Pentagon Covers Up Iran War Casualties

Summary

POD SAVE THE WORLD
Episode: Pentagon Covers Up Iran War Casualties
Date: July 22, 2026
Hosts: Tommy Vietor & Ben Rhodes
Guest: Oleksiy Sorokin (Kyiv Independent)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the alarming escalation between the United States and Iran—including mounting American casualties and the Pentagon’s lack of transparency—before turning to a contentious State Department report on Cuba, the disturbing rise of prediction market gambling in American politics, and recent political upheaval in the UK and Ukraine. Later, Kyiv Independent’s Oleksiy Sorokin joins to break down both the current military and political situation in Ukraine.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Pentagon Cover-Up: Iran War Casualties

[09:19–17:48]

• Rising Toll: Recent Iranian ballistic missile attacks on U.S. bases in Jordan killed at least two U.S. soldiers (First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, Private Isabella Gonzalez) with a third presumed dead; nearly 100 injured since July 7th.
• Transparency Crisis: Pentagon accused of withholding casualty data—especially "minor injuries"—arguing that releasing such information could aid Iranian targeting.
  • Ben Rhodes: "This is just an effort to hide the costs of the war from the American people... They have to conceal the information because the more information gets out about this war, the less Americans want any part of it." (13:36)
• Press Exclusion: Real journalists have largely been pushed out from the Pentagon, with figures like "MyPillow guy" given credentials instead, further eroding transparency.
• Escalation Risks: U.S.-Iran escalation is ongoing, with U.S. striking Iranian targets for 10+ consecutive nights. Iranian strikes increasingly target U.S. missile defense systems.
• Infrastructure Neglect: Service members in supposedly "permissive" bases like Jordan are left dangerously exposed.
  • Tommy Vietor: "It's shocking to me that you could be serving in Jordan and living in basically an unprotected barracks that could be hit by a ballistic missile and nothing's been done about it in the last year." (17:48)

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Stepping toward Crisis: Broader Escalation Risks

[18:01–24:39]

• Houthi Maritime Threat: Houthi rebels threaten a blockade on Saudi oil exports via the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, risking crippling worldwide energy markets if successful.
• Iran's Nuclear Gambit: U.S. and Israeli intelligence claim Iran moved thousands of centrifuges into tunnels deep inside "Pickaxe Mountain," out of reach of bunker-buster bombs.
• Trump's Boasts and Threats: Trump downplays significance, then openly threatens airstrikes ("We'll be hitting that area pretty soon and, and very heavily." [23:09])
• Expert Skepticism: Actual capability to destroy these new Iranian facilities is questioned; absence of IAEA oversight leaves the U.S. blind.

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Media Manipulation & Propaganda

[27:22–29:30]

• Israel's PR Offensive: Israel spends $700m (2026) on international PR, including hiring Brad Parscale (former Trump campaign manager and Salem Media exec) to "integrate narrative messaging" into U.S. right-wing media.
  • Tommy Vietor: "One has to wonder, is Israel telling Brad Parscale to tell people like Hugh Hewitt to ask about these issues because there's a whole lot of money flowing around that suggests that might be the case." (27:22)
• Coordinated Messaging: Growing evidence of foreign governments (Israel, Russia) exploiting the U.S. right-wing media sphere for political gain.

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Congress & Public Opinion: Pushing Back

[30:36–33:25]

• Block the War: Democrats in Congress resist approving Trump's $1.15 trillion NDAA and $87 billion Iran supplement. A new poll shows the Iran war is historically unpopular—even less popular than Vietnam at its nadir.
  • Tommy Vietor: "The Iran war is the least popular war since polling started... Vietnam didn't hit [–30 approval] until six years in." (30:36)
• Defense Spending Backlash: The hosts urge a total rethink of the "reflex" to support vast defense budgets.

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State Department Report Singles Out Leftists, Cites Cuba

[33:25–40:52]

• New Blacklist: State Department outs Code Pink, DSA, and left-leaning voices as agents of "21st Century Communism," linking "upheaval" (George Floyd protests, antifa, etc.) to "Cuban influence."
• Rubio’s Crusade: At a government ministerial, Rubio calls for treating "far left extremism" like jihadist terrorism.
• Dangerous Precedent: Building a legal and rhetorical structure to label domestic leftists as terrorist threats.
  • Ben Rhodes: "Cuba poses absolutely no national security threat to the United States whatsoever... This is classic right wing projection." (37:23)
  • "This could lead to dark places... [They] could start freezing bank accounts, treating it like a terrorist threat." (39:55)

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Prediction/Gambling Markets Invade Politics

[40:53–48:48]

• Insider Corruption: Reports detail Trump’s teleprompter operator making $100k betting on what Trump would say. Congressional insiders and even family members of Trump implicated in dubious prediction-market activity.
• Loopholes & National Security: Market bets on war and diplomacy (e.g., timing of Iran ceasefire) risk leaking U.S. intentions abroad.
  • Ben Rhodes: "The corruption is not a bug... These people can just get rich off information. We just should shut down [these platforms]." (44:55)
• Global Crisis of Gambling: France is banning sites like Polymarket; Brazil deems gambling losses a public health crisis.
  • Tommy Vietor: "Political betting on Polymarket doubled to just over $4 billion during the first three months of the year." (46:47)

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Climate, Tariffs, and Punishing Canada

[51:59–55:37]

• Tariff Tantrum: As Canadian wildfires worsen U.S. air quality, Trump threatens, then imposes, 50% tariffs on Canadian goods, blaming Canada for the fires ("Maybe they should pay us some damages or something or we should do some tariffs." [52:08])
• Hypocrisy Alert: The U.S. itself is simultaneously suffering wildfires. The move is likely an attempt to punish Canada diplomatically and economically.
• Climate Policy Irony: Despite Trump's complaints, his own climate policies fuel such disasters.
  • Ben Rhodes: "It’s not a mystery... It’s been really hot and we suddenly have all these wildfires. Well, yeah, that's what every climate scientist has told you." (53:40)

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UK Politics: Andy Burnham’s Ascent and Conservative Clown Show

[55:55–71:17]

• Labour Reshuffle: New PM Andy Burnham forms government, purging Starmer loyalists. Cabinet appointments are deemed more tactical than visionary.
  • Ben Rhodes: "You see a lot of politics and very little vision... We don't know what Andy Burnham wants to do." (59:20)
• CPAC UK Flops: Liz Truss’s attempt at hosting CPAC in the UK is called “empty, miserable, and downright weird” by the Spectator (attendance: ~100–400).
  • Ben Rhodes: "You cannot humiliate Liz Truss." (65:27)
• Farage vs. Count Binface: After a corruption scandal, Farage resigns and triggers a by-election in Clacton—opposed mainly by satirical candidate Count Binface.
  • Count Binface (manifesto): "I'm not Nigel Farage." (71:21)
  • Tommy Vietor: "If any country is going to elect Count Binface over just a clown like Nigel Farage, it is the UK." (71:56)

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Ukraine: Security, Defense Politics, and Morale

Interview: Oleksiy Sorokin [73:57–91:48]

• Missile Barrage: The past month brought some of Kyiv’s deadliest attacks; Russia uses ballistic missiles that are hard to intercept.
  • Oleksiy Sorokin: "Ukraine is currently lacking Patriot air defense missiles and Russians know that..." (73:57)
• Patriot Manufacturing: Trump agreed to let Ukraine license and produce Patriot interceptors—potentially a gamechanger, but subject to politics and delays.
  • "If Ukraine is able to produce those Patriot missiles... this will be a tremendous boost for Ukraine's air defense." (76:33)
• Drone Innovation: Ukraine fights back with domestic drones for both long-range and medium-range missions, aiming to isolate Crimea and damage Russian oil, logistics, and morale.
• Political Crisis: Zelensky’s firing of Defense Minister Fedorov (aged 35)—seen as a modernizer—in favor of an older, more traditional (sometimes labeled "Soviet-style") general prompts mass protests:
  • "It's a young progressive guy with a plan... The saying on the street goes that a small Soviet army can't defeat a big Soviet army." (83:16)
• Morale & Fear: Russian strikes on civilian targets—including metro stations/bomb shelters—spread terror. Disrupting Russian civilians’ lives considered a "bonus" of Ukrainian drone strikes.
• Oligarch Drama: A wild Monaco bombing story dimly illustrates how war breeds grey-area criminality and lawlessness.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Pentagon Secrecy:
  Ben Rhodes [13:36]:
  "This is just an effort to hide the costs of the war from the American people... The more information gets out about this war, the less Americans want any part of it."

• On Israeli Influence in U.S. Media:
  Tommy Vietor [27:22]:
  "One has to wonder, is Israel telling Brad Parscale to tell people like Hugh Hewitt to ask about these issues because there's a whole lot of money flowing around that suggests that might be the case."

• On Congressional Duty:
  Tommy Vietor [30:36]:
  "The Iran war is the least popular war since polling started... Vietnam didn't hit [–30 approval] until six years in."

• On U.S. Defense Spending:
  Ben Rhodes [32:55]:
  "We should start holding people accountable for the fact that they want a trillion dollars in defense spending when everything else in this country is going to shit."

• On Far-Left 'Terrorist' Blacklist:
  Ben Rhodes [37:23]:
  "Cuba poses absolutely no national security threat to the United States whatsoever... This is classic right wing projection. Like, the Cubans must be doing the things that we do to them."

• On Prediction Markets & Corruption:
  Ben Rhodes [44:55]:
  "The corruption is not a bug... These people can just get rich off information. We just should shut down these platforms."

• On Canada Tariffs:
  Donald Trump (quoted by Ben and Tommy) [52:08]:
  "We can help them, we'll help them, but maybe they should pay us some damages or something or we should do some tariffs."

• On UK Political Satire:
  Count Binface [71:21]:
  "I'm not Nigel Farage."

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Important Timestamps

• Pentagon & Iran Casualties discussion: [09:19–17:48]
• Houthi threat & Iranian centifuges ("Pickaxe Mountain"): [18:01–24:39]
• Israeli PR/Media Manipulation: [27:22–29:30]
• Congress/Iran War Unpopularity: [30:36–33:25]
• State Department/Cuba/Blacklist: [33:25–40:52]
• Prediction/Gambling Markets in Politics: [40:53–48:48]
• Canada, Wildfires, and Punitive Tariffs: [51:59–55:37]
• UK: Labour reshuffle, CPAC UK, Count Binface: [55:55–71:17]
• Ukraine: Security situation & Fedorov firing (Interview): [73:57–91:48]

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Tone & Language

The conversation is sardonic, skeptical, and acerbic—marked by incredulity at current U.S. national security policy, open mockery of right-wing political theater (both in the U.S. and U.K.), and a sustained sense of alarm about democratic erosion and foreign policy drift. The interview with Sorokin is earnest and urgent, giving voice to the lived realities of Ukrainians under siege.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Pod Save the World lays out, with granular detail and biting wit, the layered crises of American foreign policy in 2026: a fog-of-war in Iran, authoritarian trends at home, global corruption and influence games, and brittle democratic institutions abroad. The extended Ukraine interview brings the high-level politics back down to ground truth—reminding listeners what’s ultimately at stake.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vietor]

and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba.

