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Posse of the World is brought to you by Incogni. Have you ever wondered how a random company you've never heard of got your personal cell phone number? It's because data brokers are constantly collecting and selling our details behind the scenes. It's invasive and honestly, it is exhausting to manage while you have the legal rights to opt out. The process is intentionally designed to be a bureaucratic nightmare. That's why I'm a fan of Incogni. Instead of you spending dozens of hours chasing down these companies, Incogni acts as your personal privacy advocate. They'll handle the request to get your info deleted so you don't have to with. Once you create an account and give them permission, Incogni automatically reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and demands they remove your data. I can't recommend Incogni enough. Everyone has too much data on the Internet. People are buying and selling it all the time. It can be used by hackers and data brokers and people that make your life miserable and try to sell you stuff and bug you and screw you over in many ways. And you really want to think about your privacy online. And what is even better is Incogni doesn't just do it once. They continuously monitor these sites to make sure your info stays off the market. And for those seeking total control, their unlimited plan features custom data removals. If you see your info somewhere it shouldn't be, just send Incogni the link and their team of actual humans will step in and take it down for you. Take your personal data back with Incogni. It's even independently verified by Deloitte, so you know they're the real deal. Go to incogni.com PSTW and use code PSTW to get 60% off your annual plan. That's code pstwincogni.com PSTW for 60% off plus try it risk free for 30 days with our money back guarantee. Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington and beyond. They don't just tell you what happened. They tell you why it matters and how it might impact you. Join the NPR Politics Podcast every single afternoon to understand the world through political eyes. The biggest homeowner mistakes. Do it yourself, lumberjack. Better leave it to the pros. Doing your own electrical work. The results could be shocking. But letting just anyone replace your windows? Biggest mistake ever. Be a happy homeowner and leave window replacement to the best renewal by andersen. Now through April 30th, buy one window or door and get the second 40% off, plus $200 off your entire purchase with a minimum of four and special financing. Visit renewalbyandersonhome.com today. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
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I'm Ben Rhodes.
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A
Ben, the vibes are high in Budapest right now.
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B
Immaculate, immaculate.
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A
Check out this clip from Sunday. Let's watch. Yeah. The dude with the moves there is reportedly the leading candidate to become become the new health minister of Hungary. But he's one of just millions of Hungarians celebrating Victor Orban's defeat in this past week's parliamentary elections.
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B
How much more would you like to hang with that guy than RFK Jr. Or health secretary?
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A
Oh, God, I didn't even thought about it.
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B
I may dance like that when RFK junior's out of office.
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A
Yeah. Instead you'd be drinking just like raw milk, taking HGH or whatever the hell he's taking. Working out in jeans with Kid Rock. Yeah, none of that sounds very fun. We're going to dig into those election results later in the show. Like, just absolutely great news story, story this week that we're going to cover out of Hungary.
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B
Good news.
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A
We're going to start, though, with the latest from Iran. Why the peace talks in Islamabad blew up on Saturday, how Trump's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would work or more likely will not work. We'll talk about the growing economic impact of the war on the global economy, the online propaganda wars that are being fought daily on the streets of Twitter,
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B
being won daily and not being by
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A
the Iranians, and how the Legos became a prominent feature of them, along with this associated crackdown on press freedom. Then we're going to update you guys on the Israeli bombardment and partial occupation, occupation of Lebanon, along with the peace talks such as they were in D.C. today. Then we'll talk about Orban's defeat, what it means for Hungary, what it means for the world. The latest election news out of Canada. Our neighbors to the north are also having a good day. And then what that tells us Mark Carney's ongoing victories. Prime Minister Mark Carney about how world leaders could or should react to Trump. I think there's a lesson there.
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B
There's some lessons.
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A
There's some lessons. And then, Ben, you did an interview this week. What do we got?
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B
Yeah, I talked to Anand Gopal, who is a writer for the New Yorker and really just extraordinary journalist, has a new book out called Days of Love and Rage, which is about the Syrian Civil war. And pretty extraordinary, this city in Syria, Manbij, that was under Assad, then a revolutionary council, then isis, then Kurds. And so the whole civil war is in this one place. So we talk about what he learned from that experience of reporting that book about not just the Syrian civil war, but how politics has functioned in the Arab world, how foreign and particularly US intervention has not worked in that part of the world, what he learned about democracy in writing that book, what we might extrapolate from that experience vis what's happening in Iran right now. So incredibly fascinating book and discussion and also very relevant given we are currently in another war ostensibly to help a protest movement that, you know, I don't think any of us believe we're helping. So check it out.
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A
Yeah, that sounds really interesting. He also wrote that amazing piece about like the ISIS family prison. Right. And like the nightmares in Syria. So one of those New Yorker writers like Patrick Radden Keefe who writes something every like six to eight months.
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C
It's the best thing.
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B
Appointment. Yeah, yeah. Every now and then you're like, how did you do? Holy shit. You know, this is. I forgot that a 10,000 word magazine piece can like completely knock me grossing
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A
and just like riveting. Our friends at the Pod subscribers will hear us answ some of their questions from the discord community at the end of the show. So stick around for that if you're a subscriber. Cricket.com friends if you want to learn more about how to become one. By the way, we're cranking out tons of bonus episodes on the Pod Save the World YouTube page. So please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube if you're not already. We did an episode last week about the tenuous ceasefire agreement. I think a lot of the concerns we talked about there kind of bore out. Feels like a ceasefire in name only.
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B
Yes.
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A
And well, they're not shooting actively, but straight ain't open. When you subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube, you help us get good information into the YouTube algorithm and displace all the right wing pro war garbage from Fox news. Ben Shapiro, 31 flavors of asshole.
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B
Who's listening? Who's left listening to Ben Shapiro?
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A
His numbers are way down, I think. Yeah, yeah, I he he. I mean yeah, there's just the, the audience for kind of neocon super pro Israel pro war. Just this doesn't really exist anymore. Anyway, thanks for subscribing to Pod Save the World as a podcast and on YouTube and sharing it. It really does help out. So let's turn to IR So I assume by now our listeners know that the Islamabad peace talks between the US And Iran failed. The US has now gone from relaxing sanctions on Iran to get more oil into the market. Remember the jiu jitsu. To now joining Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. So you make that one make sense. Yeah, buddy. The failed talks were just one example, though, of where Vice President J.D. vance got his ass handed to him on a silver platter this past weekend. So that's the small silver lining to take wins. Yeah. This dark, dark cloud. Here's Vance talking about the Iran talks in various media appearances. Let's watch. We're looking forward to the negotiation.
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B
I think it's going to be positive. We'll of course see, as the President United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand. One thing I'll say, Brett, is, is Iranians are very different negotiators. At least those Iranians were very different negotiators than we are in the United States. We go back to the United States having not come to an agreement.
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C
If it doesn't Happen, I'm blaming J.D. vance. If it, if it does happen, I'm taking full credit.
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A
Like that is why Trump's a good politician. That part at the end there. DJT I love JD Vance, like talking about Iranian negotiators, like he's genuinely learning this for the first time. So we're learning more every day. There's lots of news reports about why the talks failed, what was discussed. I suspect that the reopening of this traitor for Hormuz was actually Trump's top priority, even though he says it was the nuclear program. That's because it's causing him the most near term political trouble. However, the Iranians have not figured out that closing the strait can basically replace all their previous deterrent strategies.
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B
Nuclear weapons, they don't need nuclear weapon. They've got the straight.
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A
You can imagine Iran thinking like, why are we wasting all this money on ICMs, nukes and proxy groups when we can just threaten to close the straight or h and create, you know, bend the global economy to our will. So there's that. On the nuclear front, though, the U.S. as we suspected, came in with maximalist positions. They said no enrichment ever for Iran. Iran will shut down and dismantle its nuclear sites. Iran has to ship out its uranium stockpile out of the country. Those were positions Iran had already rejected. No surprise that they did so again. However, we've since learned that during the talks, the US proposed a deal where Iran would agree to a 20 year moratorium on uranium enrichment, along with Iran shipping out its uranium stockpile. The Iranians countered by offering a five year moratorium. And they said they would dilute their uranium stockpile. The US said no dice. So after 21 hours, JD Vance walked out in a huff, even though the Iranians said they thought they were making progress. And here we are. So, Ben, I didn't expect these guys to get a comprehensive deal done in less than a day. That's crazy. But I did think there was a chance they would maybe get a ceasefire extension, given that the war is a political disaster for Donald Trump and MAGA and the Republicans. Obviously, that didn't happen. What did you make of the talks? And boy, it was quite interesting to me that after a decade of hearing that the JCPOA was a terrible piece of shit agreement because some provisions sunsetted after 10 years, that they offered a deal that would have sunsetted after 20 years. That seems notable.
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B
There's so much about these talks that illustrate the incompetence and kind of amateurish approach of the Trump administration. I mean, the first thing I'd point to is just the fact that they thought they were going to do this in a day. I mean, I was a part of those JCPOA negotiations on the Washington, and not at the, at the table, but, you know, debriefing with the team. After all these sessions, it took us, you know, two and a half years. I mean, thereabouts, maybe more.
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A
Frey, are you including like the very early, like, Oman, you know, secret talks all the way to the end?
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B
If you do that? Yeah, that's two and a half years. And because, you know, these are technical matters, you have to narrow differences. And frankly, the issues that they're seeking to negotiate are much broader than the jcpoa, which is just on the nuclear issue. They're trying to bring support for proxies into the negotiations. Both missiles, the Iranians are bringing the Strait of Hormuz comprehensive sanctions relief. And so the idea that J.D. vance is gonna parachute into Pakistan and end the war and resolve all these issues. Hey, guys. Is so fundamentally unserious. And you kind of saw this leaking out that the Americans in those talks were just incredibly imperious. Their version of diplomacy is to show up and make demands. And what's so interesting about that is that that's fundamentally at odds with the actual dynamic in play, which is that the Trump administration are the ones that have a sense of urgency about reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
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A
And the Iranians know that.
