Is Trump Planning to Invade Cuba?

Summary

Pod Save the World — May 20, 2026 Episode Title: Is Trump Planning to Invade Cuba?

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Overview

This episode, hosted by Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes, delves into the alarming signals that the Trump administration may be preparing a Cuba regime change operation. They examine the humanitarian catastrophe on the island, U.S. policy maneuvers, and the broader context of Trump's foreign policy in Latin America and beyond. Other hotspots including Bolivia, Iran, China, Taiwan, and even Eurovision are covered, as well as the escalating economic impacts of U.S. actions abroad. The episode maintains the hosts' signature irreverent and accessible tone, filled with both sharp critique and humor.

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Main Segments & Key Discussion Points

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I. The Cuba Crisis: Regime Change Signals (11:43–24:48)

Context & Escalating Rhetoric

• Multiple signs suggest the Trump administration is laying groundwork for action against Cuba:
  • Reports of Cuba acquiring drones for potential use against Guantanamo Bay, but only in retaliation if attacked (11:43).
  • Rumors of indicting 94-year-old Raul Castro for a 1996 crime, seemingly as a pretext for regime change (12:24).
  • CIA Director John Ratcliffe's highly publicized visit to Cuba delivering a Trump ultimatum (12:56).
  • Increased U.S. surveillance flights over Cuba (13:02).
• Ongoing total blockade since January, causing catastrophic humanitarian consequences, especially lack of fuel and food (13:03).

Humanitarian Catastrophe

• Description of Cuban life:
  • Hospitals shut down, families unable to cook, infant mortality rising (13:27).
  • “Children are starving to death.” —Ben Rhodes (13:28)
  • Reporter Ed Augustin’s on-the-ground account:
    • “Hunger is growing by the day in Cuba because there's no diesel to get food to market… Tomatoes, milk, meat is rotting in the countryside… I was reporting from 18-story high rises where the rich are now cooking with carbon, with coal, and the poor are cooking either with firewood... or with cardboard they find in piles of rubbish… It's the most vulnerable that are suffering and are having their life expectancy reduced.” (19:13)
  • There is palpable fear about a U.S. military invasion; even those dreaming to emigrate would fight back (20:37).

Political Motivation & Critique

• Rubio’s statements critiqued as hypocritical—“the reason people are eating garbage is because... there's a full blockade of the island.” —Ben (14:37)
• The hosts highlight that the suffering is because of the U.S. blockade, not solely Cuban government mismanagement (15:19).
• The latest political playbook is described as:
  • “Regime change on the cheap. A bunch of Delta Force guys are going to go grab a 94-year-old man and then what?… Some Miami Cubans might get some beachfront property… it’s just, it’s like a political project for Rubio in Florida.” —Tommy (17:53/18:47)
• The likely result is massive suffering, migration, and potentially another long-running insurgency (21:47).

Quote Highlight

• “[The US is] killing the people that [we] claim to be trying to help. And I wish that there was more of a kind of moral outcry against this from the Democrats, from the media, but it is what it is.” —Ben (16:29)
• “If Donald Trump's America invades, I fight.” —Cuban source, via Ed Augustin (20:55)

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II. Bolivia and the Trump Administration's Latin America Doctrine (29:03–31:54)

• Summary of a political crisis in Bolivia involving pro-Morales unrest, shortages, and rumors (but no confirmation) of U.S.-backed plots to seize Evo Morales (29:03).
• These rumors are seen as plausible in the current climate, post-Venezuela operation.
• Ben likens U.S. policy to “1950s, 60s, like kind of Dulles Brothers in charge of the CIA just like, rampaging through Latin America on behalf of, you know, a fruit company” (31:11)
• Warning: These “cost-free” interventions have long-term tragic consequences, e.g., Central America in the ‘80s (31:23).

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III. Iran: Stalemate and Global Consequences (31:54–44:24)

Current State (31:54)

• Strait of Hormuz is closed; U.S. and Iran far from a deal.
• Trump alternately threatens and delays attacks, citing foreign requests and Pentagon fears (33:42).
• Iranian proxies are striking Gulf states; conflict is regionalizing (33:42–34:48).

Nuclear Negotiations

• Trump’s own statements are fragmented, confused (“the dust... nuclear fuel... we call it dust. I think it's important for the fake news that we get it.” —Trump, 34:48)
• U.S. now has drastically reduced aims—only trying to get “the dust” (enriched uranium) instead of eliminating the entire infrastructure (35:05).
• Iran has the upper hand: controls Hormuz, can withstand pain, and is extracting ever more expansive demands (37:04).
• Markets are ignoring the ticking economic time bomb of a prolonged Hormuz closure (39:32).
• “There’s just not oil and LNG getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. There just are shortages, there just are higher prices and you can’t talk your way through that.” —Ben (40:21)

Accountability for Mass Casualties

• Moving reporting: Sky News’ Dominic Waghorn details aftermath of a U.S. strike killing 120+ children in Iran (41:14).
• U.S. military leadership is stonewalling, refusing to accept blame for the attack, which hosts call “shameful” (42:35).
• “Just because you’re wearing a uniform doesn’t mean you’re infallible.” —Ben (43:24)

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IV. Trump’s China Visit and U.S.-China-Taiwan Triangle (48:03–59:27)

Trump’s Fruitless Trip

• Trump secures no meaningful wins from China on Iran or trade (48:17).
• U.S. delivers “economic deliverables” that even Wall Street ignores; China secures possible concessions on U.S. farmland (48:36–49:23).
• Promises on restricting Chinese investment in U.S. farmland are now reversed, contradicting MAGA rhetoric (49:23).

Taiwan Policy: Strategic Ambiguity Redefined

• Trump repeatedly refuses to clearly state if U.S. would defend Taiwan (49:44–51:19).
• His equivocation is called “word salad” and a dangerous signal of American unreliability (51:24, 54:12).
• Arms sales to Taiwan are used as “a negotiating chip” with China rather than a true security guarantee (51:06).
• “You also are entertaining negotiating away Taiwan as if... it’s yours to negotiate.” —Ben (58:30)

Implications

• Taiwan becomes more vulnerable; Xi Jinping may interpret these signals as a window for invasion (55:16).
• Economic repercussions could be far greater than current oil disruptions; “90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors come out of Taiwan ... That’s the entire economy.” —Ben (58:30)

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V. Eurovision Interlude: A Cultural Palette Cleanser (61:12–65:21)

• Michael presents the weirdest and wildest Eurovision performances of 2026 (including Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Finland, and winner Bulgaria’s “Bangaranga”).
• Ben’s verdict: “If this is a window into the state of the culture, what is going on in Europe? I mean, here we know what's going on. It sucks here." (64:11)
• Levity and surrealism; “They seem like they're having fun... We're not having fun." (65:02)

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VI. Interview: Nish Kumar on British Politics (68:03–94:22)

Topic Highlights

• Labour Party in crisis post-local elections; Keir Starmer faces pressure but no clear challenger (69:27–78:00).
• Wes Streeting resigns, Andy Burnham might stand for Parliament to become eligible for PM, Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband discussed as possible contenders (70:01–81:45).
• Brexit fallout: “Everybody is afraid to engage with the fact that it has negatively affected our economy, it is making us poorer. But there is no political will to reverse any of the decisions..." —Nish (82:16)
• Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the rise, despite major corruption stories getting little scrutiny, unlike left-of-center politicians (85:28–89:46).
• On UK’s CPAC: “It is really going to be Woodstock for red-faced men called Christopher.” —Nish (91:11)
• Both hosts underscore the absurdity and danger of fringe right figures’ mainstreaming.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If Donald Trump's America invades, I fight.” —Ed Augustin relaying a Cuban’s view (20:55)
• “Children are starving to death... because of Marco Rubio. He's killing the people that he claims to be trying to help.” —Ben Rhodes (13:28)
• “It feels like 1950s, 60s, like kind of Dulles Brothers in charge of the CIA just like, rampaging through Latin America.” —Tommy Vietor (31:11)
• “There’s just not oil and LNG getting out of the Strait of Hormuz... and you can’t talk your way through that.” —Ben (40:21)
• “You also are entertaining negotiating away Taiwan as if ... it’s yours to negotiate.” —Ben (58:30)
• “If it looks like corruption, it smells like corruption, but it is. We both suffer from this kind of scrutiny deficit...” —Nish Kumar (86:52)
• “I think it's really important to tread a line between saying this is a real problem. It presents some dangerous ideas for us. But it is also important to say, fuck me, these lads are weird.” —Nish (93:07)

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Segment Timestamps

• Cuba & U.S. Policy: 11:43–24:48
• Bolivia & U.S. interventions: 29:03–31:54
• Iran/Nuclear/Global Economy: 31:54–44:24
• China Visit/Taiwan: 48:03–59:27
• Eurovision: 61:12–65:21
• Nish Kumar on British Politics: 68:03–94:22

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Final Takeaway

The episode systematically dismantles the justifications for U.S. escalation in Cuba and elsewhere, foregrounding the real human costs and the cynical domestic political drivers. The hosts warn of the cycle of U.S. imperial “smash and grab” ventures repeating with grave consequences. Meanwhile, Trump’s ineptitude on Iran, China, and Taiwan leaves the U.S. isolated and in a weaker global position. A world politics snapshot, shot through with both outrage and gallows humor.

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Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[B]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[A]

Ben, please enjoy this great moment in national security history from our President, Mr. Donald J. Trump. Let's watch.

[C]

The entire roof is developed for military. They have a 360 degree fusion Washington D.C. they have a massive drone capacity. Not only is it drone proof, if a drone hits it, it bounces off, it won't have any impact. But it's also meant as a drone for it. So it protects all of Washington. The roof of the building.

[A]

Ben, do you think that that's how he thinks that counter drone systems work, that it's just like a strong roof? Does he think Iron Dome is a literal thing?

[B]

So first of all, it feels like a wonderful space for a coup. If you need to launch a military coup.

[A]

Oh yeah, a little put.

[B]

What better place to launch the putsch from within your own ballroom.

[A]

That's a good point.

