Tracking Trump's Global Grift

Summary

Pod Save the World: "Tracking Trump's Global Grift" Release Date: May 28, 2025

In this episode of Pod Save the World, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes delve into the intricate web of international corruption associated with the Trump administration. The discussion spans a range of topics, from Trump's foreign business ventures and crypto-related scandals to significant policy shifts within national security structures and ongoing conflicts affecting global stability.

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1. Corruption in the Trump Administration

Tommy Vietor opens the discussion by highlighting the pervasive corruption intertwining Trump's personal business interests with his presidential policies. A key focus is on Trump's international real estate projects, notably the $1.5 billion golf development in Vietnam.

"These foreign officials do not see any distinction between Trump's business interests and US interests. Nor should they."
— Ben Rhodes [07:53]

Key Points:

• Vietnam Golf Project: Eric Trump's venture in Vietnam expedited by bypassing standard legal procedures, aiming to bolster US-Vietnam relations while significantly benefiting the Trump Organization.
• Global Footprint of Trump Enterprises: Projects include a $500 million hotel in Oman, multiple Trump Towers in Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dubai, a $3 billion project in Qatar, and extensive investments in India and Serbia. These endeavors often displace local communities and prioritize Trump's financial gain over genuine diplomatic or economic benefits for the US.
• Crypto Bribe Dinner: In a scandalous event, Trump hosted a dinner for top buyers of his Meme Coin, Trump Coin, raising $148 million. Most major holders were foreign nationals, exacerbating the perception of Trump leveraging his presidency for personal enrichment.

"The corruption itself is the entire point of the enterprise. It's actually the foundation of the entire presidency."
— Ben Rhodes [08:21]

Insights:

• The intertwining of Trump's business interests with his presidential policies represents a fundamental corruption that threatens national interests.
• Foreign investments are not contributing to broad-based American prosperity but are instead funneling wealth into the Trump Organization.
• The Trump administration's support for unregulated crypto ventures undermines financial stability and the US dollar.

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2. Restructuring of the National Security Council (NSC)

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes express deep concerns over the Trump administration's decision to halve the size of the NSC from approximately 350 to 175 members, transferring many of its responsibilities to other agencies like the State Department and Department of Defense.

"They're setting up all foreign policy to be done by presidential fiat, which maybe is inevitable with Trump, but like, I don't know, it just seems destined to end badly."
— Tommy Vietor [25:27]

Key Points:

• Elimination of Structured Processes: The traditional NSC process involved coordinated policy development and interagency collaboration, which is now being dismantled.
• Risk of Presidential Overreach: Without a robust NSC, foreign policy decisions are increasingly subject to unilateral presidential control, bypassing critical checks and balances.
• Impact on Expertise and Policy Quality: The reduction undermines the ability to engage in thorough debate and informed decision-making, increasing the likelihood of strategic blunders reminiscent of historical conflicts like Vietnam.

"The only thing that matters is that the administration is destroying the State Department too."
— Ben Rhodes [27:32]

Insights:

• The dismantling of the NSC not only centralizes power but also diminishes the role of expert analysis in shaping foreign policy.
• This restructuring hampers the US’s ability to engage effectively and thoughtfully on the international stage, potentially leading to more reckless and less informed decisions.

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3. Murder of Israeli Embassy Employees in Washington, D.C.

The episode covers the tragic shooting of two Israeli embassy employees, Jerome Lisinsky and Sarah Milgram, by Elias Rodriguez, who claimed to act for Palestine and Gaza.

"This is evil. It's unjustifiable. ... Not one life is going to be saved because this idiot decided to shoot people in Washington, D.C."
— Tommy Vietor [36:56]

Key Points:

• The Incident: Rodriguez targeted and killed the couple outside the Capitol Jewish Museum, citing political motivations linked to the Gaza conflict.
• Implications for Peace Efforts: Such acts of violence undermine efforts to resolve conflicts and perpetuate cycles of retaliation and hatred.
• Broader Impact on Societal Violence: The episode emphasizes the dangers of vigilante justice and the need to condemn all forms of violence regardless of the underlying causes.

"Violence tragically tends to beget violence. And none of this is leading anywhere good."
— Ben Rhodes [40:14]

Insights:

• The murder highlights the severe consequences of unresolved political tensions and the extremities to which individuals might go to express their grievances.
• It underscores the importance of addressing root causes in conflicts to prevent such tragic outcomes.

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4. Israeli Humanitarian Aid Plan in Gaza

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes critique Israel’s new plan to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which involves armed American contractors securing aid distribution hubs.

"This plan de facto puts the Israeli government in charge of deciding who gets aid and who does not."
— Tommy Vietor [42:20]

Key Points:

• Structure and Operation: The GHF, established in February, aims to replace UN agencies by using American contractors, raising significant trust and logistical issues.
• Implementation Challenges: Current hubs are located in southern Gaza, distant from the main population centers, making access difficult for many civilians.
• Leadership and Funding Concerns: The resignation of Jake Wood, executive director of GHF, and unclear funding sources (including a $100 million anonymous donation) cast doubt on the organization’s legitimacy and intentions.

"This is a plan to kill more Palestinians, not to save Palestinians."
— Ben Rhodes [45:29]

Insights:

• The GHF’s approach appears counterproductive, potentially exacerbating humanitarian crises rather than alleviating them.
• The privatization and militarization of aid distribution undermine trust and efficiency, risking further suffering for the civilian population in Gaza.

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5. Putin Undermining Trump's Peace Efforts in Ukraine

The hosts discuss Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggressive actions in Ukraine and how they thwart Trump's attempts at peace.

"He's completely a mockery of Trump's peace efforts in Ukraine."
— Tommy Vietor

Key Points:

• Ongoing Conflict: Putin continues large-scale military operations in Ukraine, including unprecedented drone and missile attacks.
• Trump’s Response: Trump's sporadic and often incoherent statements towards Putin demonstrate his administration's struggle to effectively address Russian aggression.
• Impact on Peace Efforts: Putin's relentless tactics not only destabilize Ukraine but also diminish the credibility of any peace initiatives proposed by Trump.

"Putin is intentionally humiliating Trump to both get more land in Ukraine and to make Trump look like a fool."
— Ben Rhodes [56:37]

Insights:

• The confrontation between Trump and Putin reflects broader geopolitical tensions and the challenges in negotiating peace amidst ongoing hostilities.
• Trump's inability to present a unified and strategic approach hampers the US's role in facilitating meaningful resolutions.

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6. North Korea's Naval Disaster

A significant incident involving North Korea's navy, where a 5,000-ton destroyer capsized during its christening ceremony, leading to internal repercussions.

"Imagine watching this thing tip over and just collapse in sync and knowing, like, how fucked you are."
— Tommy Vietor [58:10]

Key Points:

• The Incident: The destroyer capsized due to alleged negligence, resulting in the detention of three officials.
• Kim Jong Un’s Reaction: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un publicly condemned the failure, highlighting the regime's emphasis on military prestige.
• Implications: This disaster exposes the fragility and potential incompetence within North Korea's military apparatus, raising concerns about future stability and operational capabilities.

"Things are happening on a daily basis that are rearranging the global economy away from the United States."
— Ben Rhodes [14:06]

Insights:

• The incident underscores the unpredictable nature of North Korean leadership and the potential for internal instability to impact regional security.
• It signals possible vulnerabilities within North Korea’s military infrastructure, which could have broader implications for international relations.

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7. Japan's Rice Crisis

Japan is grappling with a significant increase in rice prices, leading to political fallout and the resignation of the Farm Minister.

"This is insane."
— Tommy Vietor [60:43]

Key Points:

• Price Surge: Rice prices have doubled due to panic buying, substitution from wheat due to global shortages, and increased demand from a booming tourism sector.
• Political Consequences: A joke made by Farm Minister Taku Ito about receiving rice as gifts led to widespread outrage and his subsequent resignation.
• Underlying Issues: The crisis highlights the challenges of balancing agricultural policies with market demands and the cultural significance of rice in Japan.

"It's a lot better than having... Mike Johnson and a rules committee drafting a big, beautiful bill behind closed doors."
— Ben Rhodes [66:45]

Insights:

• The rice crisis illustrates the delicate interplay between economic policies and political accountability in Japan.
• It emphasizes the need for responsive and culturally sensitive governance to manage food security and market stability effectively.

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8. Interview with Congressman Jim Himes

In an exclusive interview, Congressman Jim Himes, ranking member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, discusses critical issues ranging from the Pentagon leak investigation to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

a. Pentagon Leak Investigation and Alleged Illegal NSA Wiretaps

"The NSA is not allowed to surveil people inside the United States, full stop."
— Jim Himes [70:29]

Key Points:

• Allegations: Reports suggest that a Pentagon leak investigation may have been based on illegal NSA wiretaps without proper warrants.
• Congressman's Response: Himes dismisses the claims as unfounded, emphasizing the legal strictures that prevent such surveillance.
• Implications for Intelligence Oversight: The incident underscores the importance of maintaining integrity and non-partisanship within intelligence agencies to prevent politicization and abuse of power.

"The intelligence community must report the truth full stop, not try to alter the truth for political reasons."
— Jim Himes [73:01]

b. Tulsi Gabbard and Politicization of Intelligence

"Joe Kent can say all that he wants to say about how much he hates Democrats and stuff, but the phrase that this not be used against the director or the President shows that he is beyond disqualified from a senior role in the intelligence community."
— Jim Himes [81:16]

Key Points:

• Politicization Concerns: Emails revealed that Tulsi Gabbard's chief of staff attempted to influence intelligence reports to favor political interests.
• Historical Context: Himes draws parallels to the Iraq War, where politicization led to disastrous outcomes, emphasizing the necessity of unbiased intelligence.
• Future Implications: The attempt to politicize intelligence could jeopardize national security and erode public trust in government institutions.

"The intelligence community is not about policy. It is about providing... the very best information that we can get so that they make good decisions."
— Jim Himes [79:44]

c. War in Gaza and Terrorism Recruitment

"Violence tragically tends to beget violence. ... it's all the more reason that we should want an end to all violence."
— Ben Rhodes [40:14]

Key Points:

• Impact on Terrorism: The sustained conflict in Gaza serves as a generational event that fuels extremist recruitment and perpetuates cycles of violence.
• Humanitarian Crisis: Israel's blockade and restrictive aid distribution exacerbate civilian suffering, potentially radicalizing more individuals against perceived oppressors.
• Call for Peace: Himes advocates for immediate cessation of violence to prevent further humanitarian disasters and the spread of extremist ideologies.

"It's time for the Prime Minister to say, now we think about how we rebuild this society on a trajectory to someday live at peace with the state of Israel."
— Jim Himes [86:18]

d. Policy on Ukraine and Potential Conflicts with Iran

"If the status quo is maintained... the Russians pick up 100 yards here, 100 yards there. Yes. Will it be a slow and grinding war for many years until the Russian people have finally had it years down the road?"
— Jim Himes [93:58]

Key Points:

• US Support for Ukraine: Continued intelligence and military assistance is crucial to sustaining Ukraine's defense against Russian aggression.
• Risks of Withdrawal: Reducing US involvement could embolden Russia, undermining long-term European stability and American credibility.
• Iran Conflict: Potential for increased tensions with Iran is heightened by Netanyahu’s aggressive stance, risking broader regional instability and nuclear proliferation.

"The Biden administration did not use the full leverage that it has."
— Jim Himes [87:21]

Insights:

• Effective foreign policy requires sustained and strategic support to allies like Ukraine to deter aggression and promote regional stability.
• Politicization of intelligence and inconsistent policy stances undermine the US's ability to lead and maintain international alliances.

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9. Additional Discussions

North Korea and China's Growing Ties

• Military Collaboration: Reports indicate increased collaboration between North Korea and Russia, potentially enhancing North Korea's military capabilities.
• Regional Security Concerns: Enhanced North Korean military prowess threatens allies such as South Korea and Japan, escalating regional tensions.