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B
Yeah, the Iranians, time is on their side. I mean, if you think about it, if the status quo just holds, that overwhelmingly benefits the Iranians. Because under the status quo, and we'll get to the blockade in a second, that is an effort to disrupt the status quo. But under the status quo, they've survived, the regime is in place. They've demonstrated their control over the Strait. They're getting extra revenue from the sanctions, relief from Jiu Jitsu, soybean farmer Scott Besant, the Secretary of Treasury. They, you know, they're taxing fees on
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A
this came out of the closet. It's fine. It's historic.
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B
And meanwhile, what they can see is that Trump is, you know, his poll numbers are dropping. Oil prices, gas prices are rising. So what's so weird about this is like, you don't have to be a genius to see that time is playing on the Iranian side. And yet they show up, make a bunch of demands. The Iranians are like, well, those we can't do, but here's some counter proposals. And they're like, fuck you, we're out of here. And it's like, okay, and then what? The Iranians benefit. And so I just. The amateurism and incompetence is really catching up with us. And I should just add to this, like, again, you can dislike, you can loathe the Iranian regime. These are really sophisticated people. Right? Just take the Foreign minister, Rachi, like, that guy was in all the negotiations over the jcpoa. He knows the intricacies of nuclear programs and nuclear fuel cycles. J.D. vance doesn't know anything about that. He doesn't know anything about Iran. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner don't know anything about anything except, like, real estate and. And shaking down foreign governments for crypto investments or investments in their funds. They don't even know what they're talking about. And they're sitting. There's a. And I'm just gonna. There's a racism, too. They must just be idiots. Or we can roll these people. Or like, again, like, just because you don't like them doesn't mean that they're not quite skillful and sophisticated, you know?
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so I just left feeling like I don't. I guess the only positive thing I take is that, to your point, they understand they're not gonna get everything they want. Like the fact that they've already moved to something on the nuclear side that sunsets, you know, they. They know that they don't have all these cards. But the problem is you have to get creative in finding solutions and, you know, thus far they've not demonstrated it. Maybe they will.
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A
Yeah. And Trump. While J.D. vance was en route to Islamabad, Trump posted this the following on Truth Social. The Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards other than a short term extortion of the world by using international waterways.
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B
Pretty big card.
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A
Pretty big card.
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B
Pretty big spades right there.
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A
Yeah. One that one might call it a straight one can play that one. Yeah. J.D. vance, he told Fox that he didn't think the Iranian negotiators were actually empowered to make a deal. However, there's a very interesting article.
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B
I don't think that's true.
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A
So this Iranian magazine, you know, you and I were talking about this earlier, they published this 42 minute discussion about the talks that featured a member of the Iranian media who was with the delegation who offered that perspective. Now, look again, take it with a grain of salt. But in this, in this clip, in this conversation, the Iranians thought that the delegation lacked the technical expertise, the US Side, to understand the issues. That checks out. They thought that in past talk, Wyckoff and Kushner didn't understand this stuff well enough to communicate it back to Trump. We've heard that before. Yeah. They said JD didn't seem empowered to make decisions, which seems to be backed up by Vance saying like he kept having to call Daddy, calling Trump back home. They felt that JD was just like a sent to assess them, offer some maximalist positions, see how they reacted. And then meanwhile, as you said, I mean, Iran's delegation included two previous heads of negotiating teams and that they felt they had a stronger hand given the Strait of Hormuz closure, which again is clear for all, all to see. So they also feel like Trump does not want to go back to fighting. And they also are smart and they know that 80% of Iran's oil goes to China. And if China is suddenly cut off for from the Iranian oil they purchased, that is going to create massive complications for Donald Trump, who has a trip to where, Beijing coming up. So it seems like that's another pretty big card. The other card they have to play that we can get into is whether the Iranians talk to the Houthis and they say, hey, now it's time to choke off shipping traffic in the Red Sea. That would be catastrophic. So they got a lot of cards, it turns out.
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B
Yeah. And, and, and it's not like they don't know that it's not like the rest of the world doesn't know that, you know, because the rest of the world just wants to straight open and doesn't, you know, care whether like Donald Trump, like gets a win of some sort. I mean, this whole thing is so insane. Cuz even the ceasefire itself, the fact that Pakistan hosted the talks, that's Trump's favorite country because they nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and they invested in, I mean literally the reason is because they invested in Witkoff and Eric Trump's crypto business and yeah, and you
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A
know, you can work with some corrupt general who's, you know, been credibly accused of human rights abuses, who will just do what you say.
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B
But I mean, I'm not, you know, I don't mean for the Pakistanis to catch strays here, but what do they know about mediating talks? The Omanis have mediated a lot of talks. The Qadris have mediated a lot of talks. The Pakistanis can't mediate between the United States and Iran. The whole thing was kind of thrown together cuz Trump needed to get out of the box he's in. But why would the Iranians do him a favor, right? I mean, that's what's so crazy. He's just bombed them. The Iranian delegation flew to the talks on a plane with like seats for every one of the kids killed in Minab in that school. Like that didn't seem like they were in the mood to capitulate and give Donald Trump a victory.
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A
No, they did not seem like it. So while these talks were happening in Islamabad, Trump was taking things very seriously by attending an ultimate fighting event in Miami with Marco Rubio, America's top diplomat and the White House national security advisor. So again, good to see them focused on Monday, Trump delivered some impromptu remarks about the talks and about the blockade with the doordash Grandma.
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B
That one of the strangest things just in my life.
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A
Just weird. Let's watch. It's weird.
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C
Iran, you marking it down. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And we agreed to a lot of things, but they didn't agree to that. And I think they will agree to it. I'm almost sure of it. In fact, I am sure of it. If they don't agree, there's no deal. There'll never be a deal. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and we're going to get the dust back. We'll get it back. Either we'll get it back from them or we'll take. Mr. President, as far as the naval
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B
blockade is concerned, what's the end game?
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C
Is it to force Iran back to the negotiating table? Is it to open up the straits so that gas prices ultimately come down? Maybe everything. I mean, both of those things, certainly, and more. We can't let a country blackmail or extort the world because that's what they're doing. They're really blackmailing the world. We're not going to let that happen. Do you think that men should, should play in women's sports?
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A
I really don't have an opinion on that.
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C
You don't? I'll bet you do.
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B
No, I'm here about tax on tips. Yeah, we really are.
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A
That you do.
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B
We really are at that stage of the movie where they pull back the curtain and the wizard of Oz is like a, you know.
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A
Yeah, it's not good. Yeah, it's not good. Okay. So to take this, you know, blockade idea seriously. The idea is to choke off oil and gas revenue to Iran to see if we can make them blink and, you know, an economic game of chicken. The way this would reportedly work is the US Will prevent any ships from entering or leaving Iranian ports. There's 15 big US warships in the region. They're tasked with running the blockade. The actual operations will span from, you know, intimidating Iranian linked ships out of trying to get to Iran to possibly boarding and seizing ships. The boarding operations, you have to attempt those as far away from Iran as possible because, you know, that would maybe minimize the very high risk of, from missiles and drones, but there will still be significant risk. And these, you, you know, the huge, like, Navy ships there, the destroyers, they'll conduct missile defense operations. The other ships will do interdictions. Helicopters would help with that too. But it's like, this is incredibly risky. It's complicated and risky on a normal day, but that risk goes up exponentially if the conflict resumes. And Iran and the US Are just like, trading shots. And there's also a lot of diplomatic risk, as we mentioned before. Like, 80% of the oil goes to China from Iran. The Chinese have said, we have contracts with these guys. We intend to fulfill them. Like, stay away from our boats. We'll see what Trump does when push comes to shove.
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B
Like fire on Chinese boats.
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A
Yeah, I mean, interdict them, seize them. It's crazy. And then like we mentioned before, like, Iran has another card it could play, which would be calling on the Houthi rebels at Yemen to close the Bab El Mandeb straight, which is a narrow passage between Djibouti and Yemen that ships have to pass through to get to The Red Sea. And if that's closed, this is a. It's a global catastrophe. It's like a. One quarter of the world shipping goes through the Red Sea. It's how you gain access to the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean. It would essentially cut off Saudi Arabia's or severely curtail Saudi Arabia's ability to get the oil out that it's been shipping west via a pipeline. So, Ben, I mean, does this have any plan of working? What do you think about this blockade idea? By the way, Rahm Emanuel was pitching this as his idea, too, when he
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B
was in here a couple days ago.
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A
Not sure how it works.
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B
I mean, first I want to say, you know, Trump keeps saying, well, they can't get a nuclear weapon. Like, they. They don't have one. They pledged to not develop one in the jcpoa, the Iran nuclear deal. Like, if Trump gets them to commit to not building a nuclear weapon, I just want to set the predicate that that's fucking nothing.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And that's something that they've said a million times before. So part of what he may be doing is lowering the bar there. Another thing that is related to the blockade, the Rubio thing is not unrelated to the blockade, because people need to understand that the normal process is you have a negotiating team, and then the National Security Advisor's got a team of experts around the table in Washington, and you're going back and forth and you're seriously considering proposals and counter options. What process are they running? How are they making the decision to blockade? How are they giving guidance? It just feels like we're all on a plane and there's no pilot.
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A
I think that's unfair. You have J.D. vance calling a note to Joe Rogan, who walks it over to Trump at the UFC fight, and he says, go or no go.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And this is what's so crazy. But I mean, on the blockade in particular, I just. It seems like Trump fundamentally doesn't understand an obvious thing, which is the Iranians, because he launched a regime change war. No matter what he says, it's existential to them. So if they lose billions of dollars in revenue from some US Blockade, if it works, this is. If it works, this is the best case scenario where we actually do make it so that the Chinese can't get the Iranian oil and, well, they don't care. They will sit there for two months and, yeah, it could be calamitous for the Iranian people that we were supposedly helping, but the regime doesn't give a shit because they're Playing for eternity here. They're playing for their survival as a regime.
- [22:42]
A
And they have 100 million barrels or so of oil floating in storage off the coast of Malaysia and China that they can sell to kind of, like, keep themselves afloat.