[B]

Where you can have a bunker under the ballroom and you can send drones out. So good dual use to use a national security term. I also just love how did you see him at some point? Trump RX event. Talk about how great it is for medical.

[A]

Yeah, you can't talk.

[B]

Same thing. Like, this is great for military. Like. Like what?

[A]

Just like skips parts of sentences.

[B]

Yeah, it's just, you know, it's all.

[A]

I also love their innovative ways. They try to hold press conferences at the locations with the worst audio possible. They're like, how do we beat this Marine one jet engine. Oh, I know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Dude with a hammer.

[B]

Yeah. It reminds me whenever I have to do like a podcast from home or something and like planes are flying overseas and there's some dude with a leaf blower outside. But Trump likes that.

[A]

Yeah, he loves it.

[B]

Apparently.

[A]

He's like, how can we make this as annoying as humanly possible? For everybody. Also, did you see the Wall Street Journal story the other day with the headline, dad Books are a dying breed? The Wall Street Journal says that nonfiction books about politics, current affairs, and biographies are falling off. And what's killing them, Ben, are podcasts.

[B]

Well, then I'm fucked.

[A]

So this feels like a direct shot at this show because I feel like, well, first of all, we need to create a cur for dad books, because dad books are great.

[B]

We do. And dads. And we read books.

[A]

You've got one coming out.

[B]

I do, I do.

[A]

I feel like this is important. We have a responsibility as podcasters to promote nonfiction books.

[B]

The podcast should work in synergy with the book, not in competition with it. So a week from today, as we record, is the release date for my book. All we say.

[A]

All we say.

[B]

This book is very personal to me because basically, you remember, our last book is about authoritarianism. And one of the things I noticed in writing about Putin Xi Trump is how central history and storytelling is to authoritarians. They're essentially trying to rewrite history as a prequel to their ascent. And it got me thinking about feels

[A]

familiar to us here in America.

[B]

Very familiar. And so I wanted to understand Trump and all the dysfunction and toxicity in our politics today by going all the way back to the beginning and using my speechwriter experience, choosing 15 speeches through which to understand the argument we've been having about America and our identity. Who is an American? What is an American? Who gets to decide those questions? And so you take a journey all the way from Benjamin Franklin through some extraordinary abolitionists and suffragettes and people like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass up through Martin Luther King, all the way to ending with Obama and Donald Trump. And I promise you, this was incredibly fun to write. So I think it'll be fun to read, because when you look at a speech, you're really just looking at history in the present tense. Like, how were movements operating at that time? Who were these people that emerged out of nowhere to change the course of history? How do you tell a story that actually galvanizes and mobilizes people? Something that we seem to have lost the capacity to do today. So the book is out one week from today. Please, if you want to pick it up, pre order it, pre order it, gets it out.

[A]

It gets banned on the New York

[B]

Times bestseller list, gets on the bestsellers,

[A]

but it also displaces Don Jr's Triggered 4 or whatever.

[B]

Take a look at that list and just think how much better you'd feel to see, like, a book about who we are as Americans.

[A]

We're not losing to those people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All we say is going to beat the bulk order. Little cross next to their name. Don Junior, Eric Trump. Fucking bullshit. Chop, chop, Fox News. Killing Lincoln garbage books.

[B]

Yeah, no more. We're not killing anybody in the. We're trying to tell the story of America on our 250th birthday in a way that we can feel both honest about. Actually, one of the other things I was really struck by, Tommy, is like people knew exactly what was going on at the time. You know, the seneca chief in 1805. It's not like they didn't know what was being done to Native Americans in this country. It's not like abolitionists didn't know what was going on in the 1830s. And just reliving that through the story as it was told at the time was extraordinary for me to experience for four years. You can hear a clip of the audiobook if you want to go all the way to the end of the podcast today. And I'll be out on the road and I'll be sharing all those dates and hope to see the world, those in the audience, because it's always cool

[A]

to see everybody save the dad book by picking up a copy of all we say for Father's Day.

[B]

Dare I say yes. The perfect Father's Day gift.

[A]

Perfect Father's Day gift. Which is coming.

[B]

Father's Love history. They love America.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's a better version of America.

[A]

My wife's going to be out of town for Father's Day, so I'll be with the kids solo.

[B]

Just kick back with this.

[A]

That's what she thinks about me. Okay, we got a great show for you guys today.

[B]

We're going to find out if Hannah listens to this podcast.

[A]

She does not. There's all these signals. Ben, we are. You and I were texting over the weekend. It just feels like every light is blinking red. Would it be red or green? I guess green. That the Trump administration is planning some sort of imminent regime change operation in Cuba, which is great. We need another one of those.

[B]

We need.

[A]

We're going to talk about.

[B]

So.

[A]

Well, we're talking about what those, you know, what those indications are. We'll talk about the humanitarian situation on the ground there. We'll also touch on this growing political crisis in Bolivia, which is kind of exploded on social media over the weekend. Then we're going to up you guys on all things Iran. The bad, the worse, the dumb. We'll explain what was and what was not accomplished during Trump's China trip. Why? Folks in Taiwan are feeling a little more nervous these days than they were before the triple. And then Ben and I are going to get to see some highlights from the annual Eurovision contest for the first time.

[B]

Oh, look forward to this every year. Every year, Michael's curation of Eurovision for us.

[A]

Every year, once a year, Michael tries to force us to care about Eurovision and we say, all right, yeah, I got on a better pitch.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you're going to hear my conversation with Nish Kumar from Pod Save the uk. We talk about what the hell is happening with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the Labour Party, Nigel Farage, the rise of reform uk, the right wing party over there. And then we just laugh a lot because Nish is so funny.

[B]

Does Nish have a favorite horse in this fight? Is he an Andy Burnham guy? Is he an Angela Rayner guy?

[A]

My guess is he didn't say, but my guess is, you know, he would sort of tech a little further to the left.

[B]

Nish is probably green curious.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're all a little green curious.

[B]

I'm green curious.

[A]

Pod Save the UK is a hilarious, fantastic show. You should subscribe. Also, check out Nish's comedy special. It's on YouTube right now. It's called Nish Don't Kill My Vibe, which is a great title.

[B]

He's a funny guy.

[A]

Also, speaking of YouTube, please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. How many times do we have to ask? We're trying to build a counterweight to the right wing pro war propaganda from Fox News and others. It's free. And when you subscribe, when you like, and when you share our stuff, you help us grow. So please consider doing it. And if you want to see everybody here in person, Ben, Get a ticket to crooked con is November 5th through 7th in DC. There will be live shows, panels, meetups, torrid love affairs, underwhelming love affairs, and mostly just fun people coming together to talk about the future of politics, trying to make this country a better place. The midterms will just have happened. Hopefully they're good. Trump endorsing Ken Paxton in Texas today.

[B]

Yes. Makes me a little genius.

[A]

What the fuck? Yeah, that guy is a creep.

[B]

A walking creepy. Uh, it's hard to design a MAGA creep more effectively than Ken Paxton.

[A]

Have you seen the story about Ken Paxton? He's going through a security gate to get into a, like a courtroom or something and he stole some guy's like, thousand dollar pen.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, just like a Crook. If you ever wanted to test the proposition that maybe right wing politics in this country are not about earnest religiosity, a James Tallarico vs. Ken Paxton race is definitely going to put that to the test.

[A]

Yeah, that's not a hard one. More [e-mail] and also Friends of the Pod subscribers get a discounted price, so another reason to subscribe. All right, Ben, should we start with Cuba?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I know you care deeply about this one. So again, seems like all these warning lights are flashing. The most recent data point was this Axios report from over the weekend that said Cuba has obtained 300 military drones and is considering using them to attack targets at the US Military base in Guantanamo Bay if they are attacked. I feel like the if they are attacked retaliation part of this was kind of underemphasized in the reporting, but there were a lot of background quotes kind of hyping the threat from Cuba to the U.S. it's like all these people quoted just figured out it's 90 miles away. I always love that. So there's your pretext for why the US has to take a preemptive action in Cuba. Right?

[B]

Because if they're invaded, they might fight back.

[A]

So we got to preempt the retaliation.

[B]

Okay, got it. Trying to follow logic.

[A]

Listen, I appreciate that. There's also been reports that the US is planning to indict 94 year old Raul Castro for a crime that occurred in 1996.

[C]

As.

[A]

As is normal, you might be thinking that seems strange. He seems like he's about to die. But it's not strange when you consider how central the indictment of Nicolas Maduro was to the rationale for the Venezuela operation that deposed him earlier this year. Then there was CIA Director John Ratcliffe's visit to Cuba last week. Sometimes those trips happen. They're usually secret. That's why you send the CIA director. But instead, the CIA put out a statement about it. They said Ratcliffe was there to personally deliver a message from Trump. That sounded like an ultimatum to me, Ben.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then finally, the Times has been reporting that there's been an increase in US Surveillance flights over Cuba in recent weeks. And the broader context, as listeners probably know, is that the US has had this full blockade on Cuba since January. The entire island is just rocked by this humanitarian crisis. There is no fuel, so there's no power. Hospitals can't function. People can't cook food. Families are starving. It is an absolute nightmare.

[B]

Children are starving to death.

[A]

Children are starving to death. And here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about Cuba last week. I think this is like on the way to China or while they're in China. Let's watch.

[B]

There is no economy in Cuba. To the extent there's any wealth in Cuba, it doesn't go, it doesn't forget about. It doesn't go to the people, it doesn't even go to the government. The wealth is controlled by a private, by a company owned by military generals. They take all the money. They're sitting on billions of dollars. Okay. This is a country where people are literally now eating garbage from the streets. But they have a company that controls all of the money making there that's sitting on $16 billion. So it's a broken non functional economy and it's impossible to change it. I wish it were different, but I believe it's my personal opinion you cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it. That's what's going to have to change because these people are proven incapable. I hope I'm wrong. We'll give them a chance, but I don't think it's going to happen.

[A]

Okay, so Ben, I'm curious how you're reading all these tea leaves and like, I don't know if there isn't a regime change operation, are they just going to starve this entire island full of people in perpetuity? Is it like a medieval siege happening here?