[Ben Rhodes]

To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam.

[Tommy Vietor]

Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six.

[Ben Rhodes]

All new drinks are here now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine.

[Tommy Vietor]

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

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vietor]

Ben, one way that politicians sometimes try to Humanize themselves or soften their public image is by getting a dog. You know, I don't need to tell you this. They're great companions. They're cute. They're cheaper than kids. So we had fdr, he had his beloved fala. Nixon had Checkers. The Bidens had those German Shepherds that kept biting everybody.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm not sure about those guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I don't know about those ones either. But I've never seen a politician quite embrace their pet as lovingly as this.

[Ben Rhodes]

Let's watch that. Your decision to defect to one nation is dragging you further into a place

[Tommy Vietor]

of intolerance and racial discrimination. You're defending your leader, but are you

[Ben Rhodes]

really comfortable with where she is taking you?

[Tommy Vietor]

My feet.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Sit down.

[Ben Rhodes]

Sorry.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

The dog.

[Ben Rhodes]

Okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

That was an Australian politician named Barnaby Joyce. Have you ever seen this guy before, Ben?

[Ben Rhodes]

Nope. That's a first. Okay, okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's a fan favorite, so he's a charming fellow. He's now a member of the right wing One Nation Party. But not long ago he served as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. He's also leader of the National Party. But Ben, believe it or not, this is not the first time that Barnaby Joyce has declared his love for man's best friend on national television. Check out this clip from 2015, the next issue, which is a gentleman by the name of John Christopher Depp, 51 years old, otherwise, aka Jack Sparrow.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

And he's decided to bring into our nation two dogs.

[Tommy Vietor]

Basically. Looks like he snuck them in. We found out he snuck them in

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

because we saw them taking it to a poodle groomer.

[Tommy Vietor]

Now Mr. Depp has to either take his dogs back to California or we're going to have to euthanize them. If we start letting movie stars, even

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

though they've been the sexiest man alive twice to come into our nation, then

[Tommy Vietor]

why don't we just break the laws for everybody?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

So it's time that Pistol and Boo

[Tommy Vietor]

bug it off back to the United States. Maybe if you threaten to kill dogs on tv, maybe you shouldn't be allowed to have one in the future. That's my idea.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm not here to, like, defend Johnny Depp, but I'm here to defend Pistol and Boo. That was a pretty hard swerve to nuking them, you know?

[Tommy Vietor]

Do you remember this?

[Ben Rhodes]

When this happened?

[Tommy Vietor]

I feel like there's a live feed of his, like, apartment.

[Ben Rhodes]

I do.

[Tommy Vietor]

I remember it being the pandemic, but no, it was 2015. When I googled it, it was referred to, I guess as the War on terrier.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's funny because I remember it as a pandemic too. I think any truly bizarre thing that involved like bringing stuff into a country I just associate with the pandemic. But hopefully Pistol and Boo made it out alive.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, no, I think they made it okay. I mean what happened was Johnny Depp brought his dogs to Australia. We did go through the proper quarantine protocol having been there recently. They take it quite seriously. But you probably don't need to threaten to kill them. You can probably just ask them nicely to leave. I think they're okay though. Also, Ben, in 2024 the Daily Mail ran a video of Joyce. He was taking a phone call. He was on the street. He fell off a potted plant around midnight. I'm assuming he had a few. He landed on his back and then just lay there and did the phone call. This is mid about midnight in Canberra and some bystander walked by and filmed it. And she said that she talked to the Daily Mail and this is an actual line from the story that I wanted to read you. This is Barnaby. Joyce's wife said her husband was not referring to her when he called some someone a quote dead C word during the phone call. Then she said I think he was calling himself one. He likes to self flagellate.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, sounds like a colorful guy, you know. Yeah, I'm not sure I. I'd want him anywhere near positions of power and responsibility though, you know.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, nor I. Look, this started as a cold open on one funny video and then I went way too deep on Barnaby Joyce because I missed the World Cup. I should have been watching like Cabo Verde versus Switzerland, but instead I was YouTubing this asshole.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I somehow the algorithm is not feeding me Barnaby, but maybe now will and I'll get to keep up with his various vendettas against animals and other other living beings.

[Tommy Vietor]

With any luck? With any luck. All right, we got a great show. We're going to cover the major escalation fighting between the US and Iran over the weekend. There were multiple US casualties, accusations the Pentagon is covering them up and then a couple signs this war could be escalating even further. So a lot of bad news on the Iran front. Then we're going to talk about a State Department report on Cuba and how it's being used to smear and potentially target left wing individ and organizations all across the country. We'll talk about politics in the prediction markets like Kalshi and polymarket. The wildfires in Canada and why Trump is punishing our neighbors to the north. We'll get into the first couple actions by new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and then we will end by taking the piss out of some right wing candidates and organizations in the uk. Always fun. Ben, do you see CPAC started in, in Britain?

[Ben Rhodes]

I know. With some funding coming from the Trump administration too. Oh, really? How much they give them? Their new international aid budget includes some line items for like right wing think tanks in places like Britain.

[Tommy Vietor]

Are you kidding me?

[Ben Rhodes]

Glad to see we're on that side. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh yeah, we're so we're like zeroing out, you know, HIV AIDS funding for, you know, kids. Okay, okay. We're giving it to Liz Truss.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's how it's going.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's great. Finally, you're gonna hear my interview with Alexei Sorkin. He's from the Kyiv Independent. We talk about the security situation in Ukraine, this recent series of massive ballistic missile strikes by the Russians on major cities across Ukraine. We'll talk about the latest on Ukraine's missile defense capabilities, including President Trump giving them a license to manufacture Patriot missiles in Ukraine and sort of how long that might take. Talk about the strikes by the Ukrainian side on Crimea, on Russian oil and gas infrastructure, and then this major fallout from President Zelensky firing his Defense Minister, which led to huge protests in the streets. I should note though, Ben, I spoke with Alexei before we learned that President Zelenskyy had fired Oleksandr Syrsky, who is the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces. So they're actually a huge development since I did that interview this morning.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, not good to fire the Defense Minister and the commander when things seem to be going well too. Politics in Ukraine are pretty volatile right now.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, volatile politics. It's a very interesting conversation and interview because the Defense Minister Fedorov is like 35 years old. The Syrsky is 60. So this is a generational fight. It's a debate about tactics and technology and accusations that Syrsky was running kind of like a Soviet era military strategy while Fedorov was developing all these new drones and, you know, accountability and data based targeting. It's very interesting. And the political fallout is huge because a lot of people think Zelensky may have fired Fedorov because he viewed him as a political threat, as a rival.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So a lot to watch there. Lots to watch there. Iran sucks up all the attention, but it doesn't mean there's not another war going on.

[Tommy Vietor]

I know, it did make me feel badly that we had not covered Ukraine as much recently. It's like just the agenda fills with crisis after crisis and it's like almost easy to forget there's this four year running nightmare of a war in the background. I mean, it's not easy to forget for anyone in Ukraine or on the front lines. It's just there's like so much on our plate here. All right, so we had this terrible news over the weekend from the war in Ukraine we got. The death toll for the US service members from that war is now increased to 18. So first lieutenants Tyler James Feehan and Private Isabella Gonzalez were killed by an Iranian ballistic missile attack on a U.S. base in Jordan. Private Gonzalez was 19 years old. It's always like heartbreaking when you see how young these service members are. A third service member is presumed dead. Remains were found sort of at the blast site, but that person has not been identified yet publicly. The Pentagon also announced that another U.S. service member in Iraq was killed during a control detonation of an unexploded ordinance from an Iranian drone. I would like to better understand what happened there. That sounds awful and it should the kind of thing that should be avoidable, but I don't know, we'll learn more. On top of that, nearly 100 service members have been injured in the conflict since July 7th. So the past couple of weeks the Pentagon says the vast majority of those injuries were, quote, minor concussions. However, they've been far from candid about casualty figures which we should dig into. So we've since learned that the the base in Jordan that was targeted was hit several times over the course of 24 hours. Dozens of soldiers were injured, destroyed a bunch of helicopters. And the question becomes how does Trump respond? On Truth Social, he posted quote, every time Iran kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing. Many times over. This directive has been passed on to the Secretary of War, Pete Hexeth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Daniel Kane and every leader in the military, end quote. The Pentagon has hit targets in Iran for about 10 consecutive nights now. Iran at the same time has been hitting US Targets or targeting US Sites in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. Worryingly, it seems like a lot of these Iranian airstrikes were targeting radar and missile defense systems which if successful, could make the bases even more vulnerable. Of course, in Jordan they were managed to hit the barracks that sound like they were barely fortified at all, leading to these casualties. Iran has also had some tankers in the Straight or Hormuz. So Ben, let's start with this question of or issue of transparency around US Casualties from the Pentagon. The Pentagon, they deny that they're withholding casualty information. They're kind of huffily saying like we're not going to release anything that might tell Iran that their targeting is going well or help them operationally. And they're also arguing they have no obligation to release information about kind of minor injuries. What's your reaction to that?

