Chaos at the Pentagon

Summary

Pod Save the World: Episode Summary – "Chaos at the Pentagon"
Release Date: April 23, 2025
Hosts: Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes

---

1. Pentagon Scandal and Pete Hegseth's Mismanagement

[04:39 - 22:34]

The episode opens with hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes delving into a major scandal involving Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is accused of severe misconduct, including sharing classified operational details about military strikes in Yemen through an unsecured Signal group chat. This incident, dubbed "Signal Gate 2.0," mirrors a previous breach known as Signal Gate 1.0 but is compounded by Hegseth's reckless sharing with non-essential contacts, including his wife and personal lawyer.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [07:14]: “You do not want the person who's in charge of the strongest military in the history of the world to, like, show off to his buddies or his wife when bombs are gonna drop on people in another country.”
• Tommy Vietor [11:11]: “Hegseth's message is rules for thee, but not for me.”

The hosts discuss the implications of Hegseth’s actions, highlighting concerns about his temperament and security practices. Hegseth’s personal phone, deemed insecure, raises alarms about potential espionage and national security risks. The situation escalated when Hegseth began purging his staff, firing three top Pentagon officials amidst an ongoing leak investigation. The investigation encompasses various sensitive topics, including military operations near the Panama Canal and controversial interactions with Elon Musk.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [13:15]: “The Pentagon is this massive organization and that front office where he's just had a kind of purge is the connective tissue between the Secretary of Defense and the uniform military. If that's in chaos and the whole building can't function, then the whole building is in chaos.”

Hegseth’s public appearance and subsequent Fox News interview, where he defensively labeled his staff as leakers, further exemplify his erratic leadership style. The hosts criticize Hegseth’s handling of the situation, questioning his fitness for the role and the broader impact on Pentagon operations.

2. Marco Rubio's Plan to Reorganize the State Department

[27:15 - 35:34]

The discussion shifts to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s ambitious proposal to overhaul the State Department. Released via a Substack post, Rubio aims to reduce bureaucracy, eliminate redundant functions, and curb the influence of special interests. Key points of his plan include a 15% staff reduction, consolidation of 734 offices into 602, and the elimination of pivotal bureaus such as the Undersecretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

Notable Quotes:

• Marco Rubio [27:15]: “I am initiating a broad reorganization of the department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American foreign policy.”

Tommy and Ben express skepticism about Rubio’s motives and the potential consequences of dismantling essential offices like the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. They argue that such cuts could undermine the U.S.’s commitment to global civil society and weaken efforts to support political prisoners and dissidents worldwide.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [32:06]: “We have been a safe haven culture for people, for refugees and dissidents. And so what happens to all those people out in the world who is going to be advocating for the release of political prisoners?”

The hosts also highlight the disconnect between Rubio’s stated goals and the practical implications of reducing the State Department’s workforce and capabilities. Concerns are raised about the long-term impact on diplomatic relations, particularly in Africa, where Chinese investments are rapidly increasing.

3. Global Trade War: US-Chinese Relations and Economic Implications

[52:44 - 72:34]

Tommy and Ben critique the ongoing global trade war initiated under President Trump’s administration, emphasizing its detrimental effects on both the global economy and U.S. economic standing. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported a slowdown in global growth to 2.8% for the year, attributing half a point reduction to Trump’s tariffs.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [56:37]: “The Chinese have been preparing for this since Trump's first term. They've been methodically remaking their own economy.”

The hosts argue that Trump’s inconsistent and short-term tariff strategies have inadvertently strengthened China’s economic position. China’s strategic investments in clean energy and technology sectors have positioned it as a global hub, overshadowing U.S. efforts. Additionally, the disruption caused by tariffs has led to retaliatory measures from China, further isolating the U.S. economically.

Notable Quotes:

• Tommy Vietor [61:01]: “Trump may have set in motion a reordering of the global economy that actually may be irreversible.”

They caution that the U.S.'s approach has not only strained relations with traditional allies but also accelerated the decoupling of U.S. and Chinese economies, reducing American leverage in regions like Taiwan.

4. Yemen Conflict: US Airstrikes and Houthi Repercussions

[63:47 - 74:03]

The episode returns to the Middle East, focusing on the deteriorating situation in Yemen. U.S. airstrikes targeting Houthi-controlled ports have resulted in significant civilian casualties and infrastructure damage. Despite ongoing military efforts, the Houthis continue to retaliate effectively by downing drones and launching missiles.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [66:10]: “They are shooting back at us and pretty effectively. The Houthis are also launching missiles at Israel, including last week, and they're reportedly building closer ties with China. So the State Department said that a Chinese company...was directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks on U.S. Interests.”

Tommy and Ben highlight the entanglement of regional conflicts with broader geopolitical tensions involving China and Russia, exacerbating the chaos and hindering resolution efforts. The potential for a ground operation in Yemen looms, raising concerns about further escalation and humanitarian disaster.

Notable Quotes:

• Tommy Vietor [66:27]: “What's so dumb about this Trump thing is...you have all these supply chains for clean energy...If you're a U.S. ally, you're gonna choose China over the United States?”

5. Israel-Gaza Conflict: Netanyahu's Attempt to Fire Shin Bet Chief

[68:10 - 74:03]

The conversation shifts to Israel, where Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu faces accusations of undermining democratic institutions. Ronan Barr, the head of Israel's domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, alleges that Netanyahu pressured him to spy on protesters and prioritize loyalty over judicial rulings. This internal conflict reflects broader issues of governance and accountability within Israeli leadership.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [69:16]: “Netanyahu's imperative to stay in power to avoid prison is really dangerous. I think that's everything else reinforces.”

The hosts express deep concern over Netanyahu’s actions, drawing parallels to U.S. political turmoil and questioning the stability of leadership amid ongoing regional conflicts.

6. Reflecting on Pope Francis's Legacy

[40:32 - 52:44]

In a thoughtful segment, Tommy pays tribute to the late Pope Francis, emphasizing his role as a moral leader and his efforts to modernize the Catholic Church. Pope Francis was lauded for his humility, advocacy for climate change action, support for refugees, and pivotal role in international negotiations, including the Iran nuclear deal and U.S.-Cuba normalization.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [42:41]: “He was a moral leader in a world that lacks moral leadership. There are not many people who could do that...and make a moral weight to what we were doing that nobody else could have supplied.”

The discussion acknowledges both conservative and liberal criticisms of Pope Francis, noting his attempts to balance tradition with progressive social justice initiatives. His legacy is portrayed as a beacon of decency and a catalyst for meaningful change within the Catholic Church and global diplomacy.

Notable Quotes:

• Tommy Vietor [47:05]: “The essence of the man...his public persona was entirely different.”

7. Additional Highlights and Closing Remarks

[74:03 - End]

The episode concludes with lighter segments, including a quirky look at Sweden’s “Great Moose Migration” live stream, providing listeners a moment of respite from intense political discourse. Hosts Tommy and Ben reflect on the importance of such simple pleasures amid global chaos.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [74:14]: “I saw some moose recently in Wyoming. Those are some big guys. I would not want to run into a moose anywhere in the world other than on a live stream, you know?”

Tommy and Ben wrap up the episode by acknowledging the complexity of international crises and the interplay of leadership, policy, and global dynamics. They emphasize the necessity of informed discourse and the impact of high-level decisions on both national and international stages.

---

Conclusion

In this comprehensive episode, Pod Save the World tackles a range of pressing global issues, from internal Pentagon chaos and high-stakes diplomacy to the enduring legacy of a transformative Pope. Through incisive analysis and candid discussions, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted challenges shaping today's geopolitical landscape.

Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

Pod Save the World is brought to you by via. I love via. John, I don't know if you've heard me talk about have you gotten any via? No. And I'm like been dying for it. Got to get on the VIA train. They sent us a big box of samples and they got really good like kind of relaxing Gummies, sleep gummies. There's some intimacy ones that I haven't really checked out yet. No Intimacy gummies. It's a great product. It's 410 right now and I'll be needing some via gummies. 4 11, 4 12, 4 13. If you haven't tried them, you are missing out. When you need to unwind mind, refocus or boost your mood, Via is here to enhance your everyday or night. Trusted by over half a million happy customers, VIA is changing the game and natural wellness blending powerful high quality hemp. Derive ingredients to deliver real effects driven benefits. Whether you're looking to sleep better, have better libido, improve focus, recover or simply relax, Via has a tailored solution for you. We're adults but we're still going to laugh at that. Whether you're looking to support your daily wellness routine, enhance focus or clarity, unwind with deep relaxation, Via has you covered. From their award winning effect Forward Gummies to calming drops, every Via product is thoughtfully crafted, made with organic lab tested hemp sourced from trusted independent American owned farms. And the best part, VIA legally ships across the usa. Discreet direct to your door, no medical card required and backed by a worry free guarantee. Not sure where to start? Take Via's product finder quiz to get personalized recommendations tailored to your needs. It can take you less than 60 seconds to complete. If you're 21 or over, check out the link to VIA in our description and treat yourself to Via's Spring 420 sale. Black Friday level. Savings up to 35% off site wide right now up to 50% off packs and bundles and get a free gift and more savings with your first order using our exclusive code world plus enjoy. Free shipping on orders over $100. That's code world at the link in our description after you purchase they ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Enhance your everyday with via. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vitor]

How's it going?