[B]

Yes. And first of all, Rubio, if you kind of look hard enough into his eyes, it's hard to identify like the soul underneath, especially on this issue, because what he's talking about is it's so farcical because is there corruption and repression in the Cuban government? Yes. But the reason people are eating garbage is because on top of the embargo that has been in place for 60 plus years, there's a full blockade of the island. If they wanted tomorrow to have a market based economy, they couldn't because they are completely cut off from the US financial system. When we were in office and did the engagement of policy with the Cubans, they wanted to open up their economy to foreign investment and they created a private sector and literally we couldn't get any bank to do any business in Cuba because of US sanctions, even though we were trying to lift those sanctions. And we actually had to kind of give direct permission to one bank just to facilitate some transactions. So these guys like Rubio like to get up there and make it seem like the entire just travesty of human suffering that is happening. There is somehow because of a handful of corrupt Communist Party officials or generals when far and away, and I'm tired of just this one end on the other end thing. Far and away. The reason that Cubans are suffering is because of the US Blockade. You could have Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes running the economy. And if you have a total US Embargo that cuts the country off from accessing the US Dollar, which is needed for transactions, and then a blockade of all oil coming into the. You'd still have people eating garbage in the street.

[D]

Right.

[A]

You can't refrigerate anything.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's no electricity for 20 hours at a time.

[B]

And that means that hospitals are shutting down and people are dying who are on things like ventilators because of Marco Rubio. He's killing the people that he claims to be trying to help. And I wish that there was more of a kind of moral outcry against this from the Democrats, from the media, but it is what it is. In terms of what's happening, my sense is that the Cubans have been willing to make lots of concessions. You know, they've been trying to make signals that they're releasing certain political prisoners. They're probably willing to open up some real estate for development from Trump's rich Cuban American friends in South Florida, or they're willing to make changes in their economic model. But you just heard Rubio give up the game, which is he thinks that the whole government has to change, and no government, whether you like that governor or not, is going to negotiate its own regime change. And so we're in this kind of, you know, Mexican standoff where essentially they're saying, you guys all have to leave or else what? And the or else now seems to be that they, you know, Diaz Canal, who's the actual president of Cuba, is not a big enough fish, probably for Trump and Rubio.

[A]

No.

[B]

So they're looking at Raul Castro, who's like, literally 94 years old. It's not like he's, you know, he may be the final decision maker, but he's not running the country day to day. But he's a name. You know, Fidel's dead, Rao's left. We're going to indict him over something.

[A]

It's like literally a scalp for all these hardline Cubans in Miami who have hated the casualties.

[B]

And by the way, if we're relitigating things that happened 30 years ago, I mean, the CIA has shot down Cuban airliners and killed civilians. Like, there was something called the Bay of Pigs invasion. I mean, like the point is that the history runs in both directions in this relationship. And the idea that you're going to charge Castro for the shoot down of an airplane in the mid-90s, that's not serious. I mean, why would the justice system waited 30 years until Donald Trump wanted to play emperor of Latin America, to all of a sudden decide to hold Raul Castro accountable for this. And I think what they'll probably try to do is regime change on the cheap. A bunch of Delta Force guys are going to go grab a 94 year old man and then what? We'll put a gun to the rest of the Cuban government's head and say, let the Miami Cubans develop the real estate down here.

[A]

I mean, right. They don't even have oil for us to steal. I mean, it's not even a clear play. It's just, it's like a political project for Rubio in Florida. And by the way, just to hammer home this humanitarian point, because I'm with you, like, it does feel like there's just a bizarre lack of concern, interest, concern.

[B]

We're doing this.

[A]

Yeah, the United States is doing this. We reached out to a reporter on the ground in Cuba named Ed Augustin to get his sense from his reporting what life is like on the ground for the Cuban people. Let's listen to that.

[E]

Hunger is growing by the day in Cuba because there's no diesel to get food to market. Tomatoes, milk, meat is rotting in the countryside because it can simply not be transported to the city in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's main city in the East. I was reporting from 18 story high rises where the rich are now cooking with carbon with coal and the poor are cooking either with firewood they have to walk miles to chop with machetes, or with cardboard that they find in growing piles of rubbish. We're seeing infant mortality rates shoot up, an increase in the lack of drinking water. Over 80% of the water pumps in Cuba to get water from reservoirs to people's homes and hospitals relies on electricity. So these sanctions are killing, they're killing the civilian population. It's the most vulnerable that are suffering and are having their life expectancy reduced. But there's also fear of a military intervention. And that is really significant because until recently in Cuba, the notion of a US military attack was seen as a bit of a cliche. Right. The government's been warning of it for 2/3 of a century now. The feeling's changed. I spoke to a guy whose dream he said was to leave Cuba and to go to the United States. But when I asked him what he'd do in the case of military intervention, he said, well, I'm a trained sniper and what I'll have to do is I'll have to go and be on duty. Another family I spoke to got told that they have a contingency plan, state organized contingency plan to go and live in a tunnel. What I point to here is Cuban nationalism. Many people that I speak to say, if Donald Trump's America invades, I fight.

[A]

So, you know, like President Diaz Canelo said that any military action by the US Would result in a, quote, bloodbath and upend regional stability. I mean, I think it's fair to doubt their capacity as a fighting force, but, you know, a guerrilla army could do some damage and kill some US service members. And again, it's like, to what end? And then, you know, I saw Bob Gates, former CIA director, former secretary of defense under multiple administrations, on, I think CBS over the weekend, who was saying that he thinks the biggest risk is we just starve this island to death and lead to a mass migration, attend the tens of thousands of Cubans to the US Again, which puts them at risk, but also is, you know, I was told by Maga that was the thing they hated the most was mass migration. It's like, yeah, what are we doing here?

[B]

Yeah, if they go forward with this, there are several ways it could go. And like, the bad messy scenarios are that there's actually some kind of insurgency that drags on, that there's state collapse and mass migration. But let's even. And also, by the way, the Cubans have networks across Latin America. This is kind of scenario where they could kind of wreak havoc in different places. You know, almost like terrorist type tactics. I'm not sure that they do that, but it's possible. However, like, let's say this goes Venezuela style, right? We some Delta Force guys and some cinematic operation, grab Raul and they maybe they grab Diaz Canal and Marco Rubio gives a press conference and says he's in charge and puts on a sweatsuit again. Puts on a sweatsuit. And then we're, I guess, responsible for the governance of the poorest nation in the hemisphere because of our sanctions. Because I honestly think that one of the reasons why some Democrats aren't more vocal about this is they're like, well, what if it goes well? And we, you know, first of all, that's wrong. Imperialism should have gone out a long time ago. And the idea that we just like randomly, you know, starve and then invade and regime change a country just because we can is the most dangerous form of politics that there is. And also, like, really importantly, you mentioned maga. Like, who wants this? Like, why is this happening?

[A]

Rich Cubans in Miami.

[B]

Exactly. This does nothing for anybody in America. Like, there's not even some weird bank shot like with Venezuela that they could talk about oil. Although the gas prices are up, it doesn't seem like getting the Venezuelan oil to put dent in that one. So, like, a very small number of people will get rich, right? Some, like, you know, Miami Cubans might get some beachfront property. Like some corrupt, you know, Eric Prince will probably get hired to.

[A]

Jared Kushner will run some new board of peace offshoot for Cuba, builds Trump

[B]

properties and golf courses. And like, we, our tax dollars will probably spend billions of dollars on the operation. I mean, we have to start, like, it can't just be the wars that are catastrophically consequential like Iran that people are against. All of this is connected. It's all about imperialism and corruption and power and grift. And you should care as much about Cuba as you care about Iran. In the same way that, frankly, the decent feedback loop Trump got on Venezuela probably contributed to the war in Iran 100%. And so this Cuban operation is probably a gateway to, to Greenland or Panama Canal, like, whatever comes next. This is what history tells us happens with autocrats. You know, they keep going. They never stop when they get the territorial expansion regime change bug.

[A]

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Having someone to listen to, to understand and support you can make all the difference. That's where better help comes in. Betterhelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US Better Help does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. They send you a short questionnaire that helps identify your needs and preferences and their 12 or more years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time. From their tailored Rex, they have over 30,000 therapists. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over 6 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. I know what you guys are thinking. Why do I need a therapist? That's what friends are for. That's what family's for. You know what? When you complain to them about your problems, they're not listening. They're thinking about you get a. They got to do it a couple times a month. Yeah. You know, maybe, maybe, maybe what you need, you need someone to talk to that is paid to be there, that's listen to you and is trained on how to help you. Yeah. You don't have to traverse life's challenges alone. Don't traverse. Find the. Find the personal support you're looking for in therapy. Sign up and get 10 off at betterhelp.com Crooked World that's better. H E L P.com CrookedWorld. We're going to talk about Iran in a second, but before we do, we wanted to flag this growing crisis in Bolivia where supporters of former President Evo Morales have blocked roads for a couple of weeks. They've created all these shortages of fuel and medical supplies and food. It's really a growing crisis. And on Monday, some of these protesters clashed with police in La Paz, the Bolivia's capital. And so the protests are over economic conditions, which are very bad and prices going up and inflation and long gas lines, but also the treatment of Morales, who has been holed up in the jungle surrounded literally by like an army of supporters who say they will fight to the death to protect him. The protesters are now calling on the current president, President Paz, to resign. There have been reports that the government has ordered the arrest of leaders of like, indigenous rights groups and unions. And there was also a report that I've not seen corroborated anywhere else, Ben, that the US Military was preparing some operation with Oblivion Police to capture Evo Morales. Yeah, again, that was not confirmed, but like post post Venezuela, it feels a lot more believable. And I can understand why, like any leftist leader in Latin America would think that the Trump administration is angling to take them out and is ready and willing to intervene militarily in their affairs at any time. So I don't know, this sort of like exploded my feeds over the weekend. We wanted to talk about it. What do you make of this?