[Ben Rhodes]

So listeners, regular listeners will know that we've been talking about this for months, that there's a lack of candor about the damage that's being done in terms of the injuries to American service members, the damage to US Bases, military facilities and embassies. This has been very clear, Tommy1, because if you talk to anybody in the Gulf or any of these countries that are being attacked, they'll tell you that there's far more significant damage than is being reported by the Pentagon or that's being seen. But the other thing, Tommy, is like you and I used to be responsible for this. Used to have to oversee the communications around what was going on in Moors. And nothing about this feels normal. And I think what people need to bear in mind is that this has been a process, right? We covered kicking out the Pentagon press corps. So they're not people, actual journalists. You've got like the Mike Lindell, my pillow guy, has a correspondent in the Pentagon briefing room, not like the actual journalist with sources. So you're not getting the kind of reporting from people there. You're also kind of getting these very opaque statements. You either get some insane Pete Hegseth statement about we've won the war for the thousandth time or we've destroyed the entire Navy. Or you get this kind of very minimalist statement from the CENTCOM Central Command that has run running the war that will report a death and make kind of a vague allusion to injuries without any detail about the nature of those injuries. And look, the reality is this is just an effort to hide the costs of the war from the American people. They do not want you to know how much damage has been done to our facilities, how much that's going to cost to repair, which could run well into the many billions of dollars. They don't want you to know the extent of the injuries of service members. They don't want you to pay attention. They want to be able to do whatever they want to do without any accountability. And normally also Congress would be holding hearings on these matters and forcing answers information out to the public. But because the Republicans control both houses of Congress, the very spare hearings that we get yield very little information. And when it's like Hegseth, you get this kind of performative bullshit from him. So this is by design. This is what it feels like to have an authoritarian system leading you into a war that is illegal, that nobody wants. They have to conceal the information because the more information gets out about this war, the less Americans want any part of it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, and it's hard. Like, normally these kind of numbers are just, like, updated on a website. It's supposed to be very, like, routine and kind of technocratic done by professional public information officers within the US Military. It's hard not to feel like data like this would not be being withheld because it seems to contradict statements by Trump and by Hegseth and by Vance that we have eviscerated their missile capability and, you know, the Iranian military, military is decimated, blah, blah, blah. It's also, I think, relevant that a lot of these strikes happened in Jordan. You know, the Journal, the Wall Street Journal noted that Jordan is among the most permissive countries in the Arab world when it comes to allowing US Spaces to operate from their territory. A bunch of other countries in the region have shut down US Access to their airspace at times to try to prevent us from doing. Try to prevent Trump from doing stupid things to escalate the war. So it seems like the targeting of Jordan is deliberate by Iran and is probably an attempt to change public opinion within Jordan about US Participation and cooperation.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And bear in mind that there are 50,000 U.S. service members scattered across this region, by the way, like, I think far more than is necessary. And that's something that a future Democratic president should look at, but it's hard to secure. What the Iranians have figured out is they have a very broad target set. If the United States is hitting things inside of Iran at increasing pace and scale, which we can talk about, but they have in their target list they've got US Bases, facilities anywhere there's US Military personnel. They've got the Gulf states and the kind of. They want to extract a cost on both the global economy. So hitting things like energy infrastructure and obviously closing down the Strait of Hormuz. But also just if something gets hit. I've noticed if a desalination plant gets hit inside of Iran, they're hitting one in Kuwait. So they're seeing the entire region essentially as presenting targets that in their mind, match up with what is being done to them. And they show that there are all these different ways of carrying a cost. The other thing we should point out, Tommy, is That we've burned through a lot of our missile defenses. We have less today than we did at the beginning of the war. That's a finite resource. I think we get comfortable with this idea, idea that we can just shoot everything down. Well, we can't for two reasons. One, contrary to everything that Trump and Hegseth and Rubio have said, they clearly maintain a significant ballistic missile capability. I saw potentially over 2,000 ballistic missiles, and they're able to reproduce them. They have obviously a significant drone capacity. And so if they're maintaining these capabilities and we have less and less defenses and we have to make judgment calls about where to put them, well, stuff is increasingly going to get through. And so the more this war goes on, the less capable we are of defending. And then lastly, when you see the precision targeting that they're doing in places like Jordan, you have to think that in addition to Iranian intelligence, they're probably getting intelligence from the Russians too, because they seem to know where to hit things with a degree of precision, with either ballistic missiles or with drones. And so this should be warning. The longer this war goes on, the more American casualties there's going to be, the more damage there's going to be to US Allies, the more it's going to create rifts. They want to create divisions between not just public opinion in those countries, but governments in the U.S. so the Iranians, to use a Trump phrase, again, have a lot of cards here.

[Tommy Vietor]

And it just doesn't seem like the Pentagon has taken any steps to harden the infrastructure where these service members are living and staying and working. I mean, it's just shocking to me that you could be serving in Jordan and living in basically an unprotected barracks that could be hit by a ballistic missile and nothing's been done about it in the last year. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Quints. Summer is all about relaxation, which is why I always reach for Quints. They're comfortable, well made. Essentials are the perfect everyday staples to live in all season long. Quince's 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable, easy to throw on in the summer. Upgrade your rotation needs starting at just $34. Their tees are so soft, you'll never want to take them off. And the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when summer nights cool down. Everything at quints is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. 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It is finally socially acceptable to talk about mental health, but actually reaching out for help when you need it is a story New data from BetterHelp confirms exactly why BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma report surveyed 2,000Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 12 or more years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored wrecks. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10 off at betterhelp.com crookedworld that's betterhelp.com Crooked World. Let's talk about some of those escalation risks. Ben so there's a couple in my mind. First, on Monday, the Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened to put in place a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia in the Babel Mandeb Strait, which is how ships get in and out of the Red Sea. We talked about this last week the Saudis bombed this Houthi target We both were like, why the would they do that? They've had a, basically a ceasefire in place since 2022. And now in the least surprising news possible, you have the Houthis threatening retaliation. So the reason this matters so much is that when the Strait of Hormuz was closed, the Saudis were still able to export oil by shipping it west through a pipeline to the Red Sea side of the country and exporting it that way. And if the Houthis managed to prevent the Saudis from exporting oil, it would remove several million more barrels of oil per day from the market. And then it could create serious long term problems for the Saudi producers if they have lock in their wells. That's obviously a long, it's a long ways off, but it's something they're thinking about, I'm sure. And the impact would be even greater if the Houthis block or deter other shipping through the Red Sea. Earlier today, Trump was asked about this. He said the Houthis hadn't actually done anything yet, but he's a liar and time will tell. Yeah, the other major escalation risk was kind of outlined helpfully for us via a leak to the Wall Street Journal. So here's the lead of that story. Quote, israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside a mountain last Israeli and US Officials say a development that would heighten concern that Tehran could reconstitute its nuclear program. So that story says these materials were moved after the 12 Day War when the US and Israel first bombed Iran's nuclear site. Trump was asked about this pickaxe mountain concern during a press conference on Tuesday. Let's watch. Do you believe that Iran has moved nuclear centrifuges into pickaxe mountain?

[Ben Rhodes]

And when you say we're not done

[Tommy Vietor]

yet, what is left to finish? Well, I think that they, they may have.

[Ben Rhodes]

We don't have it on record.

[Tommy Vietor]

All we do is read the fake news.

[Ben Rhodes]

You know, we see the news is

[Tommy Vietor]

so wrong so many times. So, you know, maybe, maybe this one they have.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

But it's okay. It doesn't mean anything unless they have the material.

[Tommy Vietor]

You're talking about the centrifuges.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it doesn't mean anything unless they have the material they don't have. We follow the material.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's where the action is.

[Ben Rhodes]

And we'll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon. And there's not, not a thing they can do about it.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, normally I wouldn't say that

[Ben Rhodes]

if I thought they could do something.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

About it.

[Ben Rhodes]

I would never say that, but we'll be hitting that area pretty soon and, and very heavily.

[Tommy Vietor]

Interesting logic train there. It's like it doesn't matter, but we're going to bomb it anyway. I guess now they could move it and prevent that from happening, but here we are. So but the, the broader problem with Trump's threat there to bomb Pickaxe Mountain is that experts believe these facilities could be between 300 and 450ft under solid rock. It is not clear whether even the US Bunker busting bombs that were used against the previous nuclear sites could reach these areas. James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program, at an interesting Twitter thread about this question of whether the bunker busters could hit Pickaxe Mountain. He said there's a debate about how deep the biggest US Bunker buster can actually burrow into rock before exploding. And the range is presumed to be 60ft to 200ft, which again, not deep enough to get to the deepest parts of Pickaxe Mountain. So it's not clear that this would work. He also pointed out the strike at Fordo was only effective because it hit a ventilation shaft and then even then they had to drop 14 of the massive ordinance penetrator weapons to finish the job. So big picture, we don't know if Pickaxe Mountain could be targeted. We don't really know what's happening within it because the IAEA does not have access to the site because Trump pulled out of the JCPOA and got rid of IAEA access. So, Ben, not the most subtle leak here from the Israelis. Interesting that Trump decided to just comment on it and preview an airstrike. But what did you make of this?

[Ben Rhodes]

First of all, there's two governments with massive credibility issues. So every time you see a leak of Israeli intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program, this is a bit of a boy or cried wolf, right? It's always some pretext for why the United States needs to get deeper into the World War. And so this one may be true. But we've heard Prime Minister Netanyahu say for well over a decade that Iran was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon. So it feels like the leak clearly had an interest to pressure Trump to do something. And then it bears repeating that Trump has said that the Iranian nuclear program is obliterated after the 12 Day War, and now he's nonsensical. It's not just a nuclear program. It's not just a nuclear fuel.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Fuel.

[Ben Rhodes]

The nuclear dust which he was referring to there, I think with the Material that's the product of the nuclear program. The nuclear program is the scientist, is the centrifuges is the uranium that you mine and put into the centrifuges and then it's the fuel. Right. And so you can't say we've obliterated the program. They just had centrifuges and their fuel and their scientists. What exactly have we done here? The logic train of this would lead Americans to say, you're telling me that we've gone to war with this country multiple times now. If you count the 12 Day War as a different war, and we've been bombing them for months now, and they've got centrifuges in a mountain, they've got the nuclear fuel somewhere. Maybe we know, maybe we don't know where that is. It just shows that they don't have a strategy. Because the reality is we can have all these conversations about massive ordnance penetrators, these bunker busting bombs. The only way that you're going to verifiably get that material or those centrifuges out is either with a nuclear deal in which there are international inspectors who can go in and verify that, or it's with massive amounts of US Ground forces going in and getting into a real fighting war on the ground. And I don't think there's any appetite for that whatsoever. You cannot fix these problems from the air. This is the problem with their whole war strategy. And so if you look at what they're doing, they seem to be trying to bomb infrastructure associated with the irgc. I don't think the IRGC looks like they're ready to capitulate anytime soon. They're willing to weather more of that. So that's not going to work. Then Trump saying, like if for every American killed, we're kill a bunch of people or blow up a bunch of stuff. Let me tell you, however upset you are about American service members being killed, vengeance is not a war strategy. It's a horrible way to think about targeting. Wait, wait, ask. And so these guys just, yeah, they just don't know what they're doing. And it's very clear what the Iranians are doing. They're just holding the line. If we can survive and stay in power and demonstrate that we control that strait, it doesn't really matter how much damage Trump tries to do to their economy or to bombing in the vicinity of their nuclear program. They have a nuclear program, they control the strait and they're still in power.