Japan’s Rice Crisis

• Economic and Political Repercussions: The surge in rice prices has led to significant political turmoil, including the resignation of the Farm Minister following inappropriate remarks.
• Cultural Significance: The crisis highlights the interplay between agricultural policies, market demands, and cultural values in Japan.

Innovative Parliamentary Practices

• New Zealand’s Biscuit Tin: A unique method using a cookie tin to randomly select parliamentary bills for consideration, promoting a more democratic and less partisan legislative process.
• Australian ‘Shoey’ Tradition: A cultural ritual involving drinking out of a shoe to conclude parliamentary speeches, reflecting unique legislative customs.

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10. Conclusion

In this episode, Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes provide a comprehensive analysis of the Trump administration's intertwining of personal business interests with national policies, highlighting the systemic corruption that undermines US national interests. The restructuring of the National Security Council and increasing instances of policy-making by presidential fiat pose significant threats to informed and effective governance. The tragic events in Washington, D.C., and Gaza, alongside the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the precarious situation in North Korea, further illustrate the tumultuous global landscape shaped by current US policies.

The interview with Congressman Jim Himes underscores the critical need for maintaining the integrity of the intelligence community and the dangers of politicizing intelligence reports. The discussions encapsulate the broader implications of leadership decisions on both domestic and international fronts, emphasizing the necessity for transparency, accountability, and strategic foresight in navigating complex global challenges.

Notable Quotes:

• "The corruption itself is the entire point of the enterprise. It's actually the foundation of the entire presidency." — Ben Rhodes [08:21]
• "Violence tragically tends to beget violence. ... it's all the more reason that we should want an end to all violence." — Ben Rhodes [40:14]
• "The intelligence community is not about policy. It is about providing... the very best information that we can get so that they make good decisions." — Jim Himes [79:44]

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This detailed summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions of the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for listeners who may not have tuned in.

Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vitor]

We are talking to Ben. I'm talking to Ben. Just hours before the Knicks and the Pacers.

[Ben Rhodes]

I may have just been looking at Knicks Twitter.

[Tommy Vitor]

I meant to you got game four, the Eastern Conference finals. Depending on how things go, I think this section could sound really fun or it could be as Awkward as the conversation between Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron after she slapped the shit out of him while playing in Vietnam.

[Ben Rhodes]

Way to bring in the world, Oak Content.

[Tommy Vitor]

You following that story?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I'm following that story. I mean, I will tell you. After game one, when the Knicks blew somehow like a 12 point lead in two minutes and like 900 things had to happen for that to happen. I. I actually just lost consciousness.

[Tommy Vitor]

You went dark for a while.

[Ben Rhodes]

I fell asleep on a hotel bed with all the lights on, fully clothed, and I don't even remember falling asleep. It was just like my body couldn't handle what had just happened and just shut down. Emmanuel Macron, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to shut down, but then he realized he had to walk down the stairs of the plane.

[Tommy Vitor]

Could you imagine, you're the head of state, that awful, whatever that was happens, and you turn and look and you realize there is a press corps standing there watching.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, that's the best for people. I haven't watched this. There's this video where Brigitte Macron clearly smacks Emmanuel Macron as he's about to get off this plane in Vietnam. And the funniest thing is when he realizes that the camera's caught it. Cause he ducks out of the. He just ducks out of the way and then he pops back out like.

[Tommy Vitor]

Hey, this is terrible. And I think they tried to lie about it and say it wasn't true. And then they were like, oh, it was a friendly tiff. I don't know, man. Not great.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, a little karma coming back to the colonizer there in Vietnam, you know, I mean, that's kind of what went through my nerdy mind.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that's fair. Also, just, you know, have your arguments before you land, I guess would be a point too. We have a great show for you today. We're going to talk go deep on the international corruption that is driving so much policy behind the Trump administration. We're going to give you a quick recap of Trump's crypto bribe dinner. Sounds like a good time, Ben. We'll talk about a major restructuring of the national security staff and reports that the administration is pausing. Also student visas. Then we'll talk about the horrible murder of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, the bizarre origins of an almost certainly disastrous new plan to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza, the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Putin making a mockery of Trump's peace efforts in Ukraine, why North Korea's navy is having a rough week, Japan's rice crisis and more. And Ben. Then you'll hear my interview with Congressman Jim Himes from Connecticut. He's the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. We talk about Tulsi Gabbard and her firing intelligence who won't change their views for political reasons. We talked about this weird report in the Guardian this morning that a Pentagon leak investigation ordered by Pete Hexaf might be based on an illegal NSA wiretap.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, a little alarming there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, good time to have him on for that. We talked about how the war in Gaza is fueling extremist groups that threaten America and a lot more. It's fun to do just like a tour of the region with someone who's pretty well read into a lot of.

[Ben Rhodes]

Information and no lack of intel. Adjacent stories here.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, no. Right on.

[Ben Rhodes]

A lot going on.

[Tommy Vitor]

All right, Ben. So listeners to this show know that we believe that corruption is kind of the first, second and third most important story of this administration. It's the thing driving it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, we, we've definitely been on that beat.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's in. It's a rich beat. There's a lot of avenues to cover. So the New York Times reported out a bunch of new details about just one piece of the corruption pie that I think was really instructive in terms of helping listeners understand how the grift works and what the impact is on our national interest. So here's the gist. So last week, Eric Trump, he went to Vietnam for a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5 billion golf development project. The plan includes villas, 36 holes of golf. There's theme parks, there's a big, like, commercial zone. The Times meant they reported that they erected a tent for a groundbreaking ceremony that had a golden facade. I thought that was a nice gaudy touch. So according to this report, Vietnam has ignored at least a half dozen legally required steps in the development process to fast track what is usually a two to four year process in just to accommodate Eric Trump's travel schedule. The Times says that Vietnamese officials both publicly and privately say they hope this golf project will be seen as a gesture of goodwill to help them build better ties with the US and with Trump. And Ben, this is one of my favorite details. Last week we talked about Trump flipping out on the president of South Africa about a law that allows the South African government to expropriate land from farmers without compensation. This story says that the Trump company is pushing ahead with this golf project in Vietnam that will displace hundreds of farmers who were told that they at best should expect to get about half the value of their land in compensation. So he's doing exactly what he claims is a problem in South Africa. And this isn't the only project. There's also a skyscraper going on in Vietnam. And so the point is, like, these foreign officials, they do not see any distinction between Trump's business interests and US Interests. Nor should they. Right. I mean, sort of like that's the whole deal. And this is also happening all over the world. Just a couple examples. There's a half a billion dollar hotel project in Oman, a half a billion dollar Trump Tower in Jeddah, another half a billion dollar tower in Riyadh. There is a half a billion dollar Trump Tower in Dubai, a $3 billion golf and villa project in Qatar that was just announced in April. There's nearly 2 billion worth of development happening in India, 1.4 billion. That's the Jared Kushner Hotel in Albania. There is a $500 million hotel project in Serbia. This doesn't even get into, like, all the money the Saudis are pouring into the Trump properties here by hosting golf tournaments. So, Ben, it's a little, like, tedious to go through all of this, but I just thought it's critical for everyone to understand kind of like the mindset of these foreign officials who think their focus right now is on putting money in Trump's pocket. It's not about constructing deals that would normally be viewed as being in the U.S. interest or advancing U.S. policies.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I think what's hard for people, understandably, is that we're accustomed to corruption being something that a politician kind of skims off the top. Right. Like you get a side payment or even in Trump's first term, like, well, you know, they're staying in his hotel rooms. And that kind of pads the bottom line. And I think where this is different is that the corruption itself is the entire point of the enterprise. It's not like an add on.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's actually the foundation of the entire presidency.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's why Eric went to Vietnam.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Because to give you an example of this, if you take this Vietnam piece, Trump puts 46% tariffs on Vietnam. And then he pauses it, and in the pause, they don't agree to buy a certain amount of American products or, I don't know, whatever the thing is that might in some way benefit Americans. They agree to do this. They agree to put billion plus dollars in the Trump Organization. And that's the point. It's using the policy of the United States, in this case tariffs, to extract an enormous amount of money in the context of an individual company like the Trump Organization, and that's how it works. And so no Americans benefit. I mean, what is so outrageous about this is Trump supporters are like, well, he needed to give himself leverage. Right. Trump is finally leveraging our status in the global economy to get a better deal. He's just leveraging things Americans built. Like, the reason that America has a huge economy and leverage is not because of anything Donald Trump did. It's because of what generations of Americans did. And he's just leveraging it to get money, to just get money plotted in the Trump Organization. The second point is these are all kind of autocratic countries. Notice you didn't say the UK Yeah, the UK Or Canada or Botswana. Right. These are rich, autocratic countries where they can do this, where they can basically, like, yeah, you know what? How are we going to deal with Trump? We're just going to throw, like, a billion here, 2 billion here, and just kind of get through this four years with all of our interests taken care of. By the way, it's not a lot of money to them. I mean, it's a lot to Vietnam. But for Qatar, Saudi Arabia, oh, yeah, this is nothing. This is a routing area. Right. And the last thing is that, like, Vietnam is an important country. It's a really important country. It's a big country in Southeast Asia that is like, kind of a swing country between the US And China. And we're just treating it like a piggy bank for the Trump Organization. And so there's something so diminishing about it for the United States that we're now just another thuggish, autocratic country playing by these rules in ways that don't serve our own people. But it is ultimately fundamentally what this presidency is clearly animated by.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, and to a lesser extent, this is happening on behalf of Elon Musk and Starlink. Like, ProPublica had a piece out about how the Trump administration is pushing countries to make deals with Starlink, the Elon Musk satellite Internet company. And that includes putting extreme pressure on very poor countries in Africa like Gambia, where, according to this report by ProPublica, the local telecom infrastructure is like 20% of all tax revenue for the country. And it's a huge source of jobs and infrastructure. So if Starlink puts the local telecom companies out of business, that's a huge problem. But also, even if Starlink is better or cheaper or faster in a good deal for people in the country, if it becomes the only game in town, they all know that Elon can then jack up the price or threaten to pull out or do all the shit he did to, you know, Ukraine in the days of the war. So, sure, they're advancing a US Business, but doing so in a way that's like predatory.

[Ben Rhodes]

And they're advancing. And this is a common thread with Trump, despite what he says about bringing jobs back to the industrial Midwest, that's not happening. First of all, none of these US Businesses are broadly benefiting American people.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

So first of all, you and I think it's grotesque that we treat foreign countries like this and foreign publics and the same Gambia will kill usaid. We'll mess up their economy, but we'll care about starlink. But the thing is, even these deals he's announced. Right. So that big deal we talked about last week, the AI deal in the Gulf, there's not like the OpenAI Starlink. These are not countries that are opening like the assembly line in Michigan.

[Tommy Vitor]

This is going to benefit a small.

[Ben Rhodes]

Group of really rich investors. Yeah. How many people work for starlink? I mean, it's certainly not like GM back in the day. Right. And so that's what's so even further maddening is that even when he can kind of say he's going to bat for some US Company, he tallies up some huge number. Because I also don't believe the investment numbers. The Saudis are saying they're all made up. We're going to invest $500 billion in the U.S. economy. No, they're not. They're going to invest a lot of money in AI in the Gulf. And yes, some of that money is going to be invested in US Companies, but it's going to pad the bottom line of Sam Altman. It's not going to benefit broad based prosperity in this country. And this is where the gap between the division in the Democratic Party between foreign and domestic kind of messaging has got to go away. Because you cannot explain to Trump people, their voters, why they're being screwed by Trump without explaining this stuff to them, that he's basically leveraging the entire power of the United States to enrich himself and a very small number of people at their expense.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Who are his donors? Yeah. And also, yeah, those Golf investment numbers, they're completely made up. Like they're not going to do a trillion dollars worth of investment.