[B]

You remember the Don Rowe Doctrine?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So there's a lot of smoke around some of these reports. Right. So we have this idea that there might be some special operation to grab Evo Morales in Bolivia. We also had, you see this like, weird Honduras thing that the Trump administration was working together with like, Javier Milei and the right wing leaders to, you know, basically target, you know, Shane Baum in Mexico and Petro and Colombia, like, meddle in their politics and undermine the Latin American left. We've had these reports of kind of CIA presence in Mexico that we've talked about. I think when you take this all together, there really does seem to be a pretty comprehensive and coordinated playbook to essentially treat all of Latin America like literally imperial possessions of the United States, where we either pick the leaders, we, you know, remember Trump intervenes in Argentina with a massive bailout from Milei, or if some leftists get in charge, we, you know, undermine them, go after them Maybe even, you know, seize them. And Evo Morales just points to how kind of weirdly personal this is, because Evo Morales isn't even powerful anymore.

[A]

You know, he's literally like, he's not a good guy.

[B]

No, he's not statutory rape, but he's out to pasture. Like, he's not like. Like it's not even like some election coming up that he's running in. Like, he's like some guy, like on a compound somewhere. And it feels like there's this. You know, a lot of people are using the Trump administration. I heard you describe it as like, smash and grab. And that's exactly right. And it's also like, oh, I can use this moment to settle my scores. You know, a lot of people are mad at Evo Morales about things he did 10, 20 years ago. And it's like, I can talk the Trump administration into, like, running a special

[A]

op to grab, like, some corporate interest. It really feels like 1950s, 60s, like kind of Dulles Brothers in charge of the CIA just like, rampaging through Latin America on behalf of, you know, a fruit company or whatever.

[B]

And by the way, these things can feel cost free when you do them, but they tend to have a tail. You know, like, meddling in Central America in the 80s led to death squads and left wing revolutionaries and mass migration in the United States. You know, so it might feel clean when you decapitate the Cuban government or grab Eva Morales, but, like, other people don't forget and then they kill people and then they get massacred. And so this, all this stuff can set in motion dominoes that lead to pretty dark places.

[A]

Yeah, agreed. And something we're watching closely. Okay, so let's turn to Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Just doesn't seem like the US and Iran are anywhere close to a deal to actually end the conflict. Last week, Trump said the ceasefire was on life support. Then on Sunday, he posted, quote, for Iran, the clock is ticking and they better get moving fast or there won't be anything left of them. Time is of the essence. Another adorable, like, you know, mass casualty truth social post of, you know, extermination. But a day later, Trump announced that he would not attack Iran this week because of a request from leaders in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the uae. He always has to, like, name check the Field Marshal. Field Marshal Asamunir. Did you know that the cops in London have an arrest worn out for him for torture and, like, crimes against a total creep? Yeah, the horrible guy. So the New York Times reported that the delay in the resumption of hostilities could also be related to fears within the Pentagon that Iran has been studying, you know, US Tactics, US Flight patterns, maybe in conjunction with Russian intelligence, and can now better target US planes. And maybe that's why that F15 went down. Regardless. Shit in the Gulf keeps blowing up, Ben. Drones keep flying from places. So last week, a drone hit the UAE's sole nuclear power plant. Not good. Luckily, the damage was limited to a generator on the edge of the facility, but still, nuclear power plant. The UAE says the drone was fired by Shia militia groups in Iraq. Saudi Arabia also said they intercepted a bunch of drones coming from Iraq. Just another example of how the war has metastasized the entire region. Again, like we said at the top, US And Iran seem quite far apart when it comes to a possible nuclear deal. We can tick through all of that if you want, in a second. But here's what President Trump had to say about Iran in the last few days. This is sort of a hodgepodge of all the very coherent thoughts he had.

[C]

They've been holding up the world for many, many years with the strait. You know, they've used this many, many times. They said, we'll close the strait. They've closed it in the past. They use it as a weapon. They're not using it as a weapon with me. We really did the cease fire at the request of other nations. I wouldn't have really been in favor of it, but we did it as a favor to Pakistan or terrific people. The field marshal and the prime minister.

[A]

The titties for.

[C]

Well, I mean, I'm saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something. Maybe early next week, a limited period of time because we can't let them have a new nuclear weapon. 20 years is not enough for you. It's got to be a no. 20 years since enough. But the level of guarantee from them is not enough. In other words, it's got to be a real 20 years. Not a big means. You've got to fucking get all the fuel out and no more product. We have to get everything. But we're not even talking about the nuclear. Does keep up with a term we seem to have got on. There's been people that have been generals

[D]

that I've spoken to that think you

[C]

have to get the dust which is the enriched uranium. I don't think it's necessary, except from a public relations standpoint. I think it's important for the fake news that we get it.

[A]

Don't tell Netanyahu that. Did you See, Trump started ranting at David Sanger from the New York Times and accusing him of treason on the plane.

[B]

David Sanger, what the fuck?

[A]

What do you make of all that? I mean, like, I don't know, man, it just feels like they are just absolutely treading water. I mean, have no plan.

[B]

Here's the. There's a baseline that we need to name again. But I found a different way to do it this week, which is, remember the talks that were happening right before the war when Witkoff and Jared were tabling these proposals at the time, their demands were dismantle the entire nuclear program, dismantle the entire ballistic missile program or accept limits on ballistic missiles to a certain serious limits number of miles, that is you can't hit a.

[A]

In stockpile size.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And then also cut all support for

[A]

proxies and no enrichment, so.

[B]

And no enrichment. So the fact that even on their best case scenario, they've gone from those demands before the war to nothing about support for proxies, nothing about the ballistic missile program, and just trying to get the dust to give me your dust

[A]

or just let me watch your dust.

[B]

And so, first of all, by their own negotiating positions, they are in a much weaker position than they were before the war. And Iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war because they controlled the Strait of Hormuz, which they didn't before the war. Trump is nuts when he's talking that they did not close this strait, like

[A]

literally the opposite of what he was saying.

[B]

That's just the opposite of the truth usually lies, but that's just a, you know, upside down lie.

[A]

And by the way, Iran's just. Their offer, according to Iranian State News, was like asserting their right to enrich uranium in peaceful nuclear development, lift US And UN Security Council sanctions, withdraw US Troops from areas surrounding Iran and to the war in Lebanon, enter the US Blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, release Iranian assets and compensation for damage caused during the war. So an expansive list because that tells

[B]

you everything you need to know about who actually has the leverage here. The Iranians are sitting there, they can absorb economic pain. They're controlling the strait. They have a revenue source from that if there's no deal, and if there's a deal, they get all the sanctions released. So either way, they're going to come out with a lot of revenue coming in. And Trump is completely cornered and he doesn't want to restart the war, but he feels he has to threaten to restart the war. But the Iranians don't Blink when he threatens it. The Gulf countries are pissed. They too would like to see Iran weakened, but they're afraid that if the full scale war ramps up again that they're going to get hit harder again. And so here we are and everybody can see it's only people in this country that feel the need to believe that we accomplished something or they watch Fox News. Everybody else around the world's like, shit, the Iranians have him pretty checkmated.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I love that. He's like the dust caught on. We say dust to make fun of you.

[A]

Yes, yes, right.

[B]

Like the reason it did not catch on, sir, it is highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel.

[A]

Yeah, we think you're stupid when you

[B]

say dust and we know that you say dust cuz you have to cling to the lie that only 65 and over white people who watch Fox News believe that you obliterated the nuclear program and the so called 12 Day War that still hasn't ended. So yeah, this is just a guy who has no idea what he's doing, no way out of the mess he's created. And the only way out is to basically accept defeat. And hopefully the Iranians let you get the dust out in exchange for a bunch of revenue.

[A]

Yeah. And it's just a question of if and when he'll move on some of his positions because again like the conflict is metastasizing, it's spreading to other countries. Like we are learning about the UAE and Saudi Arabia taking direct strikes on not only Iran but also targets within Iraq. Shia militia groups within Iraq. And I saw today the Wall Street Journal said that over half of the 1,000 drone attacks on Saudi Arabia came from within Iraq. So like clearly like they've been feeding drones to these Shia militia groups. So again it's just like a regional war now. And then last week Ben, Israel and Lebanon announced a 45 day extension to the ceasefire there. But Israeli strike killed seven people in Lebanon on Monday alone. So it's like hardly a ceasefire. Like people are still getting killed. A couple months ago, remember when the Trump administration announced they would like had this plan to provide insurance to ships that wanted to go through the Strait of Hormuz. You know how many people took them up on this offer? 0. 0.

[B]

Worked about as well as Operation Freedom or whatever Project Freedom or whatever brief freedom.

[A]

The FT has now reported that 76 countries have had to take emergency measures to deal with the economic fallout from fuel shortages. So that ranges from Australia, France and India to like poor and developing countries. And then energy traders are warning that like prices are, are high now, but we are going to eventually reach a tipping point where there's like a freezing up of the markets that you could see oil prices jump to like 180 a barrel and a bunch of countries have already released their emergency supplies and those are going to run out by July. So it's like, this is bad, man.

[B]

Wait, doesn't A five siren emoji axios report change those shortages that the war is ending? Because that, that, that's worked seemingly with the markets before.

[A]

That does work with the market.

[B]

I think what you're. Yeah, like the point is that there's, what is so interesting about watching this war play out is Trump is still operating in spin world, but there's a physical reality here. Like there's just not oil and lng getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. There just are shortages, there just are higher prices and you can't talk your way through that. And Trump seems think he can just kind of talk his way through that. And the irony of it all is that the strait is closed because he launched the war and he really needs the straight open. He can't just accept the permanent reality in which the straightforward moves is closed. So at some point he really does have to make concessions to Iran here or else the whole global economy is going to collapse this year because we just can't endure this level shortage for several more months.