[Tommy Vietor]

And one last thing on this pickaxe mountain piece Hugh Hewitt, who's kind of a right wing, not kind of right wing commentator who kisses Trump's ass. Big Nixon fan. He's a radio host on the Salem Radio Network. He's obsessed with pickaxe mountain. Trump was on his show the other day and he was asking him about it. I noticed, Ben, there was a Wall Street Journal report recently, I think it's over the weekend, on the stunning amount of money that Israel is spending on PR propaganda to try to fix its image. I think the total amount for 2026 is $700 million. One of the people they've hired is a guy named Brad Parscale. He was Trump's former campaign manager. I think he has a $45 million contract. Parscale is not only has his own kind of like company, he is also the chief strategy officer at Salem Media. And his contract for Israel involves, quote, integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties. So one has to wonder, is Israel telling Brad Parscale to tell people like Hugh Hewitt to ask about these issues because there's a whole lot of money flowing around that suggests that might be the case.

[Ben Rhodes]

Just one question I entirely plausible and in line with how Israel approaches messaging. Like the closer you can get to decision makers. And this is the thing about like the, the for sale nature of right wing media. Like we've seen the Russians do this, right? We've seen the Russians literally buy influencers in the United States. Now frankly, not new for Israel to be doing something similar, but it just goes to show in a fractured media environment, like how vulnerable we are as a society to Israel dumping a bunch of money into Trump cronies and suddenly Hugh Hewitt is laundering potentially, we don't know for sure, Israeli narratives or Israeli interest, right? You should bomb this mountain. I mean, every now and then actually there's an anecdote that kind of illustrates how absurd the times are that we're in. It is plausible. Again, we don't know for sure that Israel pays Brad Parscale and then Hugh Hewitt is trying to do targeting with Trump on his show. Like that is fucking nuts that we even can entertain that as a possibility.

[Tommy Vietor]

And meanwhile, the finance minister, Basilo Smotrich, he had a quote that he gave to some media, some outlet in Israel after their like national security conversation last night where he said of the war in Iran, the state of Israel has no interest in joining a contained confrontation between Iran and the United States. The current situation is the best one for us. We know. Ah, we know, buddy.

[Ben Rhodes]

Good for you guys. I mean this is exactly these guys. Like, this is exactly what you worry about, which is what did they do? They dragged the United States into this war because Bibi Netanyahu is in that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Can't say that. I'm just kidding.

[Ben Rhodes]

What did they.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, you'll get yelled at on Twitter. You'll get yelled at.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'll get yelled into. Like, let's. Okay, they had a very persuasive briefing. Smotary.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just like confirming it. Like, how dare you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And they convinced Trump to do this dumb thing. And then it's like, now the US Is in. Oh, we don't have to be a part of this anymore. I mean, give me a break. If you ever needed more evidence that we need to rethink the entirety of this relationship with this completely maniacal government, it's Smotrich who would have been cheering Israel joining the US on the front end. And now it's like, oh, we can take a step back. Let these guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

Let them do it for us. Meanwhile, last thing on Iran, Trump's kind of trying to jam some Iran connected legislation through Congress. There's the NDAA bill, which is the annual bill authorizing Pentagon programs. Democrats are currently blocking the $1.15 trillion NDAA bill to pressure trust Trump to end the war. Trump has also requested another $87 billion in Iran supplemental funding. Hegseth and Chairman of Joint Chief Stan Kane were up on the Hill today talking about it. I just want to point out to anyone who works on Capitol Hill or any members of Congress listening that as you decide on how to vote on this stuff, I wanted to flag an economist YouGov poll for you that shows that the Iran war is the least popular war since polling started. Started. How about that for a stat? It has a -30 approval rating. A stat which the Economist notes the Vietnam War didn't hit until six years in. Again, for context, the Afghanistan war started at 90% support and it took 13 years to dip below 50% approval. Breakdowns by group. The Iran war is 84 points underwater with Democrats. It's 52 points underwater with independence. It only has a 72% approval among MAGA Republicans and is 25 points underwater with non MAGA Republicans. So it's like it's hard to imagine a more clear cut vote than this. Vote no against any funding, any support for this conflict, period.

[Ben Rhodes]

This is the biggest no brainer in the world. And the only two things they'd add are those MAGA numbers too. Like there's a tiny, tiny portion of those people that actually support the war. Right. The constituency now that Lindsey Graham is no longer with us.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. They just support Trump.

[Ben Rhodes]

We're down to like Hugh Hewitt and Ben Shapiro. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right. Like, so most of those bag of voters probably don't support the war. They just, if they're asked something that Trump is doing, they say they support it. Right. So there's not a lot of depth to that support. There's not a lot of people that are like, yeah, we really gotta finish the job in Iran. Like, you don't sense that anywhere.

[Tommy Vietor]

Not a lot of MAGA shots who are like, look, we gotta get Pickaxe Mountain. I've been saying it all along. This is really important.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People are sitting in there.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like in the diner, you know, like the Trump West Virginia diner, saying like, you know what? I really voted for Trump. I voted for Trump so he could take care of Pickaxe Mountain.

[Tommy Vietor]

Can I afford my heating bill? No. Do I want to bomb Pickaxe Mountain? Absolutely. That is how I view the world. It's important to me.

[Ben Rhodes]

But the other thing is like, who on earth is like out there wanting to spend a trillion dollars in defense? Period. So if part of the concern is that you're like not voting for the overall defense package because you're blocking this, well, you shouldn't vote for that. That, like nobody should vote for a trillion dollar defense budget at a time when we have such massive needs. It's crazy. It's time to completely reverse this premise that you have to vote for defense spending or else you'll be held accountable. We should start holding people accountable for the fact that they want a trillion dollars in defense spending when everything else in this country is going to shit.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's nuts. All right, let's switch gears, Ben, because something really weird has happened at the State Department. Earlier this week, we wanted to talk about it. They released this 100 page report titled Cuba, the Capital of 21st Century Communism. It claims that for over 70 years, quote, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States. It is a campaign that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US Government and had backed left wing terrorism. On. They say it has backed left wing terrorism on American soil. So the report lists people who it calls front groups and fellow travelers of Cuba. It's like groups like Code Pink and the Democratic Socialists of America or dsa. It mentions a bunch of prominent leftists in like Democratic leaders by name streamer. Hassan Piker gets a shout out Zoran Mamdani is in there. The report was released shortly after Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted a, quote, ministerial on the resurgence of political terrorism. Rubio's speech at the ministerial focused almost exclusively on what he called left wing terrorism. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein noted that a White House press release about the event said, quote, far left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism. Ben, I watched Rubio's speech and I noticed this one line which was, they despise the west because the west is great. It was like identical framework to, like the Bush era. They hate us because of our freedom bullshit about Al Qaeda.

[Ben Rhodes]

So.

[Tommy Vietor]

Ben.

[Ben Rhodes]

Except now there's no freedom. We're just great. We're not free anymore.

[Tommy Vietor]

They hate our greatness. Maga I guess so, Ben, this weird report in my mind seems to be merging two different strands of work. The first is the work to build this legal structure to designate lefties or leftist groups, or even just democrats as terrorists or terrorist organizations, and then go after us with counterterrorism authorities. We shall remind ourselves that in the US that includes killing people. The second is the Marco Rubio passion project of trying to force regime change in Cuba, but doing it by punishing an entire island, an entire civilian population full of people through this energy blockade. By merging the two, they have created a kind of de facto new leftist blacklist that would make Joe McCarthy proud. And then there's this attempt to create an intellectual framework and legitimacy around the work. So the first 60 pages of the report are like this history lesson that feels like it was ripped from a Liberty University student's term paper or something. It's sort of this like slapdash kind of pop history from a slightly paranoid right wing perspective, although often about like real, real historical events. But then it ends with this absolutely crazy stretched, like six degrees of Kevin Bacon style guilt by association conclusion which says, quote, many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history, from the George Floyd riots to the rise of antifa to the explosion of pro terrorist activism on American college campuses, can be linked in some way, shape or form to Cuban influence. You know, your argument is strong when you include the words in some way, shape or form. Of course, we also know that, like, pro terrorism activism means on college campuses, means like, like kids who are upset about, you know, children getting bombed in Gaza.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. About war crimes. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

So, Ben, I genuinely don't know what is more worrisome, the State Department whipping up this document as kind of a pretext to go after liberals or Marco Rubio and his minions sincerely believing that Fidel Castro's ghost is behind every corner and responsible for, like, people being upset by watching George Floyd get murdered live on, you know, their screens by a copy. What did you make of the State Department blacklist in this kind of broader effort to criminalize leftist thought or, like, somehow link it all to Cuba?

[Ben Rhodes]

I think there's a few different things going on here. And I say this as someone who used to, like, be in charge of Cuba policy the second Obama term. The first thing is that Cuba poses absolutely no national security threat to the United States whatsoever, right? Full stop. I mean, I saw the Cubans aren't penetrating American society. These people can't keep the lights on. Like, the idea that Cuba's running networks all over the country is absolutely fucking absurd. It's just not true. But because they have no pretext for why they would launch a military operation in Cuba, regime change operation in Cuba, or certainly even no pretext for why they're starving Cubans to death or causing people to die because ventilators get turned off when they're power outages because of our blockade. There's no Cuban nuclear program. So they have to kind of create this facade, this bullshit idea that. That they pose some kind of danger to our society. It's not true. It's fundamentally not true. Just because people in America have leftist views doesn't mean that they're agents of the Cuban government in any way, shape or form. The second thing that's going on here, Tommy, is a lot of projection, and I'm just gonna name this, the United States has done what they are alleging Cuba does. Right? I know this because when I was in Cuba policy, I started looking at all these crazy USAID programs. And like, you know, generally we're supportive of usaid. I think a lot of people at USAID would agree with me. There are all these line items we used to just give. I found money that was just sent to P.O. boxes in Miami, right? And with no. With no specificity about where that money was going to end up, like the United States. And like, you could say from a pot, you know, someone might say, from a human rights perspective, direct funding for dissidents in Cuba is something we should do. But some of this seemed to go, you know, was just more beyond that. It's just like creating funds that could go to oppositionists or efforts to undermine the government. Remember, there were some. I mean, if you want to go down, take A trip down memory lane. There were even programs that became public. The Associated Press did a bunch of reporting during the Obama years about, I think it was Operation Chaos that we were going to use social media to kind of sow chaos inside of Cuba and undermine the government, which was, by the way, before they even had a lot of Internet access in Cuba. So it was a pretty dumb way to spend money. So this is classic right wing projection. Like the Cubans must be doing the things that we do to them, them, you know, and so we're going to call that out.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. Never mind like the historical stuff. If you want to go back even deep. I mean their report goes way back and you know, there's all sorts of efforts to take out Fidel Castro and there's Cuban report, Operation Mongo. I mean.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah, Bay Pig's invasion, like, you know.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that little thing.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. So those two things are about the pretext due after the Cubans then the last thing is, the point you made is this whole antifa thing. We should not treat as a sideshow show. It is like foreign governments. It's absurd that anybody showed up at that conference. Like I would hope that's a. Yeah, I would hope that you just can say no to that because this could lead to dark places like we are, we have two plus years of Trump left. And if you listen to like rhetoric, not just Rubio but Steven Miller gave some like bloodthirsty speech like do I think they're going to start like droning DSA members in the United States? Democratic socialists. No, but if they, they do start freezing bank accounts, if they start treating it like a terrorist threat on some insane nexus to Cuba or anything else, like we could, you know, see them trying to shut down civil society, shut