[Ben Rhodes]

Doing good.

[Tommy Vitor]

You look good. You're not coming to D.C. this weekend?

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm not. I've been to eight White House correspondence dinners at which there were not a at least that Many fascists. So I'm glad you're going on my behalf. Tommy.

[Tommy Vitor]

The dress code this year is brown shirt. I know. I'm not going to the dinner. I'm just going to see.

[Ben Rhodes]

Good for you.

[Tommy Vitor]

For the priest. Yeah. I have the same feeling you do of too many fascists. But also I think I just walk into that room and just feel massive anxiety about running into people and forgetting their names.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, even by the eighth year, I mean, I was pretty over it. For those of you who have not had the pleasure, picture like what, a thousand people in like a gigantic windowless room with the least attractive. The kind of hotel furniture. You're at like a round table with, you know, half the people you don't know and a bunch of journalists looking for celebrities. And it's just not every conversation.

[Tommy Vitor]

They never. There's never eye contact. It's someone looking 15 degrees to your right or left for someone more important.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

That was kind of my experience in D.C. yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

The only good one was the one the night before we killed Ben Laden where all of us had to go so that they didn't notice that none of the national security people were there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that's totally why I went to.

[Ben Rhodes]

I remember I was right into that thing.

[Tommy Vitor]

I just decided to go anyway.

[Ben Rhodes]

I remember walking around and every now and then I'd see one of the people who knew what was coming tomorrow and we kind of make eye contact and it's like a little head nod.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I could have used a steer because I got wasted until 5am that night.

[Ben Rhodes]

Sorry about that.

[Tommy Vitor]

And was just a mess when I got to the office the next day. I almost wore a Celtics jersey into the office when you called me.

[Ben Rhodes]

Did not compromise the operation though.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, you did not.

[Ben Rhodes]

Not like Pete Hexen.

[Tommy Vitor]

Unlike Pete Hexen. Our top story today. Great segue. Thank you. So we're going to talk about this. The latest scandal engulfing Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense. And just the general chaos of the Pentagon. It's pretty shocking, actually. We'll get into Marco Rubio's plan in air quotes to reorganize the State Department. Pope Francis's life and legacy. And what comes next? The latest on our idiotic self defeating trade war. How things are going against the Houthis in Yemen. President Trump challenged us to check in with them, so we're going to do that. And a new scandal engulfing Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The latest from Gaza. And then our interview today was a late scratch as they say sports world. We're not going to name names. Yeah, but you're listening and you know who you are. Yeah, you know you did.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's not good.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's like Lucy with the football, you know, it's hurtful.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's excited to talk to this individual, but maybe, just maybe, they'll come back on in the future. Should we start with Pistol Pete?

[Ben Rhodes]

Let's start with Pistol Pete.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Okay. So the Pentagon is in complete and total chaos right now, and I feel like it's just not really getting the attention it deserves. So we just want to kind of hammer this home for folks. This latest mess comes via the New York Times, which reported that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, was part of a second Signal Group chat where he shared what was clearly classified operational details about an upcoming military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Pentagon still says that it wasn't classified. They're just clearly lying about this. Ben. Listeners probably remember Signalgate 1.0, when Mike Waltz, Trump's national security adviser, created this Signal Group chat group to discuss bombing the Houthis in this new Signal Gate 2.0. Hegseth shared basically the same information about the operation against the Houthis on the same day as signal gate 1.0. Like, he shared information like what time the F15s or the F18s are going to bomb their targets. Like, very specific details about the military plan. But this time, Hegseth shared that information with a new group that included his brother, his wife, and his personal lawyer. For some reason, the lawyer part really confuses me.

[Ben Rhodes]

So signal gate 1.0, maybe. Good thing that that guy was read in on the front end.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's true.

[Ben Rhodes]

He made some work.

[Tommy Vitor]

You'll be doing some pro bono work on the back end. So signal gate 1.0. Remember Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic got looped in on that one. But in that case, he clearly screwed up by sharing classified information on a commercially available app called Signal, which you're not allowed to share classified information on, but he was on a chain that was created by Mike Waltz with individuals who have a need to know about that kind of information. Right. They were actually debating whether or not to take this strike kind of. They're sort of debating it. But With Signal Gate 2.0, Hegseth created this group himself. He did it on his personal phone and was sharing classified information with people who have absolutely no need to know about it. Like, his wife doesn't need to know what time were bombing the, you know, whatever. Hodea port in Yemen. So this is a huge security breach. Since Hegseth's personal phone is not at all secure, it is likely the target of all kinds of espionage efforts by foreign actors. It's also a completely improper dissemination of classified information. We learned from NBC News, Ben, that the information Hegseth was sending around was basically copied and pasted from messages sent to him on a secure system by the head of centcom. So this wasn't like. There's just no debate over whether this classified. So we'll get into this staffing chaos in a second. But this. I read this Ben, and I thought, this definitely supports Ben's theory that this guy was just showing off.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Yes. So, first of all, let's start there. The temperament. What this tells us about the nature of the person who's Secretary of Defense. It's one thing to show off to JD Vance and, you know, Mike Walts and people that you would need to know about the OR in the pdb.

[Tommy Vitor]

They're cleared.

[Ben Rhodes]

But there's no reason to share this information with your wife and your buddy and your lawyer, other than to show off, like, hey, look, here's when the F18s are taking off, and that is a window into a person that has some serious problems. Essentially, you do not want the person who's in charge of the strongest military in the history of the world to, like, to show off to his buddies or his wife when bombs are gonna drop on people in another country. Just imagine what that could be like in a real crisis or, you know, God forbid, some more that Trump starts, you know, so we're getting a window into Pete Hegseth's kind of personal demeanor. We know he's erratic. We know from reporting that he's had drinking problems. You know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

All this paints a picture of someone who's just fundamentally not fit for that job in a kind of dangerous and scary way. Then there's the question of just the security of this. And I just kind of want to reiterate for people. I mean, I had. In my house, my wife used to call it the command center. I had a secure communication set in my house. There was this kind of giant cabinet with these phones and encryption wires, and it made all these weird noises, but I had to get on that phone just to talk to anybody about anything that was classified. These are available to Pete Hegseth.

[Tommy Vitor]

Pete Hegseth has a plane that can fly after a nuclear strike on the United States.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's my point.

[Tommy Vitor]

No one is better equipped in the world to communicate in a secure fashion.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's exactly my point, is that this guy clearly has secure comms in his home. He has secure comms in his car. So this is just a guy wants the capability to just jump on his personal phone, which is almost. It's certainly been targeted and quite possibly been compromised, given what we know about the Chinese access into JD Vance's phone and Trump's phone during the transition.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, you can buy off the shelf Israeli spyware like Pegasus and get it to people's phones.

[Ben Rhodes]

Of course Chinese are doing this, so that's alarming. And look, as things ratchet up with the Chinese, maybe if they did have access to that, maybe they would pass something to the Houthis. It'd be a huge escalation.

[Tommy Vitor]

We'll get to that in a minute.

[Ben Rhodes]

We'll get to that then. The last thing I want to say is, Tommy, it reminded me of the McChrystal event. And so for younger worldos, Stan McChrystal was the lead commander of US forces of international forces in Afghanistan. While we were in office, there was a Rolling Stone article that came out in which he was, you know, hanging out with the reporter, drinking with his team, and kind of just trashing everybody in the administration, particularly like Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, who was at the State Department. And Obama ended up firing McChrystal over this. Now, the reason why he fired him, I'll never forget. Remember our buddy Doug Lute? Doug Lutz saying to me, look, we liked General McChrystal, but he said, look, in the army, if a private talked about a captain this way, they'd be disciplined, they'd be fired, and on up the chain. The point is, what message is this sending about things like operational security. This actually matters. The reason the military is so vigilant about having kind of uniform codes for these types of things is that if, you know, the leadership is playing by a different set of rules, it sends a message down the chain of command to all the mini Pete Hex who might be in the military, like, well, I'll send signal messages about what I'm doing, you know, and so this could filter out through, you know, not. Not everybody in the force. And I'm not going to impugn everybody. And most people know better. But, you know, this is not the example you want to set.

[Tommy Vitor]

No. And it's. Yeah, exactly. Hegseth's message is rules for thee, but not for me. Yeah, it's kind of the takeaway there. But it actually gets worse, Ben. So Hegseth has just been purging his own staff. Last Friday, three top Pentagon officials were fired. The official explanation for these firings was that they were associated with a leak investigation that we'll get into a second. But the guys fired were Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to Hegseth, Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy defense Secretary, and Darren Selnick, who was Hegseth's deputy chief of staff. So the leak investigation that apparently precipitated all of this was started by Hegseth's chief of staff, Joe Casper, who Politico says is also leaving the job in the coming days for some other kind of nebulous Pentagon position. So the leak investigation itself, according to Politico, involved reports about, quote, military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk's controversial visit to the Pentagon, and pausing the collection of intelligence to Ukraine. The Elon Musk piece of that was when he was apparently going to get briefed on the military plan to take.

