Con Man Air: Trump’s Middle East Cash Grab

Summary

Pod Save the World: Episode Summary – "Con Man Air: Trump’s Middle East Cash Grab"

Release Date: May 14, 2025

Hosts: Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes
Guest: Senator Chris Murphy

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Introduction

In this episode of Pod Save the World, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes delve into President Donald Trump's inaugural foreign trip, dissecting its implications for U.S. foreign policy, potential corruption, and broader geopolitical dynamics. The discussion is further enriched by an insightful interview with Senator Chris Murphy, who scrutinizes the unfolding events for signs of systemic corruption.

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Trump’s First Middle East Trip

Destinations and Objectives
President Trump's first official foreign trip as recorded in this episode includes visits to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike previous administrations that might have included Israel or NATO meetings, this trip focuses exclusively on Gulf monarchies, signaling a strategic realignment of U.S. foreign policy.

Key Announcement: Syria Policy At [09:03], President Trump made a significant announcement in Riyadh:

Frank Murray (Ironworkers Local 7 President) [09:03]: "I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at..."

This move involves lifting sanctions on Syria, a policy aimed at revitalizing the war-torn nation's economy by removing barriers that previously stifled investment and reconstruction. Ben Rhodes emphasizes the importance of this decision:

Ben Rhodes [10:18]: "It's exactly the right decision... It opens the door for Syria to have a chance."

Potential Corruption Ties
The trip has been marred by allegations of corruption, with Gulf allies offering extravagant gifts to Trump, such as a 7478 airplane from Qatar and significant investments in Trump-affiliated cryptocurrency ventures. Ben Rhodes points out the audacity of accepting such gifts:

Ben Rhodes [06:37]: "The idea that you could take a plane from a foreign government and use it as Air Force One is so just ludicrous on its face."

Tommy Vietor adds his skepticism regarding the security implications:

Tommy Vietor [06:52]: "It's unworkable. It's unfeasible."

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Impact on U.S.-Israel Relations

Skipping Israel on the Itinerary
Trump's omission of Israel from his Middle East tour has sparked concerns about a potential rift with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The hosts discuss the implications of this decision:

Tommy Vietor [10:18]: "Netanyahu probably hates this decision, but it's unequivocally the right thing to do."

Rising Tensions and Hostage Situations
Recent developments include negotiations for the release of American hostages from Gaza. However, Netanyahu has maintained a hardline stance, insisting that the war will not cease solely based on hostage releases:

Netanyahu (Reported by BBC) [23:42]: "We'll take them and then we'll go in, but there will be no way we will stop the war."

Ben Rhodes critiques the administration's handling of these delicate negotiations:

Ben Rhodes [24:38]: "If you don't see that this is leading towards the wholesale isolation of Israel going forward, you're just not paying attention."

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Trade Relations and AI Policy

Temporary Trade Deal with China
Amidst escalating tariffs, the U.S. and China reached a temporary trade agreement reducing tariffs from 145% to 30% on U.S. goods and from 125% to 10% on Chinese imports for 90 days. Ben Rhodes underscores the superficial nature of this deal:

Ben Rhodes [37:46]: "It's like a deal. It's not a deal, first of all... They're not compelling China to do anything substantive."

AI Policy Implications
The hosts explore how AI policy plays into these international relations, particularly regarding semiconductor exports to the UAE. The relaxation of export restrictions could inadvertently bolster China's technological advancements, posing strategic risks to the U.S.:

Ben Rhodes [19:19]: "China will get access to these semiconductors and they will be able to potentially lap us when it comes to the future of the global advanced AI industry."

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India-Pakistan Conflict and Ceasefire

Escalation and Ceasefire Efforts
Recent escalations between India and Pakistan brought nuclear tensions to the forefront, with Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division reportedly contemplating the use of nuclear weapons. In response, Trump’s administration, represented by J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, initiated diplomatic efforts leading to a ceasefire:

Tommy Vietor [44:07]: "The ceasefire was announced on Truth Social... It's not a good look for them to treat everything... as just some vehicle for Trump to truth something."

Critique of Diplomatic Handling
Senator Chris Murphy criticizes the administration's approach, highlighting the lack of technical expertise and the risky reliance on unverified translators during negotiations:

Chris Murphy [85:11]: "Quid pro quo is being announced as Trump is touring the Middle East... Another example of the brazenness part of the deal is this UAE investment in a Trump family crypto business."

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The New Pope: Pope Leo XIV

Introduction of Pope Leo XIV
The episode also touches upon the election of Pope Leo XIV, an American with deep roots in missionary work and social justice. Ben Rhodes views this as a positive development, contrasting sharply with the administration’s policies:

Ben Rhodes [59:22]: "Pope Leo is going to be the most prominent American in the world... a guy from humble background, a guy who made his life about missionary work."

Implications for Global Influence
The new pope represents a progressive face of the Catholic Church, emphasizing social justice and humanitarian efforts, potentially counterbalancing right-wing global political trends.

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U.S. Immigration Policy: Racism and Controversies

Termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans
The administration’s decision to terminate TPS for approximately 9,000 Afghans threatens their deportation back to Taliban-controlled regions, sparking outrage and condemnation:

Tommy Vietor [64:06]: "This is truly disgraceful... It's a real stain."

Selective Refugee Acceptance
The policy appears racially biased, welcoming refugees predominantly from white South Africans while pushing migrants from other regions to unsafe destinations like Libya and Rwanda. Ben Rhodes underscores the inherent white supremacy in these policies:

Ben Rhodes [67:34]: "This gives away the whole game... It does reveal the fundamental white supremacy that is embedded in the Trump project."

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Interview with Senator Chris Murphy: Unveiling Corruption

Overview of Corruption Concerns
Senator Murphy provides a detailed account of the illicit exchanges during Trump’s Middle East trip, highlighting significant contributions and investments from Gulf monarchies in return for favorable policies:

Chris Murphy: "Quid pro quo is being announced as Trump is touring the Middle East... It's a really different play."

Cryptocurrency Deals and Investments
The senator exposes how Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures, such as Trump Coin, are being fueled by foreign investments, blurring the lines between legitimate business and campaign corruption:

Chris Murphy [77:34]: "They are now, they are part of this package of gifts that it's giving... the Trump cabal is a deal with Starlink."

Legislative and Public Response
Murphy emphasizes the need for congressional oversight and public awareness to combat the administration's blatant corruption:

Chris Murphy [82:02]: "Democrats need to communicate to these foreign allies that they should get out of this deal with Trump... We can mobilize the public around this set of issues."

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a stark portrayal of the Trump administration's foreign policy maneuvers as a blend of strategic realignment and egregious corruption. Hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes, along with Senator Chris Murphy, underscore the urgent need for transparency, legislative action, and public mobilization to address these deep-seated issues.

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Notable Quotes:

• Frank Murray [09:03]: "I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at..."

• Ben Rhodes [10:18]: "It's exactly the right decision... It opens the door for Syria to have a chance."

• Ben Rhodes [06:37]: "The idea that you could take a plane from a foreign government and use it as Air Force One is so just ludicrous on its face."

• Chris Murphy: "It's a really different play."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Corruption Concerns: President Trump's Middle East trip is under scrutiny for potential corruption involving extravagant gifts and cryptocurrency deals from Gulf monarchies.

2. Syria Policy Shift: The lifting of sanctions on Syria represents a significant policy change aimed at economic revitalization but raises concerns about the new government's stability.

3. Trade and AI Policy: Temporary trade concessions with China and relaxed AI export restrictions to the UAE may have long-term strategic ramifications, potentially empowering China's technological advancements.

4. Immigration Bias: The administration's immigration policies exhibit overt racial biases, prioritizing refugees from white South Africans while endangering others.

5. Legislative Actions Needed: Senator Murphy advocates for increased congressional oversight and public mobilization to counteract and expose systemic corruption within the administration.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights from the episode, providing listeners with a clear understanding of the multifaceted issues surrounding President Trump’s Middle East trip and its broader implications.

Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

Pod Save the World is brought to you by Rocket Money. Everyone on Pod Save the World has used Rocket Money. You know why? Because we all signed up to subscription services, news sites, magazines, whatever, and then just literally forgot we had them. Just keeps charging your card every month. Ben used it, I use it. Tons of people in this office have used it. And because when it comes to spending, sometimes it's out of sight, out of mind. Your daily coffee habit. Those streaming subscriptions, they add up fast without even noticing. Rocket Money helps you spot those patterns so you can do something about them and and keep more money in your pocket. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money's dashboard gives you a clear view of your expenses across all of your accounts. Easily create a personalized budget with a custom categories to help keep your spending on track. See your monthly spending trends in each category to know exactly where your money is going. The new goals feature automatically saves money for you so you don't have to think about it. Help pay off bills, put away money for a house, or just build your savings. Rocket Money makes it easy. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you. They automatically scan your bills to find opportunities to save. Then you can ask them to negotiate for you. They'll deal with customer service so you don't have to. Rocket Money is over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. This should have been Doge Instead of Elon Musk, they should have had Rocket Money just go in and just doge everything. Great idea. Anyway, cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Download the Rocket Money app and enter my show name Pod Save the World in the survey so they know we sent you. Don't wait. Download the Rocket Money app today and tell them you heard about them from Pod Save the World. Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. Don't smile at me that way.

[Ben Rhodes]

This is one of the best days of my life. 25 years.

[Tommy Vitor]

You hurt Jason Tatum.

[Ben Rhodes]

We did not hurt.

[Tommy Vitor]

Tore his Achilles was dirty pool. No, it wasn't. It was fine. It's a terrible injury though.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I felt bad. It was like one of the greatest. I. I mean, I. I felt bad mainly because you want to beat the team full strength. Yeah. Yeah, that's where we were at by the fourth quarter. I also like Jayson Tatum. I feel like he's gotten kind of a bad rap.

[Tommy Vitor]

Catches a lot of shit. People say he doesn't have aura. They think he sometimes doesn't seem like he wants the ball at the end of games. Maybe we jack up too many threes, all of that. You know, there have been times when it's true. But also, he won an NBA final.

[Ben Rhodes]

He did. Now, he played very well. He's no Jalen Brunson, who wants the ball in every clutch situation and tends to hit the shots. But, you know, we're still rooting for him. We wish him the best.

[Tommy Vitor]

Can I just. I want you to know who you're hurting with this. This is an amazing clip I saw released on Twitter. Ben, this is a guy named Frank Murray, president of the Ironworkers Local 7. He's talking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Listen to this, man. Listen to your hurting, who you're hurting.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's time for us to stand up for our brother Kilmar and for all the people that have been unjustly deported.