[Ben Rhodes]

They're not.

[Tommy Vitor]

They want to give them the press release and then they'll do whatever they do. Also, interestingly, Ben, I saw the byd, which is a big Chinese electric vehicle company, they're kind of going hard at Elon now. They cut prices by 34%. So they're going to try to just kill Tesla sales in China, the Middle east and Europe. So it seems like maybe you could imagine a scenario where the Chinese are working with them to create some leverage of their own.

[Ben Rhodes]

And you could imagine a scenario where again, this stuff doesn't become manifest like tomorrow. Right. So it's not like, oh, my God, all of a sudden the whole global economy is rearranged away from the United States. But these are the kinds of things that are happening on a daily basis. Right. People are like, buying different cars. People are adjusting their supply chains. You think that Vietnam is going to use the golf course to get Trump off its back, then it's probably going to cut a bunch of trade deals with China.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so Trump gets to look like, strong, like I, you know, I bully. Because they'll come up with some other thing. They'll say that they're going to buy more, you know, rice from the US.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, no, but what they want, what the Trump administration wants is for Vietnam to crack down on Chinese companies that are basically using them as a middleman.

[Ben Rhodes]

They're not going to do.

[Tommy Vitor]

To export Chinese products into the U.S. right, right.

[Ben Rhodes]

The Vietnamese, like, does anybody believe that they're. And by the way, the people in the. This is important and it kind of sets up some of the stuff. We'll talk about the NSC later. The people in the US Government who have to be expert enough to follow the commercial behavior and practices of Vietnam over a period of years to determine if they're a pass through for Chinese goods, they all got dozed.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like, there's no experts in the government to even do the things that they, they use this language to justify what they're doing, but what they're doing is for entirely different purposes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Good luck. Big balls.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah. Big balls is not like you could evaluate the inputs into certain Vietnamese products.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Cotton from Xinjiang, that's like picked with slave labor. Yeah. Good luck. So the other piece, you guys know that Ben and I are obsessed with is the crypto piece. So last week, Trump hosted a dinner for 220 of the biggest buyers of his Meme coin. This was at his golf club in Virginia. The top 25 biggest buyers got to attend a private reception and a guided tour, I believe, of the White House itself. NBC News reported that the attendees spent a combined 148 million to be there. And remember that in addition to Trump's family holding about 80% of the Trump coin supply, they get paid fees every time it's bought or sold, and the estimate is that they've made more than $324 million on meme coin trading fees alone. So the event itself sounded like a weird combination of, like, shitty, ostentatious, and douchey. Like Lamar Odom was there for some reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An attendee told NBC News that he saw 16 people wearing Richard Milei Richard Milli watch. I had to Google what that is. Apparently, these watches cost at least 60 grand and up to several million dollars. So it was just like that kind of guy. The number one holder of Trump coin is a Chinese crypto CEO named Justin sun, who we've talked about. He has openly been buying Trump's crypto offerings to make an SEC investigation of his company go away. The foreign policy piece of this event is Bloomberg estimates that all but six of of the top Trump coin holders are foreign nationals. These are foreigners pouring money into his pocket. So, again, like, it's so. The corruption is so brazen and massive that it feels like we're kind of screaming into the void. It did make me happy, though, to learn that Trump only showed up for 23 minutes, that he didn't talk with anyone, that he didn't take any pictures. One attendee told NBC News that the food sucked and the only drinks offered were water and Trump wine. And this guy apparently was. He told the NBC that he was driven to the event by his dad in the Lamborghini, which is just a.

[Ben Rhodes]

Weird good thing in that that guy was probably hopped up on ketamine. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Or something.

[Ben Rhodes]

I just need water.

[Tommy Vitor]

Also, Ben, since this event, the price of Trump coin has tanked. It went from $16 on Thursday to $12.85. When I wrote that sentence today. Tonight, Tuesday, May 27th, JD Vance is headlining a political fundraiser in Vegas for Trump super pac. Guess how much it cost to attend.

[Ben Rhodes]

For the Super PAC? $10,000.

[Tommy Vitor]

$1,000,000.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm glad this time. I lowballed it, remember, on the executive orders, I highball good about that.

[Tommy Vitor]

Just. I just want you to imagine for a second, you go to a Las Vegas, you spend a million dollars, and your boys are like, what you do? And you're like, I saw J.D. vance fucking speak.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, dog.

[Tommy Vitor]

This is the night before the Bitcoin 2025 conference. Don Junior's there, Eric David Saxwell there. It's just like. It's like this. It's the same core group of people.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, look, this is grotesque. It's the most open form of corruption because they, by design, have deregulated and again, people should know they basically neutered the SEC from investigating any crypto. So there's no government oversight of anything that happens in the crypto space. It's Wild West. They can do whatever they want. These crypto people think their interests over line with Trump's. They don't because they're making a mockery of crypto. They're just kind of showing what utter fucking bullshit these people in the crypto space spent years telling us this is bad, like anti authoritarianism and everything. The ultimate form of authoritarianism, the ability to be this corrupt and pay powerful people to get what you want. And that's all that's happening. So there should be a fucking reckoning. By the way, like if I'm the Democrats, like one of the things I'm doing is I'm keeping score. Absolutely. And look, we'll be lucky enough that we have an election in three years. But I mean this, like instead of being worried about the crypto people dumping some money on you like they did to Sherrod Brown and other Democrat politicians, I think it's gotta be the opposite. It's gotta be like we are going to break these fucking people, going to regulate the shit out of this bullshit financial instrument, the Trump coin. Trump coin's worth 0.00. It's worth nothing. It doesn't exist in the world. Right. So that pisses me off. Then we talked about how this is just further undermining the dollar too. Creating parallel financial systems undermines the currency that most Americans have to use, which is the dollar. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

And you're creating companies that provide bank like services without the regulations that protect you with banks.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah, it's. I mean this. If you think there's not going to be some bubble, I mean this is how you get depressions and stuff.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't like big banks either. But if you think the dude driving his Daddy's Lambo with $1 million watch is going to like take good care of your investments, like you get the wrong idea.

[Ben Rhodes]

Just look at the people walking into that dinner and tell me that you trust those people with anything other than being extras on the next season of White Lotus. Okay.

[Tommy Vitor]

That you see the story about the new D.C. club for like the MAGA losers. It costs 500 grand to get in. I thought you'd love this. David Sachs is like a founding member or investor or something. And this is a quote I think attributed to him in the New Yorker. We wanted to create something new, hipper and Trump aligned. It was described as a Sanctuary where members won't have to encounter, quote, a fake news reporter or anyone else, quote, we don't know and we don't trust. These losers are just building bunkers for themselves that cost half a million dollars.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm going to. I want to speak directly to our audience, Sami, and I want to say this to you. You're all probably listening. This is horrible. I want to assure you that no amount of money, no amount of crypto grift is going to fill the deep and bottomless hole in all of these people's souls. No, like, these are like, Eric Trump is not going to be a happy person who receives the love and intimacy that he's longed for since childhood.

[Tommy Vitor]

That hug.

[Ben Rhodes]

Because the Vietnamese built a tent for him with gold on it. Right. The guy whose dad drives the Lambo, like, is not gonna, like, prove his business chops because he, like, purchased. Like, these people are not. Like, this is not the path. You know, like, not to get all serious. But, like, I honestly, I just think this is just. This is just like, like, people like David Sacks is someone who's so clearly hungers to be taken seriously, and he's just behaving like a High School 17 year old who got to control the seating chart at lunch one day.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And maybe the punishment is them creating a club where they all have to hang out just so we can do a little equal opportunity criticism. I did just want to offer a quick boo and hiss to Senator Cory Booker for voting to confirm Charles Kushner to be the U.S. ambassador to France. Those who don't know Charles Kushner is Jared Kushner's daddy. He went to jail after pleading guilty in 2005 to 18 counts, including tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. He had hired a sex worker to seduce his own brother in law, had their tryst secretly recorded, and then sent the tape to his own sister to try to intimidate a witness. Booker claims he voted for Charles Kushner because of the family's work on criminal justice reform. Seems far more likely it's because they've been longtime friends and donors. But like this. This is not a person who should be representing the United States at any miss Care. If it's like a fake ambassador job where you're not doing high stakes diplomacy, this is embarrassing for the United States.

[Ben Rhodes]

And embarrassing for the Democratic Party and Cory Booker. It's frustrating because on the one end, he can stand up for 29 hours or whatever it was and show that he gets it. On the other, end he does this that makes it seem like he doesn't get it at all. You put a stamp of approval and normalization on any of this stuff or if you look like well I'm just gonna vote this way cuz this guy was a donor and give you some line about how he is a champion of criminal justice reform, then you look no different than the other side.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it hurts your credibility.

[Ben Rhodes]

And again, Cory Booker knows better. He's shown that he knows better so he can do better.

[Tommy Vitor]

Good guy, great senator, terrible vote and not gonna give him a pass on it. Ben Another big story that happened right before Memorial Day weekend was the Trump administration announced a major restructuring of their national security staff. So they're going to cut the size of the NSC from about 350 members to about half of that and then transfer some of the NSC's like authorities to agencies like the State Department or Department of Defense. It doesn't sound like most of these people will get fired. Most people at the NSC are detailed there by other agencies, so they'll likely just return home to the CIA or Department of Defense or wherever they were from. But Ben, far more important and interesting to me is it sounds like they are just kind of wholesale doing away with the NSC process. So the way that used to work is let's say the President wanted a new approach to dealing with North Korea. You would start by having the Senior Director for Asian affairs bring together representatives from all the relevant national security agencies. They work up proposals. When those are ready for primetime, they get sent to the Deputies Committee, they convene, meet on it, do a bunch more work and then the deputies send it up to the Principals Committee. That's the cabinet level grouping of the nsc. And then the President ultimately has a meeting with his entire national security team where they make changes, they greenlight whatever it is, they reject it, whatever. And yes, maybe that can be a little bureaucratic and slow at times, but I would argue that it was a pretty good way to force debate and hard thinking and kind of, I don't know, it's just a good process. Like I actually thought the NSC process should be replicated in other parts of the US government, but apparently it's all gone. And in this quote is from Axios quote, that's the bottom to the top approach that doesn't work, it's going away. A senior White House official said all those things feeding up to the principles are the unnecessary piece. That same official says that that process might have been needed in the past when they were interagency turf wars. But Trump's team all knows each other really well. They love each other. So that's no longer an issue, according to this person, which is very funny since Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, has gotten knifed and pushed out of his job and Pete Hexath can't seem to win a turf war within his own department. But Ben, I mean, what do you think? Like, it just seems like they're setting up all foreign policy to be done by presidential fiat, which maybe is inevitable with Trump, but like, I don't know, it just seems destined to end badly.

[Ben Rhodes]

It is. And again, just to build on what you said, like the. Because the NSC was a little too big, right. I don't think you need 300 plus people there.

[Tommy Vitor]

But for us it was even bigger. It was like 500.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it got too big. But you focus on the right point, the process, right. So the beginning point, before you get to that deputies level, right, you have something called the Interagency Policy Committee, which is usually run by like a senior director at the nsc and that's the person in charge of Europe or Asia or a functional issue like counterterrorism. And they coordinate the different agencies. And people may say, well, why does the NSC have to do it? Because apparently they're moving that to the State Department. Well, actually, because in today's world, most issues have huge cross cutting aspects. Treasury has to be at the table because there's an economic component. The intelligence community is usually at that table. The military has to be at the table. If there's a military equity. There are some countries where the Commerce Department has to be there, technology's involved. And the point is that only the White House can coordinate and facilitate, as you said, this kind of debate and bottom up expertise that informs policy. And they're just doing away with that, I don't think. By the way, they're clearly not trying to empower the State Department. No, because they're in the process of just destroying the State Department too. They're chasing people out of the State Department, they're firing people, they're elevating ideologues in their 20s. So the two things I take away from this are your point, they basically want Trump to decide what he cares and Steve Witkoff and a small number of people. And then the US Government is just this kind of instrument to act on Trump's the announcement he wants to make or the trip he wants to take, and that's it. That is very dangerous because it's also how you make just massive mistakes. I mean, I've been doing some like Vietnam reading again. This is how we get into like Vietnam. Right. Nobody listened to the experts out in the government who are like, hey, this is not actually like a communist movement, it's a nationalist movement in Vietnam. Well, you know, it would have been good to listen to those people. There will be things where they wish that they had like listened to experts cuz it gets them in trouble.