[A]

No, it's crazy. It's crazy. I just feel like the stock market and the oil markets are all just kind of like whistling past the graveyard. And that'll work until it doesn't. Interest rates are shooting up over 5%. Something is going to break and it's going to be sudden and it's going to be devastating. People are going to lose a lot of money except for the Trump people who will front run the trade and make tons before we move on from Iran. Ben, I just did want to give a shout out to some really great reporting. There's a piece by Sky News's Dominic Waghorn. Hope I say his name right. He got into Iran, traveled to Manob, took like a four day drive to Manob to speak with people there who were impacted by the US airstrike on the school that killed 150 people. I think 120 of them were children, mostly schoolgirls. He interviewed some men who are first responders on the scene who had to like try to dig through that fucking grisly setting. He talked to a mom by her son's graveside who was Grieving him. And it's like gut wrenching stuff. And it's worth watching. It's really important. And a reminder that Trump and all the lackeys at the Pentagon, including combat commanders, like the head of centcom was on the Hill yesterday. They still will not take responsibility for this mistake. And it is shameful. It is truly shameful.

[B]

I have a problem with, first of all, that this is not like a bigger story. We killed like 120 girls. I mean, I have two daughters like this. This should be like the biggest story in many ways about this war. But I also, like, I'm just gonna grab onto the third rail, Tommy, and hold onto it. Because the uniform military has basically gone along with a whole bunch of bullshit from Donald Trump. Not down to the pilots and the service members. I'm talking about Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the CENTCOM Admiral

[A]

Brad Cooper was up on the Hill today. And Adam Smith, Congressman Adam Smith was trying to push him on, like, hey, what's up with the investigation? This should not be hard.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Like, remember there's a map that, like, whatever. Dan Cage had a map up in one of his Hegseth briefings that showed all the places the US was bombing and Manob was on that list and the Israelis were bombing in the north. Like, it only could have been us. They know it was us. They're lying.

[B]

Everybody's done exhaustive investigations. And so what you've seen is a complete failure to take responsibility for this horrific incident. A complete obfuscation of the damage caused. I mean, we saw Dan Cain kind of standing next to Pete Hegseth when he was saying that we like decimated their ballistic missile capability. And then we had to learn in the New York Times that 75% of their ballistic missile launchers are still there. Some like 70. 75%. Yeah. Then we don't know the damage done to the bases across the region that we taxpayers pay for. The Congressional Research Service CRS had to issue a report about all the aircraft that we lost because they won't be transparent about that. Just because you're wearing a uniform doesn't mean you're infallible. And I don't think those guys are lying like Trump is, but they're standing right there and not telling us the full truth either, including on this incident.

[A]

They know they're lying about this.

[B]

They know that they're lying about this. They know what the idea that the CENTCOM commander has no idea what happened in Manab is.

[A]

They knew the next fucking day. If that was a US Tomahawk missile or not.

[B]

And they're, I guess, afraid that Trump will be mad at them if they acknowledge it in that. Is it worth it?

[A]

No.

[B]

I mean, it's, it's kind of like the Republicans, like, is this really, like, is your job that cool that you go along with this?

[A]

You know, someday he's just going to endorse Ken Paxton, so.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

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[B]

Literally nothing.

[A]

Literally nothing. Trump claims that Xi Jinping promised not to sell weapons to the Iranians, but there's all these reports.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

U.S. officials told the New York Times that Chinese firms have been plotting secret arms sales to Iran through other countries. So I don't know, seems like there's probably some loopholes in there, guys. Trump did not secure a trade deal. Nothing close.

[B]

No trade deal.

[A]

He instead announced some, like, pretty small potatoes economic deliverables. Economic deliverables. Like purchases of ag, like $17 billion of ag purchases, I think, which will never come to be. And then a commitment from the Chinese, buy a bunch of Boeing planes, which was so underwhelming that Boeing stock price went down. So great work there. He Also apparently agreed to a vehicle for Chinese investment in the U.S. including Chinese investment in U.S. farmland, which is just weird because that's a big MAGA thing that they're really mad about. They don't want the Chinese to own

[B]

foreign ownership of land. That goes back to, like, the organic plug. I learned a lot about how the American populist movement started in the 19th century around 1 or two issues, one of which was foreign ownership of land and the other was tariffs.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

So Trump, like Trump is, you know, fucking over, you know, his OG populist. Well.

[A]

And also he explicitly, in his campaign, he explicitly promised to ban Chinese ownership of farms. Whatever. It's like, just, like crazy.

[B]

He said he wouldn't go to war.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So then there's Taiwan. Here are some examples of how Trump has described the US commitment to defend Taiwan since his visit.

[C]

Let's listen, Mr. President, I'm Taiwan, and you said you were going to check with the president of Taiwan, but the 1982 assurances that President Reagan gave said you would not. Said the United States would not consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan. 1980s is a long way. It was. That's a big thought. So what am I going to do? Say I don't want to talk to you about it because I have an agreement. It was signed in 1982.

[B]

Would the US defend Taiwan if it came to.

[C]

I don't want to say. I'm not going to say that. There's only one person that knows that you know who it is. Me. I'm the only person. That question was asked to be today by President Xi. I said, I don't talk about that.

[B]

Should the people of Taiwan feel more

[C]

or less secure after your meetings with President Xi? Neutral. Neutral. Has the policy changed at all? No, nothing's changed.

[E]

US Policy?

[C]

No, nothing's changed. I will say this. I'm not looking to have somebody go independent and, you know, we're supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I'm not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down. But you're waiting on approving billions of dollars of weapons for Taiwan. Is that moving forward? Well, I haven't approved it yet. We're going to see what happens.

[B]

What are you looking for?

[C]

I may do it. I may not do it. Yeah. What's your hinge point? Well, I'm not going to say that, but I may do it. I may not do it. I'm holding that in abeyance, and it depends on China depends. It's a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly.

[A]

Back to the point earlier about how he doesn't know English. You don't feel neutral. It's like it doesn't make sense.

[B]

Well, and then in the next breath change the policy. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So like also, he's really hunchbacked. It's not looking good there.

[B]

And also can I just say, because we know Bret Baer watching a guy like that that's been on the like the Taiwan hawk cocktail circuit in D.C. have to choose his Trump master over his own personal politics on Taiwan.

[A]

Not just his Trump master. Bret Bear was doing straight up pro CCP propaganda while he was there. He went into some convenience store and ordered a sausage from a robot.

[B]

It's like Tucker with the Moscow Metro.

[A]

Brett, what are you doing? You don't have to do this. Anyway, Ben, I feel pretty confident that the answer to Brett Bear's question about whether, you know, the Taiwanese people feel less secure after this visit is yeah, they feel pretty freaked out. But what did you make of, you know, all the Taiwan elements here?

[B]

First of all, it just goes to saying like we got nothing out of this summit. I mean no trade deal. Like I was going to watch the AI stuff and there's giant nothing. We agreed to talk about it. And then Scott Besson went out and like dunked on the Chinese about how we have better AI but like it just, there's nothing of substance. I mean the idea that you have like a carefully planned multi day summit with the president of China and literally like have nothing to announce except some Boeing planes got sold and you know,

[A]

they pretend they're going to buy.

[B]

Jensen Huang probably, you know, did some side deals on some chips. It helps the Chinese.

[A]

Well, that was the other thing. Like they, they they re upped the offer to provide or sell the Chinese the H200 Nvidia chip, which is not the top of the line but it's like the pretty good. And the Chinese said no, I think because they're probably just getting all the best chips they want through like carve outs in Vietnam and other places and then developing their own indigenous chips.

[B]

And they were, yeah, like the whole thing is so upside down that they were like kind of preparing to frame the Chinese buying high end chips as like a Chinese concession when in fact it's what is going to help the Chinese pass us on AI on time. So if you go into this as an American, the reason I say that too is if you go into this summit as an American president, the last Thing that you want dominating the conversation is Taiwan. You want that under the radar. You want to not touch that. You want to talk about the things you want to talk about. Like, Xi Jinping wants to talk about Taiwan and how we have to not sell them arms and let them basically do whatever the fuck they want. You want to talk about trade and all these things. Trump, like, just kept tripping over himself talking about Taiwan and, and look what.

[A]

And she was like, this is our top issue. And he was like referencing like the Thucydides trap, like, suggesting there would be war over Taiwan.

[B]

He. The language that the Chinese put out, which is always like, very carefully calibrated. First of all, there's some hilarious things where, like, we were reading out, like, Xi Jinping said he would be helpful on the Strait of Hormuz.

[A]

He's like, no, it won't.

[B]

Crickets in the Chinese readout, right? There's like making shit up in the readouts.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then the Chinese put out this, like, bloodthirsty statement about Taiwan. Like, there will be like, conflict. Like, for them it was bloodthirsty. And look, the thing you want is you want there to not be a war or a Chinese invasion. And so you're just trying to kick this can. The arms sales are actually part of kicking the can because you're trying to show the Chinese, hey, look, this might be a tough operation, you know, like just full on amphibious invasion of this island. It would not be simple, especially if they have arms. And so again, this is one of those weird situations where you're trying to deter conflict by not cutting the cord on the Taiwanese, because if you cut the cord on them, then they are vulnerable and the Chinese do a blockade and they squeeze and squeeze. And he just kind of kept stepping on rakes because he would say something that made it seem like he wouldn't care at all about Taiwan. And then he would say, nothing has changed in the policy. And yet now I'm gonna say a word salad that is totally different than what the policy was.

[A]

But then you'd be like, hey, but I'm gonna call the president of Taiwan, which is something that would upend 50 years of US government policy because we don't have leader, leader contacts with them.

[B]

Yeah, because in fact, the last guy who did that was Trump after he won in 2016. Like, some lobbyists talked him into calling Tsai Ing Wen the president at the time. So look, if I'm in Taiwan right now, I'm just thinking, like, I gotta get through the next two and A half years of that being invaded. And I'm not saying that because I want the next president to go to war over Taiwan. I want the next president to have a more effective strategy over avoiding a war in Taiwan. And so I'd be trying to kind of keep my head down a bit here, keep your relations with Congress and both parties and kind of just don't even really try to play the Trump game because he has no interest in Taiwan. And the more he gets dragged into it, the more he's gonna signal how little he cares and the more that might make Xi Jinping think, you know, it would be a really good time to invade Taiwan like the last year of the Trump administration.