- [22:51]
B
So I saw some commentators and, you know, again, I hate to, you know, have Rahm catch some strays here, but there are people that are acting like this is a normal administration, like, engaging in normal coercive diplomacy with a blockade. No, these are people who fundamentally don't understand what they started and who they started it with. And the fact that all of the leverage in terms of the damage to the global economy redounds to the United States because Iran has already been sanctioned into hell by the United States for 10 years. They know what it's like to live under incredible course of economic pressure. So all you're doing is, like, adding to the misery of not just China, but our allies in Asia and Europe who are suffering the consequences. And people that are paying for, like, $6 plus gas here in California.
- [23:37]
A
And, like, obviously the IRGC, they and their families will be the first ones fed. You know, it'll be the regular people.
- [23:44]
B
You're just gonna further hurt the Iranian people who will know that it's the US blockading. And this is the other thing. Trump can pretend like he was forced to do this and they were gonna attack us or they have nuclear weapons. Everybody else in the world who doesn't watch Fox News or listen to Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin or whatever that guy's name is, like, knows that Donald Trump started this. It's his fault. It's his mess. They're pissed as hell. Are they pissed at the Iranians? Of course they are, for, like, bombing the Gulf and stuff, but they know at Cord, this is something that Trump fucking started.
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A
Yeah, they're not.
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B
And the Iranian people know that, too, by the way, that Donald Trump bombed them instead of helping them. And so he just doesn't have the lever he thinks he does.
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A
Nope, he does not have all the cards. Pod tape. The world is brought to you by hims. ED is way more common than you guys think. Millions of guys deal with it at some point. That's exactly why HIMS offers a straightforward way to handle it. Yeah, one way to handle it. One way to handle it. HIMS connects you with licensed healthcare providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home. No awkward appointments, no pharmacy lines. Just complete a simple online intake, and a provider will review your information to determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed. Your treatment ships directly to your door in discreet packaging that includes Sildenafil, also known as the generic for Viagra, available through Hims at up to 95% less than the brand name version. And if that option isn't right for you, there are also additional treatment options available so you can find what works best for your body. Straightforward, transparent and designed to make getting care feel easy. To get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ed, hair loss, weight loss and more, visit hims.comworld that's hims.comworld world for your free online visit hims.com world getting care should feel easy and hard and hard prescription required. To see website for details and important safety information. Sildenafil is the generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Viatris Specialty llc. HIMSS is not affiliated with or endorsed by Viatris. 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 Squarespace collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Start with Blueprint AI Squarespace's AI Enhanced Website Builder to get a fully custom website in just a few steps, using basic information about your industry goals and personality to generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations. Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair all inclusive price, no hidden fees or add ons required. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life. Whether that means building a website or adding professional email service, don't wait to claim your name. Invest in your dream domain today. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial when you're ready to launch. Go to squarespace.comworld to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.comworld. One other interesting thing with respect to China, Ben the New York Times reported that China might be helping Iran by shipping them shoulder fired missiles or otherwise known as manpads. This intel is described as not definitive, but given that Iran just shot down a US fighter jet with a shoulder fired missile, it would be a very big deal. Also, our ability to punish the Chinese if they don't listen to what we're saying and you know, go abide by this blockade is pretty limited given that the Chinese just won a trade war with the US by cutting off our access to rare earth elements. And guess what? We'll need those rare earths for rebuilding the stockpile of missiles that we just expended that we would need in a war with China. Not exactly risk here.
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B
And, and this is why what Trump is doing is he's just shining a gigantic spotlight on the United States as like a declining empire because we exist in this world where we think we can command other countries to do things and not do things. Of course the Chinese are giving them shoulder fired missiles. Of course the Russians are giving them targeting intelligence. I don't like the Chinese government or the Russian government, but why wouldn't they do that? They see that the United States just did something incredibly stupid. They see that we're bogged down there and we're getting weakened by what's happening. It's their ally Iran that's under attack. They've seen us arm all kinds of proxies, you know, from, I mean, obviously we've been arming the Ukrainians. The Chinese think that US arming the Taiwanese endangers their security.
- [28:18]
A
We saw weapons happen.
- [28:19]
B
So you can say to me, oh, Ben, it's not the same. Of course it's not the same. I like the Taiwanese better than I like the Iranians, but that doesn't mean that they're not gonna do it. And like Trump seems to live in a world where he thinks he can snap fingers. And again, unfortunately, he has learned lessons from European leaders, from American law firms, university. Like all the people that capitulated to Trump. Trump, like, led him to think that he could do the same thing to Iran or China or whomever. And, and once you bump up against these adversaries, they're literally been handed a geopolitical gift of a lifetime with this war. If you're the Chinese, yeah, they have.
- [28:53]
A
We're also getting a lot more data about the economic impact of the war so far. So just some data points. The United nations has warned that over 32 million people around the globe might be forced into poverty even if a ceasefire in peace is achieved. Just because the price of oil has gone up so much. The IMF says global the economy is at risk of growing at its slowest pace since the COVID 19 pandemic. If oil stays at $100 per barrel for the rest of the year, inflation could hit 5.4%. The Philippines declared a state of emergency. They're limiting air conditioning in public buildings and made public Transportation free people are also striking to protest gas and diesel prices. There's been gas station employees in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan that were killed in robberies or like rage based assaults because no one can get, get gas at the pump. The EU was warning that it's going to struggle with low growth and high inflation. And there's this looming jet fuel crisis in the, in Europe that could lead to just like mass cancellation of flights. Like they literally cannot get jet fuel to power their planes. The Saudis, their oil production fell by 700,000 barrels a day last week because of attacks on oil fields and their pipeline. That capacity is now back online, but that's a huge dip. And then an under discussed part of this, Ben, is a lot of these countries have all these migrant workers. Like the Emirates has something like 8.7 million migrant workers, according to the New York times. That's like 80% of the population. Those people are being hurt the most as economic activity falls off a cliff. And so tourism, for example, to the UAE was 15% of GDP in the country before the war. That's like $79 billion in 2025. That is down to zero. Right. And all these people who work in hotels or, you know, coffee shops or whatever have nothing taxis and they're not able to sell, send any money back home and they're just getting crushed. So of course like the poorest people in poor countries are getting hurt the most, the fastest, while Trump, you know, laughs about how whatever will be fine.
- [30:46]
B
Yeah, I mean that's what's so kind of grotesque and offensive about this is, you know, and I, I, you know, kind of been a bit perturbed today. But it's because of this, right? It's, it's because like Trump seems to think that this is just like another show and another thing he's managing through and he'll muddle through and he kind of lose, but claim he won. But there are a lot of real people that are losing, that are dying or that are suffering or that are suffering massive economic hardship. You mentioned the Gulf. We still haven't really seen what's gone on there. There's such censorship of any imagery coming out. We don't know what Dubai looks like. We don't know the extent of the damage to Gulf energy facilities. We keep hearing it's worse and, and we've heard, and we keep hearing, by the way, to your point, about the damage that there are estimates that it could take up to if the war stopped now, if no more damage is done, it would still take Two years for them to kind of crank this machine of energy production up to where it was. So there will be a tail, all these things you said, and it was a great lay down. There will also be a massive tail to this. Like, we're going to be living with the ramifications of this war for years to come, even if it stops now. Now.
- [31:56]
A
Yeah. And that is the best case scenario. So along with the actual war between the US and Iran, there is a hot propaganda war getting fought online. I'm sure many listeners have by now seen, like, the disgusting videos that came out of the White House initially that were cutting together real footage of US airstrikes on Iran with clips from movies and video games. I don't know if those have stopped or not, if I just stopped seeing them, but they were. They're pretty widely condemned. Iran's rejoinder, though, has come in the form of Legos. Here are a couple examples.
- [32:26]
C
Bulls.
- [32:27]
A
Let's watch Epstein Queen.
- [32:30]
B
Epstein Queen kissing on the lips, living that scene.
- [32:34]
A
She says never friends with a straight face lie. But the files got Trump by the balls. Now she's on TV saying we were never close. But the photos got her looking like the perfect host. Another threat, another fake attack.
- [32:50]
C
But we all know why.
- [32:51]
A
Your portfolio's flat, you need the market to drop, need the oil to crash, then you buy at the bottom, flip it for cash. You don't want a war, you want the price to fall. Fake news on truth social, that's your only call. You scream open the straight but why though? Sell your rich friends short and watch the money flow.
- [33:12]
C
Fake tweet, fake news, fake hope, fake clock.
- [33:16]
A
Your whole game's a joke, make it stop. You crush the world and you buy the dip. Fake war, fake tears from your fake lip. It's just bangers left and right. For those listening, not watching again, subscribe to Pot Save the world on YouTube. But the first video featured Melania Trump. It was a reference to her bizarre press conference last week where she was like, I did not know Jeffrey Epstein and like, ran away. But the videos writ large kind of span a fascinating range of messages. The most common themes are Jeffrey Epstein, that Trump is controlled by Israel. But some are focused on history. There were Lego missiles bearing messages like for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or in memory of the American Indians, or more recently, for the children of Gaza. But the majority of the videos are fully rooted in the super online Internet zeitgeist of today, the Epstein files. As we just saw, online betting markets and war profiteering. Pete Hegseth being a drunk idiot with stupid tattoos. We should note that we cut out some extremely anti semitic stuff to make this more watchable. There's lots of images of like Bibi Netanyahu of pulling the strings or controlling Trump in some way. Kind of old tropes. We don't know who for sure who is making these. The first ones originated from an account called Explosive News. That account has been banned from YouTube and Instagram, but the videos are all over Twitter and have been amplified by accounts linked to the Iranian government and then Russian state run outlets and plenty of Americans. It's not exactly clear who runs the account. New York magazine interviewed someone over there via email. They claim they're independent, but who knows? That's what they'd say. But that according to that article, basically these movies would launch on an official or semi official account, then move into channels aligned with like Hezbollah or the Houthis, then to the Russian linked channels, then to the kind of anti imperialist left channels, then they'd be everywhere. But then once the kind of Lego format was established, I think Iran's supporters treated it like a meme and you started seeing copycat videos from God knows where. I think those ones we just played, you were most likely copycat videos. And all of it is enabled by AI. Obviously like use AI to make the videos themselves, but I would imagine that, that these Iranian filmmakers are probably using AI to write the scripts themselves to like make them feel as American as possible and plugged into the Zeitgeist as possible. So Ben, I'm quite confident that the world would oppose this war no matter what, for all the reasons we discussed in the first 30 minutes of the show. What do you think the impact of these videos has been on shaping world opinion?