[Tommy Vitor]

Or like pre Iraq war when nobody knew the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. Yeah, might've been good to run that one down.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, you want those people. But the other thing that I take away from it, Tommy, is that they just probably don't give a shit about 90% of the world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Because like a lot of the stuff that really runs through the NSC is actually the kind of, you know, what is our relationship with like Indonesia, like a big important country. We need some people sitting thinking about how we like selling more stuff, making trade agreements, like trying to like get Indonesians to see things our way in Asia. Like the President doesn't get involved in that. But you want someone at the NSC coordinating everybody. They care so little about most of the world that this means I think we're just actually gonna be absent from most of the world too.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And I think they also view this in terms of just power structures and that the nsc, if it was strong, would compete with people over in the West Wing like, you know, Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles and other political hacks. And also they just view every like non personally vetted human being in the building as a risk of leaking, you know, like the Alexander Vindman kind of whistleblowing. They just think that that's what the NSC is.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And I do think that I'm glad you mentioned Steve Miller because I think he's actually a key part of this. I think he is kind of a shadow national security advisor.

[Tommy Vitor]

Remember Trump said he was more powerful than the national security advisor.

[Ben Rhodes]

So he doesn't want to manage a staff of 250 people. He wants like a rump group of loyalists at the nsc. And really you're right, the decisions are Trump, Miller, Witkoff. You know, maybe they'll let Susie Wiles in the room every now and then a handful of other people. And actually instead of a staffing a resource to him, it's either something to be afraid of, as you said, or it's just like a burden. I don't even want to go through the Process. I want to, like, I want to do something tomorrow. I don't want to do it, you know, go through a week.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. One other thing from the Trump world we want to talk about, Ben. So Politico is reporting that the Trump administration has ordered US Embassies to pause scheduling interviews for student visa applications and that they are weighing requiring all students to undergo social media vetting. This seems like it's just an extension of the Trump administration's effort to punish anyone who has been critical of the war in Gaza. So I don't know. I mean, these were early reports. I'm not sure that this is enacted yet. It sounds like this was part of a cable that Rubio sent out on Tuesday. I think this would be enormously damaging to the US if we stopped being a place where all the smartest people in the fucking world want to go to college and potentially move and live and start businesses and create economic value. But also, Ben, just a huge congrats to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and all the tech geniuses who voted for Trump to get us free speech and to get him to prioritize the top performing immigrants for their software engineering roles. I think that's. That's going really great. Congrats to you guys.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, this is another one of these things that's. Even if they don't do the worst version of the rule, like if you are a foreign student thinking about where you want to go to school next year, why would you try coming here?

[Tommy Vitor]

Especially if you're Muslim or you're brown.

[Ben Rhodes]

Or black or you have anything on social media that is critical of Trump or free Palestine or whatever the thing is. And so we won't know. I'm very curious. Calendar year, next academic year, I think we're gonna see this precipitous drop in foreign students, no matter what Trump does, because they've made it look so miserable and dangerous to be here or to get here. The irony of this whole thing is that Trump's whole tantrum about tariffs is about trade deficits. There's almost. I can't think of any industry that is more of a net trade surplus for the United States. In higher education, over a million foreign students come here every year and put a tremendous amount, tens of billions of dollars into the US Economy. That's before you even get into their capabilities then. As you said, these people tend to be some of the best and brightest from their countries coming here to do research here that benefits Americans and American universities and American research institutes and American companies. They're gonna go someplace else. They're gonna go to China, they're gonna go to Gulf, they're gonna go to Europe, they're gonna go to India. Like that is gonna have a long term consequence on the United States at the same time, by the way, that they're getting with the Department of Education. So they're trying to make Americans dumber. So we're not gonna be able to patch the gaps in our own education system with foreign students or illegal immigration. So this thing is not a secondary issue, it's like a headline issue. Because if we cease to be the destination for international students, it's both gonna be a massive economic hit, but it's gonna be a huge long term hit to the United States as a research and innovation hub for the world.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And remember that as part of his effort to court all these kind of like maga curious tech bros, Trump went on the all in podcast in June of 2024 and he told them that we should make it easier for international students who graduate from top US Colleges to become citizens. Derek Thompson resurfaced this quote the other day. Here, here was what Trump said. It's so sad when we lose people from Harvard after they graduate. He said, I think you should automatically get as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country. That is going to end on day one. And so all the, you know, chamath was like, that's fantastic. David Sacks, like, that's great. They assumed they had like, you know, high skill pilled Trump when it comes to immigration and now he is just doing the exact opposite. He is driving the smartest and best performing students away from the United States. Great work.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Which, which will just be, I mean, like, you know, so much of our history. You know, would Einstein come here today? Like he'd be looking, he'd be checking other places. You know, not that he was a student, but the number of people that came here to do work, to study, to research, it's incalculable. The economic benefit that's at the United States. And for Trump, there's such a corrupt short termismerism that this is really important. To contrast with his quote unquote, gold card. Remember he was talking about selling $5 million for a gold card. Well, that's like some oligarch from Russia or some Saudi prince or something that can just make a one time payment of $5 million. I would much rather have the kind of lifelong relationship you develop with an international student who comes here, creates things here. Builds things here. Found sinks here. Look who runs tech companies in this country, right? So many of them are immigrants and this is just massive, massive cell phone.

[Tommy Vitor]

Imagine if Einstein was in your class. Sit next to that guy, you know, Cheat off that homework.

[Ben Rhodes]

Couldn't understand.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, not even for a second. If you wanna fight the monsters behind all these terrible policies. Ben on June 6, John Lovett is teaming up with the Bulwarks, Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell for free. Andre which is a fundraiser at World Pride hosted by Crooked Media and the Bulwark at the Lincoln theater in Washington D.C. they're going to be celebrating Pride and most importantly, raising money for the Immigrant Defenders Law center which is the group representing the makeup artist and actor Andre Hernandez Romero and many others who are disappeared to El Salvador with no due process. Before the live show, Votes of America will join forces with the Human Rights Campaign for a protest at the US Supreme Court to bring more attention to this important cause. Get your tickets and RSVP for the [e-mail] events pod save the world is brought to you by Manicura Honey. Are you looking for something simple and delicious to add to your wellness routine? I am. You know, I've been trying to shift a little more. Drink less coffee, drink more tea and there's nothing that makes a little honey in the tea is really nice. It's really good. And manicura, that is the perfect dash of sweetness for your tea. Manicura honey is rich, creamy and the most delicious honey you've ever had. It's ethically produced by Manicura's master beekeepers in the remote forests of New Zealand. Manicura honey contains powerful nutrients to support immunity and gut health. The bees collect the nectar from the manuka tree in New Zealand. The nectar is packed with bioactives and the honey that is produced has three times more antioxidants and prebiotics than your average honey. A special antibacterial compound called MGO also comes from the nectar of the tea tree. Manicore Third Party tests every single harvest for MGO and makes these results available through their QR system. It's a game changer and all you need is one heaped teaspoon each morning to get the most out of the amazing bioactives in Manuka. It's a honey with superpowers. Now it's easier than ever to try Manicura honey. Head to manicora.comworld to get $25 off the starter kit which comes with an MGO 850 plus Manuka honey jar 5 honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon and a guidebook that's M A N U k O R A.com World for $25 off your starter kit at Carl's Jr.

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[Tommy Vitor]

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[Tommy Vitor]

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[Tommy Vitor]

All right, Ben, so we wanted to talk first about the horrific shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in D.C. last week. Jerome Lisinsky and Sarah Milgram were a young couple leaving an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum when they were shot by someone named Elias Rodriguez, who told the police, quote, I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza. US Officials are investigating this crime as both a hate crime and as an act of terrorism. Just wanted to say this is evil. It's unjustifiable. Obviously this person thinks he did it for Palestine. I think it's pretty much unequivocally true that it will set back the movement to end this war and that extrajudicial vigilante violence is stupid and we should not celebrate the people who do it. I don't care if you think Luigi's fucking hot and has great abs or you think a cause is righteous, like not one life is going to be saved because this idiot decided to shoot people in Washington, D.C. and I also don't think that we as liberals and Democrats are going to win an escalating war of vigilante violence. So it's just a horrific story. Absolutely tragic.

[Ben Rhodes]

And yeah, yeah, it's the worst possible thing for the cause, too, that he claimed to be representing. I mean, so it's first and foremost a human tragedy. Two young people had a whole life in front of them. No longer have that life in front of them. That's like the most important thing and that's like the horror of what happened. It's also, to your point, like vigilante justice. Like, this is not, this is the worst thing you could do for the thing you claim you care about. So it's wrong, it's stupid, it's horrific for everybody involved. I think that the tragedy of what we're seeing in Gaza we've had. It's interesting, we made some points earlier on in the war about Hamas, where we're like, this is a radicalizing violence, right? That essentially what Israel was doing was going to further radicalize Hamas over time. That pisses everybody off because people will say, don't justify what Hamas is going to do in the future by what Israel's doing. And then other people say to us, essentially, don't reduce kind of Palestinians to people who can be radicalized because it plays in. So I'm naming the awkwardness of the conversation that we're about to kind of have here. I'm just saying analytically, like, violence tragically tends to beget violence. And none of this is leading anywhere good. It's all the more reason that we should want an end to all violence. That includes obviously horrific murders like this, but it also includes the war in Gaza itself. And there's a kind of awful discourse where what's happened in Gaza is no more like right or wrong the day after this happened than it was the day before. And that you see, unfortunately, social media brain kind of pushes people in those directions. You can accept this as a horrific, evil tragedy that happened and realize that it kind of does not really interact with the horror of what's happening in Gaza and hold those two thoughts at the same time.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't understand why people can't hold two thoughts in their head at the same time. It's like, I think killing innocent civilians is wrong at any point. I don't care whether it's this crazy shooter in dc. I don't care if it's Hamas. I don't care if it's the idf. Like, you shouldn't just kill innocent people. It's not going to advance your cause. It's not going to end the suffering that you want to suffer. I talked with Congressman Himes about this horrible combination we're seeing, though, of just like day after day after day of horrific violence in Gaza, coupled with the fact that there is no political track to create a Palestinian state and the hopelessness that creates and what people sometimes do when they feel like they have no hope for a future.

[Ben Rhodes]

And that's the thing. The only last thing I'd say about this is like to take it to Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli political leadership that is doing this in Gaza. They're not making part of what their argument is always, we're here to make Israel safer and Jews safer. This is not doing that. And again, that doesn't mean it's right that bad things might happen like this horrific thing that happened. It just means that you have to think about the tale of what's happening in Gaza is going to be decades, if not hundreds of years. It could end up being that scale of events that sticks and just walk back from the precipice. They should have done it already. But anyway, that's why I think people feel both the pain of what these young people lost, but also a sense of foreboding that this violence, we're tolerating way too much violence around us.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, no, I mean, I remember talking with you on the show even in the just early weeks after October 7th, knowing that there was going to be a sustained and absolutely brutal conflict. But if you had asked me then whether it would still be just a full scale war May 27th of 2025, I never would have guessed this has gone on this long. And that's partly why you can't even begin to ascertain, like, the tale of this.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, and not even a war, really, because I just don't think. I don't see much evidence that Hamas is like, fighting back.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, I don't either.