[Tommy Vitor]

Bring our brother Kilmar home.

[Frank Murray]

My name is Frank Murray.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm the President of Local 7 Iron.

[Tommy Vitor]

Workers here in Boston. That is the best Boston accent I've ever heard. I. I don't know Frank Murray, but I love him.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's better than Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and goodwill hunting.

[Tommy Vitor]

He's wearing a Sox hat in this video, too. Of course he is.

[Ben Rhodes]

I just sit at home watching clips of drunk knicks fans on 7th Avenue screaming Bing bong. Yeah. So that's basically what I do at night these days.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay. Well, you know, we had different things going on, but we have a great show today.

[Ben Rhodes]

We do have a great show.

[Tommy Vitor]

We're gonna talk a lot about President Trump's first foreign trip. He is going to. He's in Saudi Arabia. He's going to Qatar. He's going to the uae. There's a big announcement, some big news on Syria policy that we're going to dig into. Ben. We're going to talk about how the future of AI policy kind of looms large in the background of this trip. We'll, of course, talk about corruption. We're also going to cover what this trip tells us about Trump's relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and the latest news on the Iran nuclear talks. Then we're going to talk about why Trump caved to China in the trade war, what scared the administration into getting involved in diplomacy with India and Pakistan to stop the fighting there. Hope for a possible meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Putin this week. That would be big.

[Chris Murphy]

See?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, yeah, we'll see. We'll talk about the new Pope, what he means for America and the world, how our immigration policy here in the US Somehow got more racist. And then you're going to hear my interview with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy about the historic corruption happening in plain sight during Trump's trip, what it means for US Foreign policy and what Congress can do about it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Chris Murphy always brings the takes.

[Tommy Vitor]

He does bring the takes.

[Ben Rhodes]

Lethal efficiency.

[Tommy Vitor]

I also had a tight interview. I love that. It was like, 19 minutes. I do appreciate, though, that he. He was saying, you know, before we started recording that, for a while, it seemed hard to get people to pay attention to, like, the kind of crypto corruption piece. But obviously, when you gift someone a $400 million airplane, like, guitar just did, suddenly that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Although, focus on again. I'd like to say that this is a beat that we've been on for a while.

[Chris Murphy]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And the reality is, yeah, sure, the plane is attention grabbing, but the $2 billion gifted to Jared Kushner, the hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto. I mean, I know you covered this with Chris Murphy, but it's useful that a plane can encapsulate things, but that is kind of the tip of the iceberg here.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's definitely the tip of the iceberg. You do sort of sometimes need a. An image or an object or a video clip, you know, like John Edwards getting his hair cut or, you know, whatever the kind of political moment might be to focus on.

[Ben Rhodes]

Boy, that was a callback.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that will.

[Ben Rhodes]

That one from someone who worked for John Edwards.

[Tommy Vitor]

That one hurt. That cut. That cut deep. All right, Ben, let's take into this trip. So this is Trump's first official foreign trip. I say official because he did go to the Pope's funeral, but that doesn't count because it wasn't like what they planned to do. First, as we record, Trump is in Saudi Arabia, then he goes to Qatar. And finally, the UAE listeners may remember that Trump's first foreign trip back in 2017 also started in Saudi Arabia, but then he went on to Israel. He went to Italy for another meeting with the Pope. I think the G7 was there. And then to Brussels for NATO meetings. This is just a tour of Gulf monarchies.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, his favorite places on Earth.

[Tommy Vitor]

Not a democracy in sight, not a voter in sight. And it probably tells you everything you need to know about the way Trump is trying to kind of reorient our foreign policy or realign the United States globally. More on that in a second. So Senator Murphy will get into the Bonanza piece that was kicked off by the cutteries giving Trump a 7478 that he's going to pretend to use as Air Force One and then take with him after he leaves office.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's the best part.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, let's just talk about that for a second. I want to get to the Syria piece, but, like, the idea that you could take a plane from a foreign government and use it as Air Force One is so just ludicrous on its face. Like, the security considerations alone are just. It's unworkable. It's unfeasible.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I think that the, the point of this trip, though, is that the corruption is like a feature, not a bug of the entire Trump administration. And I will give credit where it's due to the Gulf Arabs. They get that.

[Tommy Vitor]

They get it right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like, so they're not pretending, they're not trying to hide the ball here. You know, the Saudis writing checks, the Emiratis put a bunch of money into Trump coin. The Qataris are gifting a plane. They understand exactly who they're dealing with, you know, and so it's hard to hold it against them, you know, when Trump is just essentially making the United States and its foreign policy for sale. And so you have to think of this corruption not as, like, a few bad actors or not as some side deal. Like, this is core to the Trump presidency here, and that's what is on flagrant display. And, yeah, Air Force One. It's hard for me to even get my mind around the security issues, obviously, but also just a sense of. I mean, I remember I wrote about this in my first book, Tommy. It's not like the plane of an individual, it's the plane of an office.

[Tommy Vitor]

Exactly.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, I remember being on Air Force One the first time, and it was like, the president's 15 minutes out, the president's five minutes out, the president's on board, and then Obama comes on board. They don't say, even President Obama. It's like, it's the office of the presidency's plane. And then I remember I had to do some remarks and I went to use this. Remember those giant computers that were, like, nailed down a desk in the back and I booted up and there was a set of remarks on the desktop that were George W. Bush's remarks delivered after Russia Invaded Georgia.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, wow.

[Ben Rhodes]

And it was a very, like.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's probably like the last speech someone edited on the computer. Right. In, like, 2008.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Because he was at the Olympics summer. It was a very humbling experience because it. It definitely reminded me that I was, like, a temporary employee on this plane. You know, that it wasn't mine, obviously. Wasn't even President Obama's. Right. And you know that that's kind of missing, obviously, in the Trump conception of the presidency.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. What is Trump going to, like, uproot the White House? Put it on.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Blocks. Roll it away. Probably would if you could chill. Try. Yeah. It's absurd. It's outrageous. But let's start with the trip, because there was a big announcement about Syria policy that Trump made in his speech earlier today in Riyadh. Let's listen.

[Frank Murray]

I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at.

[Tommy Vitor]

So it's quick there. There's a lot of applause. You got, like, 45 seconds of applause. Trump also told reporters that he's going to meet with Ahmed Al Shara, the new president of Syria, while he's in Saudi Arabia. I think Rubio is going to meet with the Syrian foreign minister later this week in Turkey, if Steve Wykoff will let him. We don't know all the details for how the sanctions relief itself will work, like, if they're lifting sanctions, if there's just a pause on them, if they're going to ask Congress to do something. But either way, it's a very big deal. We've discussed on the show many times the fact that these sanctions were put in place to punish the Assad regime and the keeping sanctions on the people who deposed Assad is madness.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

And it was destined to destroy the country or prevent them from getting off their feet economically. So I think Trump deserves a lot of credit for this decision. It was politically difficult to take sanctions off someone who admits he was part of Al Qaeda and ISIS at one point. You know that Netanyahu probably hates this decision, but it's unequivocally the right thing to do. Ben, your thoughts on this, this policy change? And just I know the itinerary for this trip generally.

[Ben Rhodes]

First of all, the applause is interesting because people clapped for about 25 seconds, and then Mohammed bin Salman stood up and everybody else in the room stood up. I mean, this is a royal court. Right. Like, everybody's watching, and if that guy stands up, you have better get your ass up in a podcast.

[Tommy Vitor]

That was the bone Sauce.

[Ben Rhodes]

So that was interesting. And I think clearly MBS was one of the Arab leaders who was pushing for this decision too. So it kind of further reinforces his clout. That said, it's exactly the right decision. It's hard to overstate how impossible it was going to be for Syria to have any chance at viability as a state with the continued sanctions. We've talked about this. You just cannot attract any investment, any reconstruction funding, anything whatsoever. If businesses are worried or foreign governments are worried that that money could get entrapped in sanctions or could be seen as a sanctions violation. And so this opens the door for Syria to have a chance. And it's so clearly the right decision. People may start to think that we harp on Joe Biden, but I don't know why Joe Biden didn't do this. This just shows you too. Like, I don't like Trump's motivations for lots of things he does, but he's. One thing you will say is he's not like tied to this constant fear of some bad faith right wing attacks. Yeah, bad faith.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, bad faith right wing attacks or kind of stupid blob type. Well, we don't do this. We must leverage the sanctions for blah, blah, blah. No, sometimes you just have to try something different. And continuing to sanction a country because of the sanctions you've put in place for the dictator who's no longer there makes no sense. Now, we'll see how this goes. We don't know if Ahmed Al Shara is going to end up governing in an inclusive way. We'll see. But I mean, as we've said about this topic in the past, you can always put those sanctions back in place if they do something terrible. But why not test and see if this new government can deliver on some of its promises? They have huge challenges. Not the least a largely destroyed set of infrastructure. They have Israel bombing and occupying parts of their country. So this gives them a chance. And hopefully what this can also do is unlock a ton of money from the Gulf. Right. I mean, if the Gulf Arab states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE want to plow money in there, that's all to the better. That's a good way for them to spend their money. The one thing I'd say about the itinerary is, you're right, it's just the three Gulf countries. And first, that is the world that Trump likes. And yeah, we talked about the corruption piece, but even just literal kings. Yeah, transactionalism. He likes transactional foreign policy. There are no rules. There's no rules based order. There's no norms, there's no values proposition. We're just dealing with wealthy countries that can invest in things and can move things quickly. And Trump likes that. I will say and we'll allow ourselves to do the what if Obama did this, you know, or what if any Democrat did this. I remember Obama's first trip to the Middle East. We went to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and I'm still hearing about not going to Israel, about how we didn't go to Israel. Look, they are cutting Israel out of the Iran talks. They clearly made this decision which Israel wouldn't like on Syria cuz Israel's bombing this government. They aren't going to Israel on this trip. So I don't think that means that Trump gives a shit about the Palestinians. He doesn't. But it does mean that he isn't like going to check everything with Bibi Netanyahu first. Which by the way Joe Biden also did. Yeah, so. So like he can be unburdened by that kind of foreign policy.

[Tommy Vitor]

I want to dig more into this Israel piece because I agree with you. It's really interesting. I like, yeah, I like tweeted something praising Trump's decision and people are like, well actually me being like Alshara offered to build a Trump tower in Damascus, like that gives a shit, wouldn't you?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean if you wanted to get sanctions for your country, like I'd be offering to build fucking whatever.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't think this is why Trump made the decision. I agree with you MBS and all these golf. That's why clearly push hard for this decision and clearly push for it to be announced during, you know, the Riyadh portion of the trip. Alshara did just meet with Emmanuel Macron in Paris. So I think there will be a lot of global support for this decision. Ben this is another clip from President Trump's speech today though that I think, you know, kind of made both of us perk up.