[A]

Right. But, and if you're listening and thinking like, look, I just don't want any conflict, I don't want the US Telling the Chinese what to do, like, okay, well, if you don't like the economic disruption that's coming from a two month long straight or Humu's closure, wait until there's no chips for any of the computers and phones and things come out of Taiwan. Right? Like that would be a big problem. And Ben, just, you know, so Trump, there had been a $14 billion arms sale that had been approved and was pending from the administration that they held off to try to like make Xi happy in advance of this trip. It's not at all clear that Trump is going to go through with it. But on top of that, there is $32 billion worth of aid to Taiwan that has been promised as part of foreign military sales that is still being held up. Drones, air defenses, like anti ship missiles, like big ticket stuff. And it just seals like people always point to those Trump administration arms packages to Taiwan and be like, see, look, the hardliners, they're in there, they're committed, like Rubio is doing the right thing, but they're not delivering this.

[B]

They're not delivering anything. Look, this is yet another issue where Trump is the one who kind of led this move towards like getting tougher on China and being against China.

[A]

Remember the campaign?

[B]

And by the way, all the Democratic blob types follow that like herd because it's like, now we're going to be super tough. He's now swerving in the other direction. He's talking up leader to leader. He's friends with Xi and what a great man. He's going to come to the ballroom and I'm canceling the trade war because the Chinese have more leverage with rare earth materials. Just like the Iranians had the Strait of Hormuz, he's tacoing left and right. And so all these things, he, he promised to get tough on the Chinese, he promised no foreign wars. All these things he just keeps going back on that were like pretty core to maga. Like, what does Steve Bannon think about this visit where basically you had Trump sucking up to Xi Jinping like a supplicant, like it's the Middle Kingdom and we're going to like pay tribute to the Chinese emperor. And look, and I'm not even, I'm saying that as someone who wants engagement with the Chinese, but engagement for some purpose.

[A]

Right. What's our goal?

[B]

Like, Trump's goal is just protocol. It's just that he's like received well and has nice dinners with Xi. Like, I want to negotiate, like AI safeguards, you know, like, I want real things. And again, if you're the Taiwanese, like, you also don't want. He started describing arms sales to Taiwan as a negotiating shit.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, that means that you also are entertaining negotiating away Taiwan as if, by the way, it's yours to negotiate. And again, what you. I'm not suggesting you want to go to war. I am suggesting you don't want to implicitly green light China going to war. Because to your point, even if you don't care about the Taiwanese people, and I do, 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors come out of Taiwan. TSMC, that's your car computer. That's all of it. It's everything. That's the entire economy, you know, and that would be bad.

[A]

Yeah. And these like bloodless ghouls, you know, over the all in pot or people administration are like, well, just give us a couple years, we'll have the technology we need to make that not a problem. It's like, ok, that's.

[B]

They've been saying that for a while.

[A]

I mean, a nice way to talk.

[B]

I heard that the CHIPS act was going to do that when. Yeah, Joe Biden was the guy that

[A]

did the Pacific Basin and then they unraveled that.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

And by the way, like, you know, RIP any conversation about religious freedom, human rights, freedom expression for the Chinese people.

[B]

Remember you were raising whether like he might get.

[A]

Jimmy Trump brought up two political prisoners. There's Ezra Jin Mingri pastor who was detained last October, and Jimmy Lai, this media tycoon from Hong Kong. Trump said, she said he will strongly consider the pastor didn't remember his name, but basically sounded like there was no shot in hell. He would do anything to support Jimmy Lai and that Trump didn't really care and wouldn't, you know, do anything about it. And, you know, I don't know what Steve Bannon thinks of this trip, but, like full time Trump fluffer Hugh Hewitt, who is one of those, like, pro Taiwan, anti CCP right wing guys who always talks about Jimmy Lai, he's been suspiciously silent on Trump. Just absolutely caving on Jimmy Lai.

[B]

Yeah. All these guys, I mean, it does make you wonder what they actually believe. Yeah.

[A]

Like, I will say one thing, credit to Hugh in that, like, when he interviews Trump, he'll ask about these issues, he'll ask Trump about Jimmy Lai. But when Trump completely caves Xi Jinping, he never follows up. He's still just like, thank you for you, Mr. Trump.

[B]

And they thought, this is why. And this is actually an important point that I don't understand. You know, we saw John Cornyn get rug pulled today. All these people seemingly convinced themselves that Trump would actually act on the thing they cared about. Whether it was the Epstein files, whether it was not getting into forever wars, whether it was being tough on the ccp. Like when all. You don't need to be like a. A genius to see that Trump only cares about himself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, and frankly, if. If he likes anybody, it's the field marshal and Xi Jinping, because they're fellow autocrats.

[A]

Yeah, he loves those guys. All right, Ben, final topic for us here. So years of doing the show with you has taught me many things. One of them is that there exists a song competition in Europe called Eurovision. It's one of the longest running TV programs in the world. Hundreds of millions of people watch it and go bonkers for it.

[B]

Big deal.

[A]

There are always scandals, there are always controversies. Usually they involve Israel. I never really understand why people are boycotting. It's a big thing.

[B]

It's also interesting because Israel's not in Europe. But side note.

[A]

And then most of all, most importantly for us, there are goofy clips of the performances themselves, which Michael curates for us to enjoy. Whoa. Jesus christ. What the. Oh, my God. Hey, man, that look, that was like I took acid and was on the ship from the Fifth Element. Remember that movie?

[B]

And somehow booked an appointment with the dominatrix for a while.

[A]

Yeah. And then at the end, it's just the British boy band guy with a Teletubbies.

[B]

It's like.

[A]

So the list there was Moldova, Romania, with a song called Choke Me. Okay.

[B]

The Romanian dominatrix, that I would have guessed Romania.

[A]

Yeah. She was. She was choking. Ukraine, Serbia, Lithuania, Finland, and then the uk.

[B]

Who's that? Guy who's just screaming at stuff.

[A]

As long as I don't know. Who was that? Okay, that tracks. The UK song was called Eins Zwei Dreit. I'm assuming that was German. Finally, this is the Eurovision 2026 winner. Spoiler alert. Drumroll. Bulgaria learned that today their song was called Bangarenga. Is that really true?

[B]

Bang who?

[A]

Bangarenga.

[B]

Bangaranga.

[A]

Bangaranga. Should we watch the Bangaranga clips? Let's watch it.

[B]

That's the winner.

[A]

I can see why that was popular.

[B]

I mean, it's, it's catchy. She's, you know. But like, I. If this is a window into the state of the culture, what is going on in Europe? I mean, here we know what's going on. It sucks here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Biggest glass house on earth.

[A]

Acknowledging that, I'm guessing that people not, you know, fluent in Bulgarian, just muted.

[B]

It feels like pop music needs like a, like a reset button here because we've reached kind of the end. My musical critic take on this is like there's like the end of death metal there. Like the end of like a kind of Gaga pop, you know, the end of some weird British acid Daft Punk kind of thing going on.

[A]

Like Teletubby.

[B]

We need to like start over with some genre bending. I don't know.

[A]

Yeah, I just think European shit is weird sometimes.

[B]

I will say this. They, they, they seem like they're having fun.

[A]

That looked like a good ass time.

[B]

We're not having fun.

[A]

No, we're having a terrible time.

[B]

So their lives are probably objectively better and, and more fun than ours. They probably go to clubs and dance that music and have a really good time.

[A]

Yeah, they probably get to the club at 6 in the morning, leave at

[B]

9am I mean, so you're winning at life. Even if I couldn't really see myself listening to any of that.

[A]

So that was Eurovision until next year. Ben. Next year, I gotta say.

[B]

Did Israel compete this year?

[A]

Okay, come here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Second place. Israel got second place.

[B]

I feel like they're always in second place.

[A]

The clips really do deliver in terms of weirdness, though. Every year I'm like, I don't know, is this gonna be funny? Yep, that's some weird shit. So well done on that. Cut. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you're gonna hear my conversation with Nish Kumar about the weird world of British politics. So stick around for that foreign. 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. With their collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. 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. 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. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life. Whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service, don't wait to claim your name. Invest in your dream domain today. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.comworld to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that squarespace.comworld dish has been connecting communities

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[A]

My guest today is a stand up comedian, television presenter, sex symbol and the co host of Pod Save the UK Nish Kumar. Great to see you. You have a special out Nish. Don't kill my vibe on YouTube right now.

[D]

I have a stand up special available right now and I think by giving people an opportunity to watch a video of me, they will immediately get to stress test the sex symbol claim.

[A]

I'm staring at one right now with my own two eyes so I believe them. Excited to talk with you today. Your co host on Pod Save the UK Coco was going to join us this morning. She had a last minute scheduling thing so we don't have her. But we, we love her. She is effervescent in all things that she does. But we'll miss her today. So I'm excited to talk with you because there's a lot of crazy shit happening over in British politics. Last week, Ben and I talked about Labor's drubbing in these recent local elections in England, Scotland and Wales. It seemed for a moment like the writing was on the wall for Keir Starmer and that everyone agreed he could not be Prime Minister anymore and that he was not cut out to lead labor in this moment. However, it was not clear who would depose him. That kind of weird status quo seems to be holding. Where do you think Starmer stands at this moment? And can you give us your quick and dirty take on how Starmer went from leading Laborer to this historic landslide nearly two years ago, less than two years ago, to this mess today?

[D]

Okay, well, let's, yeah, let's talk about the why of Star Murray's got here second. Because this, because so much shit has happened. This is a little anecdote into my personal life, but I told my mother that I was doing this show today and she said, oh, it's bad when they ask you to do the show. Isn't

[A]

is it is.

[D]

She's like always. Usually it's never because something is going. It's never to come on and talk about how the UK is functioning too well.