[Ben Rhodes]

So it's basically like just a killing zone in Gaza and which is going to lead other people to say, we're gonna fight back in other places. And that's what history shows you. It doesn't make it right. It just makes it what we learn from history, that people will lash out in other ways in other places.

[Tommy Vitor]

On the ground in Gaza, there is this new Israeli American plan for humanitarian aid distribution that has created a huge uproar. The idea is to replace the UN and other independent and experienced aid organizations with this new organization called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, or we'll call it the GHF for short, which only came into existence in February. So the GHF is structured to use armed American contractors to secure what they're calling hubs in Gaza through which aid will be distributed. Israel claims this plan will prevent Hamas from intercepting aid attended for the civilian population. There's currently four hubs, three of which are on the southern end of the strip, which immediately creates a huge logistical problem because most of the population of Gaza is concentrated in north and central Gaza. And to get to the hubs in the south, Palestinians are going to have to cross Israeli military lines with no assurances that they will not be shot at, no assurances that they'll be allowed back. There's reports today that at least one person trying to get assistance was arrested by Israeli forces. So they're not going to trust this process. People on the ground in Gaza. And you are asking a starved, battered population to make physically a long trek to get food to survive, which will just be impossible for the elderly, the sick, the disabled, for children. And this plan de facto puts the Israeli government in charge of deciding who gets aid and who does not. And it dovetails with Israel's stated claim of displacing the population of Gaza into the southern end of the strip. So the GHF has claimed that it is plans for more hubs to be put in place in the north. But nothing about this organization like smells right? On Sunday, Jake Wood, the executive director of the ghf, he resigned, saying in a statement, quote, it is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, which, which I will not abandon. He resigned shortly after the New York Times reported that this isn't some neutral independent organization, that it was actually first proposed and developed by Israeli officials just a few weeks into the war. The Times piece also highlights there's this one American contractor, a former CIA operative named Philip F. Riley, whose company Safe Reach Solutions is the primary contractor securing the hubs. According to the Times, Riley helped train the Contras right wing militias fighting Nicaragua's Marxist government back in the 80s. He was also the CIA station chief in Kabul after the US invasion. And there's also some weirdness around the funding of ghf. Like it got seed funding from some non Israeli businessmen and $100 million donation from an anonymous western country. So like no one knows where this money's coming from. So Ben, the operations commence on Monday. On Tuesday there's already reports of Israeli gunfire after crowds of desperate people like broke down a fence to get to the aid of the IDF is firing warning shots in response like this seems like it's just going to be a logistical disaster and it's already a disaster when it comes to trusting this organization's independence.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I actually went down a rabbit hole with this organization, including its branch organizations like SRS Safe Reach Solutions. And then I kind of stopped myself because I'm like, what am I doing here? Because let's take a step back. First of all, this is what happens when you, you know, wage war on delegitimize attack organizations like unwra, organizations that know how to deliver aid. It's the same thing that was so dumb about that pier, right? Like let's just drive some vans in.

[Tommy Vitor]

Humanitarian relief pier that Biden set up.

[Ben Rhodes]

Let's just drive some trucks across the border and give it to the aid professionals and they'll give it to the people. Like, you know, I'm not a humanitarian aid specialist, but that seems like better than building a pier. Well, in this case, it's even more cynical because if I'm. Look, I have enough information. I don't think they want to give any aid to people in Gaza. I think they want to be able to say they have a plan to give aid to people. They're going to call it the ghf. They're going to enrich some people who are like private security contractors and not give people aid. And then they're going to kill Palestinians and starve Palestinians and have houses collapse on Palestinians and have them walk and die on the way to get to these things. This is a plan to kill more Palestinians, not to save Palestinians. And we just have to start. I don't know what else to think about these things that keep getting presented to us, because if you're telling me that the rational way to save Palestinians is to make GHF and pay some fucking, make some native thing in southern Gaza while you're getting rid of UNWRA and you're getting rid of people, actually have the relationships and expertise to feed people, I'm not gonna give you the benefit of the doubt anymore. They just want talking points to say they have a plan so that they can. When they get asked, why aren't you giving aid? They can talk about this like, that's. I know that's cynical, but I don't know how else to think about it.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, look, I have no doubt that Hamas was stealing aid and then reselling it, but one way to combat that is to flood the Gaza Strip with enough humanitarian supplies so that the prices aren't astronomical and they can't make a huge profit off of anymore.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's a very good point.

[Tommy Vitor]

I also think, like, long term, this is part of this broader project to undercut the existence of unwra, which not only provides humanitarian relief in Gaza, but also fundamentally takes care of Palestinians as they seek the right to return to land where they were displaced from over the past several decades. Right. So that is an ongoing Netanyahu project. Also, Ben, you know, you sort of alluded to this earlier. People get mad at us on the show when we accuse the Israeli government of war crimes or ethnic cleansing and, you know, it's off. You know, I get this all the time on Twitter and shit. It's like, oh, it's because you hate Israel or it's because you're an anti Semite. But I think it's harder to make those rejoinders when the person making the allegation is a former Israeli Prime Minister. This is a clip from Ehud Omert from CNN A couple days ago, particularly.

[Ben Rhodes]

In the last few days, was the statements made by Israeli cabinet ministers, the leading cabinet ministers, that say we should starve Gaza.

[Tommy Vitor]

What is it if not a war crime?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, how can a serious person representing the Israeli government can spell it out in such an explicit manner that.

[Tommy Vitor]

We should starve Gaza, that there should.

[Ben Rhodes]

Be no supply of basic fundamental humanitarian.

[Tommy Vitor]

Needs to a couple of millions people living there?

[Ben Rhodes]

They are terrorists that we need to fight. But this is not a war against Hamas. This looks more and more like a political war of the Israeli Prime Minister and the cabinet and the group of.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thugs which are now representing the Israeli government inside Israel and across the world.

[Ben Rhodes]

Are committing actions which can't be interpreted in any other way.

[Tommy Vitor]

Pretty, pretty clear. Now, he is wildly corrupt, he's a convicted criminal, but I think he's telling the truth.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, you know, Bibi would be. Yeah, yeah. And there's something sad about it, like the criticism, because, you know, take unwra. There are people, I think, in the Israeli government that want UNWRA out of the way for the reasons you said that they're too tied in with the Palestinians. They, like, they have. Their existence legitimizes the idea that there's such a thing as a Palestinian refugee, which means that that person has a home that they're supposed to return to. But then what they do is they take the people in the United States. They say they go, all these people are Hamas and they're all terrorists, and it's not safe for them to give out the aid. And you have, by the way, we've talked to some of these people. They're nice European people, right? And then you get these people online who think, genuinely believe that we're idiots. You don't understand UNRWA's terrorists. They have no fucking idea what they're talking about. Like, what do you know about what you're talking about? You are being used. You are being played. You are being played in the most cynical way possible because people are telling you that unless you call, like, people like us anti Semites for criticizing the murder of children in Gaza. Like, we don't understand that UNRWA's full of, like, tea seething with Hamas. Like, you don't know that You've been told that by people that want you.

[Tommy Vitor]

To believe that there's 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza. At least there were. Is there some subset of that group that hates the Israeli government?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, of course.

[Tommy Vitor]

Certainly. Could they be in Hamas? Very, very possible. It also could be that they are extremely angry about being bombed and that.

[Ben Rhodes]

They would really like to just do the job of giving people food.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'm not excusing any connection between unwra employees on October 7th. That should be investigated. Those people should be prosecuted. I'm sure they're being targeted by the IDF as we speak, if they're still alive. But the idea that that makes it okay to cut off the sole means of distributing aid to every single human being in the Gaza Strip is insane.

[Ben Rhodes]

And give me a break. It's horrible what some people did with Nun Ra. Are we gonna apply the same standard to the IDF because we, like, one person does something in an organization of 13,000 people, and we're all supposed to, like, just banish it from existence? Meanwhile, I don't see any accountability on the other side for anything.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I saw a great interview that Firoz did, our guest last week. He was on a channel 13, an Israeli, very conservative news channel, who were, you know, kind of making the talking. What you always hear about. Well, the IDF had to bomb a hospital because there was Hamas infrastructure beneath it. And he was like, well, Netanyahu had a prostate operation. He was in the hospital for a couple days in Israel, presumably directing the government, making war plans, making decisions about the conduct of the war. Would anyone then argue that that makes that hospital in Israel a legitimate target?

[Ben Rhodes]

No, it's not.

[Tommy Vitor]

Absolutely.

[Ben Rhodes]

It only applies in Gaza.

[Tommy Vitor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vitor]

A quick update Ben Just on on the Trump incoherent, feckless and failed effort to end the war in Ukraine. So per usual there's sort of two core elements. The first is Trump complaining, untrue, social, usually mostly about Zelensky, or at least more Zelensky than Putin. And the second is Russia launching massive airstrikes and massacring civilians in Ukraine. Here's a clip of Trump talking to the press about the war in Ukraine and about Putin on Sunday.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people and.

[Jim Himes]

I don't know what the hell happened to Putin.

[Ben Rhodes]

I've known him a long time, always.

[Jim Himes]

Gotten along with him.

[Ben Rhodes]

We're in the middle of talking and.

[Jim Himes]

He'S shooting rockets into to Kiev and other cities. I don't like it at all.

[Tommy Vitor]

What do you want to do about surprise?

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm very surprised.

[Jim Himes]

We'll see what we're going to do. What am I going to tell you? You're the fake news. Aren't you, you're totally fake. I don't like what Putin is doing, not even a little bit.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's killing people and something happened to this guy and I don't like it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, Putin just started killing people.

[Ben Rhodes]

He just figured this out. I mean, how weak does he look?

[Tommy Vitor]

He looks fucking pathetic. I think Russia, right around that time, he's either before or after those comments. Russia launched its largest ever drone and missile attack on Ukraine, largest since the full scale invasion started. The Ukrainian Air force said Russia launched more than 350 explosive drones and at least nine cruise missiles. Trump then said Putin had gone absolutely crazy. That's a quote that to which the Kremlin responded that Trump was showing signs of, quote, emotional overload. Then on Tuesday, Trump truth quote. What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'd like to know what he did.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, yeah. So he's like, he's playing with fire. So like, it's just he looks so pathetic there. The only good news for the Ukrainians, Ben, is that German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz announced that Germany will give Ukraine the Taurus missiles. That's their long range missile. They also announced that the, the Ukraine's allies would remove all range restrictions on arms they're supplying. I don't, some of the reporting suggested that includes US supplied weapons, which would surprise me that Trump would green light that. But interesting. I don't know, but I just, it's just you made the point like Trump is the most thin skinned person in the world. He takes every slight so personally and Putin just humiliates him over and over again.

[Ben Rhodes]

And I think if there's something that we've learned about Putin's intentions, which is not surprising, is that Putin, you know, some people like, well, will he see Trump as an opportunity to work with Trump to kind of get what he wants, or will he see Trump as an opportunity to completely humiliate the United States? I think he would be more than happy to have Donald Trump end up hating him because Donald Trump is gonna prove his point that he's made his whole life. These people are corrupt. They're no different than anybody else. Look at this fucking guy. You wanna put him in charge of your security? So I think what Putin is doing is intentionally humiliating Trump to both get more land in Ukraine, to get the better deal whenever there is a deal in Ukraine, but also to intentionally make Trump look like a fool. And Trump looks like even bigger fool. He's like, ah, he can't do that. And then it's like, what are you gonna do about it? He's like, fake news, you know, Like.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, screaming at Jeff Mason.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Which is funny if you know Jeff Mason.