- [35:47]
B
I think it's probably far more significant than we can imagine because let's face it, they're pretty good. And, and look, you mentioned the snuff videos. Like the, the White House version of this was to show snuff videos of US planes bombing things. Who does that appeal to around the world? Literally precisely nobody outside of Israel, in the United States, like nobody else looks at that and feels good. Right? And so our propaganda is literally only designed to reach the most bloodthirsty Fox News viewer in this country or in Israel. Their videos are on offense. Their videos. First of all, it shows a striking level of connectivity to at least the online discourse in the United States around everything from Epstein to Israel to insider trading to betting markets, et cetera. But also what it does is if Iran already If basically, I think the status quo ante around the world among global opinion was, this is Trump's fault. We don't like the Iranian regime. They're bad guys, they master their own people. But Trump's the idiot who started this war. What these videos are probably doing, particularly with younger audiences who they seem very designed for, right? There's a reason it's hip hop, there's a reason, you know, Legos. It's clever. Is no, Iran is standing in for all of you. Everybody who's pissed at Trump, everybody who's pissed at inequality, everybody who's pissed at Israel, all the things that people around the world are pissed about. Iran is the vanguard of your resistance, right?
- [37:35]
A
And they're giving them a why, right? Which is Trump is doing this to distract from Epstein because he was friends with a pedophile and because the Israelis are making him do it. Now, we're not saying, but like, that's what the argument is in the video.
- [37:47]
B
I mean, if you are compelling, if you are a 23 year old in America, Europe or Asia or certainly the Middle east, you're probably gonna be very open to this message. And again, it's positioning the Iranians as the stand in for global public and men that is potent. And, and they're running circles around Donald Trump. And I should just say, as an aside, it is a little depressing that the IRGC and their cutouts have been better at trolling Donald Trump than the Democratic Party's been for the last 10 years.
- [38:23]
A
I know. There's also a fake movie trailer called Straight Outta Hormuz. You see that one? It was not Lego. It was like AI actors, but it was like Jake Gyllenhaal as Mushtaba Khamenei, Liam Neeson as Trump, Zach Galifianakis as a very hilarious, scared JD Vance, Judi Dench as Keir Starmer.
- [38:41]
B
It's a little better than the Kamala Harris, like 6, 7 rapid response account.
- [38:46]
A
Sorry, don't make me even think about that. The other part of the PR war that Trump is losing is he decided to pick a fight with a Pope, with Pope Leo. And you know, that was in part verbal and like getting mad at Pope Leo for saying, you know, we shouldn't genocide Iran like that. That's how this kicked off. He was asked to respond to Trump saying he was going to destroy the entire civilization of Iran. And shocker, the Pope didn't think that was a good idea. Then Trump posted this image of himself as Jesus Christ. I don't know if you saw this, you know, Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney responded. She said, Trump's words toward the Holy Father, unacceptable. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call out, call for peace and condemn all forms of war. So while the Lego videos are, like, exploding, you know, in the online discourse here in the global South, I'm sure in the Gulf, like, he's also pissing off all the Catholics, not only 20% of the US citizens, but also people in Italy, people in Latin America. Right. Who are we not picking a fight with?
- [39:45]
B
Right, yeah. Well, that's the thing is I think he is losing altitude very rapidly. I mean, first of all, the Pope. Guess who's gonna be in office after Trump. The Pope. Right. Guess what Catholics care about more than Donald Trump's politics, Like being Catholic. And so. So he's picking. I think we are so psychologically broken in this country that we've allowed Donald Trump to kind of assume a sense that he's permanent, but he's not. He's gonna be. The clock is ticking. The sand is running through the hourglass. He's rapid losing power. And the Pope's not afraid of him. And he forces Catholics to choose between their faith and their faith leader. And Donald Trump's truth social fights, like, he's gonna lose most Catholics. The Maloney thing is even more interesting because he clapped back at her and he said something like, did he call
- [40:37]
A
an Italian outlet or something?
- [40:38]
B
And he said, he said, you know, she wants Iran to get a nuclear weapon or something. And she said, no one believes that. Then she came back and said, there are only nine countries in the world, nuclear weapons, and the only one to use it is United States. So basically, fuck off. And, man, this is someone who's a right wing populist who attended Trump's inauguration, who's his favorite European. I mean, she's throwing haymakers at him now. I mean, I think it's hard for. He is so weak internationally right now. He's losing his allies. Orban has been toppled. Maloney's breaking with him. The Catholic Church is breaking with him. They got Lego videos trolling him. It's actually this war is the thing that he's jumped into some quicksand and he can't swim out of it by, like, truth Social post.
- [41:26]
A
Yeah, and when you're kind of like, veneer of invincibility gets popped, that's when everyone starts taking shots at you. And he just seems weakened. And, you know, back to the propaganda, though, I Think one thing that's making, as you mentioned earlier, making all this propaganda about the war travel even further is how little real information is being allowed out of the Gulf. You know, you mentioned the Pentagon is clearly covering up the scope of the damage to US bases in the region, also to casualties. The State Department has covered up the damage to embassies and consulates. We talked about some of that. Like the Saudi embassy or consulate building that got hit by two drone strikes and like would have killed hundreds of people if it had been during the day. The US has pressured commercial satellite imagery providers to restrict access to images from the Gulf. And then there's been a crackdown on news reports and social media posts of images on Iranian airstrikes within these Gulf countries themselves. And then today, Ben, on Tuesday, news broke, broke that a journalist named Ahmed Shihab Eldin, this prominent American and Kuwaiti journalist was arrested in Kuwait on March 3 after he published an image of a US Air Force jet crashing. This was that friendly fire incident early on in the war that CENTCOM acknowledged. The pilot ejected, the pilot was safe. But Shihab Eldin has been in detention since that time with limited access to a lawyer. He's allegedly being charged with these new security laws. They've been put in place to define terrorism as quote, spreading terror among the people, end quote. And then another law that punishes the publication or spreading of false rumors in relation to military entities with the intent to weaken confidence in these entities. Semaphore had a kind of related piece this week about a similar crackdown in the UAE, including the arrest of a photojournalist on March 17. This is obviously bad news for press freedom generally and is also just wildly hypocritical of these Gulf countries given how many of them have used social media to self promote like pay influencers, pay influencers to post living in Dubai, you know. So it's, it's, it's very bad.
- [43:21]
B
We should say this rest of is outrageous and this is an American and an equity American, right? Last I checked, like Kuwait's not a country that usually arrests American journalists.
- [43:32]
A
What is Rubio doing to get this guy out?
- [43:33]
B
What's. Yeah, do we care about that? So first it's like we should be trying to get his release asap. But then I would say more broadly, what is so stupid about this is it is so obvious what is happening. You don't need to be some expert. When they did the rescue of the pilot, we got like a crazy two hour briefing from Raisin Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs with every single secret detail of the minutiae of how they got this guy. And we can't even get a fucking damage assessment of U.S. embassies and bases across the region. It's so obvious that they only are putting out good. This is like Vietnam. The height of like the Vietnam dishonesty makes this look, makes that look transparent by comparison. We have no idea what the American casualties are. We don't have no idea how injured those people are. We have no idea what is the damage to our facilities or Gulf energy infrastructure. And what's also so stupid about this is that like I know people in some of these Gulf countries. Guess what? I can text with them.
- [44:33]
A
I've gotten photos sent to me of the destroyed AWACS plane that cost like $600 million.
- [44:38]
B
I've had people, you know, just be like, hey, here's what's going. I can't go outside. I went outside the other day and like, like a drone fell. Like, it's not like we don't know that shit is getting real in places like Dubai.
- [44:49]
A
It's crazy.
- [44:49]
B
So the idea, okay, we won't have pictures, like, but do you think that means that we're all going to plan vacations to Dubai, right? What are you even covering up people?
- [44:57]
A
I know, it's so, so self defeating. It really hurts them more than it helps. By the way, if you want to support a media organization that will never cover up for Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth or for, you know, broken Pentagon assets, please consider joining crooked media subscription community. You get exclusive access to bonus content like Pod Save America. Only friends get a deep dive every week into the latest polling from Dan Pfeiffer ad free episodes of our shows including Pod Save the World and Pod Save America. It is the best thing you can do to help an independent progressive media company like us grow and do more to hold the administration accountable. Go to cricket.com friends to learn more or you can become a subscriber on YouTube by pressing the join button. So thank you for doing that. Meanwhile, Ben, so there's another war happening in Lebanon. Israel just continues to level huge swaths of Lebanon. They're ostensibly going after Hezbollah, the Iranian backed, you know, heavily armed state within the state in Lebanon. But the IDF is hitting major urban areas. There have been huge numbers of civilian casualties in the images and videos are horrifying. In addition to bombing Beirut, the IDF has established this like 6 mile wide that it's, you know, the, the, they're calling it a buffer zone, but it's an Invasion of occupation of south Lebanon and they've leveled all these villages there. So far, 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced. Over 2,000 have been killed. And attacks from both sides have continued through the ceasefire between the US and Iran. Last week I think we talked about the idea of hitting 100 targets in Beirut in this 10 minute window which killed over 300 people. A lot of the strikes were, I think, in broad daylight. One horrific story among many. There was a two year old girl who survived a strike on her home last week, only to be killed over the weekend when the IDF struck her father's funeral. So really grim stuff. 12 IDF soldiers and 2 Israeli civilians have also been killed. So on Tuesday, Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met in D.C. for these working level peace talks under the regime change loving eye of Marco Rubio and what the Times of Israel called the most senior in person engagement ever between the two countries. And their first bilateral talk since 1993. The Lebanese government wants a ceasefire. Israel wants Hezbollah disarmed. And the problem is that the Lebanese government can't deliver on either of those things. And Hezbollah was not at the table ahead of the talks. The USS Netanyahu for a pause in the fighting. Netanyahu obliged by pausing strikes on Beirut. But operations in southern Lebanon have continued. The IDF reportedly hit a Red Cross center on Monday. A day earlier, the Red Cross said a Lebanese volunteer was killed after being directly targeted by an Israeli drone. So Ben, I like, I'm obviously for diplomacy, but it's hard not to feel like these talks weren't just for show. Given that the Lebanese government doesn't control
- [47:34]
B
Hezbollah and given that I don't trust Israel's claim that they're fighting Hezbollah, I'm just gonna say it like I have you seen the casualties? Like they're like they're kids. There's medical workers. Either they're killing one Hezbollah fighter and a bunch of people around them, which is a war crime, you know, because there's clearly no proportionality in what they're doing or they have designs on like territory in southern Lebanon. I mean, I don't doubt that Hezbollah is a problem for Israel. It is. But like this is just, this is. I mean if you look at southern Lebanon, for instance, you know, one thing is they're not just destroying kind of structures, they're rendering it uninhabitable. So I saw a statistic that they've destroyed something like 60,000 olive trees in southern Lebanon, right? They're destroying agriculture, the capacity to, to live there, there is that the world we're in now. That's okay. So I just, I'm sorry, I don't see how this is some credible strategy to degrade and disarm Hezbollah when they're
- [48:40]
A
bombing Beirut in broad daylight. Because they thought that, apparently. I was reading one report on this, they were like the target list got to Hezbollah hideouts and they figured there are better odds of the Hezbollah individuals, who are mostly like low level, I think, being in those hideouts during the day. So they bombed during the day. But that obviously meant people were walking to work, they were taking their kids to school. Like there were tons of civilian casualties with killed and wounded. Just horrific.