[Ben Rhodes]

A minute on the Panama Canal.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know, I don't really remember that story.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, there were no military plans for the Panama Canal when we were there. So a little worrisome that they're drawing those up.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that's a weird one to have in your playbook. So after all this came out, Ben, then on Sunday night, Hegseth's former spokesman, like the guy he had tried to hire to be the assistant Secretary for Public affairs, he wrote this bizarre but also very damning Politico op ed where he talked about being a huge Trump fan, a huge Hegseth fan, but also said that the Pentagon was in chaos and that Trump deserved better leadership. On Monday, NPR reported that the administration was shopping around for a new secretary of Defense, but the White House and Trump himself quickly shut that down. Here's a quick clip of Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, commenting on this. This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement. Do you think the entire Pentagon appreciated being described as working against President Trump? I bet that went over really well.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, there's so much that's crazy about this. I mean, first is these were his guys, as you pointed, guys like these were not deep state guys. These were people that were brought in by Hegseth. One of these guys worked for Hegseth for like a decade, Astroturf organizations. So this guy is so erratic that even people that have worked with him for Years that he hired are like, I'm out after a few weeks, you know, I mean, well, they were, it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Sounds like they were pushed out. They were like frog marched out. Yeah, like when people went to their office and they were escorted out by securities. But so it sounds like Pete is so paranoid that he's firing his own buddies of like a decade.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, who could have foreseen that someone who is a had a drinking problem and is a weekend Fox and Friends host and has jumped on stage at events and chanted kill Muslims turns out to be not the best personality, you know, but then also for the White House to just be standing there and attacking the entire Pentagon as full of people that should be fired. These are people that are currently serving in harm's way. These are people that have served in uniform for decades. This is an insane. Picking their own appointees. So that's not a great sign either. And let's be clear. The Pentagon is this massive organization and that front office where he's just had a kind of purge is the connective tissue between the Secretary of Defense and the uniform military. The combatant commands like Central Command in the Middle east to acquisitions, these massive purchases of military systems, managing a trillion dollar budget, managing health care for millions of people like that front office, if that's in chaos and the whole building can't function, then the whole building is in chaos. You can't get decisions made. And so this is not good.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, because the Pentagon's not full of a bunch of people who will just kind of make their best judgment and make decisions without orders. They are waiting for orders.

[Ben Rhodes]

By definition, there are people that follow.

[Tommy Vitor]

Orders if it's not flowing down from secretary to his chief of staff to everybody else. And you know, so Trump got Pete Hegseth's back. I mean, of course, we know in Trump world that like you're in until he decides you're out. Clearly though, Hegseth feels like he's fighting for his life. Like he went to battle with the C SPAN camera next to the Easter bunny and his kids at the Easter Egg Roll on. On Monday. And then Hegseth went on Fox News Tuesday morning to defend himself. Ben, that interview didn't start out great. Catch the little slip up here.

[Ben Rhodes]

Here to set the record straight.

[Tommy Vitor]

Himself, former secretary, the current Secretary of State, Pete Hegseth. Former Secretary, current. So he got wrong. The current or the former part of the.

[Ben Rhodes]

You know why he may be one of the people on the list? He might be because I think Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmade I mean, if Trump is shopping for new secret, he's gonna be shopping on Fox and Friends.

[Tommy Vitor]

They're pushing him out. Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

So they may upgrade from a weekend.

[Tommy Vitor]

Host to a weekday host that honestly, that's a pretty big upgrade. So tough start to the interview for Brian Kilmeade. But here's the gist of Pete Hegseth's defense of himself.

[Ben Rhodes]

I look at war plans every single day. What was shared over signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination, other things. That's what I've said from the beginning. We take the classification of information. Very important. It's very significant to us that we safeguard it. And so when we had leaks, which we have had here, we did a serious leak investigation. And through that leak investigation, unfortunately, we found some folks that we believe were not holding to the protocols that we hold dear here at the Defense Department. When you dismiss people who you believe are leaking classified information, and again, the investigation is ongoing, and that will take time. And when the evidence produced, it will go to doj. Why would it surprise anybody, Brian, if those very same people keep leaking to the very same reporters whatever information they think they can have to try to sabotage the agenda of the president or the secretary? So once a leaker, always a leaker, Often a leaker.

[Tommy Vitor]

So one, it's weird that a former Fox weekend anchor kind of talks like the cat in the hat.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

What are we doing here? Tech second. He's screwing his friends over there directly. He's being like, these guys are leakers. They're still leakers. They're leaking again. And to your point about kind of the culture rotting from the head down, every single US Service member who saw that Atlantic report and saw what he put in those signal chats knows that information is classified. And then they're watching their boss go on TV and lie about it and.

[Ben Rhodes]

Basically say there's a different set of rules for him because under classification protocols, he should be gone too. He should be court martial. And look, the fish rots from the head. I mean, not to sound, not to put on my MSNBC hat here, but when the President, United States takes classified information down to the john at Mar a Lago, like it said, the message, you know, I do wanna just come back to hearing that interview. This guy looks like Christian Bale from American Psycho and he sounds completely unhinged.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And again, almost every Republican, not everyone, almost every Republican senator voted for this. So they own this. Right. These people say that they take American Security? Seriously. In the military. Seriously. I want you to consider that person you just heard in a scenario where in the middle of the night, our time, the Chinese have launched a multifaceted invasion of Taiwan, and he's getting on a call, trying to figure out whether to send the Pacific fleet to try to prevent the blockade and amphibious invasion of. Is that the guy you want in the room making judgment calls about potential?

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, how many drinks? Three. Three or more.

[Ben Rhodes]

Best case scenario is he might be passed out and it goes down the chain of command.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's true.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, because the reality is that is even in that interview, he's bragging that he looks at war plans every day, which, by the way, I don't think is true. Like, I don't think Secretaries of Defense sit around. He just seems like he's living a fantasy camp, you know, with his pocket squares and his war plans and signaling his buddies when they have to keep. And he's just so far over his head that you can't even get your mind around it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Try getting a reservation at Dorsey now, Paul, with that attitude. Last thing, Ben. So Tucker Carlson had Dan Caldwell on his show. That was one of Pete's. The senior advisor guy who is one of Pete's closest friends who'd worked with.

[Ben Rhodes]

I love Tucker's. Like Fox News revenge every now and then.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, so. So, so this, like, Tucker, as always, like the conversation. Whenever Tucker talks to someone in power from the Trump administration, it's always about how they have no agency and they're just like, victims of the deep state and being sabotaged by the people around them or whatever. But Ben Caldwell had an interesting theory for who is really responsible for the leaks that led to the leak investigation. I thought this might interest you as we sit here today, Tucker, and this could change by the time this is aired. But as we sit here today, Susan Rice, Michelle Flournoy, Eric Edelman are still in good standing with the Department of Defense.

[Ben Rhodes]

What?

[Tommy Vitor]

That is correct.

[Ben Rhodes]

They are.

[Tommy Vitor]

Susan Rice. Susan Rice. Obama.

[Ben Rhodes]

Susan Rice. Yes, Susan Rice is still on the.

[Tommy Vitor]

Defense Policy Board right now as we speak. Sit here today. By the time this is released, that might change.

[Ben Rhodes]

But as we sit here today, she is still on the Defense Policy Board.

[Tommy Vitor]

Now, that doesn't mean she can go in the building and get access to.

[Ben Rhodes]

Whatever she wants, but it means that she works with DoD employees, she can interact with them and has the credential and the affiliation with the Department of Defense. Well, that's shocking.

[Tommy Vitor]

That is shocking. Huh? Should we call Susan right now?

[Ben Rhodes]

I Talked to Susan last week. She didn't say she was making emergency inspection visits to the Pentagon.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, why didn't she leak us the Panama Canal warpoint?

[Ben Rhodes]

Something is telling me that Susan Rice is unlikely. I mean, they. I'm sure they just. The defense policy. No offense to Defense Policy Board, but this is not like a daily job.

[Tommy Vitor]

Getting daily intel briefs.

[Ben Rhodes]

So my guess is they just haven't gotten to that over at ppo. I just love that Susan Rice has to become the boogeyman in every. Every one of their conspiracy. Always.

[Tommy Vitor]

And also this guy, like, listen, I. I watched this interview with this dude. I kind of felt bad for him because, like.

[Ben Rhodes]

Wait, wait. You know who else is on this board?

[Tommy Vitor]

Who else?

[Ben Rhodes]

We got Colin call.

[Tommy Vitor]

Nice. A lot of libs.

[Ben Rhodes]

Our buddy, former colleague, Dana Smith. Remember Dana?

[Tommy Vitor]

You're helping them do a purge right now.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm sorry. Yeah, well, but because these people are not going to meetings with Pete Hegseth.

[Tommy Vitor]

No.

[Ben Rhodes]

So this is all moot point.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, I watched this interview with this guy, Dan Caldwell. It does seem like.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, this just proves that he's not like a deep stater. He's a nut.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, he's a nut. Well, I came away kind of feeling like he's being targeted for leaks he probably didn't do. And that would suck because you get prosecuted. I mean, it's pretty scary. But then he goes and like accuses Susan Rice of doing it. So all my. All my sympathy went away. I mean, there is a question. Tucker makes a whole thing about whether Caldwell opposes war with Iran and whether he and others are getting screwed by like the traditional hawks. It does seem like there is that kind of like intra party battle happening, but I don't know if it's relevant here.