[Frank Murray]

And it's crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from Western intervention no less or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so called nation builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop cabal Baghdad. In the end the so called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built. And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.

[Tommy Vitor]

So, to your point earlier, like, I do like that Trump not only doesn't give a shit what the neocons and the Blob think, he views it as politically advantageous to slap them around regularly. So applauding that, I do think, you know, we should probably be honest that the part about not giving lectures to foreign leaders, that the Americans not giving lectures is probably Trump just saying, I don't give a shit about human rights. You don't give a shit about human rights. We're not going to talk about that today. And the fact that human rights is totally off the table was hammered home by, like, the CEO guest list, which included the, you know, Elon Musk, the head of BlackRock, the head of Amazon, the head of Nvidia, Sam Altman from OpenAI, Reid Hoffman, because, you know, you and I were are old enough now to remember the 2018 Saudi Davos in the Desert Conference, right after Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, had ordered the execution of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi. And this international effort to isolate MBS and the Saudis. And that's gone. Yeah, just off the table.

[Ben Rhodes]

Look, first of all, it's kind of funny when he says cabal for Kabul.

[Tommy Vitor]

I guess struggling with some words there.

[Ben Rhodes]

Nationalist, but let's put that aside, sir.

[Tommy Vitor]

You meant Jew.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the thing about Trump. I obviously share a bunch of his views about the pointlessness of American military intervention in Iraq, about the kind of corruption and cluelessness of aspects of the military intervention in Afghanistan. I do work with liberal nonprofits, and I'm not aware of the trillions of dollars that the liberal nonprofits have. It'd be nice if we did. But I'll say this. While I share some of those critiques, he's missing the fact that there's an alternative between essentially neocons or whatever you want to call them, who want to kind of think that they can engineer Middle Eastern politics from the US Military. And, like, a Mohammed bin Salman who, you know, let's face it, why is there marble in Saudi Arabia? It's just because there's a lot of oil in Saudi Arabia. It's not like he discovered some ideas that unlock printing money. Right. There's a third way, which is like, Arab peoples themselves making decisions, not Americans showing up there, and not like, just a small number of really rich people making those decisions. And by the way, that doesn't have to look like yours and my exact view of democracy. But what continues to be missing from this is the participation of people in these countries in some fashion. Right. It may not be multi party elections next year, but by any stretch, it's not like the people in Saudi Arabia have a lot of say in what goes on in their lives. And so we shouldn't let.

[Tommy Vitor]

Or the Emiratis or the Qatar.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, exactly. So we shouldn't let his accurate disregard for American interventionism lead you to believe that the only alternative is a bunch of, let's face it, a bunch of fucking white American CEOs and you know, a bunch of royals sitting around and deciding everything themselves. Either there needs to be a voice for people in these discussions in this part of the world. And, and that's missing. And the fact that you have Elon Musk there and Sam Altman and all these other people, you know that that's not out of some earnest interest in the human well being of the people of the Middle East. That's because they want some of this money.

[Tommy Vitor]

Purely financial. Yeah. I mean, so President Biden put in place global restrictions on the export of AI artificial intelligence chips. So he allowed unlimited AI chip sales to about 18 countries, like allies like the UK and Germany. And, and then he blocked sales to China, Iran, sort of enemies, and then all other countries, including the Saudis, the UAE and Qatar had caps. I believe all those countries want to get rid of those caps. And that's probably the kind of thing you would imagine Donald Trump trading for say a nice new airplane.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes. And look, this is a really interesting issue. And you know, I've mentioned this before, full disclosure, I've done some work over the years for Microsoft, which is obviously involved in this. I think there's somewhere in between what Trump is doing and what Biden was doing, right? Which is that Biden was putting like really tight restrictions on the export of any American AI technology. And I actually think that in the long run that was kind of futile because we saw, I mean, in China, right, with deep seek, that we put all these restrictions on chips going into China, on technology going to China, and guess what the Chinese did with a lot less money, right? Like a few tens of millions of dollars instead of tens of billions of dollars. They were basically able to take some of the open source models that were released, right? So Facebook released its llama AI model. So kind of look at that, reverse engineer it. All you need is a little bit of computing power. You don't need massive GPUs. And lo and behold, they put out a deep SEQ model that is pretty comparable in quality to most of the American AI. So I think it is a futile task to suggest that we're somehow going to build some giant wall around AI because smart people can just figure it out and when they kind of look at what is already released and what is available. And I frankly think that if we build too high a wall around American AI, well then the rest of the world's just gonna buy Chinese AI. I truly think that's where this would go. Now, the flip side is you can still try to put some guardrails about how it moves out in the world. Like the first stuff that moves out is the software and then the applications, and then you allow kind of training runs on these models to take place in different places. There's something in between just allowing as many chips and, you know, to flow into anywhere in the world and restricting it totally, you know, and I think I land in the middle of that space. Trump, probably because, you know, he's getting huge investments from these countries, is. Seems like he's moving the other direction.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, you're a third way guy.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I'm a third way guy on this one.

[Tommy Vitor]

So, Ben, you noticed you mentioned that Trump is skipping Israel on this trip. That has increased this chatter about a rift potentially between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. And as you mentioned, like, when you look at some of the recent moves out of the Trump administration, it, it sort of seems to be the case. Right? I mean, there's just the, the existence of the Iran nuclear talks led by Steve Witkoff is going to piss Bibi Netanyahu off. Wyckoff, who is also, you know, he's like the emissary doing everything around the world. He also reportedly told the families of Israeli hostages that Israel is not willing to end the war and it's prolonging the fighting despite there being no security upside, which is unequivocally true, but a tough thing to say. According to BBC, Witkoff orchestrated the release of Adon Alexander, this final American hostage who was released a couple days ago. The final American being held in Gaza. And he did it via a back channel with someone talking directly to Hamas. And I guess the Israelis didn't learn about it until Sunday night. The Axios just reported that the Israelis didn't learn about this from the White House, but from their intelligence services.

[Ben Rhodes]

My guess is Qatar might have been that.

[Tommy Vitor]

My guess, I don't know.

[Ben Rhodes]

But I mean, there's not a lot.

[Tommy Vitor]

Of addresses you go to yeah, it's not that big of a secret. The Trump ceasefire agreement with the Houthis only requires the Houthis to stop firing at US Ships, not at Israel. There's talk of cutting a civilian nuclear deal with the Saudis outside of an agreement to normalize relations with Israel. There's some MAGA Republican types that are fighting these crazy efforts in Congress to criminalize boycotts of Israel in the United States. So, you know, at the end of the day, these guys are both right wing autocrats. Like, I'm sure they'll patch things up. Yeah, by hating on some third group somehow. But it is fascinating to watch Trump. I saw Netanyahu a bit here and it does, you know, again, I don't want to pile on, but it does annoy me that the Biden administration never told Bibi to fuck off. And Trump's doing it over, over and over and over. I mean, one Trump adviser described Trump's treatment of Netanyahu is, quote, one notch above the Zelensky meeting.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, and the interesting thing is Netanyahu has nowhere to go, right, because he's not like he's going to go embrace Democrats. You know, that's just shows you like he has one play to run in American politics and it's to like the right wing, the Republican Party and all of a sudden like Trump is self interested and doesn't really give a shit. And if you're like the, you know, the foundation for the Defense of Democracies or one of these kind of right wing, anti Iran, pro Israel think tanks, like, you don't really know what to do, who are you mad at? Because they can't pick a fight with Trump because again, there's nowhere else for them to go. So it's an interesting dynamic to watch. Again, at the end of the day, I think what it could get you is hopefully an Iran deal which rationally avoids a major war over the Iranian nuclear program. I don't think it's ever going to lead anywhere good for the Palestinians because I don't think Trump gives a shit about the Palestinians. No, I mean, unless again, the Arabs decide to push him harder on that.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, Wyckoff met with Netanyahu on Monday. Israel is now sending a delegation to Qatar for negotiations this week. Trump reportedly wants to announce a deal on his trip. I mean, that's just, it's not going to happen. And also Bibi has set a deadline for the end of this week where he's claiming that he'll have the IDF conduct a ground invasion unless there's a hostage release or some deal is cut. But I just saw a report then in Al Jazeera that Netanyahu told a bunch of wounded Israeli soldiers that there's, quote, no way Israel will stop the war in Gaza even if a deal is reached to release the hostages. He said, quote, we'll take them and then we'll go in, but there will be no way we will stop the war, end quote.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, but I. Israel is going to be like, increasingly. I mean, they've already lost global public opinion. I guess I'd say this to some of the kind of people who've been dead enders in supporting Israel's horrific and morally abhorrent and strategically disastrous Gaza policy and somehow think that Trump maybe is good on this issue or something. I mean, part of what this shows is the whole focus on anti Semitism on American campuses as a means of like, you know, quashing these universities and deporting people that you don't like is fucking bullshit. You know, like, like Trump doesn't believe that. He's just using that as a vehicle to break universities. He doesn't like and to deport brown people. You know, and so this actually proves what a lie it is that, that their policies are rooted in some like, you know, across the board embrace of Netanyahu's agenda. No, they embrace it when it's convenient for them, like when they want to deport people in this country. And, you know, they could kind of care less when it comes to some other things Netanyahu is doing. So I just think this is, you know, you, if you don't see that this is leading towards the wholesale isolation of Israel going forward, you're just not paying attention.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Also, like for 18 months, anytime you tweet or criticize the Israeli conduct in Gaza, the rejoinder is always, well, if Hamas released the hostages, the war would be over. And now Netanyahu is saying, actually that's not the case.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's just not the case.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's never been the case.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's never been the case. And it's been so obvious.

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Tommy Vitor]

So Ben, Iran is as always looming large behind the scenes on this trip. Not just because Trump is pissing them off by floating the idea of renaming the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Gulf. Do you support this idea?

[Ben Rhodes]

I don't.

[Tommy Vitor]

You were telling me you love I.

[Ben Rhodes]

Told you that the Pentagon used to always call it the Arabian Gulf. And we when we were in the situation meetings and I'd have to do what like so like the Pentagon has already decided it's the Arabian Gulf. They didn't do Gulf of America though.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, that's true. So over the weekend there were some US Iran talks in Oman. The results seemed to go very differently depending on who you listen to. Steve Witkoff called them encouraging. The Iranian foreign minister said the conversations were, quote, difficult but useful ahead of the talks. Here's what Wykoff had to say to Breitbart.