- [49:05]
B
And here's the thing, cuz I'm going to say to the, like, anticipate some of the pro Israel arguments, even if we probably don't have that many pro Israel listeners left. They'll say, well, what are you supposed to do? You know, have you considered the blowback from what you're doing? And if you think that I'm, you know, how long that's going to last? And if you think that's like, you know, a hyperbolic statement, Hezbollah didn't exist in 1982. The last time, Israel or not the last time, because they've done a bunch of times. But when Israel invaded and occupied and killed a bunch of people in Lebanon that gave birth to Hezbollah. And here we are 40 plus years later and Israel's fighting the militia that was created in reaction to Israel bombing Lebanon, they're gonna be there 40 years from now fighting the next militia that was created because people were pissed about what Israel's doing right now. So don't tell me this is some genius Israeli military strategy where they're wrecking Hamas and Hezbollah. They're assuring that there are gonna be resistance movements forever.
- [50:07]
A
And boy, Trudy, it seems probably beneficial to Netanyahu that the longer the war drags on, he can't testify in court. You know, he keeps seeking these like two week extensions for national security reasons to not testify. And he pushes out the election.
- [50:21]
B
Yeah.
- [50:21]
A
And especially at a time when voters are increasingly in Israel are starting to be dissatisfied with his handling of the war. It's an interesting coincidence.
- [50:29]
B
Yeah. And so people say to me, well, what's he supposed to do about the people in northern Israel who've had to deal with intermittent Hezbollah rocket fire? Not this. This isn't working. Working like this is just bombarding a country. This breeds resistance. Right. And so I'm glad they're negotiating, but the negotiations are these kind of unrealistic like you have to eliminate any vestige of Hezbollah with a government that doesn't have the capability to do that. Like you said, it feels like Netanyahu once there's going to be election in Israel next few months and he needs there to be a feeling of war in order to get reelected. And so he makes unrealistic demands that can't be met and then bombs the country when those demands aren't met. And that's not a negotiation.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah. No. POD Save the World is brought to you by three Day Blinds. At this point, we can shop for groceries, furniture and even cars from home. So why is shopping for blinds still stuck in the dark ages? It doesn't have to be this way. That's why you need to check out three Day Blinds. Three Day Blinds is the leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the US and right now, if you use my URL three day blinds.com world they are running a buy one get one 50% off deal. Three Day Blinds has local, professionally trained design consultants with an average of 10 or more years of experience who provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your own home. Just set up an appointment and you'll get free no obligation quote the same day. Not very handy. The Expert team at 3 Day Blinds handles all the heavy lifting. They design, measure and install so you can sit back, relax and leave it to the pros. Three Day Blinds is a great service. They make it super easy, it's really affordable, they show up fast, the people are professional and I gotta say, if you like me, spent years in a bedroom that got really bright early in the morning because you didn't have good blinds. Your sleep is gonna suck. When I first used three Day Blinds it was like a revelation. I'm like, I don't have to go shopping and get them and then figure out how to install them and myself and they just do it all for you. John has risen through just three days. Do my Pete Hexath impression. Three Day Blinds has been in business for over 45 years and they have helped over 2 million people get the window treatments of their dreams. So they are a brand you can trust right now. Get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three day blinds. Head to three day blinds.com world for their buy one get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, shutters and drapery for a free no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to three dayblinds.com world the world one last time. That's buy one get one 50 off when you head to the number 3D a Y blinds.com world pod save the world is brought to you by Bilt. Whether you're renting or paying a mortgage, one of your biggest monthly expenses should be working harder for you. That's where Bilt comes in. Built is the membership for where you live that rewards you with points on every housing payment wherever you live. BILT started out rewarding members on their rent. Now, as of 2026, built members can also earn points on mortgage payments wherever they live. Every housing payment earns you points you can use towards flights with top travel partners like United and Hyatt, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases and much more. They have a long list of things you could redeem your points for. Some great options include, you know, gift cards at like literally 120 or more brands. There's tons that you could do, student loan balances, a bunch of restaurants. They have a built home collection. Then there's just literally Amazon.com you can buy anything you want with this stuff. So it's very, very easy to use your built points. But here's the most underrated part. Built members also get access to a neighborhood concier. It can make restaurant reservations, book fitness classes and find new local spots, all while being rewarded at more than 45,000 merchant partners. It's like having a personal assistant baked into where you live. It's simple. Being a renter and now owning a home, it's better with Built. Join the membership for where you live@joinbuilt.com world that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com world make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. All right, let's switch to the good news section of our show.
- [54:19]
B
Yes, it's very good news news.
- [54:20]
A
As we mentioned at the top, there was a truly historic election this past weekend in Hungary. Victor Orban, the right wing populist wannabe dictator kleptocratic prick who's been running Hungary for 16 years, got absolutely smoked in Sunday's parliamentary elections. He was defeated by a guy named Peter Magyar. This conservative former member of Orban's party, who made the race a referendum on Orban's corruption, his failure to address the cost of living crisis, his ties with Russia and and just general failed leadership. There was record participation, 77%, the highest turnout ever in a Hungarian election. And Magyar's Tisa party will now have a 2/3 majority in the parliament, which is absolutely essential for fixing what is broken in the country because it means he'll be able to roll back changes Orban made to Hungary's constitution and political system that have entrenched his party's power. Ben, I saw a lot of people online start to kind of yuck our yum by saying, like, actually, you know, Magyar is pretty right wing. He won't be different. And to them, I just want to say, take the win.
- [55:19]
B
Yeah, for like two seconds on that.
- [55:22]
A
Let's celebrate this for a bit. Because Orban was the poster child for how you strangle a democracy nearly to death. He made life awful for the Hungarian people. He was a spoiler in the European Union who helped block efforts to constrain the worst leaders in the world. Putin, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping. He's buddies with Trump. Also, this was another example of J.D. vance making a fool of himself. As we discussed last week, Vance visited Hungary just before the election to stump for Orban, where he whined about election interference from Brussels while doing a little election interference of his own. Ben, I'm sure you've seen the chart of how JD's visit corresponds with when the betting markets flipped from everyone thinking Orban would win to lose. It's delicious. So here is Vance trying to spin away his loserdom on Fox News Monday. Let's watch.
- [56:08]
B
We didn't go because we expected Victor to cruise to an election victory. We went because it was the right thing to do, to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time. So this wasn't about Russia and fundamentally, it wasn't about Europe. It was about the United States and the fact that he's been a good partner to both me and the president personally, but also to the United States. I'm sad that he lost will work very well, I'm sure, with the next prime Minister of Hungary. But it was a, a, it wasn't a bad trip at all because it's worth standing by people even if you don't win every race.
- [56:38]
A
For what it's worth, like, if you got a guy somewhere and you want to help them win election, like, by all means, go campaign for him. It wasn't a bad trip because they lost. It was a bad trip because they were stumping for Victor Orban or something.
- [56:48]
B
For anyone. It's, you know.
- [56:49]
A
Yeah, but Ben, you've been, you've hated Viktor Orban for a long time. Go off, go off, King.
- [56:55]
B
Well, look, I, because I, I will say, first of all, on Viktor Orban and then on, on the Hungarian opposition For a second, I, I heard this thing too well. Magyar, he's conservative. Like, it fundamentally misunderstands. Fundamentally misunderstands what the danger is that Viktor Orban represented. It's not just that he's conservative. Viktor Orban was at the nexus of the far right international. This is a guy that came to power cultivating ties with Putin, Putin, and drawing from Putin's playbook and Westernizing Putin's playbook, which we've talked about a lot, consolidating control of the media, packing the courts with far right judges so that they can find in favor of power grabs, enriching a bunch of cronies who finance their politics, intimidating and harassing civil society and NGOs, redrawing parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power, Wrapping up in an us versus them nationalist message, building a fucking wall. Like Viktor Orban was building the wall before Donald Trump ran for president. Right. So this guy was at the vanguard and he was part of a connective tissue to Bibi Netanyahu. Very close to Bibi Netanyahu benefited from some of those former Mossad guys in Black Cube doing campaigns for him. Very close to Putin, very close to Trump. And so Peter Magyar is against all that. He's going to stop all that. Like, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of his policies on like taxes and immigration, like, he. That's over now. Hungary is not this kind of connective tissue. It's the center of Europe, the heart of Europe. For all these autocratic leaders to fuck around in European politics and Western politics. He's not, you know, this guy was at the vanguard of the playbook that Trump, Trump's, you know, the more intellectual people on the far right, including J.D. vance, have utilized. That's why they cared so much. Like, like, let's just look from their perspective. If Peter Maguyar is such a conservative, then J.D. vance wouldn't have been over there desperately trying to help his friend Victor. Exactly right. And secondly, on the Hungarian opposition, listen to them. They are fucking thrilled. And I just wanna give a shout out to these people. They weathered 16 years of absolute bullshit. Especially the people that were activists, Some of them were harassed, some of them were docs, some of them faced criminal charges. And they kept it up. And they went from one election loss to another. They kept reporting on corruption. And by the. Corruption is the thing that really brought Orban down more than authoritarianism. There's a lesson in that for us. Yep. And so it is a huge deal. It shows that Someone who's an entrenched autocrat with his tentacles in all aspects of politics and society can be literally uprooted like root and branch. And now there's an opportunity to change the constitution and to fundamentally transform Hungary. Not into the. A progressive paradise like this is where the people online need to turn.
