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Pod Save the World
Is Pete Hegseth a War Criminal?
01:49:10
Tommy and Ben discuss a blockbuster Washington Post report alleging that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth personally ordered a “double tap” airstrike that was a textbook example of a war crime, the latest on Trump’s slow-moving regime change policy in Venezuela, Trump’s shocking pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former President of Honduras who was convicted of conspiring to import 400+ tons of cocaine into the United States, and the latest on the Trump administration’s peace talks with Russia. Then they explain how the tragic shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington, DC has led to a massive crackdown on legal immigration, and why the shooter is part of the long and disastrous history of the “Global War on Terror”, how the former president of South Africa’s daughter tricked men into fighting for Russia on the front lines against Ukraine, and the latest PR disaster for FBI Director Kash Patel. Then, Ben speaks to film director Julia Loktev and Russian journalist Ksenia M...
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- [00:00]
Tommy Vietor
POD Save the World is brought to you by unhcr, the UN Refugee agency. Displacement is at its highest level since World War II. More people have been forced to flee than at any time in recorded history. UNHCR can reach only half of those facing life threatening emergencies due to funding cuts. Humanitarian aid cuts are forcing UNHCR to make impossible choices about who receives help as the war escalates. In Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, the number of refugees is at a record high, just as the help they need is vanishing. Sick children are suffering from dehydration and disease. They are, and they can't get access to clean water. Sick and elderly populations are unable to get medical care. Families arrive at overcrowded camps where diseases like cholera are spreading. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has operations in over 130 countries worldwide. Donations are critical in funding aid to save lives across the globe. Once a donation is made, relief can reach refugees within 72 hours of an emergency. Just $37 provides an individual a winter survival kit with a blanket, sleeping mat, kitchen set and plastic sheeting to insulate their home. $95 provides warm winter clothes for a child. $179 will provide a family without electricity, a solar kit to light their home on the long cold nights of winter. Donate@unrefugees.org pod to help save lives. Help families survive the deadly winter ahead. Donate@unrefugees.org pod. Welcome back to POD Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
- [01:34]
Ben Rhodes
I'm Ben Rhodes.
- [01:35]
Tommy Vietor
Welcome back, buddy. Of course, every single thing that we focus on and record and talk about here at POD Save the World is exploding over the Thanksgiving holiday.
- [01:44]
Ben Rhodes
I know. It was like one battle after another over Thanksgiving.
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Tommy Vietor
It's like World O City World couldn't.
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Ben Rhodes
Keep up with the content.
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Tommy Vietor
Yeah, my mom Hannah's like, could you please put your phone down? No, I'm sorry. I'm reading about Steve Wyckoff. It's very important.
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Ben Rhodes
I'm working, I'm working. I'm tweeting, I'm working and eating over here. I'm tweeting over here and I can't eat as much as I used to. I mean, I have this recollection of being able to eat like, portion after portion and now I just kind of run out of room at a certain point.
- [02:08]
Tommy Vietor
I don't stop. The thing that is crazy to me is that we all used to go out as hard as humanly possible Wednesday night.
- [02:14]
Ben Rhodes
That was the big night before the.
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Tommy Vietor
Biggest eating day of the year.
- [02:17]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Why made a lot of sense at the time.
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Tommy Vietor
Didn't we get hungover?
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Ben Rhodes
We did. And you know, but you used to be able to eat a lot when you're hungover and now you just lie in a prone position and just sit there and want to take an edible and wait.
- [02:29]
Tommy Vietor
You know, think about your life, think about your parenting decisions. Wonder why you're up at 5:30.
- [02:33]
Ben Rhodes
Wonder why your child woke you up at 5:30 and wants to do a puzzle.
- [02:36]
Tommy Vietor
James loves to be up even before, even when the clock is in the 4am hour. He likes to just sort of chirp. Yeah, let me know what's going on. Anyway, it's great to be back. It's great to see you in person. We have a wild show, a lot, a lot to cover today.
- [02:49]
Ben Rhodes
Big show.
- [02:50]
Tommy Vietor
We're going to talk about this scandal engulfing Secretary of War. I hate saying that. Pete Hegseth and reports that he personally ordered an airstrike that is about as clear cut an example of a war crime as you can get. We're also going to update you on the latest Trump on again, off again, regime change, war with Venezuela, his shocking pardon of the former president of Honduras was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring with drug traffickers including El Chapo himself. Not like the low level.
- [03:17]
Ben Rhodes
No, no. Like not the no name former Sean Penn interview.
- [03:20]
Pete Hegseth
A list.
- [03:21]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, a list narco terrorist.
- [03:24]
Tommy Vietor
We're gonna fill you in on the latest Russia, Ukraine peace talks and how corruption allegations in the US And Ukraine are impacting these talks in a big way. We're also going to detail the fallout from this horrible shooting of two National Guard members in D.C. specifically how it's being used to cut off legal immigration to the United States in and to punish basically anyone from Afghanistan. And we'll explain the background of the shooter who fought alongside U.S. personnel against the Taliban, these so called zero units. And then we got some really fascinating stories out of South Africa. And then we're going to end with our bestest boy, Cash Patel, our bestest, bestest FBI director.
- [04:01]
Ben Rhodes
I, I'm torn between whether I want him to be fired or whether we need him for content, for content purposes.
- [04:06]
Tommy Vietor
I think it'd probably be good for the country to have a competent leader in that place. Also at the very end of the show, we're going to take some questions from Discord from our friends at POD subscribers. And then Ben, you did our interview today.
- [04:17]
Ben Rhodes
I did. Fascinating interview. I talked to Julia Lochtev who's the director of my undesirable Friends, which is a new.
- [04:25]
Tommy Vietor
My friends from high school.
- [04:26]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, the ones you saw over Thanksgiving break.
- [04:29]
Tommy Vietor
I'm kidding. My friends from High School are great.
- [04:32]
Ben Rhodes
It's a great title, actually. I thought it was a great title. What Julia did is she basically embedded with a number of independent Russian journalists in the lead up to the full scale invasion of Ukraine.
- [04:42]
Tommy Vietor
And.
- [04:42]
Ben Rhodes
And it's filmed with an iPhone. It's very like intimate. You see them kind of going about their lives, going about their work at the same time that there's this massive crackdown where they're being labeled foreign agents. And addition to being joined by Julia, I was really lucky to be joined by Ksenia Mironova, who is one of the journalists who's got a really harrowing story that is shown in the film. Her partner, her fiance was detained and essentially disappeared. He's also a journalist and he's serving a 22 year sentence in Russia right now. Ksenia is now in the United States and we just talk about the challenges of being a journalist, obviously in Russia. I can't even imagine why Putin did this crackdown, what lessons there are in it for the United States given where we are on the authoritarian spectrum over here. So really, really fascinating.
- [05:27]
Tommy Vietor
We are pretty far along. What's on your thumb? Do you vote in the Iraqi parliamentary elections?
- [05:31]
Ben Rhodes
What's going on there for the YouTube viewers? I cut my finger today and the only band aids we have are child's band aids.
- [05:38]
Tommy Vietor
Is that a bluey bandaid?
- [05:39]
Ben Rhodes
So I have a Halloween band aid of some sort. This is a kind of. I can't tell if it's like a spider web with stars on it. So, yes, this is why you should subscribe to the Pod Save the world. You.
- [05:49]
Tommy Vietor
This is the good shit.
- [05:50]
Ben Rhodes
You get the kind of content you get my child's band aid on my little cut finger.
- [05:54]
Tommy Vietor
I do want to thank the. The several thousand people that subscribe to the pod Save the World YouTube. We are cranking out lots of bonus content. Again, we did one on Jonathan Pollard, this spy who got a meeting at the U.S. embassy. We did one on the. The Ukraine peace deal. And when you subscribe or when you like these videos or when you comment, it actually tells the YouTube algorithm to. To push them to other people to find the show. Yeah. So thank you for subscribing. We greatly appreciate it. All right, Ben, should we talk about our boy Pete Hegseth, the Secretary Pete?
- [06:21]
Ben Rhodes
Yes, I just.
- [06:22]
Tommy Vietor
I can't say Secretary of War. It makes you feel so stupid.
- [06:25]
Ben Rhodes
All right, well, we're living in the stupidest timelines.
- [06:27]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, that's right. Okay, so we have talked a lot on the show about the administration's airstrikes on these boats in the Caribbean and in the Pacific Ocean. So Trump says this is part of a war on drug cartels. He calls them narco terrorists. In practice, the US Military is just murdering people who the administration claims are drug traffickers. They don't really know. 83 people in 21 airstrikes, to be exact. But a new report from the Washington Post now is members of Congress from both parties demanding more detail about this policy and asking whether Pete Hegseth himself is guilty of war crimes. The specific incident they are focused on was the first one of these counter narcotics strikes. It happened on September 2. It killed 11 people at the time. Remember, Trump put out this brief clip of the airstrike on Truth Social. He said the people killed were trend Aragua narco terrorists. And then a few days later, the Intercept reported a bunch more details about the strike itself, specifically that the boat had spotted the surveillance drones following them, turned back towards shore, and then the US Military hit them anyway with a first drone strike that didn't kill everyone on board, and then a second strike killed the remaining survivors. So the Washington Post reported that Admiral Bradley, who at the time was the head of Joint Special Operations Commander jsoc, ordered that second double tap strike because he had been given a verbal directive from Pete Hegseth to, quote, kill everybody. So, Ben, just to be clear here, like, I believe that these airstrikes are illegal no matter what. So it's like, it's weird that we're kind of debating whether the double tap strike is. Is illegal. But, like, even if the whole thing was on the up and up, like ordering a second drone strike to kill defenseless people floating on, on wreckage is a war crime. Yeah, it is. Like, it is. In fact, shooting at defenseless sailors after, like a U boat strike was like the textbook example of a war crime from World War II. So the law says basically when the. When a soldier is hurt or sick or surrenders or is rendered defenseless, it's a war crime to kill them and you have to rescue them. Initially, the. The Pentagon denied the story. They called the Post story fabricated, inflammatory interrogatory. Then on Sunday, Trump got asked about the report.
- [08:28]
Ben Rhodes
A lot of big words for those guys.
- [08:30]
Tommy Vietor
A lot of big words, A lot of syllables there. And so Trump gets asked on the day and he's like, I guess I believe Pete, but also, I wouldn't have wanted that. Not that second strike. Then Monday, Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, reads this prepared statement that says Hegseth authorized the strikes. But then she pointed her finger down the chain of command at the head of jsoc, Admiral Bradley, and said Bradley was, quote, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed. And then later on Monday, Hexeth tweeted about Bradley saying, quote, I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made on the September 2nd mission and all other since. So some very subtle finger pointing from, from Pete there. On Tuesday, Ben Trump and Hegseth were asked about the strike at a Cabinet meeting. Here's some of what they said.
- [09:14]
Ben Rhodes
President Trump always has our back. We always have the back of our commanders who are making decisions in difficult situations than we do in this case.
- [09:22]
Pete Hegseth
Pete didn't know about second attack having to do with two people. And I guess Pete would have to speak to it. I can say this. I want those boats taken out, and if we have to, we'll attack on land.
- [09:35]
Tommy Vietor
Also, I watched that first strike live.
- [09:37]
Ben Rhodes
As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the. Which he had the complete authority to do. And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision. I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire. It was exploded and fire, smoke, you can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don't understand.
- [10:10]
Pete Hegseth
I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants. Okay. And then they sell us their cocaine. We appreciate that very much. But yeah, anybody that's doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.
- [10:26]
Tommy Vietor
Not necessarily just Venezuela.
- [10:28]
Pete Hegseth
No, not just Venezuela. No. We're taking those son of a bitches out. Yeah.