[Ben Rhodes]

It doesn't feel relevant here. This feels like a chaos emanating out from the personality he takes out.

[Tommy Vitor]

Party of the World is brought to you by Aura Frames. Mother's Day is coming up. I know you haven't bought a gift yet, and I have a great idea for you. What is it? Aura Frames. It's a digital picture frame. You can preload it with all kinds of great family photos and then you can update them whenever you feel like it. And every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. You can add unlimited photos and videos and invite as many people as you want to a frame. There's no hidden fees or subscriptions. It only takes about two minutes to set up a frame using the Aura app, upload videos up to 30 seconds long and Your favorite live iPhone photos will play right on the frame. The embedded speaker can play audio on demand. You have complete control over who has access to your frame, and the Aura app lets you share photos more securely than with email, which many other digital frames require. Can I just tell you, I Mark and Lil, my parents got them an Aura frame for Christmas. They are obsessed. They're great and I get texts from all the time. That was like hey, now you guys are taking more pictures of the kids. Can you please upload them into our Aura frame because we look at it every day. The gift that keeps on giving Aura Frames was named Best Digital photo frame by Wirecutter and it's easy to see why. There's unlimited storage so you can add as many photos, videos and funny memes as you can find. And it's so simple to set up. Just plug it in and share away. Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. For a limited time, listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 plus free shipping on their best selling Carver Mat frames. That's a U R A frames.com promo code world. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

[Ben Rhodes]

You're the owner of a small business, which means you're also the tech guy and HR and personal assistant and head honcho and intern. You could use another pair of hands like the experts you'll find at Verizon.

[Tommy Vitor]

Small Business Days, April 21st through 27th.

[Ben Rhodes]

Get a FREE tech check, special deals and more.

[Tommy Vitor]

Call 1-800-483-4428 or visit verizon.comsmallbusiness to book your appointment. Verizon Business Cash Patel, the current director of the FBI. He there's a big write up of him in the New York Times. The headline was a different kind of FBI Chief Jet setting. Patel loves the limelight. Just a quick overview of the story. It talks about how Cash Patel keeps just hopping on the FBI private jet to go to MMA events with Trump, which is weird and not normal and not anything a FBI director has done in the past. It talks about Akash Patel have been going to NHL games and sat next to Wayne Gretzky at one of them in the box. Wayne Gretzky.

[Ben Rhodes]

Some weird Wayne Gretzky just gets worse the more you learn about him.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, he's having some like real political issues in Canada because he's a big Trump buddy.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's this giant mag.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And he won't just say like no, they probably shouldn't annex Us, it feels like pretty simple.

[Ben Rhodes]

All your childhood heroes, man.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know it's tough.

[Ben Rhodes]

Not that he was mine, but I.

[Tommy Vitor]

Mean, guy could, he could see where the puck was going, you know? Cash Patel is apparently a member of something called the Poodle Room, which is a club at the Font Blue in Las Vegas. It says that Cash Patel took three trips on FBI planes to visit his girlfriend in Nashville. Glad we're paying for that one. And he talked about how he's like, releasing photos of himself, like, dressed in camo, watching FBI training exercises and how Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, apparently hurt himself, like, grappling with some FBI jiu jitsu instructor down at Quantico. So it's. The whole story is worth reading, but it just does get at how, like Cash Patel, the kind of MAGA FBI director, It's just, it's. The role is very different these days and it should be. I. It makes me very unsettled.

[Ben Rhodes]

It should. I mean, one of the things that we have generally focused on the harms being done by the Trump administration. Rightly so. And there are many harms being done. But then there's also the question is, what is the US Government not going to be doing? You know, I mean, Pete Hegseth, Kashpatel, what kind of threats, what kind of issues are just going completely undressed because these people are fantasy camping their jobs? I mean, the common thread between Hegseth and Patel is it's, it's like they're just living some childhood fantasy of being.

[Tommy Vitor]

Kash Patel, lives in Vegas.

[Ben Rhodes]

He likes to fly around and dress in camo and go to like, can you imagine? Well, I'm not even gonna go to the like, oh, can you imagine, like Chris Wray MMA event or something? But the point is, just what is this all about?

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't get it, man. It's not good. Speaking of terrible cabinet selections, make a wish. Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a plan for a total reorganization of the State Department on Tuesday. He did it. In a post on Substack, Rubio said, quote, I am initiating a broad reorganization of the department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American foreign policy. Ben, I suspect that Rubio releases on Substack because he knows he's going to be pivoting from cabinet secretary to newsletter guy soon.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, he's trying to build descriptions.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, he's got to get some subs. Here are some of the key changes. He proposed a planned 15% reduction of staff based in the U.S. the department is going to go from 734 offices and bureaus to 602. They're going to eliminate the position of the Undersecretary for Civilian Security, democracy and human rights. According to Rubio, this position, quote, provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine human rights and democracy and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense, even when they were in direct conflict with the goals of the Secretary, the President and the American people. I personally was a little more worried about democracy promotion, human rights being used as code for regime change, wars. But you do you, Marco, they're going to close the Office of Global Criminal justice, which advises on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Why waste your time on that stuff? Right. They're going to close the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operation, which works on conflict prevention, crisis response, stabilization activities and more. And they also took aim at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which he says has become a platform for left wing activists to go after all of our favorite leaders like Viktor Orban.

[Ben Rhodes]

Never felt like that when we were there.

[Tommy Vitor]

No.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'll come back to that.

[Tommy Vitor]

No. So Rubio's announcement came after the New York Times reported over the weekend on a draft order that envisioned far more sweeping cuts to the department. So in a sense, this is a relief. Like the proposal that was leaked got rid of the Bureau of African affairs, which seems insane.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

But Ben, just a few thoughts like I had on reading this. First, like, I obviously, I agree with some of Rubio's criticism. Like, there are lots of offices with kind of unclear mandates and overlapping authorities. And, you know, I don't have enough of a handle on the State Department's current organization to know if this reorg is a good idea. But certainly, like a lot of people thought that it could be reformed. Second, though, it seems very dumb to me that they keep making this about cost savings, since the State Department budgets its annual budget is about 6% of what we spend on the military. Yeah, you're not going to find a lot of savings here. Third, the whole thing is a huge flip flop for Marco Rubio personally, since he used to talk about projecting American values around the world. And finally, it just seems so dumb that they seem completely hell bent on retreating from Africa, as the Chinese are very openly eating our lunch there. And especially when we know that by the end of the century, 30% of the global population is going to be living on the continent of Africa. You feel like you maybe want to invest now, but Any big takeaways from this, this treatise from Mr. Rubio?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean I'm just going to reiterate that Marco Rubio was the kind of person that built his entire political identity on supporting the promotion of democracy abroad. That bureau, drl, democracy rights and labor like Cuba money went through there, Cuba democracy money. So he was either completely full shit his whole career or he's so callous and self interested that he's abandoning all of his principles. It just bears repeating. I think one way to look at this is yes, the State Department was kind of right for form. This feels like not the most thought out way of doing does speak to. They have this belief that I've just not ever experienced that the State Department is full of these ideologues. It just fundamentally was not my experience. These were pretty centrist people, but also if you connect it with what they're doing broadly. So just take the democracy piece and look, we can all say, and we've said on this podcast, like regime change, bad democracy in service of regime change, but we do a lot of other things. So a lot of what the DRL did is kind of advocate for political prisoners, for dissidents. If we were traveling to a certain country, here are the cases to raise with those governments, the people who are in prison, who want to get out of prison. And part of what they're doing that is going to be very consequential is they're cutting all USAID funding. They now got rid of this department. We will no longer take in clearly dissidents. Right. So we've been a safe haven culture for people, for refugees and dissidents. And so what happens to all those people out in the world who is going to be advocating for the release of political prisoners? Who is going to be taking in dissidents? Who is going. There's a lot of rumors in the kind of rumor mill, Tommy, that their next target after universities is civil society.

[Tommy Vitor]

NGOs.

[Ben Rhodes]

NGOs. Including potential funding for global civil society. And so the American kind of abrupt withdrawal from being in any way supportive of global civil society, even if you think there were some excesses there that was a fraction of. A lot of these people don't even work on political issues. They work on environmental issues, they work on labor issues, they work on, you know, the kinds of things that people care about in countries around the world. And the United States leaving that space is going to be pretty devastating to the kind of people that we would generally be rooting for around the world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Just on your rubio point.

[Ben Rhodes]

Do you see?