- [59:37]
A
Better is better.
- [59:38]
B
Better is okay. It's better.
- [59:39]
A
Yeah, it's better, yeah. I mean, Magyara said the country was essentially taken over by an organized crime syndicate. That's how he described poor punishment.
- [59:46]
B
It's not like he doesn't get it.
- [59:47]
A
No, he get. And since the election, Magyara said he's going to go after what he called the ill gotten gains of high ranking Fidesz members. He called for the country's president, the Prosecutor General, the president of the Constitutional Court to immediately resign. He wants to amend the constitution to limit prime ministers to two turns, two terms. Orbian was. Orban was going for his fifth. I believe he said one of his first trips as prime minister is going to be to Brussels where he hopes to get them to unlock about 20 billion in aid that have been withheld because of Orban. The one place I think there is a pretty big difference on policy is Magyar does not back fast tracking Ukraine's membership into the eu. He didn't endorse like an EU financial aid package to Ukraine that had been blocked by Orban. Who knows if he'll evolve on those position over time. Positions over time. But again, on corruption, here's a clip from a guy named Shandor Lederer, the director of K Monitor, a Hungarian anti corruption initiative who spoke about Magyar's promises in roadblocks he's going to face in tackling corruption. Let's listen. He pledged to establish an asset recovery office to pursue oligarchs who enrich themselves during the Orban system, including the prime Minister, friends and family members as that's a key promise. As rampant corruption under Orban was one of the most important topics in the opposition's campaign. It united conservative, liberal and left wing voters behind Peter Magyar and had become increasingly uncomfortable even for Orban supporters in recent years, especially as high inflation, rising housing costs, deteriorating healthcare system and economic stagnation left millions frustrated by the luxurious lifestyle of Orban's elite and the impunity they also enjoyed. However, the tasks ahead of Peter Magyar's government are enormous and he will have to deliver first results in a couple of months by likely experiencing resistance from Orban's allies and state institutions and also a significant Voter base behind Viktor Orban who already announced that they are going to protect their achievements.
- [61:48]
B
So Sandor was like one of the main characters in my last book. He's just an incredible guy. I mean, he's literally been reporting on this corruption for like over a decade. I think what's like so important there, the lessons that we can draw. That point he made about corruption, like that can unite people left to right, you know, just disgust. I mean, with it's, you know, happening
- [62:11]
A
as we speak in this country.
- [62:12]
B
If you look at Eric Don Jr. Day trading on wars, gilded Oval Office ballrooms, like that stuff actually travels and can unite people across an ideological spectrum. Like that's real populism. Yeah, it's real populism. There's a real lesson for us in that. Also importantly, like, look, Maggiar is going to run into Roblox Fides. Orban's party is kind of embedded. They own a bunch of the media. It's gonna be tough and we have to accept that better is gonna be good. He may not be able to deliver anything. We're gonna have to watch. Just in the same way that Orban was at the vanguard of building this kind of infrastructure, we should learn lessons as Democrats about how successful or not they are in kind of uprooting these systems of corruption. I'm just gonna go on a limb, Tommy, and say that the Merrick are like, and did not do that as justice, Attorney General, but because again, we have an investment in them. And the last thing I want to say is what does this say about the future of the far right in Europe? Look, it doesn't mean it's all over for them. The French election looms in the national rally there.
- [63:17]
A
Germans too.
- [63:17]
B
But I think you see, first of all, what we can say with certainty is that Trump is an albatross on them. Right? Which was not the case a year ago when J.D. vance was lecturing people in Germany and felt like he had the momentum. Now you got Giorgia Maloney like literally distancing herself and taking a wax at Trump, cuz she's a good politician and she sees what happened to Viktor Orban, you know. And so at a minimum, Trump has made it harder for the far right. So in a weird way, America's helping the battle against democracy by having such a fucking incompetent fascist running our country that it's discrediting the global far right. Right. And again, I think what, what Democrats, small D Democrats have to do in Europe is learn what worked in Hungary, you know, what what can we take away from that by waging these campaigns? And by the way, hang these far right parties on Trump. I'd be running against Trump if I was a French politician.
- [64:09]
A
Oh, God, me too. Because you got to. There's nothing you can do at this point to fix the cost of living crisis in the short term or like the spike in energy prices. All you can do is message it. And I would be making crystal clear every day that this is Donald Trump's fault. That's what I understand what like Keir Starmer is doing. It's like, enough of this, like offering, you know, defensive support. We'll get to that in a second. But it's like, hammer this guy. So finally, Ben, let's check in with our neighbors to the north in Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney is riding high after winning three out of three special elections this weekend. And Justin Trudeau was looking high at Coachella this weekend, having a good ass time. Carney now is a majority government. So remember, the Liberal Party under Trudeau was really struggling. It looked dead in the water like the Conservatives were going to win. That was until Trudeau dropped out. Donald Trump started threatening to annex Canada last year, and then Mark Carney came in and rode those threats from Trump and an anti Trump message to electoral victory, but only to a minority government. So he had trouble when we said,
- [65:10]
B
elbows up, elbows up, elbows up.
- [65:12]
A
Yeah, hockey fight. So now Carney will be better able to govern and he won't have to face reelection until 2029, which makes this a very, very sad day for Canada's Conservatives, led by Pierre pov. So back in January, Carney threw some punches at Trump during this, like a much heralded speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He expanded upon those themes over the weekend at this Liberal Party's convention. Here's a clip of what he had to say. Let's watch. Hope is not a plan and nostalgia
- [65:41]
B
is not a strategy. Canadians are demonstrating just how strong we are.
- [65:47]
A
You know, it started quietly. People choosing a wine from the Okanagan
- [65:54]
B
over one from California. Anyone? Anyone had any bourbon recently?
- [66:03]
C
No.
- [66:05]
B
The days of our military sending $0.70 cents of every dollars to the United States are over.
- [66:12]
A
We have struck 20 new economic and
- [66:15]
B
security partnerships on four continents in just a year. We are on track to double our non US exports over the next decade. That is $300 billion. We are defending Canada and Canadian values with reliable partners.
- [66:33]
A
So it sucks, sucks to hear people like whooping in an attack on California wine from a liberal leader from our Closest ally in Canada. But, like, that's obviously the way to run right now if you're dealing with Trump. I, I talked to, I went on Pod Save the uk. I was talking with Nish and Coco earlier today about all this. By the way, if you're not subscribed to that show, not listening to the show, you are only hurting yourself. It is hilarious and funny and it's hilarious and funny mean the same thing with hilarious and smart and great. Subscribe to Pot Save the uk but for the life of us, we just could not understand why British Prime Minister Kir Starmer wouldn't adopt that same approach, especially when his approval rating is 50 points underwater. Like, what do you have to lose, dude?
- [67:15]
B
I, I honestly at this point don't know what planet, you know, K Stormer is. I mean, because. And here's the thing. Do I like watching, like, a Canadian banker just, like, whale the out of me? No, it doesn't feel good, but actually it does feel good because here's why. It is ultimately in our interest as Americans that Donald Trump, in his incompetent brand of narcissistic fascism, is stopped. It really is. And so the best way to stop it is if everybody, people in this country, institutions in this country, you know, foreign leaders of allies stand up to him and kick him around and cut him down to size, because that's ultimately good for us, you know, Like, I would have liked if Mark Carney picked on a state other than California, but that's fine, that's fine. I get it. You know, like, maybe tackle the Oregon whack at a red state here, you know? Yeah, yeah. But no, seriously, like, I'm glad. But what it shows again, is time and again we've seen, like, if you stand up to Trump, like, from the first election that Carney won to Albanese in Australia to, you know, to what, like, everywhere we look, you are rewarded for standing up to Donald Trump. And everywhere we see people kissing his ass in, like, pathetic, you know, Mark Ruta going on Jake Tapper. And, you know, I mean, that just doesn't.
- [68:34]
A
I don't know what people want. Strength.
- [68:36]
B
What timeline are you people in? You know, they want strength and they want to be proud of something, you know, and, and good for Canada, like, good for the Liberals, good for Mark Carney, good for Justin Trudeau. Coachella looked like fun this year.
- [68:49]
A
Speaking of things we can be proud of, how about Justin Bieber's kind of polarizing, low tech laptop set at Coachella? It's also very funny that he was getting attacked in Canada for using a plastic cup when he tried to ban single use cups. Also, he's tweeting about Victor Orban from Coachella. My advice, I said this on psa. I would say go to Coachella or tweet about Viktor Orban. Doing both is probably gonna. It's gonna confuse everybody.
- [69:15]
B
I mean, well, usually if you go to a place like Coachella, you're. Let's just say, ingesting substances that make you think that I'm gonna be in a social media blackout.
- [69:23]
A
I'm just saying you're probably not gonna want to treat tweet to like, you know, however many millions of people he has about some foreign policy issue he's got.
- [69:30]
B
Well, Katy Perry's got a lot more.
- [69:32]
A
Oh, yeah, she's got a chill.
- [69:33]
B
Maybe they could blend. They could merge social media accounts. And do they have a nickname? Like a. You know what I mean? Like, it feels like they should be, like, have a Bennifer type nickname.