- [10:33]
Tommy Vietor
Just learned that Colombia is manufacturing cocaine. So just to like try to put a button on this long, sordid story. So previously the administration said the second strike was necessary to get rid of a navigation hazard and sink the boat. Then they said it was self defense because I guess these two people floating in the water are going to like take out a Reaper drone or whatever is floating above them. We should note that the New York Times reported out a slightly different version of events after the post, which is that Hegseth ordered a strike to kill the people on the boat. And destroy its cargo, sink the vessel. But he didn't say, like, if there are survivors, kill them too. Which, like, is an important distinction just in terms of, like, the criminality here. So let's pause there, Ben. I mean, how much trouble do you think Hegseth and Bradley are in here? And how subtle did you find his attempt to point the finger at his subordinates?
- [11:21]
Ben Rhodes
So that, to me is the headline of this whole thing, is that they know they got caught committing murder. You know, they are acting like people that are guilty of murder because they are. And Trump is furiously distancing himself from this. I wouldn't have taken the shot. I had nothing to do with it. Hegseth furiously after posting snuff videos and chest pounding about these boats. Oh, I didn't, you know, the commander did this, but I back up the commander. But I had nothing to do with it. I walked out the room. I had another meeting. These are people that the whole world is watching. Video evidence of a war crime. And it's a sign, too, that even Pete Hegseth, not the, you know, Pistol Pete's not the sharpest guy that we've had in the job, is aware that he's gonna have a life after Donald Trump is there to protect him. You know, this is becoming an increasingly common thread with this group that they're aware that there's some accountability that may be on the horizon for them. Now let's just pause and go back to the core issue of why these strikes are wrong. They're illegal, right? Even if they don't do the double tap strike, there's no domestic legal authorization for this. We've talked about this.
- [12:25]
Tommy Vietor
Manufactured forces.
- [12:26]
Ben Rhodes
Even if you didn't like the drone strikes, as we've said, there's an act of Congress authorizing use of force against Al Qaeda. There is no such domestic law authorizing use of force against drug traffickers under international law. There's no imminent threat posed by these boats, right. Hundreds and hundreds of miles from the United States trafficking maybe cocaine, but they're not providing any evidence of this. Maybe that could go somewhere else, too. It may not even come in the United States. So this is just. There's no legal basis for any of this. The reason that the double tap strike is a particularly egregious war crime is because when people, I mean, I think the people driving the boats to begin with are not exactly posing a threat. But when people are not fighting back and they're at risk and they're trying to surrender, they're not putting up A fight, you are obligated to capture those people, to help those people even. And we went through this, by the way, in Gaza. Why? You can't just blow up whole buildings. Right. And for people who don't think those are important, I just go through the few reasons. Number one, it's wrong to just kill people when you don't need to kill them. I mean, if you're fighting in a war, if you're on the front line in Ukraine and you're trading fire, that's a legal use of force. If there's vulnerable people hanging onto a boat and you kill them, well, that's just wrong. And those people could be innocent too. But secondly, if you needed another reason, that should be enough. Our troops, U.S. troops depend on these laws. If these laws go away, how would you feel if it was American troops with their hands up trying to surrender, getting double tapped and killed instead of being captured and ultimately exchanged or released to their families? Right. So our military has traditionally been a huge proponent of following the laws of war, particularly in circumstances where when people are trying to surrender because they know that there have been times and there will be times in the future when those will be Americans. So this is wrong morally, it's wrong legally. It's also wrong for our national security, for the security of our troops. If these laws of war are just out the window, it's gonna come back and boomer, the chickens are going to come home to roost. To quote the former pastor of our former boss. And so it just, to me, so many threads come into this story because there's the abuse of power, then there's the why are we there? And the regime change piece in Venezuela that we'll get to. And then there's also, remember the fact that this is why they're at war with like Mark Kelly, because the Democrats in Congress were telling those service members, hey, if you commit an illegal act, if you were ordered to do something illegal like kill these people and end up on an act strike, you could be held accountable. You don't have to do that. You follow the Constitution, not in a legal order. And so a lot of things converge in this story. It's why it's a really big and important story.
- [15:17]
Tommy Vietor
It's a big and important story. And clearly those six members of Congress made that video because they knew, they.
- [15:21]
Ben Rhodes
Knew about this, right?
- [15:22]
Tommy Vietor
This was the first one of these strikes, remember? And Hegseth is such a preening fuck that he had to go on, he went on Fox News like the day after was bragging about how he watched it live and how he was personally engaged and he knew all the intelligence. But everyone, like, I remember talking to people you and I worked with in the Obama administration, like in the days after that first strike, who are saying to me, like, there were 11 people on that boat. Why would you have 11 people on a drug runner boat, right? Like, there was probably some human trafficking. There's probably innocent people who may have been those survivors. And like you said, like, the whole policy is illegal, full stop. There's probably a legal difference for Hegseth in terms of his future in culpability between him saying you have the authority to kill everyone on that boat, with him being like, kill everyone on that boat. Or seeing survivors and being like, kill those people. But again, like, this is all greatly complicated by the fact that he watched this live, I guess. And then just bigger picture, Pete Hegseth is so obviously trying to fuck over his direct reports the head of JSOC at the time, and that is just not going to go over well at the Pentagon or really anywhere in the military. Like, the buck is supposed to stop with him. He's the leader.
- [16:30]
Ben Rhodes
And this is a common thread. We'll get to it with Cash Patel. But they are starting. I mean, look, these people, by the way, that guy, I guarantee you, I don't know anything about that guy. That guy is not a Democrat. You know, the commander of JSOC just going to go out on a limp, right? You know, so this is going to be a problem for them because one, those people know that they might face accountability. But two, I mean, you and I were talking offline about this. Imagine if Barack Obama went out and just blamed, you know, the down the chain of command. They are going to start to run into a challenge. I mean, I remember this. You know, every administration comes in and their highest moment is the first day, Right?
- [17:14]
Tommy Vietor
The half day, too.
- [17:15]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, that half day of inauguration where everybody's kissing your ass. It seems like you're going to be there forever. You know, it seems like you can do anything. Everybody wants a job, so they're being really nice to you. And that capital just diminishes throughout the time that you're in office. Donald Trump is trying to, like, buck gravity by talking about how he might run for a third term. He's not the guy's old, right? We're gonna be. We might go through some shit here with the midterms and whatever happens, you know, I'm not suggesting it's gonna be easy.
- [17:39]
Tommy Vietor
Can't stay awake through a cabinet meeting.
- [17:41]
Ben Rhodes
But the point is that these soldiers and SEALs and special operators and FBI agents know they're gonna have to have a life after Trump. And these fuckers are just passing the buck for all the crimes that they're committing down the chain. That is gonna create some real tensions inside the military. And that's why they were so thin skinned about that video, because people like Jason Crowe and Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin, they know that.
- [18:08]
Tommy Vietor
Yes.
- [18:08]
Ben Rhodes
And so that hit the target. The reason they freaked out like they did and they're trying to court martial Mark Kelly is because they know that they're speaking directly to people that are listening.
- [18:19]
Tommy Vietor
Absolutely right. Yeah. Just a few other things I'm sure, like me, you went deep on this policy debate after this, you know, hexa story posted. I hadn't realized that The Washington Post reported that the White House initially asked the CIA to conduct these drone strikes on the boats through its covert action authorities. But the CIA's lawyers were like, I don't know that there's any possible self defense argument. And they didn't want to do it. And then Stephen Miller wanted to be able to make the snuff films public, which sort of like belies the whole idea that you would do it covertly. So they passed it over to dod. And the Post also reported that the deputy director at the CIA had to become the acting general counsel and then be the one who ultimately approved CIA's participation in the policy because the career lawyers were again, like, this is, this is crazy. This is just murder. And so you know, Ben, to your, to your point about Admiral Bradley, between this strike and today, Admiral Bradley was promoted from the head of JSOC to the head of US Special Operations Command. So they, they're now pointing the finger at him and being like, he is the one to blame. If you're going to, you know, Congress, if you're going to, you know, call someone up to the Hill, it's that guy. But they loved him until like a couple days ago when the Post reported this story. And then, you know, we, I think you and I talked about this at the time. On October 6, there was another strike that had some survivors. Those survivors were picked up and then returned to their home countries. They weren't even prosecuted. So clearly they were shaken by this first strike. They knew they did the wrong thing and they changed the policy going forward. And that is also reportedly when Admiral Halsey, who is the head of Southern Command, who's retiring early, gotten some big fight with Raisin Cain, Dan Cain the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I think about this policy, maybe about this question of survivors. And now he's leaving only a year into the job, I think with the end of December, there's just like lots of interesting data points in the public domain that have shown like smoke and fire along the way about the problems here.
- [20:18]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. And if you have no again, credible legal basis, which they have not even presented, you know, domestically or internationally, and then you have a video of people being killed after the strike had already hit the target. That's why they had all the meetings, because they already knew they were on a shaky legal basis. You already had lawyers that reportedly had said no to this. Right. At multiple agencies because they also got rid of the jags.
- [20:44]
Tommy Vietor
The lawyers of defense cleaned house early.
- [20:46]
Ben Rhodes
On, cleaned house there. So they already knew that they were on pretty tenuous footing in part cuz Stephen Miller wanted to make the snuff videos.
- [20:54]
Pete Hegseth
Right.
- [20:54]
Ben Rhodes
So this is their own hubris coming back on them. It's always hubris that brings people down. Clearly the flurry of this activity, flurry of these meetings. But what they can't change is the fact that they killed those people and that there's video evidence of those people being killed and that's never gonna go away no matter what they do. And the rats can scurry off the ship here. Not to be a little too. But we all know what we saw and we all know that they can't explain why it's legal. And that's why they say, by the way, the other thing I wanna point out in that clip you played, then they pivot to those sons of bitches this kind of dehumanizing bravado bullshit. Donald Trump's not a tough guy, Pete. Hegseth, give me a break. They hide behind that because they have no argument to make for why they're blowing up these boats.
- [21:40]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, and I do think in that clip too, Hegseth kind of showed you who he really is. I mean, remember this is a guy who spent a lot of time defending someone named Eddie Gallagher, who was a Navy SEAL who, who was accused by his own men of horrific war crimes, just like sniping innocent kids. And Hegseth like put a lot of political capital into defending him. Also, Ben, I saw Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul, Republican, posted a letter from the Coast Guard that said between September 1, 2024 and October 7, 2025 Coast Guard vessels interdicted 212 suspected drug smuggling vessels at sea headed towards the US 41% of them had no illicit contraband on board at all. I'm not sure if contraband means drugs or like, anything the Coast Guard deemed illegal, but either way, at least 20% of these boats had no drugs. So if. If that is the error rate with these drone strikes, that's pretty bad.
- [22:33]
Ben Rhodes
We're just murdering. If that's the case, we don't know because they provide no evidence. We were just killing potentially like fishermen or people just on a boat. And look, then when you challenge them on that. Trump says there are not any boats to hit anymore. Well, guess what? There is. There's still fucking cocaine in the United States. What did they end drug trafficking? Like, these boats are achieving nothing. Nothing other than a big show that Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth like to put on on X, you know, and seem like tough guys.
- [23:01]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I'm so. I'm glad Republicans and Democrats in Congress are both outraged. Hopefully we'll have real hearings, real investigations. Of course, like, Pete Hegseth posts this like, Franklin the turtle meme of like a turtle firing a machine gun, like he's just a moron.
- [23:14]
Ben Rhodes
I don't know. Do you think that. I wonder if this stuff is starting to wear thin even with some people, because it's the Franklin the Turtle thing, which is just thirsty.
- [23:23]
Tommy Vietor
That was not a good swing, sir. No one knows that.
- [23:25]
Ben Rhodes
But this is why he was the weekend anchor at Fox and that's right. Guy couldn't even carry the fucking weekday.
