that go between these people that have very little to do with people in the United States. Why is it the United States that has to be so fixated all the time? Why do we spend so much time in Washington talking about Ukraine and having our members of Congress spend so much time visiting there? How is that really something that is about the lives of the United States? And to me this is what is driving this sense that I don't think is healthy, that Washington cares about everything except the lives of ordinary people. And this seems to me to be a really prime example of that.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I, look, I think a primary lesson from, for me, from my time in government is when you send the US Military to solve what is at heart a political problem, if almost always going to end badly. Iraq, Afghanistan, fill in the blank. You know, you can go on and on. I think what you're getting at with respect to Ukraine is an important point, which is that, and it sounds crass to say it, but Russian occupation of Crimea, for example, is not a core US interest. I don't, I don't, I don't think anyone would argue as much. I do think where the calculus changed during the Biden administration was when the Russians rolled tanks towards Kiev and all of Europe started to feel like, okay, we could be next and then you have a Russia NATO war. But to your broader point, I mean, look, when you view the America first slogan through like a 20 year lens, I get the appeal right. If you bust out the Hundred year Telescope, you get some Nazis in there and it's a little, it's a little scary.

[Ben Rhodes]

But like, like Charles Lindbergh and that sort of thing.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, but the 20 year version is post 9, 11 wars invasion of Iraq, the Overreach of the security state. But, you know, I guess when I compare the American first rhetoric to what we're seeing, it's like ethnically cleanse and occupy Gaza, acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal. We're fucking with Canada constantly and calling them the 51st state. I was listening to an interview that or reading an interview Eli Lake did the other day with Seb Gorka, where Gorka was bragging about making it easier for low level military commanders to authorize drone strikes. And I guess what I'm getting at is, like, Trump 2.0 doesn't feel like it's delivering on the ending of US imperialism or the forever wars, at least not so far.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, so a couple things about that. One is, not only was there no diplomatic movement toward trying to end the war between Russia and Ukraine under the Biden administration, none of that really began to happen until Trump was inaugurated. You have to admit, and I think everybody in the region does, that the reason there's currently a ceasefire, not a perfectly implemented one and an often violated one, but still a ceasefire compared to what had been taking place for the 15 months previously in Gaza, is because Trump and his envoy, Steve Witkoff, went there with the very serious intention of demanding that the Israelis stop for whatever interest Trump had. And it did stop. I mean, this is the first time in 15 months that Israel is not bombarding the shit out of Gaza. And as I said, there's nobody who denies that Trump and the envoy he sent deserve a lot of credit for that. So when you talk about bringing a ceasefire there and at the same time making real strides toward ending this horrific war in Russia and Ukraine, to me, that already is something. Now, I think one of the things that we should have all learned from Trump by now is that a lot of stuff that he says ends up never coming to pass, and a lot of that sometimes is intentional. He talks openly about how he liked to have John Bolton there saying crazy, insane, sociopathic things because it made other countries say, oh, wow, Trump looks reasonable by comparison. So when we invade Panama to take the Panama Canal, or we go to war with Denmark to take Greenland, I guess I'll take those threats more seriously.

[Tommy Vitor]

Fair enough.

[Ben Rhodes]

But the other point I want to make is I think it's very important to look at Trump's foreign policy worldview as he articulates it and realize that he's not articulating a ideology of pacifism. Right? He's not saying, like, hey, the US should never use military force. He's saying, we shouldn't Use military force to rebuild other countries, like to remove Gaddafi and transform Libya or remove Assad and transform Syria or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Those are the kinds of wars that are misguided. But if it's in the US interest, we should threaten or use military force. It's kind of a very, you know, as I guess you could call it, America first foreign policy, that we should only do things foreign policy wise, when it's in our interest rather than the other interest of other countries to do so. And a lot of what, what you're talking about, I think fits more or less comfortably within it. Which doesn't mean I like that ideology. I'm just saying that's how I understand what he means by it, at least.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, fair. We could debate this forever. But I want to ask you a couple more things. I'm already going long. I want to get your view of, understand your view of Tulsi Gabbard, our new DNI Director of National Intelligence. I think the people, I think calling her a Putin stooge or a Russian asset is fucking stupid. And it's just like, if you believe that, bring some evidence, right? Otherwise just an ad hominem attack. I think a charitable reading of Tulsi's foreign policy is she served in Iraq. She opposes regime change, wars, she is fearful of Islamist parties, she's skeptical of government surveillance. But to me, that, that still doesn't really explain meeting with Assad in 2017. Like, I don't oppose meeting with bad guys, but the full story is like, she was sort of misleading about it, misled her colleagues when she got back, including the Ethics Committee. Then she later repeated Assad's claim to not have used chemical weapons on his own people, which I believe he absolutely did. And then, you know, she was an opponent of government surveillance, but she has since changed her position on Section 702 authority, which lets the US government spy on non US citizens by just going directly to US tech companies without a warrant. So what do you think her perspective is in the world? Why do you think she wants this job? Why would she be good at this job?