- [69:43]
A
I don't know. Tell us, you know, sound off in the discord.
- [69:47]
B
There's no bad ideas in the brainstorm here.
- [69:48]
A
Let us know. We'll talk about it next week. Yeah. Anyway, congrats. Canadian Progressive.
- [69:54]
B
It's kind of funny because Justin was kind of the right Canadian leader for Trump. One and Carney's the right Canadian leader for Trump. Like, we need. We had like a woke, woke Canadian. You know, he could be like, that's what Trudeau was. Right. And now we've got this kind of like hard ass banker banker dude trolling California wines.
- [70:11]
A
Yeah. And you know, Justin Trudeau's dad hooked up with Barbra Streisand. Now he's with Katy Perry. So here we are.
- [70:17]
B
And I guess they're drinking Canadian club up there, you know, or Seagrams or whatever it is. Yeah, whatever they drink up there. Send us some Canadian world.
- [70:26]
A
I do like bourbon anyway. All right, that's it for me and Ben blabbing about stuff. Stick around, though, for Ben's conversation with Anango Paul about his new book about Syria. It's an incredible book. Incredible conversation. Check it out. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Helix. Sleep is the most important thing in my life. When I sleep well, I feel great. I'm in a good mood. I'm happy. I'm better able to work and work out and do all the things. When I get a bad night's sleep. I am pissy and your body hurts and you're not as good at work. It's worse than being hungover oh, so much worse. So much worse. Having a great mattress makes your sleep better. It just does. And Helix makes buying a mattress easy. Take this Helix Sleep quiz and it'll match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. Get free shipping and seamless delivery. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US The Happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress so you can rest easy with the seamless returns and exchanges. Plus, helix offers a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Look, we have a Helix mattress at my house. It's incredibly comfortable. Everyone who've ever slept on it says wow, that bed is amazing. Where'd you get your mattress? And I tell them Helix. And it's so easy. It ships right to your house. It's totally affordable and they'll match you with the mattress of your dreams. We love our Helix mattress. Heard it here. First go to helixsleep.com world for 20% off site one wide. That's helixsleep.com world for twenty percent off site wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com world.
- [72:09]
B
All right, I'm very pleased to be joined by Anand Gopal. He is a writer for the New Yorker. He's won a National Magazine Award for his writing on the Middle East. He's twice been a Pulitzer finalist for his report. He's the author of no Good Men among the America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes. His new book that we're going to talk about is Days of Love and A Story of Ordinary People forging a Revolution. Anand, thanks for joining us.
- [72:35]
C
Thanks for having me.
- [72:36]
B
So the book is Days of Love and a story of ordinary people forging a revolution. And really what this book does is it traces the lives of a number of people that became involved on the beginning of the Syrian revolution in this city, Manbij, inside of Syria. Syria that experienced both the drama of confronting and ultimately kind of shaking off the rule of the Assad regime, but then experienced both a form of direct democracy under a revolutionary council, then a rule of isis, then a rule of the Syrian Kurds that the United States and others were backing and then ultimately obviously currently living under Ahmed Al Shara. So it tells the story of the entire Syrian civil war kind of through the prism of people and manbidge. I want to start by asking about your process by which you wrote this because I was really struck in reading this that we live in a time when journalism is kind of under siege and this kind of true long form, in depth reporting is kind of disappearing not entirely, but too much around us. And people are getting news on social media. And here you are completely immersed in the live of these characters who went through this extraordinary ordeal over the course of more than a decade. How did you. Because you basically recreate people's what's happening in their heads, in dramatic events, what's happening in rooms that people like me have never been in. How did you go about reporting this and recreating essentially the lives of all these people?
- [74:13]
C
Well, I started with just interviewing as many people as I can and eventually settled on the six people who become the principal protagonist of the story in the book. But in doing so, I very quickly realized that when asking about people's memories from events that happened 10, 15 years ago, often there are traumatic memories that people will misremember or they will selectively remember. Of course, I was also interviewing people in the context of civil war, so there was contrasting interpretations of events. So pretty quickly I realized that by myself, I simply wasn't able to access the level of detail. I wanted to be able to tell the story. And so I started recruiting Syrians, other individuals who took part in many of the events described in the book. So people who took part in the revolution against the dictator and hired them as research assistants. And so they ended up interviewing their own friends and families, their own comrades who they shared time on the barricades with. And so that opened up people, they were more willing to talk about, more intimate moments to their friends and families. In addition to doing that, I was also able to make use of this really voluminous archive of newspapers and social media documentation that took place throughout almost all the events described in the book. Because Syria was probably the first social media war. So people were going out and building things on their cell phones and country was under dictatorship for 40 years in which there were were essentially two state run newspapers. The dictatorship is overthrown in the city that I describe in the book. And all of a sudden overnight, all these newspapers appear from left wing to conservative papers and people are going out into street corners with mimeographed newspapers and handing it out and reading it, et cetera. So I was able to kind of get like a almost day daily blow by blow account of what was happening. So with all of this, both the social media archive, the print media and the. And the interviews, we conducted almost 2,000 interviews for the book, I was able to triangulate people's experiences, and so was always able to get in any scene. I was always able to get multiple witnesses to it, so I could be confident to put it down on the page.
- [76:24]
B
So I want to ask you about revolution itself, and in particular, one of the things that I think is really useful about your method is that we meet a number of your characters kind of before the revolution. We kind of go back into their lives, and they're really. I don't want to use the word ordinary because part of the point of the book is everybody is extraordinary in some fashion, but in the sense that these are people, that they're vendors running stalls or they're students or they're not the elite, or they're not people that you would think of as revolutionary leaders. And what I want to ask about is what sense you got. There's a character ode, for instance, who's one of your main protagonists, who. Who seemingly. You would not think this person is going to be a leading revolutionary. And yet he finds himself repeatedly in circumstances early in the revolution where there's a crowd, they're quiet, they don't know what to do, or they're literally even standing in front of military police that they know are going to beat them, potentially detain and torture them, and he finds himself shouting revolutionary slogans, down with the regime. Or. And why do you think it is that some people do that and others don't? Like, why did Uday find it in him to do that? Because to me, you always wonder about who has the ability to be at the vanguard. Did you learn anything about why him and not other people in the crowd and Manbij who are willing to do that?
- [77:59]
C
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think one of the things we tend not to think about often is the nature of character, meaning one's character traits, the virtues one might have, whether they tend to be courageous or loyal, et cetera. And somebody like o', Day, who. I would think, when we meet him in the book, he starts as a sort of apolitical layabout smoking hash on rooftops, et cetera, and slowly gets inducted into the uprising and finds himself becoming a revolutionary leader. You would have never predicted, I think, beforehand, that that's where he would have ended it up. But there was always a kind of brashness to him, that if one really studied his character prior to the revolution, it may have shown itself in different ways. The way he rejected the tyrannical rule of his father, for instance. And when those personal characteristics are Given the right context, sometimes they can become politically meaningful. We have another character in the book, Abdel Hadi, who. Who? Somebody who comes from a very poor background, always had a chip on his shoulder, somebody who felt festering resentment towards some of the more wealthier citizens of his city, which is a fairly common feeling. But all of a sudden put into the maelstrom of revolution. That character trait of being resentful ends up manifesting in a kind of dark politics as we go on. So I think it's one of those things you can never know in advance what you're looking for, but once ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances, sometimes these kinds of character traits really shine.
- [79:37]
B
Yeah. And the arc of these characters, let's just take those two. And again, you don't have to have read the book to even kind of get why these threads are interesting, but you should read the book. But one of the things you described that is remarkable and I think not fully understood is that a place like Manbidge after the civil war really started and the Assad regime lost control of some territory, it was kind of. Well, it was effectively self governing with this kind of revolutionary council that your main characters, a number of them participated in. And you could understand the similar impulses or the different impulses that could lead those two characters, Oday and Abdul Hadi, to participate in revolution. But then they become quite different, different in their orientation when it comes time to govern. And you describe what began as a very idealistic exercise, something that all of us, even who have not been to Syria, could see ourselves and the impulses to we're going to self govern and we're going to set up these different councils and it's going to be great and we're going to have freedom. But quickly disputes emerge and Ode is the kind of guy who ends up. Up frustrated and disgusted with the whole thing. And Abdelhadi is the kind of guy who ends up literally making his own peace with isis. And we'll get into that as they come in. I mean, what did you learn about democracy itself and how individuals who've never experienced it act when the revolution transfers to governance?
- [81:19]
C
So when people went out initially to protest against the regime, everybody was marching and risking their lives for this idea of freedom. There was no question in their minds what freedom meant. It was just freedom meant being free from the dictator as soon as they did free themselves from the dictator. Now a new question of what does freedom actually mean in the context of governing oneself arises. And there were some in the city, especially those from middle class and upper middle class backgrounds who articulated a vision of freedom which was something like, we want freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of markets. Freedom meant kind of being left alone by the government. And on the other hand, you had people who tended to be more on the poor and working class side of the community who said, well, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, that's great, but at the same time, we're facing an affordability crisis in our city to bread, which is a basic staple. Price of bread was going sky high. Lots of people were fleeing from other parts of Syria to members, and so therefore rents were increasing. And so for them, they were arguing for some form of price control. So freedom was not just to be left alone, but freedom was to be given the resources to live your best life. And one of the lessons I drew from reporting this out was the way in which democracy really depends on maybe the latter conception of freedom, which is one in which people have a sense of an equal say, which they can only have if they have enough to eat. They can make their rent every month. And if they don't, then people will very quickly tend to grow disillusioned with a kind of very limited democracy, while not having a more substantive form of self governance. And that tragically ends in this case with a dictatorial movement, isis, taking over the city.