[A]

So basically NHS is fixed.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, everything's fixed. We're all fine. So basically where you guys got to and where we got to in our shows last week was that labor had taken a drubbing and then Keir Starmer had to go through this sort of ridiculous process called the King's Speech, where the monarch announces the government's legislative agenda for the year and the King has to give that as a speech, but it's a speech that's written for him. I've spent most of the last week trying to get us to incorporate an element of RuPaul and have the Prime Minister record the speech and then the King lip sync it live. Cause I think that would be sort of more entertaining for everybody. But obviously this King's Speech felt particularly strange and pointless because Starmer was announcing his government's legislative package whilst at the same time seeming on the precipice of losing his job. So Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, went in for a meeting with Starmer that I believe is supposed to is supposed to have lasted 16 minutes. He then left Downing street and then announced that he was resigning from the government. So there had been a kind of spate of resignations in the aftermath of the local elections. But West Streeting, obviously the Health Secretary is one of what we refer to in the UK as the great offices of State. That's a huge high profile position. Streeting also has been sort of touted as a potential replacement for Starmer from Starmer's wing of the party, which is sort of has has morphed over the course of his life as leader of the Labour Party. But now his constituency is sort of viewed as the right of the Labour Party. Streeting had been posited as the guy who was going to take over. He needed 81 other MPs to co sign his bid to be the next Labour leader. And I think just very quickly realized that he did not have the support within the Labour Party, but he quit anyway and said that he wanted, you know, to start a conversation about who the next leader of the Labour Party was going to be.

[A]

Real Machiavelli, that guy don't have the votes quitting anyway. Just shit in the bed right off the bat.

[D]

There's a problem that Wes Straiting has which is that he was sort of widely portrayed as the closest ally of Peter Mandelson, who obviously listeners of this podcast will be well familiar with. He was the man who Keir Starmer appointed as the British Ambassador to America despite, I mean, I believe the technical term is a dump trucks worth of shitload of mentions in the Epstein files. And so some of that was revealed when the latest tranche of documents was released. But Mandelson's friendship with Epstein was something that was known in the British media and had been talked about by journalists at the Financial Times and the documentary maker on channel.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So the idea that one of the biggest things that Keir Starmer has done wrong in the public's eyes being the appointment of Peter Mandelson, it's absolutely unfathomable that the only person who we equally have identified as being close to Peter Mandelson was even considering a run for Prime Minister. So I think Streeting's bid at that time was dead in the water. So then the problem, the reason that Starmer hasn't gone already is that there has not been a clear front runner to actually challenge him. So Angela Rayner, who was the Deputy Prime Minister, had to step down from that position because last year there were some revelations about her tax affairs that found that she may have underpaid tax whilst buying a flat. Now, on, on flat Thursday morning, the full investigation concluded that she hadn't done anything wrong and her misdemeanor was the lowest class of mistake that the UK tax authorities deemed to be even a transgression. So there is an arg. There is a possibility that she has a clear path to running, but she so far not shown any inclination that she wants to run. So the guy who everybody seems to think is going to run is Andy Burnham, who you've talked about on the show. He's the Mayor of Manchester, He's a Labour MP from the north of England. He got a lot of positive headlines in 2020, as a lot of politicians did, because they were immediately on the news after Boris Johnson had said something. So there were a lot of politicians in this country that came across as being hyper competent because they had just followed a man who really was giving a press conference, but really thinking about how he was, who he was going to bang later like that.

[A]

This is during the pandemic when.

[D]

Yeah, this is during the pandemic parties

[A]

and dicking around and yeah, even before

[D]

we knew about the parties, his press conferences were often garbled because Johnson is smart in a very specific, rich, white, English man way, which is he's sort of able to recite poetry, but crucially, he doesn't understand any of it. And so when he was actually put under pressure in 2020, he would often give these press conferences that were rambling and borderline incoherent and then it would cut to a different UK politician. And specifically in the case of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, who would by comparison seem incredibly studious and like a leader. And so Burnham really got a lot of attention in the pandemic. He was already a very high profile figure because, you know, being the mayor of Manchester is a big, high profile job. It's a big important city in the uk. Now, the problem here is that Andy Burnham is not an mp, right? And so that's the, that's. So there was all this polling done that suggested he's the most popular politician. His net favorability is sort of somewhere in the mid-30s and sort of seeming everyone else in British politics is in the like low teens or the minus numbers. But the problem is Andy Burnham is not an MP and as such he can't be Prime Minister. So then on Thursday, a fairly extraordinary thing happened. Josh Simons, who is a Labour MP in Makerfield, was a constituency just outside of Manchester, announced that he was going to step aside and Therefore force a by election, which is what we call a special election in which Andy Burnham could stand so that he could become the MP for Makerfield and therefore run for Prime Minister. It is, I feel like I've. The word unprecedented has lost all meaning in the last decade, both in my country and in yours. But this is pretty unprecedented. So now what comes next basically for the Labour Party is this special election in Makerfield to determine if Andy Burnham is going to become an mp, to determine if he can challenge Keir Starville for Prime Minister. In the interim, nobody has shown any appetite to challenge Starmer. So Starmer is still in post, but he's sort of Schrodinger's Prime Minister. Like he sort of is and isn't Prime Minister at the same time. It's quite an unbelievable situation because he, everybody knows he is kind of, he, he is on the way out. It's. I honestly, it's sort of baffling. You know, I'm used to the last couple of years of Rishi Sunak. Everybody knew he was gonna lose the next election. So every time he announced anything everyone would be like, yeah, cool buddy. See in a couple of years, yeah, I'll see you at McDonald's in a couple of years. Like, you know, that's not, it's not particularly important to any of us. So. But this is pretty, pretty extraordinary because technically from an electoral basis Starmer just won a huge majority. He doesn't have to call an election until 2029 if he wants to. That's how far he can push it. But he has seemingly no ability to run the country at the minute.

[A]

Yeah. Or lead his own party. The Andy Burnham by election is remarkable because as you noted, like he's going to run, it's not a sure thing that he'll win this seat, first of all, given the mood music in the country. But also you're in a situation where you have like what, 30,000, 40,000 people vote to maybe make this guy an MP. And if they make him an MP, he's the odds on favorite to be Prime Minister. So you're kind of voting for this guy to be Prime Minister, but not. Because that's not the process. The other name that's been thrown out there recently is Ed Miliband of the Miliband family, but the sandwich loving variety. He's the energy Minister currently. It sounds like he's been doing a lot of plotting behind the scenes. Is he really a candidate do you

[B]

think, for Prime Minister?

[D]

So he, I mean he did, he was leader of the Labour Party. He did run for Prime Minister. He lost the 2015 election and then he was sort of slightly cast out into the political wilderness. But whilst in the wilderness he sort of, through media appearances and through a very successful podcast that he co hosted for a while, sort of rehabilitated his public image. Also he continued to be an MP in that time. He didn't just immediately quit his job as job in politics completely and go and cash it in in the private sector, but he rebuilt his kind of political capital in this country which is is completely fascinating. And he is a sort of nationally popular figure. Now I think that I don't know what it would be like if he attempted to run for Prime Minister again. I don't know how that would look because a lot of these sort of accusations that were leveled at him in 2015 might come back around again. Now I will say the 2015 UK election and this is, there's no need for us to get too far in the weeds of this was a very strange and peculiar event because it sort of happens. It's the sandwich filling in between two referendums. So there was the Scottish independence referendum which the pro independence lobby lost and then there was the Brexit referendum the year after. And those two things are the factor around that election. Right. Because the Scottish voters were so incensed by the labor role in helping to deliver a no vote in the independence referendum and then which then led to the Conservative government essentially sort of disregarding Scotland immediately after it decided to remain a part of the United Kingdom that they switched en masse to the Scottish National Party, the snp. So a lot of progressive voters in Scotland which are a huge part of Labour support based switch parties. Also, David Cameron went into the 2015 election promising a referendum on the Britain's membership in the eu. So he essentially headed off the threat from Nigel Farage. So Labour support collapsed on its left flank and the Conservative sort of electoral split that had dogged the party for most of the 21st century was essentially found a kind of detente because Nigel Farage was essentially like, well I guess we don't need to run that hard because these guys are going to give us a Brexit referendum. So that you know that it sort of so Miliband losing that election. There's some wider circumstances that obviously aren't at play at this point. So you can sort of see why. But I still think he's not going to run. All of the rumors coming out of the UK press at the moment are that he was threatening to run if there was no viable candidate from the soft left of the Labour Party. And he was essentially threatening to run on a platform of Jesus Christ, not Wes. I think from what I could tell, that while Streeting was like touting his credentials as a candidate, Ed Miliband was like, listen, if it has to be, it has to be someone other than this fucking guy.

[A]

Got it? Look, I know that feeling. You mentioned Brexit a few times there. From an outsider's perspective, it just seems so obvious that Brexit was a mess, it was a disaster. It was sold to the public on all of these lies about funding for the nhs, stopping the boats, et cetera, and that has harmed the uk. Therefore, it has always been confusing to me that labor isn't more full throated about reversing Brexit or like, I don't know, talking it down, running against it. Why is that? Like, what am I missing here?

[D]

Because of our kind of screwy electoral system that's like, that's screwy in a different way to yours. So like, obviously the Electoral College, what the hell is going on?

[A]

Not the best.

[D]

I don't understand. None of us will ever understand why that's allowed to happen. But our first past the post system means that the same problem essentially occurs, which is there is a disproportionate importance to a small group of voters in potentially swing constituencies. And a lot of labor support collapsed in what they call the Red Wall. So vote constituencies in the north of England that had historically voted labor but then voted Brexit in 2016, then deserted the party. And part of the thinking around that is that it's over the Brexit vote. So that's why the Labour Party essentially, at this point, no one, including Nigel Farage, the man who absolutely agitated for Brexit, had been championing and touting it as a political project for really 20 years. No one talks about Brexit anymore because everybody is afraid to engage with the fact that it has negatively affected our economy, it is making us poorer. But there is no political will to reverse any of the decisions behind it, because I think there is. And also, to be honest with you, there is a real. It was, it was really, really ugly. And, you know, a sitting MP in the lead up to the referendum was murdered by a man who in court gave his name as freedom for Britain. And there is also a fatigue about rehashing those arguments. But I totally understand that from an outsider's perspective, it feels completely inexplicable that we don't at least talk about mitigating some of the effects of Brexit. And the biggest problem was that nobody agreed what it was until it had been voted for. So if you go back and look at the campaign, they were making all kinds of crazy claims and they were also very, in the short term, clever by not fully defining the exact terms of it. So it was able to be this kind of diffuse thing that was going to deliver more money for the public sector. And actually because of that, we had kind of three years of just no political movement whatsoever as people tried to work out what it was that they had just asked the country to vote on. So there is so little political appetite. But I totally understand people looking at the UK must be totally confused by it.