[Tommy Vitor]

He's like a nice Reuters guy. Like a fedora.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, Reuters. Anyway, it's just sad. And Ukrainians, you can tell all their eggs are in the European basket. They're just. It's hard. You almost don't see Zelenskyy unless he's flanked by like, Donald Tusk, Friedrich Mertz, Emmanuel Macron, and Keir Starmer. Truly, it's like you think those guys are like his bodyguards.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, he's always with a half dozen European leaders. No, I think you're exactly right. Like, he'll string Trump along. Putin knows that Putin's gonna die in office and that Trump will be gone and will probably be gone in four years. And you're right, though, over time, the humiliation of Trump becomes the humiliation of a country and a system that could put someone like that in charge.

[Ben Rhodes]

Exactly.

[Tommy Vitor]

Great work, everybody. Ben. Last week was also a tough time to be a senior leader in the North Korean navy. This comes after a 5,000 ton destroyer capsized at launch, like its christening ceremony due to, quote, absolute carelessness, according to Kim Jong Un, who watched it all happen live. He also said the wreck, quote, brought the dignity and self respect of our state to a collapse. Over the weekend, North Korea detained three officials in the shipyard where this destroyer was built. The chief engineer, the construction head, and an administrative manager. Ben, can you imagine? Okay, so like there's this, they're trying to slide this giant brand new destroyer into the water. There's a, there's a tower, kind of like viewing area set up, which presumably is Kim Jong Un. And then, like, he loves a good viewing ceremony. Yeah, there's like 4,000 fucking generals whose job is to clap as loud as humanly possible and like show their love for him. Imagine watching this thing tip over and just collapse in sync and knowing, like, how fucked you are.

[Ben Rhodes]

I feel genuinely bad for those guys, you know, I will say the useful thing about it, other than being good for content, is sometimes, and I fall into this trap too, like, you make the mistake of building up some people. You know, it's like Kim Jong Un looks like he's been on a bit of a roll, you know, like he got all this aid from Russia. Like he's got his, his boys are getting some reps in Ukraine. Like he's, he's flying around looking at stuff. Like he's advancing his nuclear program. He's sitting on top of a completely absurd, corrupt system in which, like, shit like this happens, like, the ships don't work. And so we do have to just remind ourselves, like, the South Koreans look a little nutty right now, but, like, I'd much rather have their cards than the North Koreans, you know? I mean, this is not a system where this guy flies around, stands on platforms. Wasn't there, like, an account that was like, Kim Jong Un looks at stuff.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's a great account.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, some of the stuff he's looking at doesn't work.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's interesting that Kim. He is much more likely than his predecessors to talk publicly about these kinds of disasters, which is interesting. Maybe he just kind of, like, understands the modern age or tries. He just.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's a modern man.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Use everything to his advantage. The Journal reported the Trump administration is considering withdrawing about 4,500 U.S. troops from South Korea and sending them to other places in the kind of Indo Pacific area.

[Ben Rhodes]

That sounds like a very bad idea, you know? Yeah, that's what I was worried about. It's like, because then you're green lighting Kim Jong Un to do some stupid shit in South Korea.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. I assume we'd still have, what, 21, 22,000. But yeah, it does sound like it could be the beginning of a process that would freak everybody out.

[Ben Rhodes]

Freak everybody out. Drive the South Koreans to the Chinese, like, you know, freak out the Japanese. Like, if, like, five years from now, like, Japan and South Korea have, like, nuclear weapons, like, this would be, like, the beginning of that slide.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's true. Yeah. The beginning of the dvd. Over in Japan, there's a very different crisis. They're calling it the rice crisis. The price of rice has basically doubled this year in Japan, and they're even tapping into government resources and can't bring this price down. I guess they have like a. Like we have, like the spro, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They have, like, a rice version, which is pretty sweet. Among the reasons cited for the shortage are in the price increases are panic buying, fueled by Internet rumors of some kind of mega earthquake. People globally substituting rice for wheat because of shortages resulting from the war in Ukraine and then a booming tourism sector and lots of, I assume, Americans coming over and wanting sushi and rice and everything else. All of this is important, though, to explain how a joke about rice cost the Japanese farm minister his job. So he was at a fundraiser, this farm minister, Taku Ito, he joked that he never needed to buy rice because his supporters Sent him plenty of it as a gift, which prompted widespread outrage across the country. Opposition parties threatened a no confidence vote against him. So he resigned. Which maybe. Just think, Ben, how cool it must be to have a political system where leaders still felt like, a sense of shame. And that all worked.

[Ben Rhodes]

There's possible the possibility of being shamed still exists in Japanese culture. I think it's, like, particularly acute. I will say, like, a couple of thoughts on this. I mean, the first thing is, like, Japan needs to give itself, like, a little bit of a break here. You know, like, there's some externalities here. You got tariffs, you get, like, all these factors, like, let's get through the rice crisis here. We don't, you know, do this together. We can do this. We can do this together. The other thing, like, weirdly, this made me think about. And this is the benefit of doing this podcast for a few years, because there'll be stories like this and then they'll kind of come and go. Do you remember to cite Japan's, like, you know, historic adversary when the Chinese foreign minister just disappeared and nobody. I still don't. You can't figure out what happened to that guy. Like, I was just. When I saw this thing one day.

[Tommy Vitor]

He was just gone.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's just gone.

[Tommy Vitor]

Was that the one who was thought to have been having an affair with a reporter who had worked in America or something?

[Ben Rhodes]

So the theory was he, like, impregnated or had an affair with, like, a reporter in the U.S. it was embarrassing, and they just disappeared him anyway, in the Japanese. Culture is a little different here. Obviously, this is a guy, like, stepping down himself, but it just. It brought to mind it's tough sometimes to be a foreign minister.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's a tough gig. I do think they can solve this one. I mean, I think they had a bad harvest because of hot weather. There's obviously the rise in demand we talked about, but also they have policies that they could just get rid of. I think they've paid farmers to reduce rice acreage to keep prices high and avoid overproduction. I think they probably have some restrictions on imports they could get rid of.

[Ben Rhodes]

So I actually have one substantive thing to say about this that is useful, which is, when I was in Singapore, I was at this climate change kind of conference where they were giving awards.

[Tommy Vitor]

To people pro or anti.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, they were against it. And these were people that were, like, coming up with new ways of dealing climate change. And one way is that they invented a new way to make rice.

[Tommy Vitor]

How?

[Ben Rhodes]

Because rice creates a lot of Methane, Right. Because of the way you harvest it and all the water you use and stuff. And so these people basically developed like a new way to make more rice with far less methane emission.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's cool.

[Ben Rhodes]

Takes less land. But the problem is like rice farmers like everybody else who've done things a certain way their whole lives are like, they don't want to change. Right. So I mean, I'm not saying I know the intricacies of the Japanese rice market, but part of this is as there's more demand and you just need to produce more rice. I mean like shit, people weren't eating sushi in this country like that much when I was a kid. No, I can't imagine.

[Tommy Vitor]

What did people think?

[Ben Rhodes]

Like the 80s it started to be, but now it's just like normalized. It's everywhere. Right. I mean think of how much rice that is. They gotta probably come up with some new ways to produce the rice.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, there's probably a lot of pelt up demand just from us. Okay, so sushi began to achieve widespread popularity in the US in the mid-1960s. Mainstream breakthrough came in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, yeah, I can see that now. We all just love it. All right.

[Ben Rhodes]

I get these Japanese rice, I get this fancy, these big bags. But they're expensive.

[Tommy Vitor]

Are they? Do you notice the difference?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it's better rice.

[Tommy Vitor]

Do you have a rice cooker?

[Ben Rhodes]

No, but I do the thing I now like, I wash the rice like I wash the starch off and I'm pretty like I've had some people be like, I can't believe you don't wash your rice and all this stuff. So now I like wash it multiple times.

[Tommy Vitor]

Not me, man, I'm a quinoa guy living in a rice world.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Final story, Ben.

[Ben Rhodes]

So Ben's.

[Tommy Vitor]

Honestly, we have like frozen stuff in the freezer that you can just nuke in two and a half minutes and then your kids are full. Final story, this fun one from our buddies in New Zealand where apparently a humble cookie tin plays an instrumental role in keeping their democracy going. So this is called the biscuit tin, as it's known there. It is used to determine what bills are taken up by New Zealand's parliament. Basically, they tally a list of proposals 1 through 90, then place bingo tokens labeled with those numbers in the tin. Shake it up. Whatever's picked gets added to the parliamentary agenda. The tin has a faded label that reads members bills. It was apparently bought by a staffer at a Wellington supermarket in the early 90s. Most bills never enter the tin. They go through, like, the ruling parties, legislators, but every two weeks, they set aside time for the biscuit tin, which, I don't know, man. I genuinely read about this and was like, that's a pretty cool idea. I imagine the US version, you know, 50% of the time, you will have the most hateful shit imaginable by some awful Republican. But imagine if Congress every couple weeks had to vote on a minimum wage increase or committing to not cut Medicare. I feel like that would be better than whatever we're doing now.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's a lot better than having, like, Mike Johnson and a rules committee, you know, drafting a big, beautiful bill.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. At 4am behind closed doors.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I like this. I like this approach. Biscuit tin. I mean, I sent you. I mean, not to. Because I love New Zealand. I love people from New Zealand. But the other parliamentary tradition that I flagged for your attention was this idea of drinking out of a boot in the Australian Parliament. I forgot you said that we could do both, Right. We could take this from New Zealand and the drinking out of a boot from Australia.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, we gotta cut that into the YouTube video right here.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. There's a dude that literally just drinks like, a beer out of a boot to finish his turn time in Congress.

[Tommy Vitor]

It was like end of his second term, and all of a sudden he just dumps a beer into it and does a shoey in front of everyone.

[Ben Rhodes]

I love New Zealand, Australia. And I love. I don't even understand the internal rivalry, which I'm sure is, like, really fucking intense. So I want to know more about that, like the New Zealand versus Australia rivalry.

[Tommy Vitor]

Kyle McGinn, an outgoing state MP from Western Australia, he probably won a shoei, a celebratory ritual at the end of his farewell speech in the Western Australian Parliament.

[Ben Rhodes]

Western Australian Parliament. So maybe we should be looking to the Western Australian Parliament.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, These are my people, specifically.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

I've never done a shoey myself, that I recall.

[Ben Rhodes]

I think I did a shoeie in college, but, I mean, it's a little hazy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Hannah's friends, she's from kind of rural Maryland, and they would chug out of a duck. It was like a duck decoy. You just kind of carve a hole in it, fill it up with beers, and just hammer it down.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's kind of fun.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it was a lot. It was a good time. Okay, Jim Hines, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear my interview with Congressman Jim Hines about tons of stuff. So stick around for that policy of the world is brought to you by the Council on Foreign Relations. Tackling climate change requires that everyone, not just the experts, can understand the enormous economic, national security and humanitarian effects of a warming climate. The Council on Foreign Relations partnered with Coursera, an online learning platform, to make climate literacy a reality through a new three course series. Whether you're a student, future climate czar, or just someone who panic scrolls Wildfire Maps, this is for you. You'll even get a certification in climate literacy from the Council on Foreign Relations that you can slap on LinkedIn, which is basically the adult version of a fridge magnet. Put that on your LinkedIn. No, seriously, you can add your certification right to your profile. Go to CFR.org Courseraclimate to enroll today. That's CFR.org Courseraclimate.

[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vitor]

My guest today represents Connecticut's 4th congressional district and is the ranking member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Congressman Jim Himes, welcome to the show.

[Jim Himes]

Thanks for having me.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thank you for doing this. So, on Tuesday, the Guardian reported that a Pentagon leak investigation ordered by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth may have been based on an illegal NSA wiretap that was conducted without a wiretap. Without a warrant, I should say. Do you know Hegseth is using the existence of this leaked investigation to fire several of his top aids. Do you know anything about these reports? And if true, can you help us understand the implications for the intelligence community and for civil liberties generally?