[Tommy Vitor]

Tom Malinowski, who once led the Human Rights Bureau, pointed out how Rubio would have lost his mind if the US Government if the Obama administration had stopped releasing the annual reports about human rights violations in places like, like Venezuela or China. And now I think they're just getting rid of the entire function or, you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Know, things that people on the right seem to say they care about, like, you know, trafficking in persons. You know, there's all this other work, the conflict piece, stabilization piece. The US With USAID is no longer funding peacekeeping missions around the world. We talk about all these places where there's a need for some international peacekeeping force. With the US Getting rid of this part of the State Department, getting rid of the usaid, that's going to be compromised. I think an important thing to watch though, Tommy, is this is like a one, two punch, right? This is like a substack and an org chart that they put out. We won't really know what they're doing until the budget comes out. What do they want to fund at the State Department? I'm worried about exchange programs. I think international exchange programs are cheap and you get enormous value on them. Americans have the experience in context of being in other countries, but importantly, we've educated world leaders, business leaders around the world in this country through exchange programs. So there are things like that that I think could still be cut. We may still have a Bureau of African affairs, but it's clearly going to be deprioritized by everything they've done. So, yeah, this is just a Secretary of State, like gloating about essentially weakening his own department and the United States further pulling up the drawbridge from the rest of the world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And just again, like the US military has something like 2.8 million total employees. When it's like active reserve and civilian employees, the State Department is something like 80,000 and 50,000 of those are being local citizens abroad. So it's like 14,000 trained diplomats. So again, we're carving down to the bone a pretty relatively lean agency, all things considered.

[Ben Rhodes]

And people, a lot of people left in the first Trump term. People are probably going to be fired. A lot of people are leaving now. The point is the Foreign Service is being decimated and that is going to take a long time to rebuild.

[Tommy Vitor]

And these are specialized people. These are people that can speak like six languages, who understand the politics and the culture and like niche issues like non proliferation and trade, and are just like genuine brilliant experts in all kinds of things. And they do it because they care Deeply about the country. They're not making a lot of money.

[Ben Rhodes]

We know a bunch of these people who could have been making a lot more money, so much more than they were in the State Department.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. I did forget, though, that Big Balls had gone from Doge over to the State Department. So maybe he's leading the show. He was a 19 year old.

[Ben Rhodes]

I think Big balls have landed.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, Big balls have landed. Before we move on, Ben, here's a quick clip of Make a Wish Rubio talking about the administration's efforts to cut a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

[Ben Rhodes]

We need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable over the next few weeks. If it is, we're in. If it's not, then we'll have to. We have other priorities to focus on as well.

[Tommy Vitor]

We're not going to continue to fly.

[Ben Rhodes]

All over the world and do meeting after meeting of about after meeting if no progress is being made. So they're serious about peace, either side or both who want to help. It's not going to happen. Then we're just going to move on. We're going to move on to other.

[Tommy Vitor]

Topics that are equally, if not more important in some ways to the United States. Who is that threat for? The Russians are like, great, move on. And the Ukrainians are like, great, stop attacking us in like, upbraiding Zelensky in the Oval Office. And we'll just move on to try to get the support we need from Europe without you guys because you're abandoning us anyway.

[Ben Rhodes]

And does he sound, like, scary or intimidating? No. And also, let me just say, your whole fucking job is to fly around.

[Tommy Vitor]

The world and have meetings, you whiny bitch.

[Ben Rhodes]

We're not gonna fly around the world meeting after meeting. What's the point of being Secretary of State if you don't fly around the world and have some fucking meetings?

[Tommy Vitor]

You have a plane.

[Ben Rhodes]

Guess who's having meetings? Steve Wykoff is.

[Tommy Vitor]

Rubio and Wyckoff are skipping the latest round of talks in London, but Wyckoff is going to Moscow again.

[Ben Rhodes]

Maybe get some extra paintings, you know? Yeah, yeah. They don't even give Marco the paintings.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, no, he's not getting a single painting.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's not getting a single world painting from Putin.

[Tommy Vitor]

Do you think I just. I'm being too mean? Speaking of big balls, the what a Day newsletter from Crooked Media has recently dug deep into all the Doge lobbying. Nat Berg and the news team. They looked at how AI is being used to spy on federal workers in collaboration with the Garden. Last week, they wrote about how internal emails from the NSC showed the administration's really trying to achieve the tariffs. So if you're not subscribed to what a Day, you're missing out on all kinds of great content. Big balls, small balls, informative takes, hot takes. Sign up for the what a day [e-mail] daily.

[Ben Rhodes]

And I have one plug.

[Tommy Vitor]

What do you got?

[Ben Rhodes]

Which is. I try. I always forget to share events I'm doing. But this one will interest you because this is with our buddy, Peter Hamby. Nice. So I will be on a panel. Me, Peter Hamby, and Lynn Vavrek, who you know from ucla. Awesome person. Political science.

[Tommy Vitor]

Really smart political scientists.

[Ben Rhodes]

We will be doing the Pen America World Voices Festival next Wednesday here in Los Angeles in Culver City, Angelino's at the Vendi Museum. So go online. You can get tickets at the World Voices Festival website.

[Tommy Vitor]

Where's the pregame?

[Ben Rhodes]

Hammy's house.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay.

[Ben Rhodes]

And actually, it should probably be a post game.

[Tommy Vitor]

Should be a pregame and a post game. Post game. But I'm not gonna name it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, we're not gonna name it. We'll have some fun.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, good.

[Ben Rhodes]

We'll have some fun. You should be there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Was there a moment in your life when you didn't feel in control of your money? Yeah, this week. This week. Every day of my life until I was 35. April is financial literacy month. That's right. They made a whole month reminding you to finally take control of your money. Good news is you don't need 30 days. Acorns makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future in just five minutes. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now, even if all you've got is spare change. Financial wellness may feel out of reach, but Acorns gives you small, simple steps to get started in the right direction. All you need is five minutes to create your account and start investing. Let Acorns do the hard part. All you have to do is give your money a chance to grow the market. Calamities this week notwithstanding, investing is very important. If you do it early and you just do it methodically, kind of set it and forget it. Just dollar cost average in a little bit each week or six months or whatever it will add up over time. It will make a huge difference to you someday when you want to buy a house or pay for school or pay off a bill or retire. So we highly recommend Acorns sign up now and join the over 14 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com world or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non Client Endorsement Compensation provides incentives to positively promote Acorns Tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC Registered Investment Advisor View important [e-mail] World do you know how long the average professional spends making slide decks every week? Five hours. That's almost an entire workday resizing text boxes and moving around bullet points. Well, Gamma is here to rescue you from presentation purgatory. Just drop in your notes and Gamma magically turns them into polished presentations, websites, social posts, you name it. No design or coding skills required. Start for free at Gamma App and get a month of Gamma Pro for free with promo code Podcast Foreign so as everyone probably knows, Pope Francis has died at the age of 88. The cause of death was acute J.D. vance. I'm kind of kidding. He had a stroke and a heart attack. But J.D. vance really was one of the last people to meet with Pope Francis, which is kind of mean to Pope Francis.

[Ben Rhodes]

It also just kind of defines the cavernous gap between the two individuals in question.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, so Francis went from Jorge Mario Brigolio, the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, to Pope Francis in March of 2013. That was after a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary and then a Comfort vine win in South Carolina. I'm just kidding. So the Pope really did make history. He was the first South American Pope. He was one who was not afraid to mix it up on foreign policy. Pope Francis spoke out about climate change. He called for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, he called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and he would make nightly check in calls to the Catholic Church in Gaza during the war just because he's a good guy. And then during the Obama administration, which I hope you will talk about in some detail, he supported the Iran nuclear deal and played a key role in negotiations between the US And Cuba on normalization. So the Pope was also clearly not a fan of Donald Trump or his attacks on immigrants and refugees. And then, generally speaking, Francis, I think, tried to model a more decent, humane, humble way of being, attributes which are in short supply these days. So Ben, the conservative critics of Pope Francis say He broke too far from traditional conservative doctrine and tradition and focused too much on social justice issues. The more liberal critics say that while Francis had a more moderate, decent tone when talking about, say, LGBT people, he didn't make major changes to the church itself to make it more inclusive. And then I think both sides are kind of weirded out by this deal the church cut with the Chinese government to allow them to have more of a say in the selection of Catholic priests in China. But big picture, I was a pretty big fan of the guy. I mean, I'm not a Catholic. I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church as an institution, but I just have felt for a long time that we got incredibly lucky when he emerged on the world stage after Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict, the one before him, because Benedict was not exactly warm and fuzzy. He was more of a doctrine guy. And then Francis comes along, and he has this. He models his approach where he's, like, taking the bus and caring for the poor and caring for the planet and preventing wars, and it was just an incredible breath of fresh air. But you had actual experience working with this guy. What would you make of him?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, I would say, as a headline, you know, he was a moral leader in a world that lacks moral leadership. We're living through a time where there's a huge deficit. I was saying to you earlier, Tommy, like, we were growing up, you know, Nelson Mandela was still around. You had the elders. You had people like Kofi Annan, you had people like Jimmy Carter. You know, the kind of people would kind of come into conflict zones or kind of people that would deliver messages that could reach broad audiences. Pope Francis, because of his character and because of his background, he's the first pope from Latin America. Global south, an institution in which the populations increase of Catholics are increasingly in the global south, that was so important to those people to feel represented in that institution. And then specifically, you know, he spoke out on climate change. He put out an encyclical, which is like the pastoral message the Pope sends, making essentially kind of a spiritual, moral case for fighting climate change. He constantly spoke out on behalf of refugees, including at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, where he really took on some of the political sentiment in Europe to try to welcome refugees. And he's sitting there in Italy, too, right in Vatican City. And so that mattered there, the voice for peace in places like Gaza, where my favorite line that he had is, they asked him, you call the church every day. What do you say to people there? And he says, I listen, which is another thing that is in short supply. My own experience was President Obama, we went to visit Pope Francis in 2014. He was relatively new, and I'd been in these secret talks with the Cubans. And we knew, like me and Ricardo Zuniga, our friend who was in that negotiating team with me, that when you have two parties that don't trust each other, you need a third party to kind of make the commitments to and to have kind of a validator to the deal. And we thought, well, maybe the Vatican could be good. So when we went to the Vatican, Obama spent like an hour with Pope Francis and he raised the fact that we were in these secret negotiations with the Cuba. This is the first world leader that Obama told that we were doing this with. And he said, we will be helpful however we can be.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's cool.