[A]

No, I would love to have three more years of debating hard or soft Brexit or Irish tax stops or all the bullshit we all had to learn. So on some level, I get it. You mentioned Nigel Farage there, he's the leader of Reform you uk, this new far right party. They gained a lot of ground in these elections. It is objectively bad to have a like right wing, xenophobic political party do that. Well, especially one run by a clown and a charlatan. I guess I could squint at it another way and say, I don't know, maybe they, maybe this signals there's a cap on their support. Sort of in the 20s, low 30% that we've seen across Europe. How worried are you about the rise of reform, Reform and the potential for Nigel Farage to be the Prime Minister?

[D]

There's a lot of people making the case that based on polling projections from 12 months ago, Reform actually underperformed in these local elections and that, you know, there are various statisticians that are trying to make the case that reform support may have peaked. Nigel Farage is also sort of embroiled in another scandal at the moment over here, where just before he became an MP, he got £5 million from a cryptocurrency billionaire called Christopher Harbin. Yes. Who's based in Thailand. Yeah, he's £5 million. And he said initially it was because he needed that money for security for the rest of his life. He then, when he was pressed on it, said that he. It was a present for doing Brexit. Right.

[A]

A reward, like campaigning for Brexit.

[D]

It was a reward for campaigning for Brexit. Regardless of the reasoning for why the money came in, he did, not long after it landed in his account, buy a house in cash for about, for about £1.4 million.

[A]

Didn't Keir Starmer get killed for taking like clothes from supporters or like eyeglasses? Like again, like thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. Like I understand why it was an issue. Clean that shit up. But like, it just, it feels like the press doesn't cover Farage like a real candidate. They cover him like a pundit or some like, I don't know, the performance artist.

[D]

Yeah. On podside the uk, we had to talk a little bit about the fact that the leader of the Green Party, Zach Polanski, who was sort of polling very well and taking votes from labor, from the political left, may or may not have paid council tax, which is the tax that you pay on wherever you live in this like your house tax, essentially on a narrow boat that he lived on for a period about 10 years ago. And so we were talking about, you know, we're talking about, whenever we talk about politicians like Starmer and Polanski, we're talking about scandals that are sometimes in the hundreds and the thousands. But Nigel Farage, we are talking about £5 million from, from, from a crypto, From a crypto billionaire reforms platform has pushed the idea that deregulating cryptocurrency would be something that they were pushed for in government. There are a lot of signs for that. So this is, you know, if it looks like corruption, it smells like corruption, but it is. We, we both suffer from this kind of scrutiny deficit in with right wing politicians and people like us get ourselves sort of twisted and contorted because we're all trying to do the right thing, right. Progressive people want to hold progressive politicians to a moral standard that we have all agreed upon that transcends our political biases and leanings. Right. And that's fine. Unfortunately, in the last 10 years, the other side of the political spectrum has abandoned that, you know, shared moral code. So it means that it creates the scrutiny deficit where if a left wing politician does something that we consider to be a transgression, everyone piles in on them. If a right wing politician does it, the right wing press and other right wing politicians kind of shrug their shoulders. And I do think with Farage, it is baffling. Like he is treated like no other politician is in my lifetime apart from Boris Johnson. And the really interesting thing about Boris Johnson is that when things really went south for him, when all of those revelations came out about lockdown parties, it was the conservative press in this country that went after him. And I think that's a slightly under discussed part of the collapse of Johnson. It was just the first time in a long, long time that a, a kind of right wing populist was fully exposed to total scrutiny of their actions and behavior by the entirety of the UK press. And Johnson's political career collapsed on contact with that scrutiny. And it would be really interesting if, you know, conservative papers did pick up on this Farage story, but I suspect it won't, you know, if you, if you sort of speak in defense of deregulated capital, people tend to find a way to excuse whatever behaviors. You're engaged.

[A]

Oh, God. Listen, brother, you're preaching to the choir over here. I mean, Trump just created a $1.776 billion slush fund for his political allies. And I was watching Fox News before I walked in here and they were doing a segment about an AOC interview from May 13. So like, whatever it takes to keep from talking about Dear Leader is what they'll do. Final question for you. So this summer, July 16th through 18th, I think I know where you're gonna be. CPAC, Britain is taking London by storm.

[D]

Yes, yes, I'm opening for them. I'm gonna do 20 minutes of comedy to open for CPAC.

[A]

Let's watch a quick hype video by one of the leading lights of British politics to kind of like get us fired up to talk about this. Here we go.

[D]

We are launching a British CPAC which is gonna take place this summer, bringing together conservatives of all parties, not just from Britain, but from the United States, from Europe and from around the world.

[A]

Two questions. Will you be purchasing the £100 ticket or the £10,000 ticket? And why does she talk at 0.5x speed? It drives me absolutely insane.

[D]

I will be purchasing. I will immediately go straight in for the 10 grand package. I got to have front row to CPAC uk. The issue that CPAC UK has, has is that right now Liz Truss is so politically radioactive that even Nigel Farage isn't going to turn up to it.

[A]

No. Really?

[D]

And so cpac, so far he's a no. Yeah, so far he's a no. Because she is so politically toxic that no one wants to be photographed stood next to her. And I mean, I listen, I am fascinated to see who turns up. I imagine it's going to be a who's who of British conservative back. That to me like it is really going to be Woodstock for red faced men called Christopher. Like it is gonna be really, like it's really. And I listen and I imagine we'll get some like leading lights from the European far right as well. Oh yeah, I believe Victor Orban has some time on his hands.

[A]

That's right. Oh yeah, he'll be there, he'll be, he'll be punching tickets at the front, selling drinks.

[D]

Yeah, I believe all that's got some time. But like the problem with these kind of fringe whack jobs is that they are obviously funny to look at, but the ideas that they're propagating do have a way into the British political mainstream. Because, you know, as much as Farage wants to distance himself from them for sort of electoral reasons, he's essentially offering the same policy platform. You know, he, he's, he's, he's more competently presenting it, but it's the same.

[A]

CPAC went from this thing that would happen that we'd all make fun of. It was like, you know, the bar scene for Star wars to being just like the MAGA base and the guy who founded CPAC and still runs it like allegedly runs around bars when he gets drunk and just like grabs guys cocks. That doesn't matter. For whatever reason it's got a match slap. And so yeah, I mean like it is, it's a pernicious thing. It managed to seep into the politics. There's a lot of money behind it. I think there's some question about, I'd love to know who's funding CPAC uk, because there's some question now whether the CPAC Hungary was getting funded by the Russians. Right. There's a lot more learning now that Orban is out and the records are open. But we will watch it, we will make fun of it. But also you're right to say it's a problem.

[D]

I think it's really important to tread a line between saying this is a real problem. It presents some dangerous ideas for us. But it is also important to say, fuck me, these lads are weird. Like, it's really important that we don't lose sight of the basic strangeness of a lot of these people because they are so strange.

[A]

So strange. This is why we need comedy and stand up comedians because, you know, you guys are like fun bullies, you know, we can help take down these losers.

[D]

What astonishing dismissal of my whole profession, Tommy.

[A]

I wish I could do stand up movies. Every time I, every time we walk out on stage to do like a live podcast or something, I always think to myself, man, imagine if I was doing something actually cool like comedy or music. I'm looking at your guitar back behind you, I see a nice amp in the corner.

[D]

Yeah, I've got a lot of. Listen, I got started with my midlife crisis about 10 years early. Oh, good. In fact, actually, to be honest, my whole career as a standup comedian is a midlife crisis. It just began when I was 22. So, like, I'm just. I've always been ahead of the curve.

[A]

I'm proud of you. Well, I got into podcasting as a grown adult. Nish, thank you so much for joining the show. Everyone should listen to Pod Save the UK and check out your special Nish Don't Kill my vibe on YouTube now.

[D]

Perfect.

[A]

Beautiful.

[D]

Right away.

[A]

Now watch right now. Thanks again to Nish Kumar for joining the show. And now you are going to hear exclusive, more exclusive information about Ben's book, All we say, which you should have already bought by now.

[B]

And if you haven't, this audiobook, I'm disappointed is going to put you over the top.

[A]

Yeah, I'm disappointed in you if you don't.

[B]

We live in a cynical time. We are surrounded by forces designed to make us feel like we lack control. Whether it's an algorithm that shapes what we see, an oligarchy that controls wealth and power, a world untethered from old notions of order, a climate that is changing, or artificial intelligence which mimics human functions and thought, corruption abounds. The existence of truth itself is distorted and contested. Yet history shows us that the words we speak can matter. They've started wars and forged peace, sparked movements and elected presidents, changed minds and foretold the future. The greatest speeches are the ones that tell hard truths that force us to confront the world as it is, while demanding that we pursue the world as we want it to be. We begin this journey with Benjamin Franklin's closing argument at the constitutional convention in 1787. The constitution was a profoundly imperfect document, filled with the compromises of a union and a system of government agreed upon by people with different beliefs, backgrounds and interests. We still do not know the end of the story that Franklin and his cohort began. But this book rejects an effort by one leader, backed by one faction of this country, to take custody of the American story. American identity is about having obligations to a common creed rather than a shared heritage or piece of territory. It is not their story. It is ours. And by learning from these words spoken in the past, we are reminded that history is a living thing and that we have the capacity to to change it.

[A]

Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Nunisha Bonnerjee. Our team includes Matt de Groot, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Kanter, Kenny Moffitt, David Towles and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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