[Ben Rhodes]

I think you described her foreign policy perfectly and a lot of people have a misunderstanding of it. Both people who have been on the left kind of attracted to her because she supported Bernie and people on the right who hate her. I think, you know, she, she grew up in a, in a Hindu nationalist environment and there's a lot of anti Muslim sentiment within that culture that I think she retained. I think her decision to join the, the US military in the wake of 911 obviously had a lot of overtones of we have to go combat a real existential threat, which is Islamic radicalism. And she never actually, actually lost that. So I think your description of her foreign policy view is precisely correct. And she herself says that I may dove on foreign, on regime change wars, meaning I don't believe in going to Islamic countries and trying to bring them democracy, but I'm a hawk on the war on terror. She wants to go and use military force to destroy Al Qaeda and isis, et cetera. That's her, her foreign policy worldview. But the position of dni, Director of National Intelligence is not really a foreign policy making position. It's not Secretary of State, it's not National Security Advisor, it's overseeing the intelligence community. And that's where I think she has been at her best. You know, she, when she ran for President she promised to pardon Edward Snowden on the first day, which is near and dear to my heart, on the grounds that he exposed a lot of the abuses of those agencies on American citizens. A long time left wing cause. But more broadly she was always in favor of these reforms. And while you're right, the senators, Republican senators told her unless you recant your opposition to 702, which by the way has massive bipartisan support. Nancy Pelosi loves 702, the Biden administration does, Tom Cotton does. They said you have no chance of getting confirmed. So she made that concession. Not very noble, but had she not, there would have been someone worse in that position. But if you notice in her confirmation hearing, she really did stand her ground on a lot of these issues. And one of the only things she's done so far as DNI was the British government is trying to pressure Apple to create backdoors to its encryption to allow the British government full on federal access and terrible idea. The answer terrible. I mean one of the worst things that you could do to the Internet in terms of privacy and Ron Wyden and a Republican senator, I forget which, joined to request that she denounced the British government for doing that and she did. So one of the first things she did was kind of take a stand for Internet privacy on an individual level. That's unheard of for somebody at a high level in the US security state. And that's the, the only reason I find her nomination promising, not because there's nobody better, but because anyone who could possibly be in that position besides her would be infinitely worse on the issues she's good on.

[Tommy Vitor]

Final question for you. The new FBI leadership Cash Patel, Dan Bongino. They worry me a lot. I mean, like, you, Glenn, like, I found it very weird when Democrats in the Trump era all of a sudden were like, three cheers for the FBI and the CIA. It was just like, we don't. We should just be skeptical of the government, especially the kind of surveillance state. But, like, I don't know why you pick Patel and Bongino. Look, they're not qualified to do the job, especially Bongino. That deputy job is usually like a lifer FBI agent, but they seem like people that Trump can put in there to do his bidding. You said you recently tweeted about the FBI and the CIA that left liberal politics are, quote, domestic partisan weapons now, and that's what needs to be crushed. And what Dems fear most is anyone who wants to take away that weapon from them, as Cash Patel is vowing to do, end quote. Do you really think Kash Patel is going to depoliticize the FBI? Is that why he's there?