[Ben Rhodes]

This relationship needs to change. I will offer the Vatican in any way we can support you. And what was interesting, Tommy, to just show what kind of figure he was, is obviously he had a lot of respect in the United States. And we knew that the validation of Pope Francis would help with Catholic populations in the U.S. the Cubans have a weird history with the Catholic Church. Right. Fidel, Not a fan. But when I raised this in the negotiations with the Cubans, I'll never forget, they kind of looked at each other and said, papa Francisco. Papa Francisco. Oh, yeah. And it wasn't him as the leader of the Catholic Church. It was him as a social justice committed person from Latin America.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right. Jesuit.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so it wasn't that the Vatican was playing this role. It's that Pope Francis, the person was playing this role. He could be trusted by both Americans and Cubans. There are not many people who could do that. And we went. After we concluded the negotiation, we went to the Vatican. We met with Cardinal Perolin, who's the kind of number two guy there. I think he's in the running, but he's, you know, he's coming in fourth in the New Hampshire polls right now.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, his last debate wasn't really good.

[Ben Rhodes]

And we had this incredibly powerful all, you know, multi hour meeting where we met with the Vatican officials and the Cubans did. And then we all just sit around a table and read aloud our commitments. Some of these people on the Vatican side were in tears because they'd worked in Cuba and knew the suffering of the Cuban people there. And the literal blessing of Pope Francis not only built political support in both countries, but it kind of lent a moral weight to what we were doing that nobody else could have supplied, you know, and where else can you. I'm not a Catholic at all, so I'm not saying this is about even the church itself. I'm saying it was about him, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

And there are not many places you can go today where you can find that kind of moral leadership.

[Tommy Vitor]

Dolly Parton, Keanu Reeves, Optimus Prime. No, I totally agree. And also, like, we look at the essence of the man, right. I mean, it's almost cliche to talk about how he would, you know, wash the feet of the sick or ride the bus in Argentina. But if you go to the Vatican, if you go to St. Peter's Basilica, it's not particularly humble. You know, like, the takeaway for me was like, power, money, wealth. Like, you know, that's sort of the feeling I got. He was just the. His approach in his public Persona was entirely different.

[Ben Rhodes]

When I remember when we were walking in to the complex for those meetings, there was this really nice Irish priest walking us in. And the previous pope, Benedict Ratzinger, had, you know, he had the Prada shoes or whatever, and he pointed to this very simple apartment. He's like, yeah, that's where Pope Francis, you know, moved in. It was literally like a door, you know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so he modeled humility. And the last thing I'd say, I'm not an expert in Vatican reforms. That is a tough fucking institution to reform. So 12 years is not a long time to kind of turn around the ocean liner. I will say, you know, he appointed a lot of cardinals from the global south, from conflict zones. And so it'll be interesting to watch, you know, his election. I mean, as we've learned, you can work for a progressive, and if the next guy's not progressive, your reform efforts can. But if that reconstruction of the cardinals leads to a Francis, like, Pope, this could. We could look back and say, hey, Pope Francis was the guy who turned this thing around.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't know if you heard the Daily Today on this. They pointed out that. So there's 135 cardinals eligible to vote. Francis elevated 108 of them.

[Ben Rhodes]

Oh, I didn't know.

[Tommy Vitor]

80% of the people voting. Yeah. So they owe their jobs to Francis. So hopefully, you know, this is like endorsing early in Iowa. Hopefully he'll get some, you know, someone that'll follow in his shoes. But it does speak to the point.

[Ben Rhodes]

Hopefully, Joe Biden's not running.

[Tommy Vitor]

It does speak to the point you're making, which is like, there's only so much you can achieve during your tenure but it could be that he set the stage for more dramatic changes by.

[Ben Rhodes]

Appointing all these things for an institution that is, like, literally seen as the heart of the West. Justification of empire will become a global south institution.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. So, you know, the other metric he's judged by just. Just to be fair, is whether or not he succeeded in growing the church. It doesn't seem like he was successful there. In 2023, about 20% of Americans identified as Roman Catholic. That's down from 25% in 2008. I think Catholic membership in Latin America dropped seven or eight points during his tenure. This according to, I think, Politico or Axios.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Interestingly, Ben Francis never visited Argentina during his 12 years as pope, even though he visited, like, 68 countries in basically all of Argentina's neighbors. So he never went back to his home country, which rubbed a lot of people there the wrong way. It's not totally clear why. It's likely that he didn't want to get pulled into Argentinian politics and be used as a prop by whichever president kind of scored the visit. Obviously, Javier Millet. Yeah, yeah. As we've talked about, openly attacked him and called him an imbecile during his campaign. So not gonna go see that guy. But also, Francis was criticized by some for not doing enough to stand up to the military junta in Argentina during the 70s and early 80s. There's allegations that Francis, or maybe others in the Catholic Church in Argentina either turned a blind eye to some of the worst abuses, like torture or the stealing of children from people that were executed by the regime or that they collaborated. Francis was never formally accused of collaboration. There's no known evidence, but you know, that 20, 30,000 people were, like, just disappeared during the dirty wars. So I think there's a lot of understandable, like, lingering anger and resentment in anyone who didn't stop it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, no. I mean, very complicated history for the Catholic Church and a lot of those dictatorships. The one thing I'd say is it is interesting that the Christian demographics. You see this in a place like Brazil, this kind of growing evangelical movement. The Catholics have been losing some people in that direction, which those people have become kind of Bolsonaro supporters. So that's interesting trend to watch. The last thing I just say is that the Catholic Church in this country is to his right.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right. The most extreme.

[Ben Rhodes]

So maybe one of the reasons why they're having problems with membership is that they're the ones who seem to be hung up on sex and, you know, LGBT issues and abortion and stuff in A way that Francis didn't seem to be like our. Our country, as usual, is not exactly moving in the right direction on these things.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, we are swinging back the wrong way. So last thing on this. So the. In terms of next steps. So 15 or 20 days after the death of the Pope, the cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel and they're sealed off from the outside world until they pick a new Pope. In college, Ben, we called that a lock in. It was more about, you know, 30 racks of natty Light. And anyway, so all cardinals under 80 get to vote.

[Ben Rhodes]

Do you think they do that? The Conclave? Honestly, yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Do you think they're shotgunning beers? How funny would that be? If you walked in, you got a window. So if you're under 80, you get to vote. Again, funny. There's one vote the first day, then up to four votes every day after. You need a two thirds majority to be elected the new Pope. Black smoke comes out of the chimney. That means there's no news. White smoke means we got a new Pope. Apparently they get some. They add some chemicals to the paper that they burn the ballots, but they add some chemicals to get that white color. Then the Pope will speak from St. Peter's Basilica afterwards. And if you talk about what happens during the Conclave, you can get excommunicated for it, even if you use signal. So just heads up to everybody. Technically you can pick anyone, any baptized Roman Catholic male, but it's been all cardinals who have been elected pope since 1378, so. So I guess, you know, I don't have a chance. But Biden does. You're right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Is there an age? 80 years old. I thought you said.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, you can vote if you're under 80.

[Ben Rhodes]

Okay. Okay.

[Tommy Vitor]

But I don't know if you can get the gig. Yeah, might be a brief 10 years.

[Ben Rhodes]

Did you see Conclave?

[Tommy Vitor]

I've not, but everyone says I have to. I will see it now.

[Ben Rhodes]

The end is, you know, let's just say the end is questionable whether it's in line with those results. Okay, good twist ending.

[Tommy Vitor]

Interesting. I'll have to watch that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Pot.