[Jim Himes]

Yeah, sure, sure. And I'm reading the same Guardian article you are. But as somebody who's been sort of kicking around the intelligence community in an oversight role for more than a decade, I can tell you that there's almost certainly nothing to that. The NSA is not allowed to surveil people inside the United States, full stop. And I mean from the chief of the NSA right on down to the person who started yesterday, they know what a very, very serious legal issue it would be if that were to change. And then, of course, you've got an additional layer. You know, it would be bad enough, obviously, if the NSA turned its surveillance capabilities on US Persons or inside the United States, but then to do it around public officials. So anyway, the NSA I know would, would never do that. I think the people that would be involved in the technical aspect of that, right up into whoever ordered it would have understood that they would be looking at time if anything was even remotely like what we're hearing about in the Guardian. Look, I think my analysis is, first of all, it's interesting that these firings at the top of the Pentagon required some sort of explanation, because to get back to the nsa, when they fired General Tim Hawk, a widely respected director of the nsa, there was no explanation given, and that was a serious blow to the nsa. And now they sort of feel obligated to say, oh, well, it might have involved leaks and making up this wild stuff about the nsa. I think the story here is just what a snake pit it is inside the Secretary of Defense's office at the top of the Pentagon.

[Tommy Vitor]

So we don't think they're planning illegal NSA wiretaps on signals somewhere where you feel like that's not likely.

[Jim Himes]

I think it's almost certainly not true. Again, we could spend the next hour talking about the violations of law. This is an administration, by the way, that understands the urgency of reauthorizing a controversial surveillance tool that the NSA has. This is FISA 702. Some of your listeners will be familiar with it. It is a program that by law must be targeted at non US People outside of the United States. But non US People outside of the United States periodically email or text with people inside the United States, and that's what generates the controversy there. The administration understands it's probably our most valuable intelligence tool, and they understand that if the NSA were ever involved in these kinds of shenanigans, that tool would go away on their watch. And that's not something I think that they would. That they would risk.

[Tommy Vitor]

I also want to ask you about some recent reports and decisions made by the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. So just a little backstory for listeners. The National Intelligence Council produced an assessment that concluded that the Venezuelan government was not directing or controlling the gang Trende Aragua. This is important because that assessment undercut the legal basis for Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies act, which they've been using to deport Venezuelan citizens. The Alien Enemies act allows the Executive Branch to deport foreign citizens if their government has declared war on the US or is engaged in a, quote, predatory incursion into US Territory. So, according to these reports and some emails that have been since released, after reading an early version of this assessment, Tulsi Gabbard's chief of staff, a guy named Joe Kent, emailed the analysts in question to say, quote, we need to do some rewriting so that, quote, this document is not used against the DNI or potus. Kent wanted the intelligence community to write something that was more politically useful for Stephen Miller at the White House is sort of the takeaway here. However, the final intelligence product still contradicted Trump's assertions about the Maduro government directing trend. And Gabbard later fired two top officials at the National Intelligence Council. What was your reaction to reading about that whole saga?

[Jim Himes]

Well, you told the story exactly right from start to finish, how the administration is relying on this 1798 act, how the courts have never really determined what a predatory incursion is. But the Trump administration, in their infinite wisdom at least, understand that that probably means that Venezuela should be directing this gang. And by the way, we should say gang members who are here illegal should be deported, but they should be deported legally through the due process process that we have set up to make sure that people's civil rights aren't violated. But you told the story exactly right, and it's there for everyone to see. And I'll tell you, my own journey was a tough one, because I saw that report in early April and I read it and I said, holy smokes. The intelligence community is saying that there is no relationship, no directing, no proxy relationship between Venezuela and tda. And the administration is saying otherwise. Including, by the way, the DNI in a tweet was saying, there's a connection here. The president said it, and presumably they were going to say it to the Supreme Court. That led me, by the way, to say, you know, to go to the leaders in Congress and say, how do we make sure the Supreme Court actually sees what the intelligence community believes here, which contradicts the President and the Director of National Intelligence. So that was ugly until, of course, that report was declassified, and everyone can read a redacted version. But to really zero in on what's problematic here is, you know, I'm not surprised that Donald Trump lies about it. That is what he does. He's been elected a number of times, even though Americans know that he does. He does not tell the truth. To see the Director of National Intelligence, my former colleague Tulsi Gabbard, lie about this in the context of a report that contradicted what she was saying was hard. And then, and here's the nub, Joe Kent, and he's gonna say, well, Democrats. He responded to this by saying Democrats wanna shelter Trend Aragua by deflecting and distorting the truth. But you got the line exactly right. In order to make sure that this report not be used against the DNI or the President. That is anathema. Anathema to what the intelligence community as a whole and certainly to what the leaders of the IC must be doing. The IC must report the truth full stop, not try to alter the truth, not try to make political protection for somebody. And the reason that matters, the reason that's essential, is that the last time we saw something of this magnitude where the White House and senior political figures stepped in to slant, shall we say, intelligence, 4400Americans died in Iraq, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, because the Cheney vice presidential office and the George W. Bush administration decided that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Turns out they weren't. And in fact, the CIA and the intelligence community did not really believe that they were. But Dick Cheney and his people put pressure until you have then Director of CIA George Kennett saying the case for weapons of mass destruction is a slam dunk. His words, because he was bowing to the pressure from the White House. And as a result, we have 4400 dead American troops for a war that was fought on false pretenses. So this stuff matters. And again, Joe Kent can say all that he wants to say about how much he hates Democrats and stuff, but the phrase that this not be used against the director or the President shows that he is beyond disqualified from a senior role in, in the intelligence community.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And by the way, I believe he's been nominated to run the National Counterterrorism Center. So not only is he politicizing intelligence, but he is also stupid enough to put that sentence in email, which in my book is two strikes. But I mean, look, I'm not a big Tulsi Gabbard fan, but if you take her at her word, her kind of political origin story is someone who served in the military, saw the war in Iraq, felt like it was a disaster, saw all the politicization of intelligence that you just referenced and wanted to change course and not get into regime change wars and not ever let that happen again. And for her to preside over, look, the Iraq war was obviously a greater disaster in terms of the outcome, but in terms of just blatantly politicizing intelligence and dictating the Product for solely political reasons. What Kent is doing in this email, I think almost seems worse to me. And it was just shocking given, you know, what her professed motivations are.

[Jim Himes]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I served with Tulsi Gabbard, didn't know her terribly well. But let me say this, and I'll say this about President Trump as well. It's hard to look back on the last generation, looking at the Iraq war, looking at the Afghanistan war, the failed nation building that we tried for more than a decade there, going back to Vietnam. The mistakes, the strategic mistakes America makes are mistakes of over engagement militarily. We thought we could turn Vietnam into a democracy. We thought we would turn Iraq into a democracy at the point of a gun. We thought that Afghanistan, we could grow this medieval society into a new England. We make that mistake over and over again. And Tulsi Gabbard, I know this from when she was in a political role, sort of disagrees with that. That's what led her to go see that terrible dictator of Syria, Bashar Al Assad. I don't think that was done out of any malign motive. I think she genuinely wanted to, in whatever weird way she thought she could accomplish it, avoid another Middle Eastern war.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right.

[Jim Himes]

So that instinct is not a bad instinct. But here's the point, here's the point. When you take a job as Director of CIA or Director of National Intelligence, you set aside your policy beliefs, you put those things in a freezer, and you put that freezer in the basement and you lock that thing up. Because the intelligence community is not about policy. It is about providing, you know, using the $90 billion ish of resources that we provide to the intelligence community, the president and other policymakers with the very best information that we can get so that they make good decisions. So there is no room for policymaking in the intelligence apparatus, for obvious reasons. Right. And so that's bad enough, and I hope that Tulsi understands that. But then to use your office and remember, he's chief of Staff to Tulsi Gabbard for political protection, for political figures. Again, that, you know, who knows what the United States Senate will do. Every once in a while, a few Republican senators search around for a few hours and find their backbones. But I mean, if they can look at those emails that Joe Kent sent. And by the way, it's more than just the phrase that you outlined. It's a constant and repeated attempt to bring up the failures of Joe Biden to put this in the context of an open Southern Border. It is blatant politicization of intelligence. So, I mean, if a few Republican senators can, you know, do the profoundly unnatural act of finding their backbone, this guy will not be confirmed in the role that he's been nominated for as chief of the National Counterterrorism Center.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I hope they will dig deep into whatever information they can find about this whole affair. I do want to turn to the war in Gaza. So in, In July of 2024, Brett Holmgren, who was then a top intelligence official at the State department, said about October 7, quote, it was and is and will be a generational event that terrorist organizations in the Middle east and around the world use as a recruiting opportunity. In March of 2024, Avril Haynes, who is then Biden's Director of National Intelligence, said, quote, it is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism. End quote. If you fast forward to today, things are worse for civilians in Gaza. They are still being slaughtered every single day by airstrikes. People are starving to death because Israel is blockading humanitarian aid. And then on the political track, not only is there no hope of a two state solution, there is now a plan backed by the United States to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and displace everyone there to Libya. What are you seeing in terms of the impact when it comes to terrorist recruiting and how much are these threats being directed against the United States given that we are fully backing the Israelis in this war?

[Jim Himes]

Yeah, yeah. So let's, let's take up both those questions. First, the terrorism question. Look, the numbers speak for themselves. Hamas has been able to, not entirely, but has been able to largely reconstitute the personnel that it has lost in this war. Not entirely. Let's just throw a number out there and say 2/3 to 3/4 of the manpower that they have lost to Israeli military activity has been reconstituted. Why? Because there's an awful lot of young men in Gaza who sees the devastation that has been visited on their communities. Yes, by Hamas, and let's start with that, but then subsequently by the Israelis. And this is a story as old as time. Right. There were probably as many terrorists or more terrorists in Afghanistan after we left than there were before we left. Because when you blow up a village, which inevitably you do, when you're taking substantial military activity, there are brothers, there are nephews, there are people who will then take up arms. So, yes, this righteous action, and I think it has ceased to be righteous, that the Israelis took in response to October 7, has turned into at least inside Gaza, a recruiting tool. Now, there's a larger strategic question here, which is, if you're the leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas, most of whom are dead now, but the replacements, and you say to yourself, gosh, if we could go back and do October 7th again, would we do it? I suspect there would be a great deal of disagreement on that question. Right, because Hezbollah and its leadership has been decimated. Same is true of Hamas. And so I think the strategic question is different. But look, terrorism requires one angry person to do a terrible thing, as we saw in Washington, D.C. where one radicalized, horrible person murdered two innocent employees of the Israeli embassy. Whether you want to call that a terrorist act or not, terrorism at that level is not hard to do. So let me come back to the larger strategic focus. I don't think anybody on October 8th believed that the Israelis should do anything other than to visit retribution on Hamas for the appalling attack of October 7. But as you pointed out, we have now gotten to a place, and I was in Israel two months ago, three months ago, with the Prime Minister, where the Prime Minister, I think, sees his role now as the obliteration of all of Israel's enemy. I think it's sort of a cathartic thing that he will do to make up for the attack that happened on his watch. And you're exactly right. The plan to level Gaza with the idea of either voluntarily or involuntarily moving those, I mean, let's just call that what it is. That would be a war crime. It would be a crime against humanity. To displace it is the definition of ethnic cleansing. Now, I trust the Israeli people and Israel to not go that far, even though the prime Minister may want to. But even today, where we have wildly inadequate humanitarian aid moving into Gaza, that too is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. And it needs to stop. It needs to stop both for the way you frame this question, the anger and the rage and the terrorism that it will generate. But it needs to stop for moral reasons as well, which is it is time for the civilian population of Gaza to stop paying the cost for the hideous acts of Hamas. It is time for the Prime Minister to say, now we think about how we rebuild this society on a trajectory to someday live at peace with the state of Israel.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, so American law prohibits arms sales to countries that restrict humanitarian aid. U.S. laws restrict U.S. weapons sales to countries that are committing war crimes or weapons sales to foreign military units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. I don't see anything Classified. But I see lots and lots of horrific images and videos and news reports on social media that suggest to me that Israel is committing war crimes constantly, that clearly they're restricting humanitarian aid and doing a number of things in contravention of US Law. But the Biden State Department told us over and over and again that that was not happening. And the Trump administration is continuing the Biden policy of just full throated support for the Israeli government in this war. Were those assertions that Israel was not committing war crimes, were those accurate in your view compared to what you've seen both in intelligence and in public reporting?