- [23:29]
Tommy Vietor
No, he's too drunk. Okay, so that disaster we just talked about could just be like a little war crime. Amoz bouche for the entree. That is a regime change war with Venezuela. Trump has been threatening Venezuela for a while now. As we've discussed, he's put all these naval assets in the region. There's something like 15,000 troops down there in the Caribbean. But there is still some hope that Trump is looking for a diplomatic off ramp. On November 21, Trump reportedly spoke with President Maduro in a call that the Miami Herald says was arranged by Brazil. Qatar in Turkey. Interesting group. Again, Qatar.
- [24:01]
Ben Rhodes
Qatar was. Yeah, They've been involved in Venezuela. They brokered some release of prisoners. They. Those guys are negotiators.
- [24:09]
Tommy Vietor
They're just everywhere.
- [24:10]
Ben Rhodes
They're like, whit coffee and they're negotiating.
- [24:14]
Tommy Vietor
This call was right before the State Department officially labeled Maduro the head of the Cartel de la Souls, which is a group, as we discussed last week, that doesn't actually exist. It's what Venezuelan journalists call corrupt members of the military. So according to Reuters, Maduro told Trump he was willing to leave Venezuela if he and his family got full legal amnesty, all sanctions removed, and if the US Stopped the case against Maduro at the icc. To which we said, sorry, Maduro, we only block ICC justice for Israeli war criminals. Yes, sir. So Maduro also wanted sanctions removed from more than 100 Venezuelan officials. And he wanted his VP to run Venezuela until there were new elections, which of course would be free and fair, as we know. So Trump reportedly said, no, actually, you have a week to get the hell out of the country. Best of luck. Call me back. So that call didn't go great. That one week deadline for Maduro to leave was Friday. On Saturday, Trump posted this message which said, quote, to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers, they should consider Venezuelan airspace closed. And then in a call with troops on Thanksgiving, Trump indicated that ground operations in Venezuela could begin, quote, very soon. So, happy Thanksgiving, guys. Yeah, enjoy some turkey and a new war.
- [25:25]
Ben Rhodes
By the way, what happened to the Thanksgiving deadline and the war in Russia?
- [25:28]
Tommy Vietor
It feels like that almost started. War slipped a little bit too. As we know. We discussed. The Trump administration recently doubled the bounty on Maduro's head to $50 million. Trump was supposed to have some like, kind of cabinet level meeting on Monday to figure out next moves. We don't know what happened there. Meanwhile, in Caracas, Maduro hosted a rally on Monday where he danced on stage and called for peace, saying, quote, unquote, we do not want a slaves peace, nor the peace of colonies colony. Never slaves. Never. The New York Times had this interesting piece, Ben, about how Maduro's upping a security game. He's changing where he sleeps, he's swapping out cell phones. He's also leaning very heavily apparently on Cuban bodyguards and Cuban intelligence support, which is sort of interesting detail, all while trying to be chill in public. So I guess we'll continue to hurry up and wait. I mean, at the risk of asking you the same question, like six weeks in a row, any signs you're seeing that Trump's leaning one way or the other? And did you catch the Politico story over the Thanksgiving break about all the Republicans in Miami saying they will never lose Florida again if Trump just deposes Maduro?
- [26:28]
Ben Rhodes
I did see that. It's a little bit of a trigger, you know, good reason to go to war, you know, great, great, good reason to, like invade a country and overthrow its government and it put at risk like thousands of lives. Well, hundreds of thousands of lies in Venezuela and American service members, etc. Put aside the kind of Crass, you know, offensive stupidity of that being a reason to go to war. I guess what I'd say is, like, I was interested by and concerned by the flurry of leaks, right? Including this phone call. Because part of what's so strange here is, like, Trump cannot explain why we might go to war in Venezuela. Like, he just cannot. Like, and we've said this before, but, like, it's not drugs. Like, they're not a major source of drugs coming to the United States. That's a bullshit. Then we'd be invading China, Mexico and Colombia. It's just not about drugs. It's clearly about this weird mixture of ideology and Florida politics and oil and a lot of things. And he wanted them out the first time and couldn't get them out because he can't explain it. I keep thinking, is he really going to do this? It'd be pretty insane for all the reasons we've detailed. But what worries me about this is this almost felt like the kind of thing you do when you're gonna go to war. Like, we made one last phone call, you know, we offered him an ALF ramp, you know, like it was kinda, they were leaking too, that we invited him to the United States for a meeting. Like, pretty clearly he was gonna be arrested if he came to the United States.
- [27:55]
Tommy Vietor
Come on, buddy.
- [27:56]
Ben Rhodes
Pretty obvious where Maduro's gonna end up in the jail cell that the Honduran guy just come have dinner. Come to Mar a Lago, have a cake. Yeah. So that's what made me nervous, is like, we still, we're going through these motions and doing things like ultimatums. Like, this is kind of like felt like before the war in Iraq, remember, It was like 48 hours to give up all the weapons of mass destruction that they didn't have. And, you know, so.
- [28:16]
Tommy Vietor
And these things take on a momentum and a life of their own, even when the leaders don't want there to be a conflict.
- [28:20]
Ben Rhodes
And look, we've seen Trump have the ability to just ignore his own deadlines. I mean, we've had five or six to end the war in Ukraine, as I just alluded to.
- [28:29]
Tommy Vietor
Two weeks for a healthcare plan in 2015.
- [28:31]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, he's got a lot of chips on the table, too. Like, he's like, he's promised to get rid of this guy and he's threatened to bomb them on land multiple times. And so I just think that they keep believing there's some way to do this on the cheap that they've got. Again, I've said this before, but I would Imagine there's some special forces guys in the country. They got some CIA people doing stuff, some sabotage. They're trying to get the opposition to maybe do it themselves. But Maduro, man, he's a stubborn guy and his whole existence is tied up. I mean, if he leaves, he's dead.
- [29:05]
Tommy Vietor
What is he?
- [29:07]
Ben Rhodes
And that's not who he's going to be. I mean, I don't say this with any admiration, I just say this as a. I remember I met with him once. I was at the Summit of the Americas in 2015, and Obama had an interaction with him backstage. We did it somewhere where there were no photographers. And part of this was just we had want to just make first contact here and see if we can begin to try to address some of the huge issues. And I just remember him saying over and over again, I'm a revolutionary. And I remember kind of believing it not in a good. It doesn't justify fucking dictator. But I think he's an ideologue and I think he like, okay, if he's gonna go out in a blaze of glory, he'll be that kind of guy, more than the Assad kind of guy. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe he'll get on a plane and go to Havana or something, in which case that'll probably be the next target for invasion.
- [30:00]
Tommy Vietor
Yes, for sure.
- [30:01]
Ben Rhodes
But it just, it feels like a lot of momentum and a lot of. And Trump, by the way, I'm not in the distraction crowd, as you know, but like. Cuz I think everything they do matters. But when you're losing altitude, I mean, if we study the authoritarian playbook, when your numbers are slipping below 40% and people are stopping following some of your orders and you know, some Republicans are beginning to jump ship. Like this is when autocrats like start wars.
- [30:24]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, Sometimes you just gotta bomb some shit. Yeah, Maduro was like a bus driver, then he was a union activist, then he was a member of Chavez's party and he was vice president and then became president. I think you're right that he's an ideologue also. I mean like his life has been this project. He's not done anything else. And he's propped up by corruption in the structure that he built under himself. I don't think he's ever been seen as the brightest bulb or the most charismatic person. What was the book that Chavez gave Obama?
- [30:48]
Ben Rhodes
Noam Chomsky. Chomsky book, yeah.
- [30:51]
Tommy Vietor
That's cool.
- [30:52]
Ben Rhodes
But this is, I mean, he gives.
- [30:54]
Tommy Vietor
Him a subscription to the Intercept.
- [30:56]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was no drop set yet. Sorry. We love you guys.
- [31:01]
Tommy Vietor
Descent magazine?
- [31:02]
Julia Lochtev
No.
- [31:02]
Tommy Vietor
Like we're readers.
- [31:04]
Ben Rhodes
But no, it was interesting because Chavez was compelling, charismatic, smart, Maduro, fiery speaker. None of those things. But what's important about that is as Maduro has lost the support of the people, he has consolidated and maintained control because of the military.
- [31:21]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [31:21]
Ben Rhodes
So he's become far more of a military dictator than Chavez was. Which is actually why this will be harder than Trump thinks. Because the military's in on this project, they're in on the corruption, they're in on all the things.
- [31:31]
Tommy Vietor
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- [33:40]
Tommy Vietor
Okay, so the other shocking development this past week was Trump's decision to pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. We're going to call him JOH for short. Sometimes because it's just easier. So Hernandez was convicted in federal court last year of, quote, conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and conspiring to use heavy weapons to facilitate said drug trafficking. DOJ estimates that Hernandez helped traffic 400 tons of cocaine into the US over 20 years. That got him 45 years in prison. Oh, also, he was accused of murdering a witness in prison. So good guy. So right as the Trump administration is arguing that the US Needs to invade Venezuela to depose the head of a corrupt narco state or murder random dudes in boats off the coast of Venezuela, Trump releases a different corrupt cartel linked president from prison. Makes a lot of sense. So Joh was President of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was talking with someone who, you know, sort of worked in and out of the US Government, who worked with Joh during that period, who said, you know, look, he sort of smelled dirty from the very beginning, in part because he had a very corrupt, very stupid brother, Tony Hernandez, who was also prosecuted for drug trafficking. Tony famously stamped some of the cocaine he manufactured with his initials on it, just th. So, shockingly, that guy got arrested in 2018. And then Joh also, you know, a better politician, but not the brightest bulb because he was photographed at the 2010 World cup with a known Honduran cartel boss. So folks knew this guy was a creep is what I was saying. That said, both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, you know, met with him, worked with him, praised him for reducing migration. And then the DEA was working closely with the Honduran government to try to stop the same drug traffickers that Joh was protecting. And then in 2017, when Hernandez blatantly stole an election to stay in power, the Trump administration recognized his victory. They basically strong armed the OAS to shut up about any irregularities. And then Trump praised him as late as 2019, which was the year his brother was sentenced to life in prison. So this is a bad dude. Whose activities were pretty well known, which is why Hernandez is loathed in Honduras because he stole from the people he was representing and he facilitated the violence and the narco terrorism that terrorized so many communities there. Which is why, Ben, it seemed so politically crazy for Trump in the same truth social post to pardon Joh, but also endorse the candidate from his political party who was running in last Sunday's election, this guy Tito Osvora, who is another right winger. In fact, the post was a. Was literally a threat. Trump said, quote, if he doesn't win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country. Just like the kind of Argentina model of election interference. That election is basically tied as of this recording. There are a bunch of other like, kind of congressional races and mayoral races, but it's going to take some time to get some final tally. But Ben, I think the question is just why on earth would Trump do this? We know that Roger Stone was like a big, you know, supporter of this pardon. We know that Joh is popular with the crypto crowd because of this insane project he facilitated called Prospera, which is like this libertarian wasteland that like Peter Thiel and other crypto guys liked. But it was just like so shockingly corrupt that no one seems to understand it. It was sort of like unbelievable when.
- [37:07]
Ben Rhodes
I read it, I think, first of all, Trump, and we've talked about this, but Trump likes to be the kind of emperor of the Western Hemisphere and pick the leaders and, you know, Milei has to win Argentina or else. And maybe I'll bomb Colombia because I don't like Petro and I'm gonna depose Maduro and maybe I'll take the Panama Canal. And this guy who's a drug trafficker, well, because he's friends with some of my friends, he gets to go out of prison and elect his party. I actually just think he likes sitting on this throne in the White House and feeling like he runs this part of the world. Second, I think, and I don't know, but there are lots of reports about him having buddies. Johm buddies like Roger Stone. Look, this is just a. You know, what seems inexplicable is actually quite simple. We are run by an incredibly corrupt autocrat who doesn't really give a fuck about anything other than his own power and his own money and his friends and their power and money. Yeah, and this guy had the right friends. He had some guy, I think like an operator in Florida who's probably Joh probably had a lot of money stashed away that the feds couldn't get their hands on. Some of that money probably went to work. Again, just one man's view here. But, like, you know, you start paying Trump's associates and then they start lobbying Trump and then you get out of prison. We've seen this movie before. All I want to say here is like, this gives up the game, you know, to pardon a massive drug trafficker while you're bombing small boats that carry a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the initial stamped coke that was ravaging our streets. From the H family. Okay. From the Hernandez family. And I don't know how many MAGA people listen to this podcast.