[Tommy Vitor]

Save the World is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. Now I do. Now you do. They have all the plants your yard needs, like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so many more. Whatever plants you're interested in, Fast Growing Trees has you covered. Find the perfect fit for your climate and space. Fast Growing Trees makes It easy to get your dream yard order online and get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days without ever leaving home. Their alive and thrive guarantee ensures your plants arrive happy and healthy. Plus get support from trained plant experts on call to help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants and learn how to care for them. Tons of people here at Crooked have used fast growing trees to pick up fruit trees, plants for inside, shrubs for outside. It's a great service. They showed up super fast. They have professionals who can help you think about the best way to landscape your yard or whatever space you have available, which you need. How many of us know how to landscape our yard? Zero. I have absolute. I don't even know how to have an opinion on these things or like which plants to put where in the sunlight or this and what they need. Yeah, and hiring a professional landscaper can be really, really expensive and fast. Growing trees is a great solution where you can get great quality, keep all the stuff alive, help it look good, but not break the bank. This spring they have the best deals for your yard, up to half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get 15% off their first purchase when using the code world at checkout. That's an additional 15% [e-mail] using the code world at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com Code World now that's the perfect time to plant, use world to save Today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions apply. Do you know how long the average professional spends making slide decks every week? Five hours. That's almost an entire workday resizing text boxes and moving around bullet points. Well, Gamma is here to rescue you from presentation purgatory. Just drop in your notes and Gamma magically turns them into polished presentations, websites, social posts, you name it. No design or coding skills required. Start for free at Gamma app and get a month of Gamma Pro for free with promo code podcast. Okay, let's turn to our own little mess over here, Ben. Is the global trade war. Folks probably are watching the stock market go up and then down and then all over the place. And it's because it's a stupid self inflicted global trade war that has not ended. So earlier today the International Monetary Fund or imf announced that thanks to the Trump tariffs, the global growth rate this year will only be 2.8%, which is down a half point from their projection that they released in January and below historical averages. So good one there. And again because Trump's policy is stupid. The slowdown is going to hit the U.S. economy harder than most other places. The IMF says their U.S. growth estimate is a third lower than it was in January and a full point below last year. China's going to take a hit too, but a much smaller one proportionally than we do. So again, none of this makes sense. Two weeks ago, Trump announced this 90 day pause on what they had described as reciprocal tariffs on basically every country except China. The White House wants us to believe that they're going to be able to negotiate dozens of new trade agreements before that 90 day deadline is up. So the tariffs will go back into place. You should not believe them. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's strategy is to get commitments from U.S. trading partners to isolate the Chinese economy in exchange for the US Getting rid of our own tariffs and trade barriers. But the Chinese are openly warning other countries not to play that game, issuing statements like, once international trade returns to the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, all nations will be victims. Pretty good quote.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, they got some good writers there. Look, I think that the part of this I want to focus on is the China one. Because look, what's so dumb about this Trump thing is they'll get a couple like, news cycle things like somebody agreed to this and they'll act like they wanted some big win and they've already lost the trade war to China. That's my hot take here, which is that the Chinese have been preparing for this since Trump's first term. They've been methodically remaking their own economy. And actually some analysts were like, what are the Chinese doing? Their growth is down or they're not rescuing their own housing market. What they were doing is methodically making themselves a hub for certain sectors and for certain trade relationships. So, for instance, they are a leader in clean energy, right? And so they produce massive amounts of solar panels, EVs. But it's not just that they dominate all these supply chains for clean energy, whether it's kind of the rare earth materials that we're always talking about or whether it's component parts. And so if you're Europe, if you're somebody that wants to be plugged in to the clean energy economy, you're gonna choose China over the United States?

[Tommy Vitor]

Absolutely. Over Tesla? Yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like over some fucking lunatic whose truth socialing is trade policy, you're gonna go in that direction. Right? And the Chinese know that. And these are US allies, Europe, Japan, South Korea that get this. And they're not gonna listen to Trump talking about liquid gold of American fossil fuels. They're gonna want to be plugged into the Chinese clean energy ecosystem. AI. Where are you going to want to buy your AI from? Like, you know, the Chinese who are like selling it cheaper for uses in areas like robotics and manufacturing that developing countries want. Or like the Americans who could like throw a tariff on you tomorrow? The Canadians, I mean, and you and I were talking this going in. The Chinese are now buying, they're not buying their energy from us, they're signing LNG deals, liquid natural gas from the Canadians. And so we could actually, what Trump is succeeding in doing is not only is there the low hanging fruit, the Chinese have invested a lot more in Africa and Southeast Asia than we have. They're already ahead of us there. And what Trump's doing is pushing those countries closer to China. I'm talking about Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, the countries that we would assume would usually be on our team. Sure, they may announce some news cycle things for Trump, but I think the Chinese have this thing wired so that over time they're repositioning themselves as a center of key sectors, clean energy, artificial intelligence, obviously, and a lot of manufacturing. And they're the more predictable partner. We're not gonna, we may do some crappy things, we may subsidize our industries in ways that give us a competitive advantage, we may steal your intellectual property, but at least you know the deal with us. Whereas with Trump, I'll tell you, I talked to some people in other countries, Tommy, and this is not a surprise, but, but nobody knows what these Trump people are asking for.

[Tommy Vitor]

No.

[Ben Rhodes]

And I've talked to people in multiple regions who literally are like, we don't even know what they are asking us for, cuz they don't know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

The Chinese have been planning this every week changes for like a decade. And Trump, they're planning it day by day. Who do you think is gonna win that trade war?

[Tommy Vitor]

And we were just getting to a point where a lot of countries were getting frustrated with unfair Chinese trading practices, dumping steel, et cetera, et cetera. But now they're all pissed at us. And, and to your point, Ben, I mean, Xi Jinping has been hitting the road. He visited Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia and all those places he was met by the President or the king or the Prime Minister. Right. Like they're excited to see him. And the Chinese are, they're squeezing US businesses like you mentioned, not just with tariffs, but with other means. So China suspended the import of poultry from these specific American farms after suddenly Finding a new health concern that they hadn't had for decades. In March, they've refused to renew the Registration required for U.S. companies to export beef to China. So all of that's on hold. Billions of dollars worth of commerce. They stopped buying LNG, like you mentioned. And then China's Minister of Agriculture had a meeting with his counterpart in Brazil to discuss whether Brazil could replace the $12.8 billion worth of soybeans that the US sells the Chinese per year. So like you said, this is like a methodical, targeted strategy. And meanwhile, I think, like US Consumers are just unaware of how badly this could hurt us in what weird ways.

[Ben Rhodes]

And for how long.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. So Derek Thompson, great reporter at the Atlantic, he, Mr. Abundance himself, Mr. Abundance himself pointed how rough this could be for parents. So, for example, 99% of child safety seats come from China, 96% of toys for pets, 95% of cooking appliances, 93% of coloring books for kids, 88% of microwave ovens, 70 plus percent of toys intended for children under 12. It's all coming for China. So to your point, I'd like, it's easy to get bogged down in these specifics, but I do think that the media, Wall street political figures, no one is adequately reckoning with or explaining to the American people that Trump may have set in motion a reordering of the global economy that actually may be irreversible.

[Ben Rhodes]

At this point, irreversibly to the favor of China. And you know, again, who would you bet on? Like, I'm not a fan of the Chinese Communist Party, not a communist. But what those guys do is they plan, right? And they've been sitting over there with people like, and they've been undergoing this economic transformation for years to plan for this. Do you think those guys have a plan or do you think Howard Lutnick, who's going on TV and yelling about one interview, we're going to be building iPhones here and the next we're going to have robots building iPhones, but we're going to build the factories where the robots are. And Peter Navarro went to fucking prison over the January 6th. Who do you think has a better plan? Peter Navarro and Howard Lotnick or the planning committee over in China? And the other thing I just want to say is the Chinese have also been working for years to sanctions proof their economy. They saw what we did to Russia. They don't want that to happen to them. We are massively accelerating this decoupling of the US And China. This is going to make it much easier for them if they want to invade Taiwan. Because the reason that they couldn't think about doing that 10 years ago is if we drop the hammer on them economically with sanctions and we brought along some European and Asian countries in those sanctions, well, that could absolutely bring the Chinese economy to its knees. We are doing them the favor of essentially making it so that we have no economic leverage over them to not invade Taiwan and guaranteeing that other countries are gonna be more likely to look the other way if and when they invade Taiwan. So another thing to mark back to this moment is if you see that happen in a few years, Trump will have just made it much, much easier for that to happen.

[Tommy Vitor]

Wonderful.

[Ben Rhodes]

In which case, the Chinese will control all 80. The 80% plus of the advanced semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Especially after Trump.

[Ben Rhodes]

Great job, Donald Trump. You're really sticking it to the Chinese communists.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. While he shreds the CHIPS act, which is designed to try to incentivize the production of them here. Okay, a couple more things from us, Ben. So we noticed that, well, we are.

[Ben Rhodes]

Guests canceled.

[Tommy Vitor]

Our guests canceled. So we can go real long today. So we noticed that during his defense of Pete Hexath, Trump said, why don't you ask the Houthis how Pete is doing? So we're going to do that. We're going to check in on things in Yemen. So on Thursday, the US Targeted a port in the Houthi controlled province of Hodea. This port of the Red Sea is a crucial access point for fuel and fuel import taxes for the Houthis. The Houthi run health ministry said that at least 80 people were killed in the attack and almost 200 were wounded. And the UN said that the port infrastructure was severely damaged and oil is now leaking into the Red Sea. On Sunday, more U.S. airstrikes hit a neighborhood in Yemen's capital Sanaa, killing 12 more people and injuring 30. It's hard to get good information, Ben, about kind of the efficacy of these strikes. But on the most important metric, whether the Houthis have stopped firing at ships in the Red Sea, it has failed so far. And Fox News's Jennifer Griffin reported that six MQ9 Reaper drones have been shot down by the Houthis since March 3, five of them since Trump began his strikes on March 15. So these things cost 30 million a pop. So they're, they're, they're shooting back at us and pretty effectively. The Houthis are also launching missiles at Israel, including last week, and they're reportedly building closer ties with China. And Russia. So the State Department said that a Chinese company with ties to the People's Liberation army was quote, directly supporting Iran backed Houthi terrorist attacks on U. S. Interests by giving the Houthis intelligence. The U. S Had previously sanctioned that same company in 2023 for reportedly giving satellite imagery to the Wagner group. So these sound like a bunch of. But the Wall Street Journal also reported that last summer Yemen intercepted a shipment of Chinese made weapons tech that could increase the range of Houthi drones and make them harder to spot. So that partnership is clearly deepening. This piece also pointed out that some Houthis have been sanctioned by the US for doing arms deals with Russians, including buying $10 million worth of weapons from Victor Bout, the known arms dealer. And then the Russian military has also apparently advised the Houthis and provided targeting data to attack Western ships. So there's also all this talk about a potential ground operation in Yemen where you might have some Yemeni militias trying to capture this major port city. So what we're trying to get at here is things are not better. The problem is not solved. Things are escalating. There's talk of a ground operation. So I don't know that Pete Hegseth's report card out of Yemen from the Houthis is actually all that good.