[Frank Murray]

The Iranians cannot have a bomb and they have stated back that they don't want one. So we're going to for the purposes of this discussion accept them at their word that that's actually how they feel. If that's how they feel, then their enrichment facilities have to be dismantled. They cannot have centrifuges. They have to down blend all of their fuel that they have there, send it to a faraway place. But an enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. And they, that's our red line. We're never doing a JCPOA POA deal.

[Ben Rhodes]

Where.

[Frank Murray]

Sanctions come off and there's no sunsetting of their obligations. So that doesn't make sense. That was a mismatched procedure. In jcpoa, we believe that they cannot have enrichment, they cannot have centrifuges, they cannot have anything that allows them to build a weapon.

[Tommy Vitor]

So the Iranian foreign Minister had this to say on Iranian state tv, quote, enrichment is an issue that Iran will not give up and there's no room for compromise on it. However, its dimensions, levels or amounts might change for a period to allow confidence building. He also said, quote, contradictory positions taken by the US in the media is not acceptable to us as they do not help negotiations. CNN quoted an Iranian source who also said the American side is basically not ready for meaningful technical and political talks, adding that the U.S. gives, quote, short in general answers to questions, ignores main proposals and constantly changes its position throughout the negotiation. So let's, let's decode those statements quickly. Listeners might remember a few weeks back, Witkoff did an interview where he said Iran can enrich nuclear material to a level of 3.5%. Why does that matter? Natural uranium has a small amount of fissile material in it. That's the material that you can split with a nuclear reaction to create energy. Nuclear scientists enrich uranium to get higher concentrations of fissile material for different purposes. So 90% enriched uranium is considered weapons grade. 20% enriched can be useful for research and medical purposes. 3.5% enriched uranium is used for nuclear energy. So in that quote, Wyckoff was saying Iran can enrich uranium for civilian nuclear power plant use. But after he said that, Wyckoff got smacked down. He had to walk back those comments and say, what I meant was Iran can have a civilian nuclear power infrastructure, but they have to purchase their uranium from a third country. They can't enrich it. So that's, I think, what the, the Iranians mean when they're calling out contradictory positions taken by the US and the media. Ben, do you believe the Iranians when they say that having the enrichment capacity is a red line for them? And if so, why do you think they feel that way because you hear like the Marco Rubios of the world argue that no country in the world has an enrichment program without a nuclear weapons program, too. You can have a civilian nuclear program and just say, purchase enriched uranium from Russia. Right. To fuel it.

[Ben Rhodes]

So first of all, I believe the Iranians, having lived through Iranian negotiations on the nuclear program, first of all, the Breitbart interview is very triggering to me because Breitbart, I mean, must have written hundreds of articles.

[Tommy Vitor]

One trillion articles.

[Ben Rhodes]

One trillion articles, just savaging the JCPOA before, during, and after it was concluded. And now they're like, just credulously, probably sitting there and like kind of regurgitating what Steve Wickhoff says. I also hate that he puts this emphasis on like, they've committed a never developing nuclear weapon. That text was in the jcpoa. I know, they never. And that was permanent, by the way. Like, it was a permanent commitment to never build a nuclear weapon. And. And everybody's like, how can you take Iran at their word? And there's Wyckoff being like. And I believe that he just, he.

[Tommy Vitor]

Literally said, that's almost sweet. He's like, they told me, they told me. It seems like, what are you going to do?

[Ben Rhodes]

And so I know this drives me fucking nuts. That's first thing. Second thing is Wyckoff has been all over the map because he doesn't know anything about this. Like, Ernie Moniz was the Secretary of Energy for the Obama administration, was in the nuclear talks. He's a fucking nuclear physicist. So he could like, literally sit down and, and like, understand exactly what he was talking about. These incredibly detailed things. And we've talked about the Wyckoff rolls up at these talks with like one guy with him, and now he's got Michael Anton, this kind of like right wing intellectual speech right now. Yeah, running the technical talks. Like, I didn't run the fucking technical talks in the Iran nuclear deal. So there's just clearly nobody on the US side who understands this technology. And the Iranians, like, have a bunch of smart guys who work on nuclear programs who are like, showing up to like, design. I mean, because this is what I remember about the Iran nuclear negotiations. We were literally designing a nuclear program that we could live with. Right? Like, what constraints? What could they do? What couldn't they do? These guys are just, you know, they want a deal. So they'd probably be happy with the jcpoa. Like Wyckoff and Trump would be happy if they, like, enriched only at a very low percent, shipped Everything out of the fucking country had this kind of symbolic enrichment capability that is only useful for like medical isotopes or something. Like it's totally anodyne. And they can just say they're done with this. And whether it's five years, 10 years, JCPOA's toughest restrictions were 10 years, maybe look at 11 years, and they can say it was tougher than Obama. That should be good enough for them. But they're in this bind because all these people, their own dumb politics, all their dumb politics, like, well, we gotta say no enrichment. I just don't think the Iranians would accept that they've invested too much in this program. There's pride involved in it, there's a bit of a hedge involved in it because they've seen the US Pull out of these deals in the past, so they don't want to like dismantle their whole program. And that said, there are other countries that don't have nuclear weapons that have. They keep repeating a talking point that's not true. And now granted it's countries like the Netherlands and stuff, but it's just not true that no country with a domestic enrichment capability also doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's a big Rubio talking point. He says it all the time.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, J.D. vance says it too. And it's, it's not true. Now the reason Iran is, is an outlier is cuz they cheated on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. They, they built these enrichment facilities in secret.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Which was pretty suspicious. Right. Not good. So I don't know. I think there's a deal on the table for the Trump administration. If they're willing to live with some modest Iranian enrichment capability, there's probably a deal that they can say is like in some way tougher than jcpo, even though it wouldn't really be any different. And frankly, it's just whether or not they're gonna like face down their politics with Netanyahu and some right wingers in Congress.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, you could tell they want a deal. They just want to get something done.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well and they just want to get.

[Tommy Vitor]

It off the table, you know, understandably. Yeah, rightly so. I get it. I appreciate it. All right, so listeners of this show know that we've been eagerly watching Trump's flailing tariff announcements and seeming effort to tank the global economy over the last few weeks. There was a big development over the weekend, then during talks between the US And China in Geneva, Switzerland, where both sides agreed to a drastic reduction in tariffs for about 90 days. So the US tariffs on Chinese stuff will go from 145% to 30%. Chinese tariffs on US stuff will go from 125% to 10%. According to a bunch of news reports. Pressure from industry groups, especially automakers in the defense industry, got Trump to cave. I think in particular that they put a freeze on the export of rare earth magnets, which are critical for both the technologies and cars and weapons and all sorts of things. According to Financial Times, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant also had a secret meeting with his Chinese counterpart about three weeks ago. So I would imagine that kind of plowed the fields that were announced this weekend. So, Ben, I guess like in 90 days Trump could decide to rev things back up and we could be back in a tariff war. But it just seems like there's just no doubt that he fully capitulated here. Like the Chinese conceded literally nothing. Nothing except for retaliatory tariffs.

[Ben Rhodes]

Absolutely nothing.

[Tommy Vitor]

The Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote the following sentence. Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly and as quickly. Anything jump out of you at this, this mess?

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, it's very Trump, like in the sense that he got absolutely nothing. And they, they said it was like a deal. It's not a deal, first of all, I mean, not even close. There's no substantive change beyond the kind of fluctuation of these tariff rates. The Chinese, as we talked about, were just better positioned to win a trade war. They had a monopoly on these rare earth materials. They can absorb more pain. They've kind of invested for the last decade in clean energy and technologies. They have more geopolitical support in lots of the world, particularly given what Trump is doing. So they had a better hand even if they have some economic weaknesses. If you look at Trump though, first of all, the insanity of this is there's still 30% terrorists, right? So it's not like it's all the way wound back. It's just not as insane as it was post Liberation Day week when he was just tariffing on everything true social. So there's still going to be economic impacts that are negative, there's still going to be price increases, are still gonna be disruptions, and the trust of the rest of the world is already broken. Cuz they just don't believe that Trump is a predictable actor. And I have to say, like, I don't believe, you know, I think Trump, Scott Bessen is like useful to talk to markets. Like he's literally there to speak to markets.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, just to whisper to Jamie Diamond.

[Ben Rhodes]

Oh, yeah, he's just whispering in Jamie Dimon's ear. But I actually don't think he's the real decision maker here. It's Trump and like some of the yahoos around him. And so I think, you know, at a certain point he'll probably dial these things back up again. Down, back down. Like he likes to control the volatility. He's like a child with a toy. Like he likes to be the one who controls volatility in the markets. So he's decided after the Post Liberation Day fiasco to dial things back. He'll dial it up at some point. Whether do I think he's going to like structurally arrange some deal that's going to remake US China trade relations? Absolutely not. And that's, that's what was proved to be completely bullshit.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes.

[Ben Rhodes]

The idea that this is going to like compel China to, can make all these. Remember fentanyl? Where's fentanyl in this thing too? Like there's, there's none of the things he talked about are in this at all.

[Tommy Vitor]

No. And apparently the Biden people actually had cut a pretty impactful counterfent all deal with the Chinese right at the end of the administration. It's like the Chinese are like, what? You know, why are you ignoring that we actually did something on this? I mean. Yeah, I agree with you. I think Trump clearly views tariffs as like his first, second and third favorite tool in his toolkit.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

For every situation. So I assume they'll slap tariffs back on all kinds of countries. I do think that like everyone is wondering, like, do markets matter? Do headlines matter? And the answer is yes. Like, he did not like the stock market crashing. He did not like, yeah, every CEO calling him, telling me, you're going to kill my business. Like, I think it really did matter. And so he blinked.