- [38:47]
Tommy Vietor
It's gotta be one.
- [38:48]
Ben Rhodes
But we might have some. But we all have MAGA people in our lives. Please point to this as the example, if you can, of how fucking stupid Donald Trump thinks you are that he thinks that he can stand up and tell you that he's blowing up boats illegally in the Caribbean because he's trying to stop drug trafficking while he's pardoning some rich drug trafficker at the same time. I mean, he's ending forever wars while he's starting another one. Like, how many times can this guy lie to you before your own eyes on things you care about, drugs in our communities and forever wars. These are not like small side issues. These are issues that were core to Trump's politics. And he's showing these completely full shit on both of them.
- [39:30]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. And, you know, like, I have some random kind of MAGA world contacts that I talk to about stuff and like, sometimes we argue, but when I asked them about this or when I asked them about the Venezuela policy, all of them are like, I don't get it either, man. We think it's crazy too. Speaking of which, man, let's watch this totally incoherent answer from Trump when asked about why he pardoned Joh, the former.
- [39:52]
Ben Rhodes
President of Honduras, and he was released from prison yesterday.
- [39:56]
Pete Hegseth
Well, he was the president and they had some drugs being sold in their country, and because he was the president, they went after him. That was a Biden horrible witch hunt, which was, you know, a lot of people in Honduras asked me to do that and I did it. I feel very good about it. If you have some drug dealers in your country and you're the president, you don't necessarily put the president in jail for 45 years. That was a Biden inspired witch hunt.
- [40:22]
Ben Rhodes
Did his letter impact your decision?
- [40:25]
Tommy Vietor
J O Witch said he would quote Stuff the drugs up the gringo's noses. According to a witness, he took $1 million from El Chapo. Prosecutor said he was part of a 20 year scheme to bring 500 tons of cocaine to the United States. He was taking bribes from the smugglers to protect them from extradition to the U.S. actually, that's a really important piece of this because, like, corruption and like kind of these drug cartels are so endemic in parts of Latin America. Sometimes the only way out of it is seen as like the US justice system and extraditing these people to the United States. And for Trump to just pardon this guy and undo years and years of work by like the Southern District of New York and the Department of Justice and U.S. prosecutor, I think is going to make a lot of people in Latin America think, okay, well, now we have just no recourse, you know, and the Americans are just full of shit. Like they don't actually care about the rule of law or, you know, interdicting drug shipments. They just care about money and their friends and politics and power.
- [41:23]
Ben Rhodes
And guess what? It's going to foster drug trafficking. We're basically saying you can get away with it if you can just spread some money around Florida and some Trump associates. You have total impunity down there to do this very drug trafficking that we're apparently blowing up boats and having regime change wars to prevent. I mean, the message is if you are in the Western hemisphere, as long as you're a Trump friendly, right wing autocrat, you can do absolutely whatever the fuck you want to bail out. And if you're Petro in Colombia, whatever you think of him, he's not like a narco trafficker, but if you're that guy, then we may bomb your country. And I just think this is not, I guess they're betting that this is just how the world's gonna be for 30 years, but I don't think it is. I really think the bill is gonna come due for these guys. And, and they, because they're just, they're committing crimes out in the open left and right.
- [42:20]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, look, you're right. Like your best day in office is your first day. Trump thinks he's riding high. Ultimately it's a 50, 50 country.
- [42:28]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [42:28]
Tommy Vietor
And like he is going to be slowly losing political support through this unbelievable corruption. And all the things that they're fumbling here and the fact they're not making any progress stopping fentanyl because no fentanyl is coming from Venezuela.
- [42:39]
Ben Rhodes
And I think, you know, deep down, look, Stephen Miller cares. He's like a white supremacist nationalist who wants to like deport people and remake the country into his image. Whatever. Trump and some of these people, the profiteering may be the point. They like the power and they like. But they may just think we're gonna make so much fucking money in the next three years, we're gonna make trillions of dollars basically that we'll have impunity. Cuz we'll, you know, we'll get to live where we, you know, we'll, maybe we'll live in Abu Dhabi. You know, like, seriously, I think that they're just looting the global system. And that's again, return to the if you're a Navy SEAL or someone being asked to do something on behalf of these people, bear that in mind. These guys aren't even in on the white nationalist project. Like, some of them are just in it for the buck.
- [43:30]
Tommy Vietor
Yep, we're gonna get to Stephen Miller in one second. But first let's talk about these Ukraine talks and dig more into the corruption piece. So there's been a lot of activity since last week. As we are recording, Trump's golf buddy turned special envoy, Steve Wyckoff and then his dipshit, corrupt son in law, Jared Kushner, are in Moscow meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I'm glad we sent our toughest, most intimidating guys to talk to Putin, Ben. So the vibes did not seem great as the talk started. Putin accused Europe of sabotaging the talks by changing the proposal so that it wasn't basically Russia's full wish list. He also said, quote, we are not planning to fight with Europe, but if Europe suddenly starts a war with us, we are ready right now. So it's not, not a threat. Last week we talked about the emergence of this 28 point so called peace plan from Witkoff and Kushner that was just entirely tilted towards the Russians. That plan has since been shrunk down to 20 items though. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is saying that the biggest issues like Ukrainian territory need to be negotiated directly by the leaders, which could be challenging because Trump is saying basically he wants a deal kind of wrapped up and handed to him before he'll meet with anyone else. But these talks in Moscow are happening right as Russia claims to have taken control over more territory in Ukraine, specifically the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk province and then over in Ukraine. The corruption scandal we talked about last week has just further metastasized. On Friday, investigators raided the home of Andre Yermak who is Zelensky's closest aide. And he's a guy who is so powerful that he was basically considered like the. The Deputy president. Yermak resigned from his post a few hours after this raid became public. The. The scandal involves Ukrainian officials stealing about $100 million from Ukraine's state energy company through kickbacks and other schemes. But we know there's more investigations in the defense sector happening, so we don't totally know what the. The raid was about. Yermak was hated by a lot of people. He was considered egotistical and an asshole and hoarding too much power. I remember there's an entire Politico story that someone pitched about just like, what a dick he was. But his departure leaves a huge void in Zelensky's political orbit. And Yermak had been the guy leading the peace talks with the Trump administration. So it's just not clear, like, what Zelensky is going to do here. Ben. Last week we both kind of landed on the side of we didn't think Russia was going to take this deal because Putin has no real incentive to do so. Nothing's changed in my estimation. In fact, those comments from Putin kind of affirm that take. But I guess the question is whether Yermak's departure and the sense that Zelensky is kind of being consumed by this corruption scandal might force his hand in some way that we didn't see before. What do you think?
- [46:09]
Ben Rhodes
I think that, first of all, you cannot overstate the importance of your Mac, you know, in talking to Europeans and Biden people like he was, if not a co president, about as close as you get to it. He was the guy that would talk to other national security advisors. He was the guy who talked to other political advisors. He was always in the room with Zelenskyy. He was a gatekeeper to Zelensky. If you wanted to meet with him, you couldn't get appointed to a ministry without kind of going through Yermak. Yermak ran this machine. Zelenskyy was the guy and very much his own man. I'm not suggesting Zelenskyy was a puppet. I'm saying Zelenskyy was out there giving speeches and communicating relentlessly and work, you know, traveling. But Yermak was the guy running the show, right? And actually, literally, he was a producer with Zelensky.
- [46:54]
Tommy Vietor
They lived in the same bunker together in the presidential palace. He never left. Yermak had no family, no life, no wife. Like this is all he did.
- [47:00]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, the famous video of Zelensky when he stayed in Kiev, standing next to Yermak, you know. And so losing him is losing his. Like the levers that he pulled on everything from personnel to foreign relations. I don't know what he does without that. I don't know how you rebuild that.
- [47:17]
Tommy Vietor
Like losing JD Vance.
- [47:18]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Losing Marco Rubio, something. You don't even have an archive. This year.
- [47:22]
Tommy Vietor
You see Trump fall asleep when Rubio is talking. Sorry to interrupt.
- [47:26]
Ben Rhodes
It's very enjoyable. And so there's not much to say about this deal. In fact, that clearly Wyckoff got worked again. It's not the first time it happened. Before the Alaska summit, Russians dangled a bunch of business opportunities in front of them, gave him a plan, he translated into English, and then lo and behold, of course, nobody wants to take it. And then they amend the plan and then Putin won't take it. I mean, we've been here before, I will say. And so, I don't know, maybe, yes, maybe Zelenskyy's so weak that they kind of go back to a version of the Russian plan that gets forced on him. All I'll say is I made this point last week that part of what Putin's doing here is he's weakening the US From Europe and he's weakening Zelenskyy through these talks. Like, he's tactically doing that. I'm sure that these corruption scandals are true. I'm sure that in Ukraine, I'm sure that. Well, I'm sure. But I would assume they are. I would also assume that the prosecutors are well intentioned in fighting corruption. It is a little conspicuous to me not to be on a conspiracy theory. We're not on the all in pod here. But the Russians are pretty good at making sure that the timing of how corruption scandals come out, I mean, this could not align better for them that the plan comes out and then Yermak's the guy. Then they take. I mean, I'm just looking at this. This could not be orchestrated better. Like, one mistake you could make when you don't like your adversaries is to think they're dumb like Putin. And that crowd is many things. They're not fucking dumb.
- [48:57]
Tommy Vietor
No, they're not.
- [48:58]
Ben Rhodes
And it feels to me like they're running a very clear play here to weaken Zelensky. And, you know, this was their original plan, by the way. They wanted just their own person in Ukraine, you know, and they have this on every peace plan is there has to be an election right away because they think Zelensky will lose. Right. And so it just feels to me like they're grinding down the Ukrainians. They're grinding them down on the battlefield, they're grinding them down diplomatically. And Europe is going to have to step in and really fortify the Ukrainian state here and Zelensky himself, because right now it's a very precarious moment for him.
- [49:29]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I mean, look, they certainly ran like a longer game play on Donald Trump in the United States, right? I mean, yeah. The Ukraine envoy is supposed to be Keith Kellogg, who is like more of a hardliner. Shout out to the Wall Street Journal for doing some. Some like, deep dive excellent reporting into all the corruption and kind of business elements of this peace process. Highly recommend everyone read it, but it will be not be unfamiliar to listeners of this show. Basically, Putin knows that Trump doesn't give a about Ukraine, doesn't give a about Europe or values he cares about, like press releases that show big investment numbers and personally enriching himself and the people around him. So Putin tapped all his business crony buddies to go make contact with people like Witkoff and Jared Kushner and others and make that kind of the point of contact in the interlocutor. And so now you have Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, like, dangling little deal opportunities in front of Wyckoff and Kushner. And now those bozos are sitting in Moscow doing the deals. And like, like all of it's happening kind of semi off the books and outside the traditional government processes that ensure transparency or coordination or the involvement of experts. And so, like, yeah, like you, I'm very worried about this corruption we're reading about in Ukraine. But it's like we have this other staggering corruption from the Trump administration sitting right in front of our faces. It's hard to get past it.
- [50:47]
Ben Rhodes
The corruption is right in your face, right? We're going to do deals in the Arctic and we're going to Mars together, and Jared's going to, you know, be buddies of the Southern wealth and guy. But again, you. I really want the listeners, you do not have to be some expert to see how much the Russians are running fucking circles around the Trump people. Let me just give you one example. You mentioned Keith Kellogg, right? Keith Kellogg, conventional, hawkish MAGA general, was supposed to be the envoy to Ukraine. The Russians said, we don't wanna deal with that motherfucker. Like, he's too pro Ukrainian. They form shop, they got Witkoff and Jared. They salute their envoys. What is the one thing Keith Kellogg is, quote, unquote, Accomplished in his role, he has somehow brought the Putin friendly dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, in from the cold, flew to Belarus, wrapped his arms, metaphorically, at least around Lukashenko, might.