[Tommy Vietor]

down opposition or just investigate them. Right. I mean a bunch of, a bunch of lefties went to Cuba and all of a sudden they came back and they were under investigation. Right. And it was leaked to some news outlets. Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Hasan Piker was one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a mess. It's definitely one to watch. It's really concerning and it's building on this kind of body of evidence that this stuff is happening. Starting was npsm7 I think was the directive to kind of, of sort start, begin this process. And you know, obviously Charlie Clark's assassination has been the pretext for a lot of it and this idea that it was a leftist or lefty conspiracy and Cash Patel was at that symposium. So there's. Yeah, there's a lot of kind of worrisome data points there. Let's turn to another worrisome development in the Trump era, frankly, which is this reporting recently about the online prediction market, gambling and politics. So, so the most recent kind of eye popping headline, at least to me, Ben, was about Trump's teleprompter operator, this guy Gabriel Perez. He's under investigation by the CFTC for allegedly making over $100,000 betting on Trump's speeches. So for context, for folks like on these prediction market apps like polymarket or Kalshi, you could place bets on stupid shit like what words Trump will or will not say in a speech. So I looked on Kalshi right before we started recording. You can bet on whether Trump will say or not say 28 different words or phrases during his White House correspondent speech on Friday. They give it a 45% chance that Trump says Barack Hussein Obama. So if you bet 100 bucks, he says that the payout is $210. If you want a little more risk, a little more upside, Ben kelsey has a 7% chance that Trump says Epstein. So you bet 100 bucks, you can win 1341. That's your payout with your bet included. But if you're the teleprompter guy. Right, right. You have access to the final, final version of the speech right before it is delivered, which is obviously insider information. You also know, you know in real time if he's skipping words. So like Trump is an undisciplined mess. And apparently Perez would cash out his bets mid speech if Trump skipped a line in the prompter, which I bet made it pretty fucking easy to find him and snuff this all out. Associated with this news, the Wall Street Journal had a big piece on prediction markets generally in Washington. It had some again, eye popping detail. It said three anonymous accounts on Polymarket made over $600,000 by correctly betting on when Trump and Iran would agree to a ceasefire deal. It that freaked out the White House and led them to send around a memo prohibiting the use of insider information to bet. The Journal also says that Congresswoman Annapolina Luna of Florida tipped off a mega influencer named DC Drano that Trump was going to pick JD Vance as his VP nominee so that he could bet on it. And then she later mocked him for not betting more. So that's all sounds like they're all taking this very seriously. The Senate recently passed a resolution banning lawmakers and staff with sensitive information from prediction market betting. But I would not bet on the administration taking any action, in part because Donald Trump Jr. Is a paid strategic advisor to both Kalshee and Polymarket. You might be wondering.

[Ben Rhodes]

Perfect. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's weird that two competitors would pay the same guy. Yeah, yeah, it is, unless you think about it. So, Ben, it's interesting, like, kind of hearing these organizations defend themselves. They have a bit of an incoherent view of insider information. They say, like, well, you know, insider information gets into every market, and that's what sort of, like, makes the data better and more perfect and more useful on the one hand. But on the other hand, they're trying to ban it or people from profiting off it. There's so obvious, like, the natural national security implications of some of these bets. I mean, we talked about it in the Venezuela context. Someone made a bunch of money. A special forces guy made a bunch of money betting on whether Maduro would be deposed. It seems like that would be a bright red warning sign for the Venezuelan government if this were to happen again. But what did you make of this story? And just can you imagine, as a former speechwriter, just being able to place prop bets on what Trump would say or Obama would say, in our case?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, this is one of the central things that they're doing, right? Because, like, you already have the stock market, which is the kind of more dignified version of prediction markets, right? And now you have these platforms. And the reality is, like, there's been, like, all this smoke for. I mean, the Iranians have alleged that Kushner and Witkoff.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right, good call. Forgot about that.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm not saying I trust them, but they've made billions of dollars in investments or bets on future markets related to the progress of negotiations. The prediction markets are just a cruder way. I mean, look, I'll just be blunt. Like, when I think about what I knew when I was in the White House, I knew what Obama was going to say. I was a speechwriter. I knew when we were going to roll out new policies. We knew when special operations. We knew when Bin Laden was going to be targeted. We knew when airstrikes might take place. We knew all this information. Never. Not that we're the purest people. I think that I would have said the same thing about the Bush people. I don't think they would have sat there and just, like, used all this insider information to make bets. The corruption is not a bug. I feel like we end up seeing the teleprompter operator. We end up seeing the special operator who made the bet on the Maduro operation. The richer people and more powerful people. And I'm not going to name them because I just don't know. But just use your head, right? Trump family members or senior officials or billionaires who are in that cabinet have probably greater capacity to have, have cutouts. Right. So it's not like them having to place the bet. There's so many ways in which we're living in a society where power is increasingly consolidated. Information has always been consolidated, and now these people can just get rich off these information. And look, I'll hate to be a killjoy, like, we just should shut down. I don't know why we need these platforms. It doesn't seem like sports gambling is going that well either. Not to. That's a whole other conversation. But, like, it's the, the people that end up losing. It's like at the casino, it's like the high rollers, like, tend to be fine. It's like the people that are, like, betting their paychecks because they can't afford groceries because of Trump's war that end up losing. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, look, these things, apps call themselves prediction markets, but I think like 80% of the betting that takes place is sports betting. So it's just an end around.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

To get around state laws as we are kind of hitting the gas on these, these products. And there's all this lobbying by these prediction market apps. And there's so much support within the White House. France has blocked access to Polymarket's betting website. I think this happened last week because they're worried about people losing their money. Gambling in Brazil has been named a public health crisis. It was legalized. Online gambling was legalized in 2018. It's now seen as like the fastest growing and most lucrative market. I think it was 9.8. They're viewing it as a $9.2 billion market by 2033. And in 2024, online gambling losses in Brazil drove an estimated 1.8 million people into debt. So it's like it truly is a crisis down there. In the US political betting on polymarket doubled to just over 4 billion during the first three months of the year, compared with the first quarter of 2025, according to this data provided to the Wall Street Journal by a nonprofit called Anti corruption data Collecting. But it's just like the opportunities for abuse in insider trading. I mean, it is a feature, not a bug here.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it's obvious. And what you're getting is not just the kind of rank corruption decisions might start to be made, because we've seen this in all kinds of gambling. This is why the World Series gets thrown in 1919. You start to make decisions for the purpose of making money off the bet, not making decisions that are best for American interests or the American people. That's the kind of thing that is probably clearly already happening. You'll get people who go into government or politics for the express purpose of betting on things like prediction markets. Right? I mean, there's so many things. This is such a slippery slope. If I was a member of Congress, focusing on shutting these things down or at least putting really thick guardrails around them with very high penalties for people that violate them, like it's a no brainer.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I agree. Pod Save the World is brought to you by SimpliSafe. For the longest time I thought having a home security system meant having an alarm that blares only after someone breaks in. That always seemed too late. Giving the intruder a chance to grab whatever they wanted and flee before the police could get there. That's where SimpliSafe comes in. SimpliSafe's AI powered cameras identify threats on your property and alert US based live agents who take action to deter them before the break in even begins. SimpliSafe's home security systems are fast enough and easy to set up on your own. No drilling required, no waiting around for a technician to show up. The app guided installation walks you through the process so you can get your system armed in less than an hour. And best of all, Simplisafe is actually affordable. Monitoring plans start affordably at around a dollar a day. No long term contracts or cancellation fees. As you guys know, John Levitt set up a SimpliSafe system system himself. It works great. You turn it on and off from your phone. It's easy to install that top of the line sensors, but really simple process. I think it took him like an hour or two and there was no drilling required and he thought it did a great job. We've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer an exclusive discount to Pod Save the World listeners. Right now you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com crookedworld that's half [e-mail] Crookedwood World there's no safe like simply safe. Pod Save the World is brought to you by the new podcast series from future hindsight. Occupy an unfinished uprising. Occupy Wall street is the story of the improbable becoming possible. Unfettered Wall street greed, corruption and decades of government deregulation culminated in 2008 with the most severe global financial crisis since the Great Depression, it would take another three years for the left to cultivate a mass response. In the fall of 2011, thousands of people answered the call to protest. They raged against a rigged system that had utterly failed tens of millions of Americans and tried to create their own anti capitalist village in a small Manhattan park. The movement quickly spread across the country, inspiring hundreds of satellite occupations and a new generation of activists. Occupy An Unfinished Uprising is told through the voices of activists who camped out in Zuccotti park for almost two months, bringing listeners inside the drama of a transcendent and chaotic movement that grew rapidly and then violently flamed out. Just as quickly. Occupy permanently changed the national conversation about capitalism, popularized the language of the 99%, and inspired a generation of activists still trying to finish what the movement started. As we approach Occupy's 15th anniversary this September, this series offers a reminder about the power and limitations of collective action. To listen, search for future hindsight wherever you get your podcasts, A couple more things so at the FIFA World cup finals, the Trump was there. He was in this box and one of the clips showed him talking with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. They apparently discussed the wildfires in Canada, where almost 2 million acres have burned in Ontario, and as a result, smoke has spread across the country and into parts of the US In New York in particular bore the brunt of it last week in the Midwest. And the Great Lakes have also been impacted by the smoke. So Trump got asked about what he and Carney specifically talked about. Here's a clip of him explaining what he said to Carney and then a response from Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Let's watch.