[Ben Rhodes]

And even like I think Republican members of Congress are, I'm sure calling and being like, I'm not going to be able, I'm going to vote against this.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I mean it is worth putting a point on the fact that this was one of the most catastrophic announcements early in a presidency ever. You know, like he rolls at Liberation Day and all the big charts and everything and just look at the climb down and there are no deals, even this UK trade deal. I couldn't describe to you what that trade deal is. So it is so meager. Yeah. It's the kind of thing that would normally be announced by like the deputy U.S. trade representative in an article that only appears in a three paragraph notice in Bloomberg News. And they're trying to treat it like it's some huge trade deal.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, they're trying to amp it up. They did like a stupid phone call with Kier Starmer and they did it on the day there was a new Pope announced. Yeah, sorry, pal. I don't think this is going to lead the headlines. One thing that was a big deal was this ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Ben, good transition. Thank you. Though last week, the tensions between India and Pakistan, it, it was like just short of open warfare between these two nuclear armed militaries. Folks probably remember the, the conflict started when terrorists killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists from India in India controlled Kashmir. India vowed to retaliate against these terrorist groups that are based in Pakistan and against parts of the Pakistani security state that support these groups. The fighting escalated fast. It included airstrikes deep into Pakistan. The Pakistani military said they shot down at least one Indian jet. There were Air Force dogfights. The Pakistanis launched this volley of like several hundred drones across the border. So it got really scary. And for a while, the Trump administration was just completely checked out. They were making comments like these from President Trump and J.D. vance.

[Frank Murray]

It's a shame. We just heard about it just as we were walking in the doors of the Oval. They've been fighting for a long time. You know, they've been fighting for many, many decades and centuries, actually, if you really think about it. No, I just hope it ends very quickly.

[Tommy Vitor]

What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de, escalate a.

[Chris Murphy]

Little bit, but we're not going to get involved in the middle of war.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's fundamentally none of our business. So according to a bunch of media reports, this became our business. Mr. J.D. vance, after the administration learned that India bombed an area near the headquarters of Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division, which oversees their nuclear arsenal. The New York Times estimates they have about 170 nuclear warheads sitting in Pakistan somewhere. That's a big deal, because if Pakistan thought that airstrike was intended to take out their nuclear command and control capability, that could lead to them doing something really fucking scary. The Times pointed out that there were reports in Pakistani media that Prime Minister Sharif had called a meeting of the National Command Authority, which is the group in Pakistan that makes decisions about the use of nuclear weapons. Pretty terrifying. Either way, Trump's team, they got into gear. Vance called Prime Minister Modi in India. He warned about escalation risk. Rubio called his Pakistani counterparts. Trump called nobody. But he did front run both parties and announced the ceasefire deal on Truth Social, which the Indians then, like, initially denied, so it was a mess, but, like, good outcome, at least for now. Ben, like, what did you make of how all this went down? And do you think there's any hope that Mr. Big Boy Smarty Pants JD Vance might learn that actually diplomatic intervention to prevent wars is a good thing?

[Ben Rhodes]

First of all, this was pretty scary because they. In the past, you know, they've lobbed missiles at each other sometimes. They've literally, like, just bombed dirt and said that that was, you know, that they hit something that they didn't, but they were hitting military targets. This was starting to feel like it could become an actual war, not just, like, skirmishes on the line of control with episodic strikes. And so that's scary. And that, by the way, is still something that happened and that could flare up again if there's another incident. I have to say. And look, this is not us just kind of hating on the Trump administration. You heard us give credit in the same podcast on Syria. The way they handled this was fucking atrocious because they did not negotiate this ceasefire. They lobbed in the calls that anybody would lob in, like, any U.S. administration.

[Tommy Vitor]

The bare minimum.

[Ben Rhodes]

Any bare minimum.

[Tommy Vitor]

Why would you not make those calls? What else are you doing? You're the Secretary of State.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's your job.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's literally your job.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, I know you gotta take a break from being the archivist and, you know, whatever the hell he is doing. A lot of filing, National Security Advisor, but sure, he's lobbing calls. And then J.D. vance, like, who has this kind of intellectual, isolationist worldview, which makes no sense in an actual world where if there's a nuclear exchange in India and Pakistan, like, the fucking global economy collapses and there's tens of millions of refugees and maybe a nuclear winter over, like, big chunks of the world. So, like, yeah, it matters to us. And so then these guys, they lob in, like, the pretty routine calls. Trump doesn't even call, right. And then they get wind of the fact that the Indians and Pakistanis themselves are probably like, oh, shit, we're getting pretty close to the edge here. Like, let's have a ceasefire. They announce this on Truth Social, like, clearly without clearing it with it. Because if it was a US Brokered ceasefire, like, we all know what that looks like. Their joint statements all go out simultaneously from the US And India and Pakistan. There's a plan.

[Tommy Vitor]

They're negotiated.

[Ben Rhodes]

Instead he fucking truths it. And the Indians are like, what the fuck is this?

[Tommy Vitor]

The Indians insist, by the way, that their challenges with Pakistan are a bilateral issue and it's nobody else's business.

[Ben Rhodes]

Nobody else's business.

[Tommy Vitor]

So Trump announcing that he brokered a ceasefire, like really them off.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so why does that matter? I think it matters because like if there's a next time, they're kind of not going to want to hear from us because they don't trust us. Right. Like these things, everything is so short term and transactional. Trump. And how can I get attention? So look, it's not a good outcome. It was a bad outcome for a few days there. It was scary. Like people actual, like actual people died in these exchanges of fire. It was a bigger conflict than they've had in recent years. And am I glad the US got involved? Sure. But so are a bunch of countries, by the way, that the Qataris were involved, as they normally are, the Turks were involved. Other countries, the Brits were lobbing in calls. And I just think it's not a good look for them to treat everything, including potential war between India and Pakistan as just some vehicle for Trump to truth something. Cuz that again, people aren't gonna wanna let us into their business if that's how he's gonna go about things.

[Tommy Vitor]

Did you catch any of the clips from various Indian TV stations about the conflict that were going around on social media?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Really wild stuff.

[Ben Rhodes]

Indian TV is pretty wild, man.

[Tommy Vitor]

The, the amount of like, like the nationalism is getting stoked from just every single corner in, in both of these countries now. And it comes from Modi directly, but it comes from every TV network. They're like, there was one clip that was going around, it was just like the, like, you know, the sound when there's like an inter, like an, if, if a nuclear strike was coming, like the kind of siren you would hear was just running in the background of the entire clip. It's like very incitement.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And look, I get that there's a lot of, there's a lot of hate.

[Tommy Vitor]

But thousands of years of hate.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, millions of years. But the, the, the dehumanization in both directions is dangerous because that's how you end up just killing lots of people. Like if you consume Indian television or Pakistani television, you're kind of conditioned to see these people as like subhuman enemies and that, and I'm not absolving ourselves from this. The right wing media treats a lot of people in this country as subhuman too. But I just think that that is a dangerous dynamic to just continue big time.

[Tommy Vitor]

No. I saw an Indian reporter bragging about how he had not interviewed any Pakistanis the duration of the conference.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's a great way to understand what the fuck is going on.

[Tommy Vitor]

What does that do for anyone? All right, we're take a quick break, but before we do, we wanted to let you know that Amanda Littman's new book, when we're in the Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, is out now. Uh, it's an amazing book, Ben. Amanda shares what it's like when a new generation steps into power, not just in politics, but in business, activism, and everyday life. It's a manual for leadership on your own terms. No fluff, no bullshit, no losing yourself in the process. Just real tools, honest lessons and the kind of clarity that today's leaders need. We want to help Amanda get on the New York Times bestsellers.

[Ben Rhodes]

Let's go.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's a big deal, right?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, we love them.

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Frank Murray]

Hey guys.

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

150%. Yeah. First of all, just side note, big week for Turkey here, Erdogan.

[Chris Murphy]

Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, because obviously they are huge supporters of Alshara in Syria and have been advocating lifting sanctions. They're somehow hosting these meetings. Like, the PKK is disbanding.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

So Erdogan, beside, from being a total autocratic creep who locked up as biggest opponent, his foreign policy is having a pretty week. Look, this does feel like Trump. I am on the kind of side of people that feel like this was a bit of a rug pull on Zelensky because he had Kirstarmer Mertz, the new German Chancellor, Macron, and I think Donald Tusk from Poland in Kyiv for show Solidarity. And it felt like Trump didn't, like, you know, the fact that the attention was no longer in him. So he's, like, demanding this meeting happen. And I think Zelensky then kind of called the bluff and was like, okay, fine, I'll show up. But, you know, like, Zelensky's so fucking sick of the goalpost moving on him, and so he's like, fine, I'll go to Turkey, because, like, I didn't think Putin would go. And so we'll see what happens.

[Tommy Vitor]

Now, did you see the literal Russian disinformation going all over social media, especially on Twitter, where people were trying to claim that Mertz had, like, cut up a line of cocaine and had it on the table in the train on the way to Kyiv? And there's clearly a napkin on the table and, like, a piece of string that's attached to a folder. So, like, Mertz covers up the string because he's just, like, reaching for his file folder. And then Macron grabs a napkin that he, like, balled up and he hides, and people are like, oh, that was the bag. Can you imagine?

[Ben Rhodes]

Wait, wait.

[Tommy Vitor]

Two people less likely to be doing lines on a train than Keir Starmer and Friedrich Murphy. I bet he gets down.

[Ben Rhodes]

Let's just take a minute and imagine if that did happen, how fucking awesome it would be if, like, you know, Mertz. Friedrich Mertz, new chancellor, is just, like, ripping lines. And Macron comes in, he's like, hey, can I get a bump, you know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Like, who starts that conversation? Curious Army's like, yeah. Anyone got a bag? What are we doing?

[Ben Rhodes]

Oh, God.

[Tommy Vitor]

So many people were sharing it, like, anyway, continues.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm glad that happened because, you know, that's why the Internet is still a decent place. Sometimes I just think that, like, Trump is. He's literally like a machine gun dropped on the floor with these negotiations. Right. He'll be fixated on something. Remember the ceasefire? Remember the 30 day ceasefire?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. What happened?

[Ben Rhodes]

And each time, Ukraine is the one that accepts it. So Ukraine accepted the ceasefire. Putin wouldn't. Each time he throws these things out, and it's always Ukrainians who he acts like are intransigent, who are the ones who are like, fine, we'll do it. And Russia, Putin never fucking does it, ever. Right? And meanwhile, they're still, like, grinding away at Ukraine. So I don't know what it's going to take for. I mean, I don't think Trump cares. But I do think that the good thing that you're seeing is that, like, you know, Zelensky's kind of got this clique of Europeans who have his back, who are from, like, pretty big countries with some real militaries, although not nearly as real as the United States. I mean, that's the best card he has to play, is to hold those Europeans together behind him and just trying to stay, like, if not ahead of Trump, like only a half step behind him until it becomes more and more apparent that Putin is just not the one who's serious about ending this war.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And if you get down, you guys get a little bump from your.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah, let's have a good time, man.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's incredible. I was reading this incredible story in the Wall Street Journal about how there's such an excess of cocaine that the cartels are even better funded. So you know how they, the cartels have those kind of like DIY submarines.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

They take from, you know, kind of Colombia up around to somewhere else in Central America. Now they are literally driving these sort of like, they're not fully submerged. They're like, mostly submerged in, like, with like a little, you know, they're kind of at the waterline. But now they're taking these, these submarines all the way to Europe. They're like, they're like, driving them to, like, Spain. It's crazy. It takes like 30 days. It's a wild story. Great story in the Journal.