- [51:41]
Tommy Vietor
Have given him a mug.
- [51:43]
Ben Rhodes
That is some. I hesitate to make the 5D chess point about fucking Putin, but somehow he engineered a situation where the Ukraine envoy became the Belarus envoy who brought the Belarusian autocrat, who's Putin's buddy, in from the cold. This is, this is the caliber of diplomats that we're dealing with in the Trump administration vis a vis the Russians.
- [52:07]
Tommy Vietor
Did you see the Chinese foreign minister is at these talks in Moscow. It's like I could totally see a role for the Chinese in diplomacy, but it was just like, what? Why?
- [52:15]
Ben Rhodes
What is another smart guy, Wang Yi. Very smart guy, Wang Yi.
- [52:18]
Tommy Vietor
Definitely there.
- [52:19]
Ben Rhodes
Suddenly they're buying the chips from Nvidia. You know, like the Russians and Chinese are, have had a banner fucking year. Okay.
- [52:26]
Tommy Vietor
I gotta say, too, just like, big picture, I want this war over too. I would love to see a negotiated end to the war. That, of course, as we talked about last week, will involve Ukraine giving up territory. But no one can explain why the proposal that Kushner and Wyckoff drafted involves Ukraine giving up territory that the Russians aren't currently occupying. You know what I mean? It's like, that's one of the things, like no one can explain. Yeah, the Venezuela policy. No one can explain the Joh part. No one can explain why you would have to hand over the additional, whatever, 20% of Donetsk to the Russians or.
- [52:59]
Ben Rhodes
What'S in it for Americans to like, do some deals in the Arctic with Russians, you know?
- [53:03]
Tommy Vietor
And this is where it's so stupid. Like the US Russia trading relationship was like, not that significant before the war. The idea that, like, a bunch of American businesses are going to get a good deal making partnerships with companies in like, one of the most corrupt countries on the planet, it's like, give me a fucking break.
- [53:21]
Ben Rhodes
Sell them some heavy machines, you know, like, that's about it.
- [53:23]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, we'll send them some Caterpillar machines. I, I for. Of course, Jared Kushner can get rich.
- [53:27]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. They have billions of dollars to spread around, you know, which is the common thread of this show.
- [53:33]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, Sounds nice. Okay, a couple more quick things. So I'm sure the listeners saw this horrific news last week about Ramana Lockhinwal, who is an Afghan man who had fought in this CIA backed and trained military unit in Afghanistan. He shot two National Guard members in D.C. killing one of them. This was just a horrific tragedy and one that's going to have huge implications both for US Immigration policy, but is also yet another sort of indication of, like, the long and devastating tale of the war in Afghanistan. So, just first on the immigration part, Ben, the administration has already stopped all visa and immigration processing for anyone from Afghanistan. They paused asylum cases for basically all nationalities, and they even ordered a review of green card cases from any of the 19 countries subjected to Trump's travel ban, I. E. The policy we all once called a Muslim ban. And then on top of that, on Tuesday, CNN reported that Kristi Noem, the dog murderer running the Department of Homeland Security, has recommended that Trump expand the travel ban to 30 countries total. So we're just, you know, blowing up any ability to come here if you're not like, a white European from South Africa or whatever. The incident has also led to more scrutiny of these military units in Afghanistan called Zero Units, which were elite military units that fought alongside and on behalf of the United States and Afghanistan. They are often described as the CIA's private army or secret army in Afghanistan. The zero units were trained by US Special Forces. They were tasked with some of the most sensitive and dangerous missions in the war, like going after Al Qaeda or ISIS leaders. And the irony of this crackdown, Ben, on asylum applications and this debate about, like, was this guy vetted or not? Is that Zero Unit members were basically the most thoroughly vetted people possible. Like, if you think about it, like, these guys were trusted to go on night raids every single night armed alongside U.S. personnel. And they never had one of those insider threat, like, green on blue incidents. And to get into a Zero Unit, you had to be recommended by a family member or a friend. Like, someone had to vouch for you. So that said, like, these Zero Unit members, they've been accused of some of the worst human rights abuses in the war. Executions, torture, civilian casualties, like, really awful stuff. And the Zero Units were detested in many parts of Afghanistan and accused of turning the population against the coalition forces because of these abuses. But again, they were vetted. They clearly fought on behalf of the United States. They just, you know, did some horrible things. Maybe we, you know, yeah, we'll be some culpability here. So in the final days of the war in 2021, as you know, Kabul is falling, about 10,000 Zero Unit members and their families were evacuated to the U.S. according to various news reports. And then the scandal since seems to have been that the US Government said to them, like, best of luck fending for yourself. In the United States, a refugee resettlement Volunteer told NPR that Lockenwell started out hopeful and outgoing, but by 2023 he couldn't find work. He felt culturally isolated. He withdrew from his family, started going on these weird, like long drives across the country. And this person said they tried to get him help, but there was just little infrastructure or support or services. And then Rolling Stone reported that another guy in Lock and Wall's unit says that Lock and Wall felt abandoned by the CIA and that in June he asked people at this special CIA program that was supposed to help Zero Unit members for help. And he just got no response. Just they didn't reply to him. So, Ben, I'll stop there. But like, you know, the immigration fallout, like the impact on like the entire country of Afghanistan, the collective punishment, it is, you know, it's devastating.
- [57:00]
Ben Rhodes
It's devastating. Look, there's so many dimensions to this. One thing I want to say is, and it's not just because this is what Republicans would do for a Democratic President. I did not see many people point out this is a horrible fucking tragedy. Those National Guard people shouldn't have been there. If Donald Trump didn't deploy the national guard to Washington D.C. sarah Beckstrom, the woman who was killed, would be alive today, full stop. And we hesitate to make those arguments cuz we're Democrats and we, you know, I agree the Red handler is going off here in civility, but that is the fact. Sarah Beckstrom should be in West Virginia. Obviously the shooter is to blame for pulling the trigger and should be held accountable. But we can also say as a matter of policy, the National Guard never should have been there on what happened. It has nothing to do with, as you pointed out, this is about both the refugee resettlement infrastructure that kind of failed, but also we train these people to do these things. I think I mentioned this book I read, Fort Bragg Cartel, that came out by I think the same Rolling Stone reporter. But it details a lot of murders that have happened because of the degree of violence and trauma that our special operators, many of whom were also kicking down doors in Afghanistan, went through for so many years. If anything, we created these Zero units and we created this kind of violence machines. And of course we're not having a conversation about that because Americans are not self reflective about these things. But that's another piece of this story too, right? Is that when you have 20 years of war, individuals, whether they are white or brown, American or Afghan or whatever they are, some people are going to react in different ways to that degree of trauma. The last thing I'd say, the Dumbest thing to do would then. I mean, not dumbest, the cruelest thing to do is then just to say, well, we're kick out all these Afghans, really. I mean, we don't do this. You know how many white men who are alienated have shot people up in this country? We don't kick out the white men when they do it. And so let's see this for what it is, which is they take any pretext they can. Any high profile crime committed by any immigrant becomes a basis to collectively punish all immigrants. And I don't believe that all people of any nationality, background, religion are like more or collectively guilty for what they're. I wouldn't think it was fair if like a white guy named Ben committed a crime that all the white Bens got kicked out of this. But this is a crazy way of thinking and it's sad that it's so normal that we just assumed as soon as this happened, oh, of course now they're going to come after all the African American. But we should be saying that's wrong. And by the way, we should be willing to stand up and fight for this because we were in that country for 40 years, starting with the creation of the mujahideen that became the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the Reagan years and then 20 years of occupation. I'm sorry, there's such a thing as a debt to some people and not just the people that serve with us, but the kind of women that were activists who can't go back. So I hope that there's in communities people that will defend the kind of families that are going to be targeted for this because a lot of them, you know, they're veterans who know them and can vouch for them.
- [60:34]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, look, just on the political point, I mean, yes, those National Guard members should never have been deployed to D.C. on this made up mission. Also, U.S. citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS approved Lockenwell's asylum application in April of 2025. So he was vetted by the Trump administration as well. So they want to make this all about Biden, but like that's just bullshit. It's also just this was not about vetting. This is a guy who clearly suffered some sort of deep psychological break, possibly. That's what I'm in response to the missions he was asked to do because like the zero unit tempo of operations was like way surpassed even US Special Forces. These guys were going out on night raids literally every night for like a decade, 15 years, which in its own.
- [61:20]
Ben Rhodes
Way is a dehumanizing thing to do.
- [61:22]
Tommy Vietor
To do to people.
- [61:22]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, it's awful to use him like that. But again, it doesn't absolve them of their of his responsibility. Really doesn't. But it does. You know, we have to understand that the war on terror has a very long tail.
- [61:33]
Ksenia Mironova
What?
- [61:34]
Tommy Vietor
Also in the wake of a tragedy, it benefits no one to not name the right problem and to just address the wrong things. Like we already have a. The travel ban already says there's a near total restriction on the entry of people from Afghanistan, Myanmar chapter, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. And what do they have in common? Partial restrictions on Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
- [61:59]
Ben Rhodes
Laos is my favorite. I mean just another country we drop bombs on, you know, the dangerous LA coming here. We're really scared about that, right?
- [62:06]
Tommy Vietor
I mean this guy, this guy, I mean he's a killer. He will be prosecuted. He will go to jail. He has five kids. NBC reported that as of this summer, there's like 3,000 members of these zero units who are just stuck in legal limbo with no work permits. Are we going to send them back to Afghanistan? Because the Taliban will execute them.
- [62:22]
Ben Rhodes
Those guys. Yeah.
- [62:23]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. So it's just a horrible situation all.
- [62:26]
Ben Rhodes
Around or are we going to. Yeah, I mean, what we're doing is not the right way to handle.
- [62:31]
Tommy Vietor
No, what we're doing is terrible. Okay, we are going to take a quick break. But Ben, if you need some help on figuring out what to get your friends and your family this holiday season, I have a deal for you. If they love content, how about a Friends of the Pod subscription? And it's the gift that keeps on giving. A Friend of the Pod subscription will keep you informed, entertained and mostly sane. You get access to all the good stuff, exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer ad free episodes of your favorite crooked shows and endless bragging rights that you support independent progressive media. Go to crooked.com friends bragging rights, baby. I love independent media.
- [63:04]
Ben Rhodes
Dunking on your friends. Go to your corporate media friends.
- [63:07]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, just dunk on those times. Subscribers gift a Friends of the Pod subscription. Grab one for yourself. Learn more@qriket.com friends. Podcast. The world is brought to you by American Giant. I've got some T shirts I bought three cities ago and you know what? I love them and I will never throw them out. I'm going to wear them into the ground. Because a lot of the stuff you buy these days does not last and we want that money to go further American Giant's clothes, however, work harder and are wearable for years to come, ensuring you get layers you can count on for seasons to come. Their greatest hoodie ever made is made from the highest quality materials that are cut and sewn right here in the United States. So you're investing right back into your local supply chain. As the seasons shift and get cooler, stock your closet with durable layers that are built to last from American Giant. So I bought a bunch of stuff from American Giant. I have some really comfortable sweatpants. I got a great sweatshirt. I've got a hoodie, I've got T shirts, just tons of stuff. It is super comfortable. It's thick, it's durable, it's high quality. They look good, I get compliments. And they've got a wide range of looks from the greatest hoodie ever made to everyday pieces designed for everyday life. They've got fleece to knit stuff, all in seasonal colors for versatile daily wear. Their men's crew neck is made in Los Angeles and it's easy to layer on top of the tees are under a heavy coat. Choosing American Giant means taking a stand for hardworking people, local communities and quality clothes through American ingenuity and innovation. They're going against the current and doing better. They believe that small changes add up to something big, a new kind of conscious buying. Get 20% off your first order when you use the promo code world@american-giant.com. that's 20% off when you use the promo code world at american-giant.com.