[Ben Rhodes]

No, and there's layers of what's fucked up about this. I mean, first of all, they can't articulate what they're doing. You know, I mean, make a wish. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, you know, they're gonna restore shipping or something. Well, guess who doesn't believe that? The shipping companies.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

And even if they restored for time, the Houthis will be back. And like, this is not gonna work. They can't. This is for Trump, who said he was gonna end forever wars. He's repeating all the mistakes, some of which were made by Obama, most of which were made by Bush, some which were made by Biden, of launching a military effort with no definable or achievable end state state other than just bombing some stuff. And that's morally problematic. It's strategically problematic because it also ignores the reality that they're incentivizing the Chinese. If you're going to try to launch this existential trade war with the Chinese, what incentive do they have to not start helping these guys under the table, these morons in the White House who literally talk openly about like all in podcast listeners talking about how we're gonna peel the Russians away from the Chinese. The Russians are wholly Dependent on the Chinese for their economy. That's how they busted our sanctions. That's where they get their technology. That's where they get all their shit. So the Russians have no incentive to cooperate with us against the Houthis. Putin thinks he's gonna be there after Trump, right? And so he's gonna go the same way. The opportunity for Putin is not to like, peel away from China and some all in podcast 3D chana move. It's to say, this is my chance to beat the west, this is my chance to beat the Americans. And this is the kind of shit that we have to watch because you're looking at this and you're the Russians, you're the Chinese, and certainly the Houthis. And you got Pete Hegsett signaling his wife about F18 attacks and Peter Navarro launching trade wars. It's like, look at them. They're on the ropes in the US this is not the time to capitulate to these guys. This is the time to hit them.

[Tommy Vitor]

Press your advantage. 2 Two more updates out of Israel before we wrap. So first, we have talked about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu trying to fire Ronan Barr, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service. Last night, there was this crazy report where Ronan Barr said in an affidavit that he was pressured by Netanyahu to spy on Israelis who organized protests that were critical of the Israeli government and that Netanyahu demanded that Ronan Barr be loyal to him over rulings made by the Israeli Supreme Court.

[Ben Rhodes]

Gee, sounds familiar.

[Tommy Vitor]

Barr says things went south between he and Netanyahu after Barr started investigating Netanyahu's aides for leaking classified information and for their ties to Qatar. Also for rejecting a demand that Netanyahu reportedly made that Barr signed some sort of document that would have prevented Netanyahu corruption trial from going ahead based on some specious security argument that I guess Netanyahu manufactured. So, Ben, I read this. My reaction was similar to yours, which was like, I really go up and down over who is the worst leader, Israel or us. You know, on any given day, it could be one or the other. I don't know.

[Ben Rhodes]

Pretty tight competition, you know, neck and neck. It is neck and neck. I mean, this just Bibi's. For all the people here who think he's got some grand strategy. This guy is basically just relentlessly about his own political survival, flailing. And he will take Israeli democracy down with him. He will obviously take the entire Palestinian people down with him. He will take regional. He's messing around in Syria, he's messing around in Lebanon. He wants to bomb Iran like this. It's dangerous. Bibi Netanyahu's imperative to stay in power to avoid prison is really dangerous. I think that's this like everything else reinforces.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Speaking of which, after a brief reprieve during the ceasefire for what, two months, things in Gaza are just beyond awful again. So the IDF is just back to bombing the shit out of the place. On Saturday, the Gaza health ministry said IDF airstrikes killed 90 people in 48 hours. We are once again seeing videos on social media of Gazans burning alive after some of these strikes because all of them are now 90% of the population is displaced and they're all living in tents. And the Israeli military is now occupying and are holding about half of the Gaza Strip and saying they plan to occupied indefinitely. And there are still some like ceasefire proposals being discussed. There's one from Qatar in Egypt that would entail like a five to seven year truce and hostage and prisoner releases and then the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. But there's just no reason to believe that Netanyahu would go for any of that. Also, Ben, a couple weeks ago we talked about this awful incident where 15 Palestinian aid workers in clearly marked emergency vehicles were gunned down by Israeli troops. Initially, the IDF claimed that they were terrorists and the vehicles didn't have flashing lights on. That was then proven to be just complete and total when investigators found a video on the cell phone of one of the executed medics that documented the entire thing and had his final, you know, his apologies to his family and his final prayers and just horrifying stuff. So despite this like cut and dry evidence for this being a war crime, the only accountability we've heard of is like tepid statement of regret by the idf. And I think they fired one commander and reprimanded another, but like no one's getting prosecuted.

[Ben Rhodes]

They don't care. Yeah, and those guys will pop up again somewhere else. Or, you know, I mean, there's just words fail because you essentially have like a stated policy of ethnic cleansing. You know, they're going to basically depopulate Rafah, the southern Gaza, as we've talked about. They're not letting food in, they're not letting aid in, they're bragging about it. They're pushing people onto an enclave against the water. This is really horrific. One thing to watch, Trump has this trip in mid May to the Middle east and I'm sure that they want to revise the old Saudi normalization talks. And have some announcement. And they can't get Saudi normalization without a ceasefire. And so to me, the only pathway back to a ceasefire and just the people in Gaza being allowed to stay there and live their lives is some regional play. But I don't know, it just doesn't feel good right now.

[Tommy Vitor]

And God help these hostages that are still there.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, they're just. The only way they're getting out is through a deal.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Anyone who suggests otherwise is just.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I don't. Yeah. What is this doing to get the hostages out?

[Tommy Vitor]

Nothing.

[Ben Rhodes]

You know, I mean, this is not. This has nothing to do with getting hostages out.

[Tommy Vitor]

No. This is just indefinite.

[Ben Rhodes]

There's not a threat from Hamas. Hamas could not do October 7th today.

[Tommy Vitor]

They've been decimated.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Anyway, finally, last story. Ben. People always come to us for book and TV recommendations. So here's off the beaten path. One for everybody. The great nation of Sweden. They've kind of leveled up their soothing TV game with something called the Great Moose Migration. Have you heard of this? It's a live stream. This fills up your alley. A live stream of moose making their annual trek north. So this program began in spring 2019. It's grown from an audience of 1 million to 9 million. The population of Sweden is about 10.6 million. So presumably they're getting outside the walls of the country here. Some international viewers. But hours can pass before a moose appears. But there will be a push alert to let you know that one is on one of the 34 cameras they set up in the woods for this occasion. The moose even have super Fans. There's a 76,000 member Facebook group where they monitor every single river crossing and whatever else moose do. The BBC, they interviewed one of these moose super fans who actually takes time off of work to watch the live stream for the three weeks it's on. And then they quoted another super fan in the New York Times who spends six hours a day moderating the moose Facebook group. So did that person seek help? But everyone else, if you need a break from the world and you want to chill, watch the moose.

[Ben Rhodes]

I was going to say. I mean, it's actually a pretty rational way of dealing with the world that we're in now. It's just. I saw a moose. I saw some moose recently. I was in Wyoming. In Wyoming. Those are some. Some big guys.

[Tommy Vitor]

They are big.

[Ben Rhodes]

I would not want to run into a moose anywhere in the world other than on a live stream, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, I walked through an elk preserve and that's scary enough because it's like, what? You're looking at those guys and you're like, what if one of those guys just decides to make a run at me? You know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, if they make a go at you, you're done.

[Ben Rhodes]

But the moose are majestic. I'll watch.

[Tommy Vitor]

They are beautiful. They're stunning. And, you know, they get to escape their reality, unlike us. Yeah, we're just stuck in this one. Okay, that's it for us for this week. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Talk to you soon. Ponzi World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitorino and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben.

[Ben Rhodes]

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 Hethcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Molly Labelle. Madeline 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. Do you know how long the average professional spends making slide decks every week? Five hours. That's almost an entire workday resizing text boxes and moving around bullet points. Well, Gamma is here to rescue you from presentation purgatory. Just drop in your notes and Gamma magically turns them into polished presentations, websites, social posts, you name it. No design or coding skills required. Start for free at Gamma App and get a month of Gamma Pro for free with promo code. Podcast Comcast Business helps retailers become seamlessly restocking frictionless paying favorite shopping destinations. It's how nationwide restaurants become touchscreen ordering quick serving eateries and how hospitals become the patient scanning data, managing healthcare facilities that we all depend on. With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnerships, Comcast Business is powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities. Restrictions apply.