[Ben Rhodes]

Anyway, you know, good day. Good, good time to be into coke, I guess. You know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Two more. Two more big stories. Unless you live under a rock, in which case, credit to you. Thanks for listening. You probably heard that they selected a new pope last week. Ben, you and I talked through the favorites to become the new pope according to the betting odds, and, boy, was that waste of time.

[Ben Rhodes]

Have our man on the, on the.

[Tommy Vitor]

On the card, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. Now, Pope Leo XIV had something like 3% odds according to Polymarket.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's almost like the Mavericks getting the number one pick in the. What's up with that lottery?

[Tommy Vitor]

How'd that happen? You think it's rigged? I think it's rigged because of the LUCA trade. Yeah, we get into that later. Pope Leo, as he's called now, is from Chicago. According to the New York Times, Pope Leo has Creole roots, from New Orleans. I think his grandfather was from Haiti. Super interesting guy. He spent two decades working in Peru as a missionary, a parish priest, and eventually as bishop. Then Pope Francis named him to this powerful Vatican position overseeing the appointment of bishops around the world. But Ben, do you know who did predict this? My boy Steve Bannon. Listen to this.

[Ben Rhodes]

They're going to say Stephen A. Smith.

[Tommy Vitor]

No. Did he predict the two?

[Frank Murray]

No.

[Ben Rhodes]

No, he didn't.

[Tommy Vitor]

This is Bannon from about a week ago. I do think one of the dark horses, and I think, unfortunately he's one of the most progressive, is Cardinal Prevost.

[Frank Murray]

I don't think he's getting enough play.

[Tommy Vitor]

He is certainly on the short list. That's my boy Steven.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's funny that he sounds like he's betting on it, like on FanDuel, like, you know, he's not getting enough play, you know, he's not getting enough love. Action on Prevost.

[Tommy Vitor]

So Bannon aside, what do you think it means, you know, just for the US now that we got. We got an American Pope.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. There have been a zillion takes a zillion Chicago memes. But look, to take a serious note, I mean, what's interesting about the United States. And I always try to say this to, like, some of my friends overseas who, you know, it's easy to look at the United States and just see Trump or just see our shitty stupid ass foreign policy over the years or just see like some soulless capitalism. It's a reminder. This is like a big, diverse country with many different people. And I like the fact that Pope Leo is going to be the most prominent American in the world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Sure.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, I guess together with Trump. But he'll, you know, God willing, be there after Trump. And that's a totally different kind of America. That's a guy from humble background. A guy who made his like life about missionary work in Latin America. A guy who speaks four or five languages. A guy who cares about social justice.

[Tommy Vitor]

White Sox fan?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, White Sox fan. Like underdogs.

[Tommy Vitor]

Knicks fan. Apparently he was tweeting about the Knicks or something.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, it's a Nova Knicks guy. I mean, for those not in the know, in the world o community, here we've got Jalen Brunson, Mikel Bridges and Josh Hart. Lee Villanova alums, former national champions. And we know it's been confirmed that the Pope is aware of the Nova Knicks at least. Right. Because he's a proud Villanova grad.

[Tommy Vitor]

It was weird that he went to an American college. I mean, I made this point to love it. It's probably inappropriate, but there's definitely some seven year old lady who went to Villanova who's like, oh my God, I banged the Pope, right?

[Ben Rhodes]

No.

[Tommy Vitor]

What do you mean? This is before he became a priest.

[Ben Rhodes]

Oh, he wasn't like celibate.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't know.

[Ben Rhodes]

I don't know anything about.

[Tommy Vitor]

I haven't asked him.

[Ben Rhodes]

Look, could be a 70 year old.

[Tommy Vitor]

Dude talking about in the group chat. I don't know.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, that would, you know, that would make for a good story.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's a good sitcom.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes, it's a great sitcom actually. Like the Pope before celibacy. But anyway, put that aside. I like that this guy's gonna be a different face to the world for the United States. It also seems like he's very much cut from the Francis cloth. He's a progressive, he cares about that. That part of Catholicism that is actually about what Jesus talked about, like helping the poor and social justice.

[Tommy Vitor]

The good part.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's kind of interesting to me that at a time in which the world is swinging pretty far right in its politics in a lot of places, like the Catholic Church is becoming this more.

[Tommy Vitor]

Progressive institution, swinging left.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'll take it. So I just think it's better news than just the Chicago piece of this. I'm happy for Mike o' Neill, our friend, but it's also just like, it's a reminder that the United States is big and complicated and it's the country that could produce Trump and it's a country that could produce this guy, you know, And I hope that people bear that in mind as he's spreading this message of a more kind of progressive view of social justice.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I don't really think about the Pope often, but you know, Pope Francis and Now, Leo xiv. Something to be excited about. Yeah, a lot worse.

[Ben Rhodes]

And I hope he, you know, like. I know, like, they're sometimes reticent, but, I mean, there's a lot of shit going on that we, you know, Pope wants to speak out. All the better.

[Tommy Vitor]

Stay active.

[Ben Rhodes]

Stay active on Gaza. Hope he continues. Pope Francis calls on Gaza.

[Tommy Vitor]

Steve Bannon later said, quote, the conclave that elected Pope Leo was more rigged against Donald Trump than the 2020 presidential election.

[Ben Rhodes]

Is that a real quote?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Pope Leo's brother also says he served on the same Navy ship as Steve Bannon, like, back in the 80s. Isn't that crazy? What a coincidence.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, that. I mean, we could make a whole series. We started the Villanova, you know, party scene and onto the Bannon ship.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, we'll talk after this.

[Ben Rhodes]

We'll talk about that. The brother did seem to really like his 15 minutes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I know he's out there. He's having a good time. I forgot to ask Chris Murphy about this, but apparently Pope Leo retweeted Chris Murphy in 2017 as a tweet about the Las Vegas shooting.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, Murph is going to heaven now.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

If the Pope retweets you, I think that's your ticket's punched in.

[Tommy Vitor]

The last Pope Leo, that was during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, and he was known as the Pope of the workers.

[Ben Rhodes]

I did like what the Pope said about. He chose Leo because the last Pope was a time of, like, rampant capitalism and inequality. And now, you know, that, like, so he's, you know, he's thinking about the.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right things, taking on economic issues, social justice. We like him.

[Ben Rhodes]

A good, good working class, you know, like, he's going to stop giving tax breaks to the companies that ship jobs overseas.

[Tommy Vitor]

You know, deep cut. Okay, final story for us. So, as listeners know, there's been a horrible sea change in immigration policy under Trump. We recently learned today or yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security is terminating temporary protected status for people here from Afghanistan. That means 9,000 Afghans could be deported back to the Taliban regime. These are presumably people that helped the United States military during the two decades of war there. So this is truly disgraceful. There was a report the administration was planning to send migrants to Libya. Hard to imagine a less safe place. Luckily, a judge blocked that plan, but the administration is having talks with officials in Rwanda about sending migrants from the US There. Thank you, Boris Johnson and the Tory Party in the UK for that terrible idea. At the same time, the US Though, is welcoming, quote, unquote refugees from South Africa as long as they're white. Here's Trump talking about what's happening in South Africa and why he's welcoming these folks here from earlier this week.

[Frank Murray]

But it's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about. But it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me. But white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.

[Tommy Vitor]

To be clear, there is not a genocide against white farmers in South Africa. South Africa is a very, very violent country. Many farmers live in the middle of nowhere. They're at risk of from violence because the cops can't get to them easily if you live in the rural farm. But there's no data or evidence to suggest that this is a systematic racial thing, let alone a genocide. Also, white South Africans are far better off financially than black South Africans. White people are about 7% of the population, but they own between 2/3 and 3/4 of the land in South Africa. They are exponentially wealthier, on average, than black South Africans. We should also just be honest, like, we're talking about the descendants of clothes, colonial settlers that set up the apartheid system, and government actions that are now trying to create a bit of equality for black people who are just brutally oppressed. I'm not suggesting that means these white farmers should be subjected to violence or any kind of harm, but the fact that they're getting special treatment by the US as refugees, given the history, is pretty disgraceful. Ben, I remember you and I talked about this in, like, 2018 because Trump started tweeting about it. He saw a segment on Tucker Carlson about white genocide against South African farmers. He demanded Mike Pompeo do an investigation that resulted in nothing, because there was nothing to do or investigate. But I don't know, it's just like. Just been thinking about what an immigration policy that is this overtly racist, what that's that message that sends to the world.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. This is a really important story, and I'm glad it got a lot of attention. I hope it continues to get attention because it kind of gives away the whole game. First of all, if on its face what their argument for letting in or not, like airlifting these white farmers from South Africa, their argument is an argument for why there should actually be a refugee program. In other words, if Trump is legitimately concerned about people facing threats of violence and political persecution. There are about 9 million communities around the world that you would put ahead of these white South Africans. By the way, at the top of that list would be Afghans who, if they get sent back to Afghanistan, could be disappeared by the fucking Taliban. Right? So the first thing is, like, it's completely absurd on its face. And if you actually cared about what Trump said, you know, going down the list, people from Sudan, people from Afghanistan, people from, you know, any. Unfortunately, a lot of Myanmar, like, all manner of places. It also bears saying that the Afghans who came in under tps, like some of the other people that had TPS revoked, did not come in illegally, like they were following what they thought were the rules under their temporary protective status. All that said, I think what's important here is it gives away the game because it does reveal the fundamental white supremacy that is embedded in the Trump project. And look, we, you know, I know it's not post George Floyd anymore, and. But this is. How else do you explain a situation in which they want to send pretty much largely, if not exclusively black and brown people to places like Libya and Rwanda while welcoming plane loads of white people from South Africa to the United States?

[Tommy Vitor]

Not subtle.