- [64:58]
Laci Mosley
What'S Poppin listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess. The show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em? What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented cause representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan o' and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.
- [65:40]
Tommy Vietor
All right, so two stories out of South Africa that we wanted to flag then. So last week we talked about how the US boycotted the G20 in South Africa because Trump was mad about a non existent genocide against white people. Right before that meeting happened, the US did this kind of like Hail Mary. Last minute report requests to ask the South African government president Cyril Ramaphosa to allow this low level US Official to participate in the event because normally there's a formal handoff between the current host country and the next coast country. Ramaphosa said no. So Trump now says that South Africa won't be invited to the G20 next year, which is in the United States. The funny thing about this is Ramaphosa was like, actually, we're going to be there.
- [66:20]
Ben Rhodes
Do you see this?
- [66:21]
Tommy Vietor
It's like, now we're going to go. So I guess we'll look forward to that. I guess maybe we'll block his entry Also, Ben, we had to flag this crazy story about the daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma. She has been accused of tricking men into fighting for the Russian government against Ukraine. Did you see the story?
- [66:40]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [66:41]
Tommy Vietor
She reportedly told 17 South African men that they're going to go to Russia. You're going to get some security training for a year, then you come back home, you'll get a great job. Instead, these guys got like six weeks of training and then they were handed over to the Wagner group and sent to the front lines in like, Donetsk. And eight of them are members of the Zuma family. So she was doing this to her own family. The daughter's name is Duty Zealy Zuma Sambudla. She is apparently One of Zuma's 20 kids from six wives. Busy, dude. Until recently, she was a member of parliament in her dad's political party, but she recently resigned because of this scandal. Just like, never heard of anything quite like this.
- [67:20]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, Zuma, you know, fabulously, famously corrupt and also, you know, charged with pretty serious sexual assault. You know, so the. Not a good guy. But I mean, again, to the common theme of corruption, I'm sure she, you know, Wagner, she's on some take. You know, I mean, this is, this is the common problem everywhere, you know, like different political systems, different continents. You know, this. There's a level of corruption in the world right now that is just gross. And it's this. There's got to be a global anti corruption populism here that can link us with the South Africans, with the, you know, with everybody. Because this is fucking gross. That's a fucking terrible story.
- [68:05]
Tommy Vietor
Terrible story. Terrible story. Eight members of your own family.
- [68:08]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [68:08]
Tommy Vietor
All right, let's finally, let's end this with talking about America's most insecure man. We were, of course, talking about FBI Director Cash Patel. So longtime listeners know that Cash has his job because he kissed Trump's ass and is willing to do or say Anything Trump wants. Cash literally wrote a children's book where Trump was the king. Then he wrote another book, ostensibly for adults, where Cash laid out Trump's enemies list. But things have been going very poorly for Cash over at the FBI. He's been criticized for excessive use of the FBI's personal jets for travel to see his girlfriend, including at a sing at a low rent wrestling match. He took the FBI plane to a place literally called the Boondoggle Ranch for quick vacation.
- [68:48]
Ben Rhodes
Place that actually exists.
- [68:49]
Tommy Vietor
Place that actually exists. Shockingly owned by a Trump donor, I think. And then it gets worse. So the New York Post obtained a report that was put together by what they describe as a, quote, alliance of active duty and retired agents and analysts who talked to like two dozen FBI sources. And it is absolutely brutal. So I'm going to just basically read some quotes from the Post.
- [69:10]
Ben Rhodes
Story is wonderful.
- [69:11]
Tommy Vietor
Have you had time to read the whole 115 page document?
- [69:13]
Ben Rhodes
No, but I read, I read, I read a chunk of it. Made me feel better.
- [69:17]
Tommy Vietor
I might just go to sleep with that in my, my little Kindle tonight. So here's some of the stuff it says. It says Patel is in, in over his head and that his deputy Dan Bongino is something of a clown. These are quotes, by the way. The FBI is described as a rudderless ship and all up one person says Patel, quote, has neither the breadth of experience nor the bearing an FBI director needs to be successful. This is a verbatim line from the story, Ben. Another source, a self professed Trump supporter, said Patel is not very good, maybe insecure and lacks the requisite experience or the measured self confidence to be FBI director. Yeah, no, a lot of this is ground we've covered on the show. FBI agents were furious to Patel for tweeting factually wrong things about the investigation into the Charlie Kirk shooting. They think that Patel and Bongino care too much about social media and their own PR and their own brand. But there's one incredible new anecdote that we have to discuss. So the day after the Charlie Kirk shooting, Cash flew to Provo, Utah to be on the ground pretending to manage the investigation. Remember the night before, he was at some fancy restaurant like Ra's or something. To me that's like a tomato sauce rouse.
- [70:24]
Ben Rhodes
Same place. It's. No, it's like this famously hard to get into place up in Harlem in New York that like, famously, Bill Clinton was there with Harvey Weinstein right after Hillary. It's a New York institution. But I've not been there.
- [70:41]
Tommy Vietor
Good time was had by all. That's where I think he's tweeting.
- [70:44]
Ben Rhodes
Eric Adams used to go, and he said he was a vegetarian. He'd go and order meat.
- [70:50]
Tommy Vietor
Plenty of.
- [70:50]
Ben Rhodes
There's a lot of stories that lead back to Rouse, I think, like, that guy Bo Dietle is always there. Oh, yeah, it's that kind of place if you know who Bo Dle is. Like, that's kind of who's eating at Rao's. Okay.
- [70:59]
Tommy Vietor
Okay. So I think Rao's is where it was at a Rao's dinner table where Cash Patel sent the, like, inaccurate tweet about arresting Kirk's killer when they hadn't yet. So according to this report, though. So Cash Patel flies to Provo, Utah, so he could be on the ground so he can show up at the press conferences. But he refuses to get off the FBI plane because he doesn't have his special FBI jacket. Apparently, he forgot his jacket maybe because he was up in New York at Rouse and he wouldn't get off the plane without one. So the FBI had to scramble and try to find one for him. A size medium jacket. Sure. So they were calling, like, the Salt Lake City field office. Those guys are trying to work this case. They're searching for a jacket. And now I'm just going to read to you from the Post story, Ben. When a jacket belonging to a female agent was delivered to Patel on the plane, he complained that two areas on the upper sleeves did not have Velcro patches attached. Patel would not leave the plane until he had two patches to cover those areas. So members of an FBI SWAT team took patches off their uniforms and ran those patches over to Patel at the airport. The patches were then attached to the loaner FBI raid jacket, and Patel disembarked from the plane. Patel, quote, did not make a positive impression, said Alpha99. I think Alpha99 was like, the code name for this specific source. Ben, I want to stop there. First of all, just, like, shout out to this leaker for going to the New York Post first with this story, because they're gonna play it right. And also, like, you know, Trump is gonna read this. Bo Dietle's gonna read this.
- [72:24]
Ben Rhodes
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, when the Murdoch o New York Post is publishing stuff like this, it's like when the music is starting to play you off, you know, like, this is not a New York Times thing. That detail is so good because he's clearly such, like, a petulant, insecure child, you know, diva. Like, I need the patches and I need the, you know, Walk off the plane and look like a tough guy.
- [72:44]
Tommy Vietor
It's like me fighting with my daughter to get ready for school. She's almost three.
- [72:47]
Ben Rhodes
Well, it's just. It is so unbelievably embarrassing that this person is in charge of the FBI. And I'll say this like, I'm not like one of these people that's gonna sit here and, you know, make a lengthy Atlantic magazine kind of tribute to the deep state and profess the nobility of every person that's ever been like a CIA officer. We made that mistake a little bit in the first Trump term. I will say this, though, it's just a fundamental misreading of human psychology. People that work in the FBI are proud to work at the FBI. You don't have to think that they're like, they walk on air and commit mistakes. And people that work in the military are proud to be in the military. People who work at the DEA are proud to be at the dea. Right. When you pardon drug traffickers that it took the DEA and DOJ years to prosecute, probably a bunch of Republicans, you know, hard asses, like, they feel humiliated when you make some career FBI badass who's probably Republican, come take off their patches so Little Cash can have his Make A Wish moment as director. By the way, I saw that that was in the document. We've been calling him Make a Wish FBI Director here. So we were ahead of the curve. But the point I'm making is that they're beginning. The deep staters are gone. Right. Like Peter Stroke and Lisa Page. You're not the FBI anymore. The people they don't like are gone. And what they fundamentally don't understand is that people who've dedicated their lives to an institution are actually proud of that institution more than they care about Castro, tell, or Donald Trump.
- [74:25]
Tommy Vietor
Right. And they care about the mission.
- [74:27]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. Even if they're maga, they care more about the mission and the institution than. Than Cash Patel and Donald Trump. They fundamentally just don't understand that. And this could be the thing that fucks them in the end.
- [74:39]
Tommy Vietor
I think so too. I think it's a big deal. I really believe it's humiliating.
- [74:42]
Ben Rhodes
Cuz guess what? These people know a lot of secrets, you know, and if they keep treating common thread on the show too, like treating the military like garbage, passing the buck down there, treating the FBI like garbage, like those are not the people you want to treat like garbage. And so if you're trying to consolidate, like, authoritarian power, you don't alienate the very people that you need to accumulate said power.
- [75:05]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I think the, the kind of modern description of the deep state is wildly overstated.
- [75:11]
Ben Rhodes
Yes, it is.
- [75:11]
Tommy Vietor
There was a period of time where there was very much a deep state in this country. There is a permanent national security class of technical.
- [75:18]
Ben Rhodes
They go to like Aspen Security Forum and.
- [75:21]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, or even that. Or they're like, you know, the like, what is it, GS15, like something high level.
- [75:26]
Ben Rhodes
It's both the kind of revolving door, you know, national security elites crowd and then there's. Yeah, the highest level of civil service. But we're now talking about agents, you know, special agents at the FBI, operators in the military.
- [75:38]
Julia Lochtev
Right.
- [75:38]
Tommy Vietor
And so I don't think those people are like deep state running the country. I do think they work in buildings where you end up having a lot of power and a lot of inertia.
- [75:46]
Ben Rhodes
Right.
- [75:46]
Tommy Vietor
And when your leader is not just like, like when you're talking about a Hegseth or Cash Patel, they're like on paper, self evidently not qualified for the job. But then when a year later they're acting like fucking clowns and they're getting humiliated in the pages of the New York Post and humiliating you, right. When you're going home to Thanksgiving and everyone is like, what's up with this dipshit you work for who wouldn't put his little FBI patches on and to get off the plane. Right. Like, you don't want to be answering.
- [76:15]
Ben Rhodes
Questions about that, talking about seen Charlie Kirk and Valhalla and Flynn is his girlfriend on a private jet, you know. Yeah, it's embarrassing.
- [76:22]
Tommy Vietor
Speaking of which, roll the tape.
- [76:24]
Ben Rhodes
Lastly, to my friend Charlie Kirk. Rest now, brother. We have the watch. And I'll see you in Valhalla.
- [76:36]
Tommy Vietor
You're not a Viking, sir.
- [76:37]
Ben Rhodes
You weren't.
- [76:38]
Tommy Vietor
And you weren't even wearing the coat.
- [76:40]
Ben Rhodes
Here's the thing.
- [76:41]
Tommy Vietor
Where were the patches?
- [76:42]
Ben Rhodes
The people standing behind him look so uncomfortable.
- [76:44]
Tommy Vietor
They're just.
- [76:45]
Ben Rhodes
They just kind of got their heads down.
- [76:47]
Tommy Vietor
This guy sucks.