[Ben Rhodes]

I told him, I mean, you got to stop these fires from coming in and, you know, poisoning our air.

[Tommy Vietor]

Our air has been poisoned.

[Ben Rhodes]

We can help them, we'll help them,

[Tommy Vietor]

but maybe they should pay us some damages or something or we should do some tariffs.

[Ben Rhodes]

I've never remembered this happening over the

[Tommy Vietor]

last four or five, five years.

[Ben Rhodes]

You saw it starting to take place. I've never remembered it happening before. They're not managing their forest properly.

[Tommy Vietor]

Got to remind President Trump that there's 3.3.9 million acres burning in the United States right now, and if we had resources, we would send them down to our closest friends and allies. So as you heard there, he threatened to tariff Canada because they have wildfires. Then, surprise, surprise, Ben. On Monday, the Trump administration rolled out new 50% tariffs on more than 500 Canadian goods, nearly all of which are actually covered under the USMCA trade agreement that Trump negotiated in the first term. The New York Times says that the tariff targets are about 2% of the entire trading relationship between the US and Canada. The tariffs won't go into effect until August 19th. They are almost certainly an attempt to ratchet up pressure on Canada in advance of USMCA talks. Although so far, the US has only been renegotiating the deal with Mexico while excluding Canada from those conversations. But, Ben, I mean, just like, setting aside the potential economic risk of doubling down this trade war with Canada for a second, can you just imagine if your house was on fire and it was burning for the third time in four years and your neighbor walked over and yelled at you because it was blowing smoke on his house and then threatened to, like, send you a bill to pay for it? I mean, it's just like the most insanely dickish thing I've ever heard about life.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And it's, you know, look, Doug Ford pointed out the fact that we have lots of wildfires. But if you pull the camera back here, the United States, most of the rest of the world, has made an argument for I know, going on 20 years that the United States, as the principal emitter of, you know, fossil fuels, created climate change as much as any other country, and that the United States should be paying kind of reparations, should be paying these countries that are Pacific islands that are losing their coastlines, all these countries that have unbreathable air because it's so hot. And like South Asia, the United States rejects the premise. We had a green climate fund in the Obama years, so we did think we had an obligation to pay to mitigate the effects of climate change. But look, it's not a mystery. I mean, part of what's so fucking frustrating about watching Trump, he's like, well, it's never happened before. Last few years, it's been really hot, and we suddenly have all these wildfires. Well, yeah, that's what every climate scientist has told you. You almost got it was going to happen if we didn't take stronger action, deal with climate change because of your climate policies. On top of many years, obviously, of burning fossil fuels, this problem is getting worse exponentially. Like climate change. We don't talk a lot. It's fucking hot. We've talked about the heat wave in Europe. Like, we had the French guy cooking eggs with no stove. We've got wildfires in Canada. And so for Trump to stand up there and say, oh, my God, it's hot, and there are these wildfires, because if I'm Canadian, Canadians don't have a Clean bill of health either on carbon emissions, but it's a lot less than us. So he'd have a lot more standing if he was actually doing something about the underlying problem, which is climate change.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, instead we're making it exponentially worse.

[Ben Rhodes]

Except, except now we're saying like the solution to this is what Americans should pay higher prices because that's what tariffs are. Right. So you Americans have to pay higher prices to punish the Canadians.

[Tommy Vietor]

Unlike Canadian hockey sticks, random things like liquor, hockey sticks, milk. Also, listeners are probably wondering, I thought the Supreme Court curtailed his power to leverage these tariffs. That is true. They curtailed the IPA authority that he claimed to have had. But this was done under section 338 of the Tariff act of 1930, the so called Smoot Hawley tariffs, which had never been used before. But it gives the President the authority to impose up to a 50% tariff on import to a country. Just sort of like as a king. There's no process, there's no USTR investigation, there's no cap on the rate, there's no limit for the duration. It's just like something he can do. So now he's terrorizing Canada. Ben, over in the UK, our friends have their seventh Prime Minister in about 10 years. So welcome to the party. Prime Minister Andy Burnham. We have extensively covered, you know, former Prime Minister Keir Starmer's political demise. We've covered Burnham's ascension from mayor of Greater Manchester to the Labour Party leader. So we're not going to do that again here. But let's talk about what Burnham has done in the first couple days. So he gave his first speech as Prime Minister. He basically met with the King, drove over, kind of greeted the staff and then gave a quick speech. He said he wanted his government to be a circuit breaker for Britain. He promised a new political and economic model, the devolution of power out of London back to other parts of the country, particularly the north of the country. And he promised to lay out a 10 year plan for the country, although we haven't seen that yet. In his first cabinet meeting, he talked about cutting taxes on electricity bills. He talked about getting ending rough sleeping, which is homelessness in the uk. He did three foreign leader calls. He called Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine and Ursula von der Leyen. He named a bunch of folks to his cabinet. So some names, folks probably know that the Chancellor of the Exchequer role went to John Healy. He was the guy who surprised people last month when he resigned as Keir Starmer's Defense Secretary because the budget for the defense investment plan was well short of what he thought it needed. It did make me wonder, Ben, whether Healy kind of was promised another larger increase in defense spending or if that was just kind of a fight from a bygone era. But I guess we'll find out. Ed Miliband, the former Labour Party leader, is going to be Foreign minister. Shabana Mahmoud is going to keep her job as home Secretary. She's the only kind of major her position to stay the same. She's seen as like tough on immigration. West Streeting, who made a lot of noise about running for labor leader and then prominently resigned from his job as health secretary, is going to be Defense Secretary. He is more kind of the conservative in Labor. And then Angela Rayner is back in the cabinet after resigning last year for a very kind of dull scandal about unpaid taxes. On top of that, though, like after those officials, he basically purged the entire Starmer government, including some kind of big names like Rachel Reeves, some familiar names to this show, like David Lammy, who is the deputy leader. He got rid of some talented people, some people that were seen as great managers and just like kind of technocrats. It just seems like he basically wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over. Alistair Campbell, who is Tony Blair's right hand man for a decade now. It's a great podcast. The rest is politics pointed out that if you look at the kind of the top three jobs, John Healy, now Chancellor DX Checker, was kind of the tip of the political spear. And when he resigned as Defense secretary, a lot of analysts thought like maybe that was a cut that didn't kill Starmer in the moment, but he was going to bleed out from eventually. Then you had Miliband was apparently the first person to tell Starmer to resign to his face. And Shabana macmud did the same right after and they got the top job. So it does seem like Burnham's pretty ruthless and rewarding people that help take down Starmer. But what do you make of the new the cabinet slots so far and kind of what you've heard him say and do.

[Ben Rhodes]

So in addition to just like, yeah, we're cleaning the slate, it's my show, I'm getting rid of the Starmer people. The kind of ruthless ambition that has been on display from Andy Burnham, which is sometimes you kind of want someone who's an alpha, like ambition is part of politics. The problem is what you see is you see a lot of politics and very little vision. So it's kind of like, well, Ed Miliband, he's the left wing guy. Originally, Ed Miliband wanted to be chancellor of the ex sector. That's like the guy running the finances. But he was seen as too far left. So it's like, well, we'll give Miliband the Foreign Office. That's kind of like a nice perk. And John Healy, he's kind of like safe pair of hands. Maybe the markets will feel okay about that guy. And then we'll keep our hardline immigration person at home office. And it doesn't feel like there's a vision behind this cabinet. It feels like it's managing labor politics. And we don't want to be too far left, but we got to give the left something. And that's a little dispiriting because there are these huge problems in Britain. Again, what is this all about? What does any Britain want to do? He seems to be a better politician than Keir Starmer. Both. Like I said, he really went after it. But also he's a better communicator. Sure, he may get some points for wanting to devolve power to the north of England. That's kind of, if you're an American, that's kind of like saying we need to focus more on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Fine, but what does it mean in policy? He can set some offices up there. He's going to spend some more time up there. He'll give better speeches. He spoke in front of number 10 without a podium. But I still feel like we don't know what Andy Burnham wants to do. And the reason why should this matter to us beyond just that we care about our friends there, it's also because, like, if they don't get this right, like Nigel Farage's party, fascists running the uk just like we do here in the United States. And that would be bad for everybody. So we have a stake in these guys doing well enough that Farage can't get in there. We're going to need more detail and more vision. I want to obviously give him a chance, but the early returns are. It seems like he's doing a lot more politics than anything else. The only thing I say, Tommy, is like, to your point about this, the normal photo ops, you meet the king and then you kind of go in number 10 and you meet the household staff. Like, these people have had seven.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's crazy.

[Ben Rhodes]

You know, couple couples, you know, come in and live there. Like, it used to probably be a huge event every five years. Now it's like, here we Go like

[Tommy Vietor]

Tony Blair was there for a decade. I know, it's crazy. It is crazy. Do you see that Burnham said he was going to open like a number 10 office in the north in Manchester. In Manchester, yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just seems like a nice press release. But like, what does that mean in practice? Are you going to have a separate staff?

[Ben Rhodes]

It's like an American president saying we're gonna have a, you know, a Wisconsin, you know, White House.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, it's so political. It's like we have a political problem in Northern England. I'm from there. You know, Annie Burnham's nickname is the King of the North. Like, great, fine. That makes people feel like, you know, more connected to the government in Manchester or Northern England. Okay, but like, what are the policies that are gonna follow from that? We still don't really know.

[Tommy Vietor]

We'll find out. I agree that I'm very worried about the right wing Nigel Farage, but let's just have some fun with them for the time being. So first of all, shout out to Liz Truss, who just pulled off the first cpac Great Britain. For those lucky enough not to know what CPAC is, it's a huge right wing kind of annual political conference. It started out in the US as this place where the fringe crazies gathered every single year. And now it just evolved over time to be basically the MAGA base of the party. Even though CPAC star has faded a lot recently because the guy who runs it is a weird creep. But like any good cancer, CPAC has metastasized and spread and is now infecting, you know, political systems all over the world. Because there's like a CPAC, Hungary, CPAC, UK CPAC, etc. So that brings us back to the. The CPAC conference. Great. In Great Britain. Check out this video, Ben, that was taken by a journalist named Latika Mbork. Just to get a sense of the absolutely electric vibe at this event. Good morning everybody and welcome to the third and final day of CPAC Great Britain.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's fantastic to have you all here this morning.

[Tommy Vietor]

We have an action packed morning. Boy.

[Ben Rhodes]

We had more seats at the 8:15 time slot at the Aspen Security Forum.