[Ben Rhodes]

This is the Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson worldview where we're gonna reverse, quote, unquote, great replacement. We're gonna, like, push black and brown people out of this country, and we're gonna become the safe haven for white people. This airlift of Elon Musk's from Africa, like, is absolutely ridiculous. And it kind of cuts against decades and made me think, Tommy, like, our. Our former boss, like Barack Obama, his father came to the United States in an airlift of. Of students from Kenya. They were coming here to be educated in the United States. Like, that's who we used to be, you know, 60, 70 years ago. Like, we've gone backward. We've gone way backwards here, you know? And so I just think this is like a. This isn't just like a kind of, you know, weird sideshow. This is like, pretty elemental to the project here. And it's a. It's not even a dog whistle. It's like a pretty. I don't even know. It's just like a cry to his base, like, look, we're letting in the white people and we're kicking out the brown people. And I don't know, like, sometimes, like, you gotta call out what it is. And this is a kind of white supremacist immigration policy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's weird. It's like dog whistle became the thing we would talk about all the time. But it's you're right. It's not a dog whistle. It's. It's a policy welcoming white people, sending black people to countries they were never from. But also the language involved, like the term white genocide, it's far right propaganda. It was popularized by a white separatist, literal neo Nazi. It's been used. It was, you know, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. There were signs about white genocide. The Tree of Life synagogue shooter talked about white genocide or the great replacement theory. Like, it is a. It's usually deeply anti Semitic. It's usually the Jews who are conducting the white genocide. In these twisted right wing worldviews and these theories, this propaganda has been used to defend violence.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

And the president said, saying, it's like, you can't kind of understate what a big deal that is.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And it does make you wonder, like, who is in his ear about this?

[Tommy Vitor]

Got to be Elon. Well, there's a lot of South Africans. It's David Sachs.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Elon Peter Thiel. There's a whole. The PayPal mafia is all.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm telling you, man. Like the white South African, you know, international is nothing to sneer at. I mean, like, and they have their, you know, I mean, sins of the fathers don't always pass on, but sometimes they do. And these are people that came out of apartheid. Came out. They're nostalgic for that. You know, I mean, they used to complain about what happened. I mean. Yes. Are there flaws in like, land redistribution in like Zimbabwe, in South Africa? Sure. But to your point, I mean, Mandela, like, held back the, you know, like these people were allowed to keep their farms. You know, like there's crime. Sure. But there's all kinds of crime in South Africa. It's a lot more dangerous. This is just, this is.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's gross, I think. Right. Like when it comes to the murder rate, like, the murder rate in South Africa is just shockingly high. And that's a universal problem.

[Chris Murphy]

It's high for black people.

[Tommy Vitor]

Exactly, exactly. It's a universal problem. I think in terms of land redistribution. I think one of the things that I think led to Trump really freaking out about this was a law that was passed that said the government could expropriate land from people without compensation. But we talked about this apartheid America on Monday. Like, a lot of experts say it was just kind of clarifying rules that were already in place. And when you read deeper into this, most experts say, actually the, the sin is that South Africa has done very little to reduce racial Inequality since the end of apartheid.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tommy Vitor]

In fact, you know, and people basically hate the government because it's been corrupt and sclerotic and incapable of delivering on the promises.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And I'm sorry, like, these people built their estates on like a complete white supremacist system of apartheid. And like, they've. I don't know, the fact that these are the people that you look out at the world and you see these people as the vulnerable people in the world, given all the places where there are people who are actually vulnerable and we're sending people back to those places. It's. It's a real stain.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's real fucked up. Imagine this happening in, like 2016. Trump articulating some of these things. Like, the reaction would have been pretty much bigger.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, that's the thing. The frog has been boiling for a while here.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And we're just, we're just toast. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Senator Chris Murphy. We are going to talk about all the avenues for corruption that are happening as we speak as Trump visits these Gulf autocrats. So stick around for that. This show is sponsored by Better Help. We all know that our mental health is just as important as our physical health, but we don't attend to it nearly as much. And that is a bad thing for a lot of reasons, but especially now in this very weird, very fraught, very scary political moment. But the good news is that mental health awareness is growing, but there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey say they have avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. When people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them. It impacts families, workplaces, and entire communities. This Mental Health Awareness month, let's encourage everyone to take care of their well being and break the stigma. The world is better when people are healthy and happy. You all need therapy. Don't even, don't even pretend for a second you don't need it. We all need it. We all need it. It's good for you. It'll make you feel good. It can help you deal with trauma. It can help you be the best version of yourself. It can help you deal with challenges at home or at work. Whatever you need, therapy is there for you. Better help has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapists from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists with a wide range of specialties. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide. Easily switch therapists anytime at no extra costs. We're all better with help. Visit betterhelp.com crookedworld to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com CrookedWorld hey guys, have you heard of Gold Belly? It's this amazing site where they ship.

[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vitor]

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[Tommy Vitor]

Senator Chris Murphy, welcome back to the show.

[Chris Murphy]

Hey man, thanks for having me.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's great to see you. So we're talking on Tuesday afternoon. As we speak, President Trump is in Saudi Arabia. He'll go on to Qatar, then the United Arab Emirates. A lot about this trip is unusual, but I really want to talk with you about why it presents a truly unprecedented opportunity for political corruption. Just a few examples for listeners to kind of set the table. Qatar is apparently giving Trump A747. There is an Emirati run investment firm that recently announced they will be buying $2 billion worth of a Trump family cryptocurrency for no discernible business reason. Trump's real estate business is working on a luxury golf course in Qatar, residential towers in Saudi Arabia, a new Trump hotel in Dubai. Jared Kushner has gotten a bunch of money from all of these governments. Senator, it's genuinely hard to just keep track of all of this corruption, let alone make sense of it. But what is your sense of, like, what is the other end of the deal? What are these countries getting from Trump in return for these giant favors?

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah, you're being generous. It's not an opportunity for corruption. It's like corruption right in front of us. Right? Quid pro quo is being announced as Trump is touring the Middle East. I mean, first of all, it's just so unbelievably brazen. Trump is going to these three countries not because they are the three most important countries in the world, not because there are three most important allies, but because they are the three countries that are willing to pay him. These are the countries that are willing to just hand him cash. So he's going to, to the region to Collect. Another example of the brazenness part of the deal that you just. Part of the corruption you just talked about is this UAE investment in a Trump family crypto business. It's a $2 billion investment, and the Trump entity is essentially just acting as a bank. So it takes the money it gets to invest that money, and it's so much money, $2 billion, that they can make hundreds of millions of dollars a year just on the investments. But the entity is not just the Trump family. It's the Trump family and the Witkoff family. So it's Trump. It's Trump's kids and the son of the Middle east envoy. Just to, like, make it perfectly clear that when you're dealing with World Liberty Financial or whatever the hell it's called, you are definitely dealing directly with the people who make the decision decisions on U.S. middle east policy. Okay, so what's on the other end of this? Every single one of these countries needs something, and they need something immediate from the United States. The UAE wants the United States to relax our restrictions on semiconductor sales to the uae. And Trump basically announced as soon as the crypto deal was set that he was ready to do that. The Saudis want a nuclear deal with the United States that is better than every other country's nuclear deal. In particular, they want to be able to to enrich uranium in Saudi Arabia, which would allow them a pathway to a bomb. Qatar just sort of wants to make sure that they don't get cut out of the deal. What happened during Trump's first term was that the Saudis and Emiratis ganged up on the Qataris and the United States backed the Saudi play. So the Qataris are willing to give Trump whatever he asks for because they just want to make sure that they still get invited to these clubs. But everybody's got an ask, and it seems like Trump is ready to fulfill all of their asks because they are doing what is the price of admission in the Trump administration, which is. Sale sends Trump and his family boatloads of cash.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, there's greasing them. The corruption in Trump 1.0, as best we could tell, was like governments renting extra room blocks at his hotels for weeks on end or corrupt real estate stuff. Trump 2.0 features this kind of novel cryptocurrency element or avenue to buy him off. How do you think that changes things?

[Chris Murphy]

Trump's theory is very different in his second term. He's essentially testing not just the. The Republican Party, but the public writ large. He's saying, if I engage in sort of daily acts of corruption in the dozens, then is it really corruption? Or if I'm telling you that I'm stealing, will you just consider that it's part of the price of Donald Trump being president? I think for a little while it was working. I think for a little while the American people were like, well, I guess we kind of knew he was, was corrupt and we elected him and maybe we should look the other way. But as the corruption has gotten bigger. Right, as it's not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it's now billions of dollars and it's as gaudy as the gift of a gold plated plane. I think the American people are just sort of saying, okay, enough, and a few Republicans are saying enough. So it's the size of the corruption, it's the fact that it's all playing out in public, and it's the very transparent way in which she's, you know, operationalizing the entirety of the federal government, including tours of the White House to prompt people to give him more money. I just don't think this is ultimately going to numb the American people. It was close, but I don't think that's how this is going to play out.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that is what has been surprising about this. I mean, I sort of went into this assuming God only knows what's happening in secret. God only knows what Crypto wallets from Singapore are just firing off money to Trump for whatever deal. The reality is it's all happening in public, like he's hosting a dinner for the, the 200 people who buy the most cryptocurrency. I think the top 25 are getting a VIP tour of the White House. Bloomberg News did an analysis looking at the people who own the most of Trump's meme coin, the Trump coin, and the vast majority are from overseas. So you're right. It's just kind of, it's, it's so brazen, it's almost hard to know what to do with it.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah. And some of it is playing out in public, but some of it isn't. I know it's hard to follow for some people, and I think some of the bet that Trump made was that the crypto scams would be sort of the most opaque. And a lot of Americans, because they just choose to not want to understand crypto, would look the other way, but it's really not that hard to follow. I mean, there's the meme coin and then there's a stable coin. The meme coin is just this valueless coin. Coin that's worth is just dependent on how many people want to buy Trump meme coin on a particular day. And what we know, as you said, is that it's mostly foreign buyers. What we know is that Trump makes a bit of money on every single transaction. So every time a foreign buyer, an oligarch, or a Saudi prince buys meme coin, they're sending money straight into Trump's pocket. And we, you know, and yet we don't know the names of any of these buyers. So the fact that he's doing it plays out in public, but he is conveniently masking the identity of everybody that buys. And of course, we just know what's going on. There are people buying the coin and then going to the White House and saying, hey, I just bought $20 million of Trump coin. Here's what I need from you. That's happening with foreign entities. That's definitely happening with American companies. If a mayor did that or a governor did that, they'd be running out of town or the state on a rail. And I think we're going to get to the point where people are that fed up with Trump doing it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I hope so, too. There was some bipartisan movement in the Senate to regulate cryptocurrency. It fell apart. I was told by some folks who were working on it that that happened because in part because of some of these reports about foreign actors buying huge amounts of Trump's stablecoin. As you mentioned earlier, a person involved in those talks also told me that the crypto industry dumping tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars into elections. In particular, Sherrod Brown's defeat in the Ohio Senate race last cycle loomed very large in the background. How overt is the threat from the crypto industry to lawmakers that they will primary you or defeat you in a general election if you don't do their bidding? And do you have any hope that, you know, Senate can get that crypto bill in a better place?