- [76:48]
Ben Rhodes
So this is so embarrassing that we have to sit here. You know, we've got the watch.
- [76:52]
Tommy Vietor
What watch?
- [76:53]
Ben Rhodes
What is he you're watching out for, like the fucking patch that you want.
- [76:57]
Tommy Vietor
To put on Seiko.
- [76:58]
Ben Rhodes
What are you talking about?
- [76:58]
Pete Hegseth
Right?
- [77:01]
Ben Rhodes
And the backup is Bongino. I mean, like, the amazing thing about this whole situation is that the backup, the guy that's gonna come in for the bullpen, is an even crazier podcaster.
- [77:11]
Tommy Vietor
You got this guy whose head looks like Minecraft, just like raging in the background trying to clean up cash for dolls. But, oh, they did insert. Remember they installed like a.
- [77:19]
Ben Rhodes
The second number two takeover.
- [77:22]
Tommy Vietor
I don't know. Listen, part of this desire, I do want him gone. I'm with you on the content. I do worry that they're listening and rifling through our.
- [77:30]
Ben Rhodes
Oh yeah, they don't like us. They don't like this. But I mean, Bongino and Cash by going there every day and like, who does number two work for?
- [77:38]
Tommy Vietor
Well, there's all this other, other stuff in there about like, I think some FBI agents like Quantico were making fun of Cash for wanting a sidearm. And then he was like polygraphing the dudes. He was making fun of him like.
- [77:49]
Ben Rhodes
It'S not going to work. You're going to lose in the end. You're not going to beat the FBI, bro. I'm sorry.
- [77:53]
Tommy Vietor
They're going to be there after you're gone, buddy.
- [77:55]
Ben Rhodes
They're going to have the watch.
- [77:56]
Tommy Vietor
Ask Hoover.
- [77:56]
Ben Rhodes
They will have the watch.
- [77:59]
Tommy Vietor
Okay, that was necessary and cathartic. We're going to take a quick break, but when you come back, you're going to hear Ben's interview about what it was like to be a journalist in Russia as the full scale invasion happened. About getting attacked by Putin and driven out and having your friends and your loved ones targeted and punished. So stick around for that. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. From consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI enhanced website builder to get a fully custom website in just a few steps. Using basic information about your industry goals and personality to generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations. Squarespace makes it easy to showcase your expertise and engage clients with video content on your website. Upload and organize your videos, create stunning video libraries and even monetize your content by adding a paywall. Perfect for online courses, exclusive tutorials and premium workshops, Squarespace Domains makes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all inclusive price. No hidden fees or add ons required. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.comworld to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com world.
- [79:36]
Laci Mosley
What's Poppin listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess. The show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em? What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented cause station matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan o' Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.
- [80:19]
Ben Rhodes
So we've talked a lot over the last few years about the crackdown on both journalism and civil society in Russia. There is a new award winning documentary that gives audiences a front row seat to what life was like for independent journalists in Russia in the lead up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and some of the aftermath. So I'm very pleased to be joined today by Julia Lochtev, who's the director of My Undesirable Friends, which is currently in select theaters. Look for it in streaming in the months to come, as well as Ksenia Mironova, who's a Russian journalist for TV Rain. Julia Ksenia, thanks so much for joining us.
- [80:59]
Julia Lochtev
Thank you for having us, Ben.
- [81:01]
Ben Rhodes
Okay, so Julia, to start here, this is a really long and intimate look into the lives of a number of journalists. You shot this on an iPhone, which kind of contributes to the intimacy of the film. And it's something you kind of can't look away from. You get inside the lives of these people. I wanted to ask you, as with any documentary like this, I'm always curious about why you chose to go to Russia and tell this story. And if you, when you knew the kind of story you were trying to tell in filming with your iPhone, well.
- [81:36]
Julia Lochtev
It was kind of incredible because I didn't know what the film would turn into when I started filming it. I should say I'm originally from the Soviet Union. I came to the States as a child at 9. So I kept up on Russia, but I hadn't lived there since I was nine years old, but obviously kept up on what was happening. And in the summer of 2021, Russia started declaring journalists as foreign agents. And I thought this was really strange when, you know, media and also individuals have to put basically a disclaimer saying this is brought to you by a foreign agent on everything they do. Like if we were doing this podcast and you were a foreign agent, and you would have to say like, hi, I'm Ben Rhodes and I'm a foreign agent and this podcast is a foreign agent. And if we happen to be a foreign agent, foreign agents on your show, then you would have to say, well, this is Julia Lockev, she's a foreign agent. And this is Kenya Mironova, she's a foreign agent. And you know, this was happening everywhere in Russian independent media that, you know, by New year's Eve of 2021, it felt like every other word was who we must say is a foreign agent. Because Russia was increasingly targeting civil society journalists. So that's what we began making the film with, with Ananyamser, who was a host and at what was Russia's last remaining independent TV channel. We thought when journalists are forced to in effect, shame themselves supposedly, you know, and mark themselves as other, as not belonging to this society, something is happening. What we had no idea of, of course, is that this would lead, you know what, that this was leading up to Russia starting a full scale invasion of Ukraine. And everybody thought that this was kind of leading to an increased crackdown on journalists and an increased internal crackdown. But no one was expecting the kind of war that Russia has now been waging for four years.
- [83:25]
Ben Rhodes
And how did you select the journalist that you're going to profile? And we should say it's in addition to being kind of independent journalists, you focus on women journalists. How did you choose the people that would be kind of our guides through this world?
- [83:41]
Julia Lochtev
We didn't actually intend to make it a film about women. It kind of happened that way. We started out, when we started, there were only 25 individual foreign agents. Some of them weren't journalists, some of them worked for Radio Liberty. We thought, fair enough. And then there were a few very young, vibrant women. Because part of how this works is that for terror to work, they didn't start with the most important journalists when they named, you know, the foreign agents. In fact, we picked Elena Khvistychenko, who is Russia's best known long form writer in the independent journalism world. Because we thought she'd be named a foreign agent any moment now. Well, she just got named a foreign agent two weeks ago, I think. And part of how terror works is it has to be random. So we started with people who were on the list, you know, who were on the foreign agent list. And then Anna, who was a co director also, who was an anchor at TV Rain and which was a foreign agent. She's still personally not a foreign agent. And then Ksenia, whose partner when she was 22 was arrested and she can speak to that more and is now a journalist who is sitting in jail in Russia in prison for 22 years for so called supposed treason.
- [84:53]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, there's a lot of window into the consequences that people can face, including detention, which we can get to. Ksenia, I wanted to start by asking you, though it's been risky to be a journalist, particularly kind of independent journalist in Russia for a long time now. There have been journalists who've been murdered, disappeared. What motivated you to go into journalism in the first place? And how did you think about those risks as you started out in your career?
- [85:25]
Ksenia Mironova
Oh, this is such a good question, because I actually have no idea. I was born in Urals, it's like near Siberia. No one in my family ever was a journalist or even worked with journalists. So I actually don't even know why. I just. I always loved writing and I always loved telling stories and what's. I think what's important that I think I just always wanted to be a journalist, but I never expected to be like political journalist or to write about different social issues. But I just. I graduated from the high school at a time where it was already almost impossible to write about something else. So it actually happened very natural. I just, just saw what's happening around. I just saw people protesting, I saw people being arrested because of their abuse. I saw like protests because of. Yeah, because of different things going on in my city also and in Moscow. And it happened really, really natural. So yeah, and I just became a journalist.
- [86:50]
Ben Rhodes
No. Yeah, no. You naturally wanted to tell stories.
- [86:54]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [86:55]
Ksenia Mironova
I just want to say that I've never seen something different. I've never seen a beautiful democracy or something. I wanted to be a journalist and it was like, oh, a lot going on around and I can write about it.
- [87:12]
Ben Rhodes
Well, during this time when you were a journalist at TV Rain, when Julie's filming your fiance's detained, it's not really an explanation why, and it's been sentenced to 22 years in prison. Can you talk a little bit about that case? What you understand about what happened, why it happened and what it was like to go through that?
- [87:34]
Ksenia Mironova
Yes. Well, we met when we both worked in this quemersant newspaper. And at that time, like now this is a very controlled media, but at that time it was not like this. I've never faced some kind of control when I worked there and I wrote about different social issues and protest and educational system in Russia. And he wrote about military and how Russia. What's Russia doing in Syria, about Ukraine since 2014.
- [88:15]
Julia Lochtev
And.
- [88:17]
Ksenia Mironova
He investigated some of these things. And as we know from his case, FSB followed him and like for the last almost eight or seven years. So they just fold him. They read all of his articles and they were really, really mad. FSB and I think, yeah, so they were really mad that he wrote about all of these things. And then they had this great moment to arrest him. I'm not sure if they have, like, you know, one reason. Like it was not like just one article or just one thing that he said. I think it was a. There were a lot of reasons why it was good for them to arrest him. And also I think because I wrote a lot about all of these governmental treason cases. I think that this is how they prepared people and how they prepared this system for the full scale invasion in Ukraine, because they arrested a lot of scientists since, like Ivan Sofron, my partner, he was the first case when journalists were arrested, but they also arrested a lot of scientists who worked on different issues connected to war. Then after Ivan, they arrested a lot of other journalists, they arrested a lot of Ukrainians who lived in Russia. And I think it was their way to prepare the system to this war.
- [90:03]
Ben Rhodes
No, that's. That's interesting. Yeah. Because I remember them also shutting down. You know, I knew some people at Memorial, you know, the civil society organization. It just felt like they were preparing something. Sorry, Julia, you wanted to get in and say something?
- [90:15]
Julia Lochtev
No, I think what I wanted to say is one of the things that happens in the film is every other journalist at some point mentions Ivan Safronov partner, and says, oh, or I could end up like this. And so you don't need to arrest every journalist, you don't need to arrest every scientist. The way that terror works is that you can arrest a couple and then everybody else has that constant fear of there but for the grace of God go I. And that's what happened, unfortunately, with Ivan Safronov is that. And as far as I'm aware, and Ksenia, you can correct me, as far as I'm aware, the official reason. Reason was the sharing of some information that was actually like publicly available in Wikipedia. I mean, it's something completely like. I mean, the pre. What we think the reason for arresting him is one thing. You know, obviously this was all a build up to the war, but what the official reason is the sharing of something that was actually publicly accessible information and that you can Google.
- [91:14]
Ben Rhodes
Well, and Julia, I also want to ask you, there's this, you know, you depict, and we're talking now about this, you know, crackdown, this elimination of any potential, not only, I don't want to say opposition, just independent voices, fact based, truth based voices. What? Part of what, you know, you show is both the dark humor, right, of people who are going through this, and every Russian I know has a capacity for dark humor, but also a kind of a sense of incredulity, frustration that you're in Moscow and some people are being targeted and there's this kind of darkness enveloping them. And yet most people are kind of going around as if nothing is changing, as if things are fine. As an outsider, as someone who may have been born in the former Soviet Union but is visiting, what did you make of the juxtaposition of here are these people that are going through the most intense form of repression, who are essential to a democratic society or any kind of open society. Journalist. And then, you know, you walk around the Moscow streets and most people are just acting totally normal.
- [92:27]
Julia Lochtev
Absolutely. And this is something I think about now all the time. You know, I think about this in my daily life. Why the fabric and surface of my daily life looks really nice and, you know, matcha lattes everywhere. And meanwhile, you know, there's masked men snatching people into unmarked vans and that the surface of our society right now looks really nice for the most part, while awful things are happening. And there's a moment in the film where actually one of the other characters, Sonja Groysman, is for their podcast there, she's interviewing an anthropologist who talks about, you know, that this is actually completely normal in oppressive societies, that for most people in an, you know, authoritarian, oppressive society, life looks really nice. Like she says, you know, we think about it as looking like V for vendetta. But in fact, you know, she talks about how even under Stalin, you know, the trains were running. And, you know, even at the same time, things that are contradictory, like the rights of women were expanding, and yet horrible things are happening. And this is something I am constantly, constantly coming back to now. And as we're living through some pretty.