- [83:10]
B
Yeah, and what is also interesting is you meet these people, they're familiar to us, even if the circumstances, their lives might be foreign to us. They want the same things. They want to fall in love, they want to raise a family, they want to make a good living. They'd like to be free in terms of being able to say what they want. And we see them living under a Ba' athist Arab nationalist regime of Bashar al Assad. Assad. We see them living briefly under this revolutionary council that kind of dissolves into factions fighting each other. We see them live under isis and then kind of coda is into the Syrian Defense Forces, Democratic forces come in, and then we'll get to the very end of Assad regime. But really we see Arab nationalism, Islamists, chaos, and yet they're the same people underneath that. I mean, I mean, it felt like in miniature what's happened to the region, all these different ideologies imposed on people, and them trying to figure it out. I mean, what did you learn about, and how did you see the experience of these people in Manbij as representative of how these ideologies fail to deliver what people want? And how do you compare them to each other?
- [84:26]
C
So most of the region for 30, 40 years lived under some version of Arab nationalism, which on the one hand was secular. On the other hand, there was a kind of agreement or a social contract that underpinned a lot of these Arab regimes, which is that we will give citizens a modicum of economic opportunities. Usually that meant some kind of minimum welfare state, essentially, in which people could have some social mobility, maybe your children could have a slightly better life than you had. Lot million millions of farmers moved from the countryside to the cities, and you had the growth of the middle class. All of this happened from the 60s to the 90s. But in exchange for that basic economic opportunity, you had to surrender all political rights whatsoever. So this is the kind of the Faustian Pact that was at the heart of all of the Arab regimes. What happens beginning in the 1990s is one by one that pact gets undone because of widespread privatization of the economies in a lot of these countries. And so now by 2011, people lost a lot of the economic sort of social safety net, and yet they still didn't have any political rights. And that's what was the basis of the uprising in 2011 across the region. And then, so Membage then goes through his period of, I would say, like experimental democracy for 18 months, in which they're trying out different versions of democracy, I think a kind of more quintessentially liberal democracies, one version of and other kinds of participatory democracies. And indeed there are examples of this throughout the region. But one of the things that the liberal democracy failed to deliver to people, not just in Membij, but in the early period of the Arab Spring in Egypt and in other places was the way in which it didn't always address the needs of more working class people in those communities. So a lot of it is about political rights, but not enough about economic opportunities for the poor. And this opened the door for what I would consider more right wing forces to make a play. And in this case, the right wing forces were Islamist groups who did promise more economic opportunities for people. And so in that way, Membij kind of tracks the trajectory of the region overall.
- [86:44]
B
And in the backdrop, I mean, you don't focus on the United States that much, but even just listening to your description, it feels in a way like every single thing we exported or imposed failed. The Arab nationalism was kind of, some of it was an extension of Cold War politics from the West. The privatization certainly was the kind of in vogue idea after the Cold War, the kind of secular freedom and Democracy, liberalism that appeals, appealed maybe to certain middle class, didn't deliver for people's pocketbooks, as you're saying. In the war itself, the administration I was a part of, it felt like everything we did was wrong. If we were not arming the opposition, we were not supporting them. And then when we were arming them, it was not coherent or it was the wrong people. I come away with a sense from my own experience and from reading this of like, we tend to make things worse even if our intentions are good or even maybe if they're not good. Obviously, I mean, how do you evaluate U.S. policy in this region, Syria in particular, but really the whole region in terms of what would actually be helpful to, to people? Is it just to butt out or is there something we haven't tried? How do you come away from all your journalism and writing this, thinking about that?
- [88:18]
C
I think when people in the region, in Syria in particular, think about the US and American power, there's probably three main features that loom heavily in their imagination. The first is, as I mentioned briefly, is the American mode of capitalism, privatization, kind of very pro market policies to the detriment of living standards of many people in these areas. The second is the Iraq War. The shadow of the Iraq war looms very large on what happened in Syria for a number of reasons, one of which is that it was out of the chaos in the maelstrom of the Iraq war that ISIS first appears and asserts itself across the border in Syria. And the third is US supported by of Israel. And so what that meant was there was a period early on in the uprising in which people, and I describe some of this in the book, were debating what should the foreign role be. And some people wanted arms to protect against bombings from the aircraft. Nobody really wanted boots on the ground. But there was a lot of suspicion in these ranks because they said, well, how could it be that the US is supporting Israel, The US causes chaos in the Iraq war. They're not really here, here to support our interests. Whatever US administration was actually doing, that was the perception on the ground. And it's hard for me to imagine turning around decades of distrust just from one particular policy at that moment. So what was much more important was that on the ground there was a brief period where maybe these rebel groups could have been armed. But very quickly these groups turned to banditry because they didn't have outside support. And this created the grounds for Islamist groups to come in. Gulf States started to pour in their support and weapons and fragmented the politics in the country. But at the same time, it's important to remind ourselves that the Assad regime would not have been able to do what it could have done if it didn't have its own form of external foreign support from Russia and Iran.
- [90:22]
B
From the outside, it seemed like a happy ending when Ahmed Al Shara and his forces marched into Damascus and Assad was forced to flee. I'm curious, and you know, you hinted at it at the end. You take us all the way up through that, but for the people that your characters. Was that a happy ending? I'm curious, have you been to Manbij since the fall of Assad? And if so, or if you've even just been in touch, like, what is the. Are people hopeful about the future? Do they feel like the revolution in some way succeeded? Or they just feel like, okay, this is the new reality we're doing, dealing with it?
- [91:02]
C
I did go to Membage shortly after Assad fell, and I was able to talk to some of the characters in the book about their experience. The first thing is nobody expected this to happen. Everyone had assumed that the revolution was completely lost and it had been dormant for years at that point. It was a kind of perfect storm of events that led the regime to collapse. And I think the regime fell more than the rebels succeeded, if that makes sense. And so you have this new rebel group that is in power, and they are. I would describe them as would be Syrians, who perhaps lack the capacity of the previous regime, the Assad regime, to really control the country in a way that the Ba' Athists did. But the experience that tens of thousands of Syrians have of getting a voice through protesting, through building alternative structures of governance, that experience has not been easily effaced. So that while the new authorities have committed massacres and they've attempted to delay elections, because today there is still freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in Syria. It's embattled, but those freedoms are there. And that is a direct legacy of the revolution. And I think for some Syrians who are more looking at a more generational sense, I think this is not the struggle for democracy in Syria is not something that just happened for two years in 2011-2013. It's something that's going to take a generation or two. And there may be several upcoming uprisings, several forms of social mobilization that will ultimately lead to what some Syrians hope would be a more just democracy.
- [92:36]
B
And so these people we meet as young people who are now middle aged, it's a lifetime's work. Not just that moment on the barricades.
- [92:43]
C
Exactly. It's a lifetime's work. And they themselves perhaps are now tending to their families. They're also conveying the memories of what they went through. And there's new generations of activists. When I was in MemberJ last, just a month or two after the fall of Assad, I saw, and I described this in the book, I saw a new protest. And these are most of the people in that protest had never before protested, but maybe their parents had or their uncles had or their friends had. And so you can see them bequeathing this legacy of resistance to a new generation.
- [93:14]
B
So just a couple more things. We're obviously speaking in the midst of the Iran war or the pause in the Iran war. What do you take from your long experience reporting this about? One of the pretenses, I mean, I don't believe it, but of this war was that we were somehow coming to the aid of these protesters and gonna end this regime. How do you evaluate what's happening in Iran now, and how do you evaluate what would actually be most helpful to the people that we've seen in various movements for change inside of Iran?
- [93:58]
C
Well, it's interesting, there are several parallels between what's happened in Iran and Syria, because Iranians have risen up repeatedly again and again since 2009 against a very repressive regime. And I think if the reports. We can trust the reports out of Iran initially, in the very, very early stages, there was wide, widespread support for regime change. But very quickly, people realized exactly what you said, that the current war was a pretext, and it's not a war of liberation. And more recent reports say that a lot of people in Iran now, after seeing the devastation that the US Is causing in that country, have reconsidered. And you saw this often in Syria, too, that while people are opposed to the dictator, the one thing that's possibly, possibly worse than dictatorship is civil war. And the chaos of civil war and the US Intervening in the country without a real plan for what to do on day two is a recipe for chaos and disaster. And I think a lot of Iranians see that today.
- [94:58]
B
And the last thing I wanted to ask you is just how did your own views about, let's say, democracy or freedom change in reporting that I spoke?
- [95:09]
C
Well, I think in the beginning, I had what I would think is a fairly standard view of democracies. Democracy is something that happens when you get to choose your leader or choose your representatives. Every two or four years, it happens for five minutes. And what I saw on the ground is a different kind of democracy in which there was all these formations, we call it assemblies and clubs, that appeared overnight and took part in the sort of democratic life of the city. And it was clear in a kind of microcosm how important the question of who gets to rule is. And if you go back to the original idea of democracy, ancient Greeks, demos means non elites, actually. And so democracy is the rule of non elites, and that means the rule of ordinary people. And you can. I think one of the experiences of reporting this book is it led me to reassess, assess our democracies around the world in terms of to what extent do ordinary people have power over their own lives and to what extent is it vested instead in billionaires and judges and consultants and others. And I think that's a way to assess the health of a democracy.
- [96:17]
B
Yeah. Actually, one other thing I want to ask because it kind of always sticks with you when you read a book like this. And I know, I think you use pseudonyms. Right. For some of the characters, at least. Right.
- [96:26]
C
Just for a couple.
- [96:27]
B
For a couple. How do they feel about. Have they read it? I mean, you know, because it's so personal, you know, I mean, I. I'm just curious. I always sometimes wonder, like when you have subjects where you go this into their lives and the events are so dramatic. I'm curious what the reaction is of your subjects to the book.
- [96:47]
C
Well, none of them are read in start to finish yet and partly because it's only in English. But I have read out parts, large parts of it to them after the book came out. And I think several people were quite moved because they talked to me years ago at this point because it took a long time for the book to come together. And so it brought back a lot of the most intimate memories in listening to these stories.
- [97:09]
B
Yeah, well, I think you honor them by showing such complete portraits of them. The book is Days of Love and Rage. I truly, you know, can't recommend it enough. Anand, thanks so much for joining us.
- [97:24]
C
Thank you.
- [97:30]
A
Thanks again to Inagopal for joining the show. We'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Kanter. Audio support by Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior Vice president of dues and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and much more. And if you're opinionated like us, leave a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America East.