[Chris Murphy]

Listen, I don't know how overt it is. I mean, I've never had one of these crypto bosses or bros come into my office and tell me that if I don't support what they want, they're going to come after me. But of course, I'm in Connecticut, not Ohio. But you're definitely right that there is sort of in the zeitgeist, a fear of the crypto industry. And, I mean, that's unacceptable. It is unacceptable for any member of Congress to be making decisions based upon what you fear is going to happen to you. Electorally, I think it's a little bit of an emperor without the sort of level of clothing that we believe they have. There's lots of other really powerful interests out there that we piss off on a regular basis, whether it be the oil industry, the pharmaceutical lobby. They have just as much money as the crypto lobby does. And we should just tell a story about how the crypto industry is gouging Americans, and we should tell a story about how they are enabling Trump's corruption. The crypto industry is less powerful if you unmask them for their corruption and their unethical behavior. On why the crypto deal fell apart, I think there are a lot of complicated reasons, but amongst them, I hope, was the fact that the President was exactly exempted. So the bill said that members of Congress can't issue crypto coin, at least stablecoin, which is what the bill was regulating. But the president could. At the very moment that Trump was doing the stablecoin deal in UAE in which Trump was getting a big payoff, My hope is that we will not vote on that bill. The Democrats will not support any regulation of stablecoin unless it applies the ethics prohibitions to the President. That seems like a pretty reasonable thing to ask as the president is over there engaged in this gross, gross corruption campaign.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that seems like the bare minimum. So back to Trump. I mean, it does seem like his kids are the tip of the spear on a lot of the corruption. There's, you know, the hypocrisy from Republicans when you compare the comments they made about Hunter Biden to their silence now. It's galling, but it ultimately misses the real point, which is, like, corruption is bad no matter what. Right. Like, Hunter Biden's activities were. Were, you know, cynical and kind of gross. But, you know, we're currently watching Don and Eric visit all of these Gulf countries. They're kind of either going right before dad or they're going right after to collect their real estate deal or whatever prize. I think Jared Kushner is sitting on $3.5 billion worth of Gulf money in his quote, unquote, investment firm. Surprise, surprise. Garrett just came out of the woodwork to say he was helping plan this foreign trip, I believe. What do you think the impact is of, like, the Trump kids and Kushner on the world stage? What part do they play?

[Chris Murphy]

I just don't think we should view the kids as separate or distinct at all from the father. You know, he says that the kids are running the business and, you know, Maybe operationally they are making the hour to hour decisions, but Trump is still running the business. So there's just no doubt that he is pulling the strings here. And of course, we see that on a daily basis because he's using his own social media feed to advertise and to market the business ventures that apparently his kids, not him, are in charge of. And I think you saw exactly how it works with that UAE crypto investment. The Trump kids, along with the Witkoff kid, went over there. Literally, a day later, the Trump administration announced that they were ready to give UAE what they wanted. And I imagine when he gets to the Emirates, that will be the sort of summation of the corrupt deal. So the kids and the father are just sort of playing individual parts, but it's all the same play, it's all the same game.

[Tommy Vitor]

Did you see the World Liberty Financial, that's the crypto firm that the Trump kids run. They released a video on social media of their trip to Pakistan where they were like, met by diplomats. They had lights and sirens in the streets. They were meeting with, you know, if not the president and very senior lawmakers, like, again, they're just kind of laying it all out there for us.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Chris Murphy]

And it's not, and obviously it doesn't, you know, end with the kids. Again, Witkoff is, is, is in on this. His kid is, and he are making boatloads of money off of these deals. Musk is along for the ride on this trip. And you have all this reporting that Starlink is one of the investments you need to make as a foreign entity to even get a foot in the door with the Trump administration there. Looks as if Saudi Arabia is part of this package of gifts that it's giving. The Trump cabal is a deal with Starlink. So you have to pay off Eric, you have to pay off Donald, you have to pay off the Wyckoff family. You got to pay off Elon Musk, you got to pay off Donald. And if you do all of those things, then you can ask for something from the American taxpayer. But what we know is that nowhere in that deal is the American taxpayer. Nowhere in this deal is anything good for US Security. The thing they're doing for UAE is a disaster. They are letting UAE have access to the highest technology, micro semiconductors. We've never wanted to do that because we know that the UAE and the Chinese are super tight and any technology we give to UAE likely goes straight to China. So China now will get access to these semiconductors and they will be able to potentially be in a position to lap us when it comes to the future of the global advanced AI industry. That is something that's really bad for the United States. But it's going to happen apparently only because the UAE met Donald Trump's price, which looks to be about a $2 billion cash payment into Trump Enterprises.

[Tommy Vitor]

Man, it's amazing. And by the way, the uae, I know they have a lot of friends at Washington. They have an ambassador who is kind of like, out and about often at Cafe Milano, et cetera, but they've also been funding one side of a absolutely brutal civil war in Sudan. They're funding the mercenary group called the rsf. So there's a lot of tough conversations we should be having with the UAE that are not about Donald Trump's pocketbook, and there's just no indication that those are happening.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah. And that we. And frankly, that we should have been having during Biden's term as well. I mean, we were doing deals with the UAE, not, not corrupt deals, but we were financing the UAE's defense infrastructure while they were fueling this brutal civil war. So we are going to force a vote. There is a pending sale of arms to the uae, and there is no doubt that that will not be fast tracked. We will force a vote and a debate on the Senate floor where we will talk both about the way that the UAE is funding the civil war and the. Both actors are terrible in uae, but they're funding the worst of the two. And the way in which the Trump administration's dealing with the UAE are corrupt. So we're not. We're not going to stand by. We're going to at least force our Republican colleagues to go on the record on all of this.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's good. I think that's important. So I saw you gave a big floor speech about Trump and corruption this week. I think that's great. And you're sort of sounding the alarm. What else can Congress do, though, if Republicans seem like they just kind of don't care, they're willing to turn a blind eye.

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things we can do on the foreign policy corruption is make it clear to these countries that, you know, there are repercussions if you pay off an American president. And those repercussions last beyond Trump's term. I mean, maybe UAE and Qatar believe that Trump will be president forever, but that's probably not how it's going to work out. There will probably be a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, and they're not going to get the same treatment from a Democratic president if this is the way that they deal with the United States. So Democrats need to communicate to these foreign allies that they should get out of this deal with Trump. They should unilaterally stand down the corruption if they want any long term healthy relationship with the United States of America. And then we can just do what I've been trying to do, which is mobilize the public. It is curious and a little heartbreaking that it's taken a long time for the public to kind of reach a level of outrage. But that's kind of because we as Democrats didn't talk about it enough. Like the minute the meme coin was issued on Inauguration Day, we should have been talking about it and very little else. So I think if we work to mobilize the public around this set of issues with a kind of nasty midterm coming up for Republican members of Congress, it may cause them to raise some objections. You see Republicans starting to tiptoe into objections at least to the the cuttery plane. That might be more likely to happen if we talk about this more in the public and out in the stump.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, the plane is a nice, quite literally bright, shiny object that we can all focus on and talk about. But the Steve Bannon flood the zone with shit strategy from Trump is pretty effective and makes it hard, I think, to fire the right bullet at the same target. Final question for you. President Trump gave a speech earlier today in Saudi Arabia where he said he's going to get rid of sanctions on Syria and meet with the Syrian President Al Shara. I had to say I was incredibly excited about that announcement from President Trump. I think it's a politically challenging thing to do to take sanctions off a leader who was admittedly a former terrorist. But it's absolutely the right thing to do if we want this new Syrian government to have a shot of existing. And by the way, these are sanctions that were all put on the Assad regime, which has now been deposed by these guys. But what was your reaction to that announcement? Did you guys have any heads up on it either?

[Chris Murphy]

Yeah, there's certainly some commotion that this was being considered by the administration. I agree with you. This is a really important move. Now there are a lot of announcements that Trump makes that don't end up actually coming to fruition. So I think we should, you know, pour a little bit of salt on this announcement. But yes, we, as unsavory as these characters are, this is not the Assad respons regime and we should give this Syrian government a chance to show that they are going to build a multi religious, multi sectarian society, that they are committed to a relationship with the United States. And we should just understand that if we're not talking to the Syrian regime, then our enemies are the Russians and the Iranians, many others. The Chinese are willing to cut a deal. So this is important. We should drop the sanctions, but it probably will necessitate Congress stepping in because some of these sanctions through the Caesar act are mandatory sanctions. So if Trump wants to get this done and establish a real relationship, or at least a pathway to a relationship with Syria, that's a good thing. We should applaud him when he does something decent. But he probably needs Congress to step in. But we'll see if all of his. Well, I guess they always do whatever he tells them to do. So I guess I shouldn't die that Republicans who had been pressing against Biden releasing the sanctions vigorously will pivot on a dime and all of a sudden announce that Trump has struck a genius move in doing the thing that they thought if Biden did, it was going to be a cataclysm for the Middle East.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, we got art of the deal tier. Senator Murphy, thank you so much for raising everybody's awareness about these issues and for coming on the show. Great to see you.

[Chris Murphy]

Thanks, man.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thanks again to Senator Murphy for joining the show and we'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor 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 Tolles and Molly Lobel. 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 at Eisen Ramper. We are creative problem solvers that take a 360 degree approach focusing on you. We're an award winning firm with decades of experience. Eisner, Amber. Let's get you ready. Meet Flip. She's one half of a Flip flop. That's me. Who got left behind at Celebration Key, Carnival's exclusive paradise in Grand Bahama.

[Ben Rhodes]

Uh, I chose to stay here. It really is paradise.

[Tommy Vitor]

So now Flip spends her time lounging on the beach, swimming in the lagoon.

[Ben Rhodes]

And eating the only thing more impressive than my appetite.

[Tommy Vitor]

Appetite are all the dining options.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Have you tried food service to your cabana?

[Ben Rhodes]

Ooh, yum.

[Tommy Vitor]

Flip.

[Chris Murphy]

Where'd she go?

[Ben Rhodes]

Book your cruise.

[Tommy Vitor]

Vacation to Carnival. Celebration Key, a paradise you'll want to lose yourself in. Ships registry, The Bahamas. In Panama.