- [93:38]
Ben Rhodes
Horrific things, when I look at Putin's early years, he went after the television stations, he went after the oligarchs, he went after the law firms. I mean, it's eerily familiar. Playbook. And Ksenia, I want to ask you a question that I've often thought about. I've met a lot of journalists over the years, Russian journalists from independent outlets, but also when I was in the White House for eight years, interacted a lot with kind of state media type journalists or more official media like TAs. And they were nice people interpersonally. I mean, I interacted with some of these people for eight years. I saw them change their line. They went from being pretty open, accessible people that would report pretty straightforwardly on things, albeit with the Russian Bent, to by 2016 they were defending the Crimea invasion and they were talking about how horrible America was. But interpersonally they were the same. And my question for you is, did you interact with some of these quote unquote journalists who are more in the state media line? What would they tell you privately? Was there any sense of people sharing a profession? And I know this is kind of, I've just always wondered this, like, what is it like if you're an independent journalist? Did you have any interaction with those kind of state media people that are, that are playing by the Kremlin's rules?
- [95:10]
Ksenia Mironova
I don't think I communicate with these people a lot now and for this last three, almost four years. But obviously I know some people and I believe that for most of them is just kind of copying mechanism. Like especially people who stayed. I don't think that all of them believe in what they write or what they film. I see that for many people is just as I said, a coping mechanism. And they don't really have, I mean that these people just follow the agenda and they don't really have any views, which I don't understand how you can be a journalist and don't have your views and your beliefs. I also don't understand it because like so called propaganda stars like Margarita Simonyan, obviously they got a lot of money for it, but a lot of just, just regular correspondence, they're also underpaid. So I don't really understand why can.
- [96:22]
Tommy Vietor
You.
- [96:25]
Ksenia Mironova
Make all of this propaganda news if you even, I don't know, you even didn't get something from it? I think a lot of people just don't think about it. And I think a lot of people just don't think about journalism as and about such an important thing. There are a lot of people who just don't care and a lot of people who are like, well I don't like, I'm not an evil, I'm just doing my, my job and it's such a small job. I just write some news. It's not so important when I believe it is important. So yeah, it's, it's crazy for me, too.
- [97:08]
Ben Rhodes
No, that makes sense.
- [97:09]
Julia Lochtev
That's an important feature I was going to jump in with a little bit quickly. Just, I think, actually it's in part where there is a part two to the film that I'm editing now, in Exile. And one of the characters says something that I think is important, which is that Putin's propaganda for years wasn't really designed to make you believe in something. It was designed to make you believe in nothing. And because if you believe in nothing, then you do nothing. And that's largely kind of how it seems to work, is that it's not. You know, there are definitely people who are true believers, and I think this is changing now, but I think for a lot of people, it's kind of like the way that Ksenia described it. It's a lack of care.
- [97:47]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember Alexei Navalny telling me once that Putin doesn't need to make you believe that he's not corrupt or that he's not a liar. He just makes you believe that everybody's corrupt and everybody's a liar and nothing matters and so don't even care. I mean, I think one of the powerful things. And you mentioned part two, Julia, but I want to ask both of you and Canessia, you can go first. This question of whether to leave or not, you know, kind of haunts the experience that we go through, and you struggle with that idea. I mean, nobody wants to leave their home. You also are leaving behind a partner, and you're leaving could be used against him. Ultimately, you made that choice to leave, as did other people in the film, other journalists. What? Just tell us a little bit about that decision, why you decided to leave, how difficult that was.
- [98:37]
Ksenia Mironova
Well, as you seen in the movie, it was such a hard choice, and I never truly, like, I never thought I can do it. I believe this is a very personal choice. I think we discuss it a lot with Julia, with our friends from Iran, for example. And I would never judge people who left or people who stayed, because people have very, very different reasons. Like, people who stayed have, like, their families, have their, like, grandparents or something else. In my case, why I decided to leave, it was just that I was like, it's too much to have two political prisoners in your family, because it's also like, people think, as Julia said, people think about these things, like, about this vendetta, but in reality, like, it's very expensive to have a political prisoner in your family. It's very, like, hard. I mean, bureaucracy, lawyers, money. So for me, it was just, I don't want to make more problems for, for my and his families. So it's better to leave and to check what's going on. And maybe then at that time I thought that maybe I can return. But yeah, for me it was a very like, banal reason. But I think for some of our colleagues it was just so important to stay in effect field to continue their work. And like, for me too. And it was only possible if you are somewhere else, not inside of Russia, because we tried as also as Julia showed in a movie, we tried to stay like on tv Rain. We tried this first days of the war. We were trying to stay. We were like, okay, we will try to follow all of these rules. But like a couple of days after we realized that it's impossible.
- [100:52]
Ben Rhodes
Julia, you're both showing this incredibly historic moment in time, right? The bridge between the days leading up to the full scale invasion and the immediate aftermath. But you're also making a film that Americans are going to watch. I don't want to. There are all these parallels that we can see. I don't want to overstate them because it's not like journalists here are being disappeared yet. But what was it like to edit this film and release it in a year during which the President United States routinely calls journalists the enemy of the people? They've kicked out the Pentagon press corps and have basically a state media of kind of far right influencers that are now at the Pentagon. You know, they've sued media organizations. So they've started down the path. You know, they have their own friendly oligarchs who are buying up the media and we should call it that. We should talk about the US like we talk about Russia, like, you know, the regime friendly oligarchs are, you know, essentially taking over the media. How do you think about the parallels?
- [101:58]
Julia Lochtev
Well, you're right that I did end up kind of capturing unwittingly, I have to say, this historic moment because, you know, a million people left. And the only reason I ended up capturing all of this live, like through these people, we lived through them is that I started by not ignoring the warning signs. Now, of course, there were even earlier warning signs. And if you look at Russia, they didn't start by arresting journalists, they started by suing journalists. You know, libel, all those things that are, you know, lawsuits, looking into people's taxes, looking into every. And this not just journalists, but, you know, civil society. If you look at, like, even if you look at how Alexei Navalny was originally arrested, it's always on some bureaucratic thing. It's one of the characters, Anya, and the film says, you know, Putin's favorite phrase is, you know, it's all within the framework of the law, you know, like.
- [102:47]
Ben Rhodes
Like. Like these. Mortgage, like, you know, going after, like, the mortgage. James ever mortgage?
- [102:50]
Julia Lochtev
Absolutely. As this mortgage stuff. So I finished the film. It premiered at the New York Film Festival a year ago. So it's not so much what happened in the editing, but what's happened to the film and how it's played in our heads as Americans, you know, and I'm very much like an inside, outside person in this film. I mean, I'm an American citizen. I know Russia very well, kind of having been bor there especially, but I'm American. So many things that just, you know, we're little throwaways in the film. Whether it's like, at some point, someone's like, oh, the end of comedy shows. You know, the comedy show gets shut down, or there's a mention, you know, of a university rector being arrested, or there's. When you mentioned Memorial, Memorial gets shut down under the pretext of, you know, why must we talk about our. We won World War II. Why must we talk about, like, our unpleasant history? Can't we just talk about the nice things? And I look at Trump and the Smithsonian, and there's so many things that, you know, I edited just thinking it was a film about Russia. I wasn't thinking of all the parallels. You know, the parallels kind of sadly came after. And it keeps, like, it feels like, you know, there's different details. I don't know what Easter egg will be in the film for us tomorrow. You know, that will resonate. But it really wasn't. They weren't resonating as much when I was editing it as. Because it's just happened since, and I'd rather they didn't.
- [104:13]
Ben Rhodes
Well, it's yet another reason why people should see this, because it's both a window into Russia and maybe a window into ourselves. Knessi, I wanted to ask you one last question, which is I often check myself, right. I think it's wrong to demonize a whole people because of what its government is doing, even though I do think people bear some responsibility. And. And frankly, in this country, we bear plenty of responsibility. We've elected Donald Trump twice. But as someone who's outside of Russia now, in this kind of exile community, how do you and your friends or your colleagues think about the future of Russia? Do you find anything for hope? Or what would you like to project to the world about the fact that Russia is not just Putin.
- [105:01]
Ksenia Mironova
Well, about future, I just have to say we don't think about it at all. I mean, maybe some people do, but me and my friends and my colleagues, we just don't. I think we just. We are very focused on what's going on right now, and I think this is the only way to survive, because you can just go crazy if you think about future. Like, I mean, how can I think about future of Russia when I'm Gen Z? I was born, like, with Putin. I live my whole life with him. I don't believe that tomorrow something happens. And even if something happens to him, I don't believe that everything will change in a moment, obviously. So I think I'm just so focused on my work and what I can do right now and how I can help Ukrainians. How can I help Russians who are imprisoned because of their views. Yeah. And I think with all my Russian friends and colleagues, we always remember these words of people who survived in World War II and that, like, people who thought about what they lost and people who always thought about their future, they just went crazy. And only people who focused on their job right now survived. And this is what we're all doing right now. And about people who, how. What I think about people who stayed, we obviously, obviously feel very divided. People who left and people who stayed. But I know that obviously there are a lot of people who, like Putin who make money on this war. But I also know that some of my brilliant friends who stayed in Russia, they work anonymously as journalists. They help finding and they help to save Ukrainian children, and they work with Ukrainian organizations and help them to help them looking for all of this children. There are people who helped political prisoners, even if it's really dangerous for them. There are people who sent letters to political prisoners, who sent food, and people who still protest, even. And I. Yeah, I just want to appreciate them because it's really dangerous for them. And that's great that they're still doing it.
- [107:40]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. No, they're risking everything. Well, Julia, last word to you. I mean, how is this making this film, editing this film, releasing this film and all these crazy times we're in? How has that changed you?
- [107:52]
Julia Lochtev
I just feel incredibly honored that I got to share these incredibly difficult years with characters, because it's not a normal documentary where you have experts, like, telling you, here's. You know, even here, Ksenia's playing the role of expert, and she's explaining things that in the film, it's like we're Hanging out at kitchen tables, we're in taxis. You really living through it. And for me, it was so important to be able to tell a story of what does it feel like to be living under a government that you oppose? What is that experience? And to suddenly, you know, in the course of my film, all of the characters in the film had to flee their country, usually with like a carry on suitcase and a few hours notice. And then I continued, there's a part two where I follow them in exile and I just feel like I got to create a historical document, but just through people you come to know and it's like somebody. We were talking to a critic in LA and he said, oh, this is a hangout film kind of. And it is. I mean, I think it's a. I'm like, I think it's a new. It's a new genre, maybe the hangout tragedy rather than the hangout comedy. Although there is, you know, a fair bit of dark humor in it. So I just feel incredibly honored to be able to tell the story.
- [109:08]
Ben Rhodes
Well, everybody, you know, should keep an eye out for my undesirable friends. I imagine you're going to be hearing more about it. And I want to thank you, Julia, for making the film and Canessia for all your work and your colleagues. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [109:23]
Julia Lochtev
Thank you so much, Ben, for having us.
- [109:29]
Tommy Vietor
Thank you to Julia and Ksenia for doing the show. Thank you to Kash Patel for making us laugh.
- [109:34]
Ben Rhodes
I'm gonna. I just. I hope he hangs on for a little while because people at the post good segment every week.
- [109:39]
Tommy Vietor
I hope there's this. I hope this, this random group makes some more reports. Link it to us. Help me out. You know our emails.
- [109:48]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, yeah, you know our emails. Yeah, you know our emails.
- [109:51]
Tommy Vietor
All right, talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate professor producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of news and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple. Podcasts. Don't forget to Follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, Tik Tok 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 much more. And if, like us, you're opinionated, leave us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America East.
- [110:57]
Laci Mosley
What's poppin listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em what about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh you know they represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan o' Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.
- [111:34]
Tommy Vietor
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