[Ben Rhodes]

I wouldn't go that far, but this is what I think it was sort of what I was saying about the media previously. When an institution loses the faith and trust and the credibility that it requires to operate. Right. Like, these are very powerful agencies. The CIA, we expect to operate in secret. The FBI has vast powers. This only works in a democracy if they function apolitically. Otherwise, they're, you know, grave threats to democracy, as they proven to be in the past when we've discovered what they were doing in secret.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

And I do think over the last eight years, when the establishment feared Trump, the FBI and the CIA in particular, have been politicized. I think, you know, Russiagate was a lot of bullshit. I think that's where it emanated from. The FBI and the CIA, we have a lot of evidence for that. The FBI was behind a lot of the, what I think were the precarious, dubious attempts to prosecute Trump. So I think those have been weaponized. And that is, do you think it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Was dubious to prosecute him for, like, look, if I brought all that classified information to my private golf club and I left it by the shitter in the bathroom, like, I would be prosecuted all the cases.

[Ben Rhodes]

I think that the January 6th cases were way stronger, you know. You know, every single day you pick up the New York Times and the Washington Post and there is unauthorized leaking of. Of top secret and classified information being circulated all over Washington. That is how Washington works. And none of those people is ever prosecuted because they are leaking for the business of the government. The President is the head of the executive branch. He has the right to declassify anything he wants. I thought he didn't, but it's like a bureaucratic oversight. He could just say, I hear by declassify everything, and it will be declassified anyway.

[Tommy Vitor]

But there's huge implications, a process, there's impossible implications of declassifying programs. It's not that simple.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's not like Democrats were pretty open about the fact that they wanted these prosecutions to happen and wanted Trump convicted because they thought it was the best chance that they had for defeating him in the 2024 election. I mean, you can't deny there was a political value to these prosecutions. We've seen it in the Democratic world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Turns out there wasn't. But, yes, I hear you point.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, only because the courts are so slow, which is one of the reasons I became frustrated and stopping a lawyer, because cases, even the best ones, take forever. But I do think there was a politicized element to it. I think that they create their openings, like I was saying before, with Trump's attacks on the media. So do I think Cash Patel is going to go in and be Mr. Law and Order and clean up the FBI and make it this perfect agency? No. But I do think that the need to kind of come in and say this idea that you're a tool of the establishment who's here to interfere in our politics, to, you know, disseminate lies like the Hunter Biden laptop is disinformation to help Biden win the election before voters go to the polls. This kind of stuff has to end. And if they start politicizing the FBI and the CIA, I promise you, you will be hearing from me as loudly and as quickly as anybody.

[Tommy Vitor]

Good. I mean, I did read in the Wall Street Journal that Cash Patel wants a direct line to the Oval Office, to Trump. So that didn't make me feel good, I should say. Tulsi Gabbard also stripped away the security clearances from everyone who signed that letter. By the way, those were private citizens who said, in their opinion, it was Russian disinformation on the Hunter laptop. Turns out they were very, very wrong.

[Ben Rhodes]

Do people who run the CIA and then leave really become private citizens? I mean, like, was Allen Dulles a private citizen after he stopped being the director of the CIA after all those years? I mean, they're part of the.

[Tommy Vitor]

He was a real piece of shit. John Brennan's a good guy. I know you and I disagree on that. We could have a shouting match about that at some point.

[Ben Rhodes]

Let's do that next time. It'll be fun.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay. Glenn, thank you for doing the show. I feel like we maybe agree too much. We got to do it again soon. We'll just get mad about something else.

[Ben Rhodes]

But I know your audience is going to be disappointed. But yeah, we'll come back next time and fight more.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, good.

[Ben Rhodes]

All right, Tommy, good to see you. Bye.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thanks again to Glenn for doing the show. And I'm gonna run out and buy a Tesla because my president told me.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of good EVs out there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Hey, yeah. Anything but.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Anything but.

[Tommy Vitor]

Pod Save World is a crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben.

[Glenn Greenwald]

Hi.

[Tommy Vitor]

The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis thanks to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David toles and Molly LaBelle. Natalie Evelyn Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt de Groat is our head of production. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription [e-mail] friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus, find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and more. If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Your old or broken phone can let you down. But at Verizon, trade in any old phone from our top Brands and get.

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[Tommy Vitor]

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