[Tommy Vietor]

We had more seats at the 815 time slot for the Aspen Security Forum. That started at nine. Yeah, we, we actually did sanction the sanction event. The New York Times reported that day three of the conference had about a hundred people total in the audience. Nigel Farage was the headliner. I think he had a much bigger crowd, although much bigger. It's like 300 to 400. Ron DeSantis was supposed to speak but had to cancel due to, I think, bad weather, canceling his flight. So it could have been worse for those 11 people in that audience. The British conservative magazine the Spectator called the event, quote, empty, comma, miserable and downright weird. An author named William Atkinson, a man who wants a right wing government, also said, quote, being cursed with vision, hearing insanity meant enduring an event that made Truss's premiership look like a model of tact and foresight. He also called it Yankee brain slop, barely repackaged for UK Audio, stomach churning to watch. Tickets for the event ranged from £100 to £10,000 for the full VIP treatment. Ben, do you think we might get invited to speak at that one next year?

[Ben Rhodes]

Do you think we're getting invited to speak at Aspen? I don't know. But like, maybe. Yeah, we'll see. Maybe if we don't talk about it anymore. I think that it's so interesting because, like, the idea that just because something works in the United States, it's going to, like, work everywhere. I mean, it worked in Hungary because Orban put like a ton of resources behind it. This is the problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

Liz Truss cannot front your fucking conference.

[Ben Rhodes]

What are you guys doing exactly?

[Tommy Vietor]

How, how, like get, get the cabbage or the lettuce or whatever it is.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, but this is the, the, you know, we, we used to monitor her podcast. I don't know if that still exists or if Michael, our producer, just, you know, kind of.

[Tommy Vietor]

She's fallen off a bit. Her last episode was two weeks ago and it did have 2,500 views.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, but this is the reality. This, this person seems to have like a bottomless well of her willingness. Trump has a bottomless well of not being shamed. You cannot humiliate Liz Truss. She's still up there being like, this is great. It's so great to see this crowd of a few dozen people. She's really a remarkable figure. I can't think of someone who's been so thoroughly willing to be humiliated over and over again.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, and whenever she comes to the CPAC in the US she gets similar kind of half asleep audiences.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's not like, who's paying for this? Like, it just shows you that they have such deep pockets on the far right that there's someone who'll write a check for, for something like that, you know, like, that's actually the thing that's scary is it, like, even when it doesn't work, like, they, they can still get the funding for it that looked

[Tommy Vietor]

like a conference room that was associated with a casino outside Dallas or something that was just, that was a bleak, bleak looking venue there. Speaking of Nigel Farage, Ben. So when you were out on vacation, Ben, I, I talked with Mehdi Hassan about Farage's farce of a, a by election that he's run in Clacton, a region called Clacton. So what happened was Nigel Farage was caught red handed taking gifts and not declaring them, including a 5 million pound gift from this crypto billionaire that lives in Thailand. I think. £5 million, did I say billion? £5 million, I think that's $6.7 million. Took it from this crypto billionaire who lives in Thailand. The story for why was all over the place. It was for security, then it was a gift, then it was like a, you know, payment for campaigning. Like none of it makes sense. It's just brazen corruption. And the good thing about that story is it woke up the fucking British press finally and they're starting to dig into this guy. So that also led Parliament to start investigating Farage. So it sounds like the strategy here is to kind of avoid and end these investigations. Farage resigned from his seat in Parliament. He triggered this by election which happens on August 13 that he is now running in. He claims that the election results in this new super right wing area, by the way, that he should win hands down, no matter what, was sort of render a verdict on the allegations against him. He said, quote, people of Clacton, be the judges of my actions. Right? But all the other parties, surprisingly the major political parties, they saw this as the farce that it was and they decided to not run candidates in this election, to not lend it any kind of legitimacy. So that means Nigel Farage is running against 33. Absolutely just random people mostly they are like kind of unknowns or weirdos. But there is one shining star in the field. His name is Count Benface. Count Bin Face claims to be a 6,000 year old Intergalactic Space Warrior from Planet Sigma 9. He's a perennial candidate in the UK. He has run for Mayor of London twice. He's run in a bunch of parliamentary elections, including against Boris Johnson. And then most recently he ran against our guy Andy Burnham up in Makerfield. Let's hear from Count Bin Face himself.

[Ben Rhodes]

First question, why would an intergalactic space warrior want to stand to be the MP for Clacton?

[Tommy Vietor]

Why not? It's a good question. Tell me about your manifesto.

[Ben Rhodes]

What can you offer the people of Clacton? Have you ever Been there? No, because I understand from the current

[Tommy Vietor]

incumbent that is part of how you do the job.

[Ben Rhodes]

So I deliberately stayed away.

[Tommy Vietor]

Is that how it works?

[Ben Rhodes]

You've said that you will cut my

[Tommy Vietor]

taxes and raise everyone else's.

[Ben Rhodes]

How much tax can I expect to pay? Yeah, well, let me just clarify that I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else's. Make that absolutely clear.

[Tommy Vietor]

They're not just yours, Meg. It's for everybody. This is a blanket thing. I will cut your taxes and raise everybody else's. Okay, so how much will I pay?

[Ben Rhodes]

A reasonable amount, but just less than everyone else. Okay, and how much much will everyone else.

[Tommy Vietor]

A little bit more than you.

[Ben Rhodes]

What is your appeal going to be to the people of Clacton?

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not Nigel Farage. It's a full manifesto.

[Ben Rhodes]

My national policies.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nationalize Adele. Build at least one affordable house.

[Ben Rhodes]

Tie nurses pay to that of ministers. Rename London Bridge after Phoebe Wallace, Bring back Ceefax.

[Tommy Vietor]

And of course move the hand dryer in the gents toilets at the Crown

[Ben Rhodes]

and Treaty Pub Uxbridge to a more sensible position. Because as you can imagine, that's a national issue.

[Tommy Vietor]

As you can see.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

That was from a bunch of interviews. He did a couple on the BBC.

[Tommy Vietor]

There was an LBC interview, there was a couple more. Count Ben Fay is for those who are listening and not watching. He's basically dude in a Star wars outfit with a trash can on his head. Under the trash can is a man named John Harvey. He's a comedy writer. He's been doing variations on this character since 2017. He's currently not doing that great in the polls again, it's a very right wing district. It's a very reformed district. Currently Count Ben face is at 5% odds on Kelshi. But there is always hope. Ben, I want you to know I reached out to him to see if we could book him on the show. He's not DMed me back yet. But I'm really hoping we can get a US exclusive with Count Ben Face.

[Ben Rhodes]

He may be the hero we need at this difficult trying time. There's something kind of like Monty Python esque about that that I appreciate.

[Tommy Vietor]

Absolutely hilarious humor that yeah, he has great comedic timing.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Like

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not Nigel Farage. Pause, pause. It's also like, I don't know, I just. If any country is going to elect account bin Face over just a clown like Nigel Farage, it is is the uk. I don't know what we need to do. I hope we have like one listener up in Clacton. Maybe tell your friends, vote Count Benface. Like everybody turn out like the, the farce is the point. You know, Nigel Farage is a joke. He's making the joke of your politics, your system, your campaign finance system, your laws. And vote for Count Bin Face to send him a message.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, and, and to be entertained for the coming years. You know, imagine Count Ben Face at Prime Minister's question time.

[Tommy Vietor]

It would be incredible. Do you think he. Would he be allowed to wear the whole bit, you think?

[Ben Rhodes]

I don't know. It's a good question. I don't know. It might be discriminatory to not allow him to have his Bin face.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's a really good question. I'll ask some people in follow up for next week. Okay, that's it for Ben and my portion of the show. But please stick around for my interview with Alexei Sorokin from the Kyiv Independent. Again, we talk about the security situation in Ukraine, this huge protest movement resulting from Zelensky firing his defense minister. We talk about missile defense capabilities, the kind of offensive strategy of the Ukrainian side. So really interesting conversation. So check it out. Stick around for that. This podcast is brought to you by wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates rates. With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond. Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio. The wise travel card gives you the mid market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig. Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24. 7 access to live support, your international transfers with WISE are quick, transparent and safe. Safe Plus WISE runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people already trust WISE to manage their money internationally. Be smart, Get Wise. I've used WISE when I've traveled abroad. It is super easy. You can just pay for stuff. You can get the right exchange rate, the best exchange rate every time. It's just a seamless experience. Way easier than going to, you know, a cash exchange place or you know, dealing with ATMs. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com Terms and conditions apply. My guest today is the deputy Chief editor for the Kyiv Independent, Oleksiy Sorokin. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me thank you for joining. So I just want to start with some reports about the security situation in Ukraine at the moment. I saw a bunch of reports over the course of the week that last weekend was one of the largest ballistic missile and drone attacks on Ukraine since the start of the war. Is that accurate? And can you talk about the impact of what that does to your day to day life if you're living in Kyiv or anywhere in the country?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Well, I would go as far to say that the last month, month and a half was probably the deadliest and the harshest in Kyiv. Ukraine is currently lacking Patriot air defense missiles and Russians know that. So what's happening now is that they're using, using more and more ballistic missiles that are hard to shoot down to target different sites across the city. Over the past month, over 60 people were killed in Kyiv, 60 civilians by Russian missiles. Obviously this has a tremendous impact on your day to day life. People have to basically they don't sleep, they have to go to shelter. They have to understand that because ballistics are also really fast. Right. Air raid alert is not timely enough. Right. So people don't have time to prepare themselves for, for an attack. So you can be in the kitchen cooking something or you can be in bed and then you hear ballistic missile hit something near your house. Right. So that's the everyday life in Ukraine right now. And obviously it's, it's tremendously affecting people's morale but also their just well being.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I saw, and this was on Twitter, so correct me if I'm wrong, that the Russians attacked a metro station where people are known to shelter recently. Is that accurate?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Yeah. So there's one of the metro stations. Well, basically metro stations are the best bomb shelters in Kyiv. Obviously they're deep underground and a lot of people sleep in the metro when they know there's going to be an attack. And one of those metro stations was hit, did it's actually regularly hit by the Russians because it's in a neighborhood that's being tremendously affected by Russian attacks. And yeah, it's dangerous even in a bomb shelter right now.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, you mentioned Ukraine desperately needs more missile defense infrastructure like U.S. patriot missiles. the same time, I know that Ukraine has been incredibly innovative when it comes to developing missile defense drones to take out Russian drones. So I saw President Trump recently agreed to allow Ukraine to, to have a license to domestically manufacture Patriot missile interceptors. It will probably take years for that to lead to, you know, weapons on the battlefield. How significant do you think that licensing decision was in your Mind, do we know that it's actually happened yet versus just Trump kind of saying stuff? And more broadly, I mean, how do you think Ukraine is managing and evolving to deal with the threat of these missile and drone attacks?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Well, there's multiple questions. I'll start from President Trump. Well, President, if he doesn't change his mind in the near future, then it's a really good decision. Right. Because obviously there's a bottleneck in production. A lot of countries are now awaiting Patriot missiles. Lockheed Martin is not producing enough. And if Ukraine is able to produce those Patriot missiles, obviously it will take time, it will take half a year, a year maybe to begin producing. But if that happens, then Ukraine is not going to be dependent on the United States. Right. And this will be a tremendous boost for Ukraine's air defense. And adding to that is that unfortunately, unfortunately the Patriot missiles are the best in the world. Right. So no other country has anything like that. So Ukraine can innovate drones, Ukraine can produce missiles, Ukraine can do a lot. Right. But unfortunately air defense is the most sophisticated weapon open. And if we're talking about Ukraine, it currently doesn't have air defense systems. So it has interceptor drones which can affect incoming drones, but it doesn't have systems to combat cruise or ballistic missiles. While Europeans, for example, the SAMP T Iris missile systems, they are good in battling cruise missiles, but in terms of ballistics, the only, only system that is known to down those kind of missiles is the Patriot system. And unfortunately that's something that Ukraine currently doesn't have.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, at the same time Ukraine has been going on offense, there has been this military campaign to target and isolate Crimea. I know there's been strikes in Crimea itself. There have been strikes on ships in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Can you kind of talk about how that campaign has evolved in the last couple weeks and what the goal is?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Well, I would not call it probably offense because the situation currently is a bit different in the sense that on the battlefield, Russians are still advancing. So in the eastern part of the country, Russians are still using infantry troops to just continue to attack Ukraine to gain more land, while Ukraine is waging an asymmetrical warfare, basically using drones to target Russian logistics and Russian oil refineries and so on. So there's two ongoing campaigns. Campaigns. One is the long range or deep strikes, basically using long range drones. Sometimes it's basically a plane with explosives to attack oil refineries deep inside Russia. Those planes can go 10001200 kilometers. And basically the main goal here is to inflict as much damage on the Russian economy as possible so that it's too expensive to wage the war against Ukraine because obviously Russia is still an oil and energy export country. So that's the first campaign. The second one is middlesrike campaign and here the Hornet drones are making a difference. Basically these are the drones that target Russian troops and logistical centers in between 100 and 250, 300 kilometers. So basically the goal here is to force the occupied parts of Ukraine to be cut off from Russia and for the Russians to not be able to provide troops, logistics and oil and so on to those areas, basically forcing the Russians to back down. And I would say that this started somewhere in mid May and it had a tremendous impact on morale. And Ukrainians feel that this is something that can make the victory or a favorable outcome of this war possible.

[Tommy Vietor]

I noticed recently there was a strike by Ukraine on the Russian equivalent of Amazon.com I saw. Military officials said it was because Russian soldiers were buying basically drone component parts from this site. Therefore they believed it was a legitimate military target. I'm wondering if you believe that explanation or if this was part of maybe a strategy of bringing the war home to people in Russia and bombing a website or a shopping resource they use often and spreading fear that way, disrupting their lives.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Well, I think disrupting Russians lives is a positive kind of outcome, but it's not the main one. Right. It's kind of a bonus I would say. We actually went to. So the, the company is called Wildberries, which is an interesting name. And we went on the website and we actually Google like to buy a drone or to buy like components for like military stuff and you can just go on the website and I welcome you to just go and search this website and yeah, you can buy military hardware, you can buy military equipment, dual use goods and basically it's used for the military as well. Right. It's a complicated question, right? Because obviously it's hard to definitively say is it a legit target if it sells both clothes and drones, but that's what was happening. And I would say that Ukraine deliberately hit those two factories, well, storage facilities as kind of a warning for the Russian kind of civilian and the Russian kind of non military sector to be careful with helping the military because basically Ukraine says okay look, if you sell drones and grenades and help the military, we're going to go after you and so don't do it. And I think that this warning is something that Ukraine is trying to bring to the Russians.

[Tommy Vietor]

Got it. Did you pick up anything on the website while you're there. Do you have a quadcopter or anything now?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

I think the, the shipping is expensive. It's a problem. Yeah, understood.

[Tommy Vietor]

I want to ask you about this political crisis that's, you know, been engulfing President Zelensky over the last couple days. So for listeners, last week, as Zelensky fired his Defense minister, Mikolo Fedorov. Fedorov has been clashing with Ukraine's top general, Alexander Syrsky. But then thousands of Ukrainians took to the street to protest the decision and demand that Fedorov being reinstated. Can you explain this clash and why? I see a lot of analysts saying that this is not just about two individuals. This is about kind of generational disagreements over tactics and technology and maybe even political threats to Zelenskyy.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Do you want a short explanation or a long explanation?

[Tommy Vietor]

I want whatever you think is the best explanation.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Okay, that's hard. Well, basically the experts are correct. So every July President Zelensky has this one thing of just causing a political, political crisis of his own making. Last July it was the same thing. I don't know what's with him in July, but so yeah, so in January, I think Mihaly Fodorov was appointed as Defense Minister and he brought this basically new approach, right? He's kind of the drone guy. He digitalized a lot of civilian infrastructure, but also the military. So he is seen as a modern, progressive young official who's bringing change. Right. Obviously he wasn't successful in doing everything right. But for example, he was the one who helped spearhead the Middle Strike campaign. He was the one who actually had a plan. So if in short, it's a young progressive guy with a plan and obviously that's something that's looked upon favorably by the population, which is tired, the population is gassed. There's a lot of problems with how Ukraine is doing this war for obvious reasons. Right. And then you have the military command, which is known for top down kind of approach micromanagement. Some people say that it's Soviet style. I would not go as far as saying that. But obviously there are many problems, right? For example, one of the main problems is that the military command and Mr. Syrsky is known to like infantry attacks even now. Right. They have, for example, there's this unit called Skela which is now blown out of proportion. All the mobilized people now go. Not all of them, but like many of them are drafted specifically into this unit. And people say that it's not effective. Right. So there's two visions of how Ukraine can continue this war. Right. The saying on the street goes that a small Soviet army can't defeat a big Soviet army. Right. And that's why Ukraine has to be asymmetrical. Ukraine has to innovate, Ukraine has to change. And unfortunately, President Zelensky took a pretty not wise decision and he decided to change the defense Minister. There's multiple explanations why he did it, because this kind of the old command had a conflict with the defense minister. And Mr. Fedorov also wanted to change defense procurement, how it's run and so on. So he ousted the defense minister. And apparently the president's office didn't expect people to rise up, up people to take the streets. And so the similar situation that happened last July when he didn't expect people to start protesting happened this July. And the problem right now is I'm not sure when this is going to air. Okay. So based on like right now, the situation is as follows, right? Zelensky, he is inclined to change Syrsky, to change the military leadership to kind of appease the protesters and hopefully for him, the protests are ended. Right. What he's not willing to do is he's not willing to reappoint Mr. Fyodorov as defense Minister because basically ego problem, Right. If you made a mistake, take the wisest thing to do is come out and say, sorry, I made a mistake. But if you're a president, then probably you're not going to do that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, I get, we get that over here in America. Don't.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

You don't have to explain that part. I'm not going to explain that. Yeah. So he proposed, according to our sources, Mr. Fedorov was proposed different posts in government. He was proposed being an advisor to the president, deputy prime minister, like basically, basically anything possible. But not the defense ministry, which Mr. Fedorov says that again, according to our sources, doesn't make sense because he started some reforms in the Defense Ministry and he only wants that post back. And so here there is a stalemate. And obviously the next protest is scheduled for Friday. And obviously in this window of two, three days, these we'll see if either side budgets July mess.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I don't get it. I don't know why I do it. But before I get to my last question for you, you are obviously doing amazing work reporting on all these issues covering the war. You're doing it under the threat of bombardment from the Russians. How can international listeners support you, support what you guys are doing at the Independent. Is it Subscribing is it sharing clips? What's the best way?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Well, basically we're reader funded, right? We currently have 30, 34,000 paying members. The membership starts from $5 a month. We strongly recommend supporting independent journalism in Ukraine. We rely on our readers for support. So if you have the means, if you have the desire to support independent journalism, we would be really grateful for your support.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, it's worth the money. You guys are doing amazing work. Last question for you.

[Ben Rhodes]

You.

[Tommy Vietor]

Earlier this week, Ukrainian law enforcement released this video of a package bomb exploding outside this Monaco home of someone who's described as a Ukrainian oligarch. The blast nearly kills this man. It severely wounds his girlfriend, wounds her son, I believe. I don't know if it was his son or her son. The suspected bomber is believed to have been contracted out for the hit and later killed by Ukrainian intelligence officers. What the hell is happening here? Can you help me sort of unpack the layers of this story?

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Well, this is the weirdest subplot in Ukraine currently, so obviously there are several versions, right? We don't know what exactly happened. So this man, who, Yermolayev, he's a Ukrainian sketchy businessman from the early 2000s who left the country, who had problems with the law here, who, who is basically a citizen of Cyprus now, and he's in a bunch of shady stuff, right? What happened is he was sanctioned by Ukraine, so there's definitely. He has a really bad reputation. The problem here is that because he's involved in so many shady stuff, including business in the occupied territories, which he denies, and also some illegal call centers and so on, it's hard to establish right now what's the main reason for somebody to blow him up in Monaco. Obviously it's absolutely wild story that the assassin was later killed in Ukraine, a middle aged woman who apparently was just paid to plant something and she's obviously not the main culprit here. So currently there's two people in prison in Ukraine. Actually one of them was a member of Ukraine security services. And the official kind of version right now is that it's kind of a business conflict and those people were paid to basically organize an assassination. We don't have more details right now. We obviously are covering this, but there's a whole problem, I would say, in multiple countries that are at war, right, where there's part of the society, right, is working in a gray zone and there's some kind of shady shady businesses taking place. And obviously that's something that is worth investigating both by law enforcement by, but by journalists as well.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, Crazy, crazy story. Well, that's a great reason to support the Kyiv Independent become a subscriber. And Alexi, thank you so much for joining the show. I really appreciate it.

[Oleksiy Sorokin]

Thank you very much.

[Tommy Vietor]

Thanks again to Lexi Sirochi for joining the show. And we'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Kanter, Kenny Moffett, David Toles, and Ryan Young. Her staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.