[Jim Himes]

You know, with hindsight, you know, we all saw the video of the what looked like, and I'm going to say what looked like the murder of the Red Crescent workers and then the COVID up where we never would have known about that murder had a phone not been found on a dead body, the killing of journalists, which again, I'll be careful here because I don't like forming conclusions without good facts because there's a long history of the IDF acting carefully and legally. I think that the Biden administration was stuck in a paradigm that Prime Minister Netanyahu has now sacrificed because there have been enough incidents, starting with the horrors visited upon the civilian population to the killing of the world food, Jose Andres people. And the list goes on and on and on where sadly, and this comes from somebody who has traditionally been a very strong supporter of the State of Israel, where we can no longer take it for granted that the IDF is acting first and foremost in a humanitarian way with a constant reference to the laws of armed conflict. And so that's a long winded way of saying Joe Biden did not use the leverage that he had to force a change in Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now, I'm not sure that he could have succeeded. Netanyahu is on very literally what I think he or his people regard as a mission from God here. It's a mission of, as I said, maybe reparation for what happened on October 7th on his watch. But I do think in retrospect, it's fair to say that the Biden administration did not use the full leverage that it has. And I say that sadly because while I do think that the current president will do what he can to stop another war in the Middle east, and now I'm referring to the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, he will continue to not use leverage to try to get the Prime Minister. He will continue to give the Prime Minister anything that the Prime Minister wants, even as it becomes increasingly clear that the Prime Minister has a very dark vision for Gaza that is not consistent with the laws of armed conflict or humanitarian law.

[Tommy Vitor]

You mentioned a possible conflict with Iran. I mean, I think to their credit, the Trump administration has now engaged in several rounds of talks with Iran in hopes of securing some sort of deal to prevent a conflict and also prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It does, though, seem like there is an internal fight within Trump's team about whether they would be okay with a deal that allows Iran to have some very limited amount of uranium enrichment for civilian use, for, to generate nuclear power, essentially, or whether they've fully drawn a red line that will are demanding that Iran have no enrichment program whatsoever. Do you have a sense of, of what the accurate position is given the kind of competing news reports? And what do you think is the right answer here, policy wise, just in terms of like, efficacy?

[Jim Himes]

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the, this is very technical stuff, but if you are acting in good faith, as I think the Obama administration was, you can put in place the safeguards to make sure that Iran is six months to a year away from having the capability to put together or use a nuclear weapon that is technologically feasible. And in fact, that's where we were once the JCPOA was signed. Now, the American right, and certainly Prime Minister Netanyahu didn't agree with that, but as a technical matter, it was true. So, you know, can you and I understand that it's the position of the Prime Minister that Iran can have no enrichment capacity, but technically speaking, it is possible to make sure that enrichment that is done is done to a level and in a quantity that cannot be used for a nuclear weapon. And so long as the ability of inspectors to go in and confirm that stuff is, that is a technically feasible thing. Now, we're not in a world, I think, today where technically feasible is what matters. Based on my contact with the Israeli Prime Minister, I have very little doubt that he is hell bent on going to war with Iran again. I think this is as much cathartic for October 7th as it is anything else. Because, you know, an attack on Iran's nuclear sites will set them back. No question about it. You can destroy enough stuff so that Iran is Now a year, 18 months, two years away from being where they are today, which is pretty close to the capability of having a nuclear weapon. But it doesn't end it. And what have you done in the meantime? You have united a fractious Iranian population behind a profoundly unpopular regime because you've attacked their country, you have probably unleashed a staggering amount of volatility into the oil market, which translates into pain at the pump for an awful lot of Americans. And you've probably unleashed the Iranians desire to conduct terrorist attacks around the world. So I think that's where the Prime Minister is right now. And I think he's probably paying a very dangerous poker game with Donald Trump because again, I'm going to credit Donald Trump here. I think Donald Trump is allergic to kinetic conflict, particularly in the Middle East. But what's going to happen is Israel is going to tell a story, or I should say the Prime Minister is going to tell a story about how any enrichment capability at all means that there's a bomb in the future, means that Tel Aviv is under a mushroom cloud. And by the way, so is New York City, Boston and Los Angeles. We saw this in the run up to the Iraq war. Right. We saw the then Bill Kristol and the neocons tell a terrifying story to the American people. I think this is what we're going to start to see pretty soon, driven by the Prime Minister's desire ultimately to at least get a green light from the United States to attack Iran.

[Tommy Vitor]

Anyone who wants more information about Netanyahu's credibility on this subject should look at his testimony before Congress, I believe, about the Iraq war and just how wrong he was then. Then, and then maybe compare that to what he's saying now about Iran. Thank you for letting me skip around a little bit. I know we're getting short on time. Last couple questions. So the Trump administration, their Ukraine policy is, is incoherent at best, right? I mean, Trump has been hammering Zelensky over the weekend. He decided to yell at Putin on Truth Social again. In your estimation, what happens to the Ukrainian side if things just kind of continue steady state as they are now, will they just continue to lose territory? Do you have a sense of whether intelligence, US Intelligence support to Ukraine could get cut off?

[Jim Himes]

Yeah, if the status quo is maintained, if nothing changes from today, where the Europeans and the Americans continue to provide weapons, continue to provide intelligence support, I think the situation on the ground largely remains the same. We sometimes underappreciate the extent to which the Ukrainians have actually grown their own homegrown capacity to make stuff and to learn things. They're producing unbelievably capable drones, by the way. We can learn a lot. The Pentagon can learn a lot from what the Ukrainians have learned about drone warfare. Something that until very recently, nobody in the Pentagon was thinking all that hard. About. But so the sad fact is that with no change, will the Russians pick up 100 yards here, 100 yards there? Yes. Will it be a slow and grinding war for many years until the Russian people have finally had it years down the road? Yes. That's a really ugly capacity. The alternative, of course, is two alternatives. Number one, let's finally give Zelenskyy unfettered access to weapons that can reach deep into Russia. Right. To turn the course of this war around. Not that Zelenskyy is ever going to push the Russians back to the pre conflict borders, but so that Putin finally realizes that we are there for the long haul and that this is going to be a losing venture for him, whether it's two, five or 10 years down the road. The alternative, of course, is a really ugly one, which is that the United States, that Donald Trump just gets sick of this, marches away. The 40% of the Republican conference in the House and then in the Senate that continue to support Ukraine aren't enough to provide weaponry. And now the Russian incursion into Ukraine picks up speed. And do the Russians ultimately get to Kyiv? No, I don't think so. The Ukrainian people are going to go into caves with rifles before they give up their country. But Putin will have learned that the west does not have a backbone. And though he's in a lot of trouble now, five years from now when he's got some domestic crisis and he decides he needs to invade a piece of Poland or Moldova or Estonia or Lithuania, he'll do it. He'll do it because he will have learned that the west, courtesy of Donald Trump, doesn't have the traditional commitment to democracies and stability in Europe that we did since 1945.

[Tommy Vitor]

And one worrisome sort of subplot of this war is you're seeing Russia and North Korea get closer and closer. North Korea is literally sending troops to fight on the battlefield against Ukraine. And then the Russians are reportedly providing some sort of military tech to North Korea in return. Do we know what that is? And how worried are you about that kind of changing the security situation for our allies in South Korea, Japan, and also for us in the U.S. yeah.

[Jim Himes]

We are seeing things that would suggest, and I should be clear that I'm not current on the intelligence in this area, but we're seeing things, capabilities out of North Korea, missile capabilities. As much as it was crazy to watch this new battleship fall over on its side in North Korea, we're seeing military capabilities that certainly look like they were provided by the Russians and surprise, surprise, Right. I mean, North Korea has lost hundreds if not thousands of people in a conflict that they have no particular reason to be involved in. And so of course there's a price for that. And of course that price is in all likelihood going to be some combination of oil, commodities and military know how. So, yeah, that's a pretty ugly story because we always wonder whether North Korea is a deterrable country. The leader there is particularly odd and ornery and prone to unpredictability. And so upping his capabilities, as the Russians almost certainly are, is not a happy thing for the region.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, not good. Also, I would not want to be the North Korean general in charge of that ship launch.

[Jim Himes]

Final question of arrest there. Yeah, I doubt the caliber of the legal representation those arrested are.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, no. Kim Jong Un, I believe, is known to fire anti aircraft guns at people he doesn't like. Last question for you. You know, there's, there's been simmering tensions between China and Taiwan for a very long time. The date you often hear from military officials testifying before Congress about when the pla, the Chinese military, might be prepared for some sort of operation against Taiwan is usually 2027. Is that timeframe still right to you?

[Jim Himes]

So very, very good question. It's really important that we remember exactly what 2027 was about. 2027 is the date, and this was a couple of years ago that President Xi ordered his military command to be ready to invade Taiwan by then. Now remember, that's an order. And this is an unpracticed military hasn't fought a conflict since the 1970s. They've watched very closely the Russian failure in Ukraine. Right. And remember what the Russian, the experienced Russian military didn't do was Try to cross 100 miles of blue water. And so just because the president ordered the PLA to be able to take Taiwan in 2027 doesn't necessarily mean they're going to have the capability, which by the way, doesn't mean there's any room for complacency there. My own view, and there are people smarter than I am on this who disagree, but my own view is that the risk of an invasion is so huge, so unpredictable that it's going to be more a sort of heating the frog in the pan slowly kind of thing. Take an island that is just off the mainland that belongs to Taiwan, put a naval blockade just to raise that temperature, to try to again boil the frog without it jumping out of the pan. Because Xi is very conscious of the capabilities of INDOPACOM in the U.S. military in the region. So I. I personally am much more focused on this. You know, is there a blockade? Are there islands that are taken? Are there provocations that are set up that, you know, allows China to say they need to start flying their military aircraft over the island? That. That's frankly what worries me most right now.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Well, Congressman Hives, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and doing this. This tour of the region. I really appreciate it.

[Jim Himes]

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thanks again to Congressman Himes for joining the show. I'll be out next week, so you'll be getting a heaping dose of Ben, you want to know.

[Ben Rhodes]

And my guy, Ali Velshi, who people may remember, he guest hosted when you were out once before and was just like. I mean, this is like the kind of chemistry that Kat and Jill and Brunson have on the pick and roll. Like, he can just step in, you know, get it done.

[Tommy Vitor]

I was gonna say Sydney Sweeney and whatever that hot guy's name is. No, Ali's so sweet, smart, and he's such a.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's a great dude.

[Tommy Vitor]

And when you. I remember I've. I've hosted an episode of Pod Save America with him, and I was like, oh, yes, this is what a professional looks and sounds like.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, that's. I had the same thought. He was so prepared, and, like, I was like, this is not his main job. He was just smooth. Like, just spoke with authority. No ums, no likes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Just.

[Tommy Vitor]

Just good at it. Okay.

[Ben Rhodes]

Slay it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, I'll be off for a week, and then I'll be back, but I'm very excited to listen to that, so talk to you guys soon. Pod Save World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsman. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben.

[Ben Rhodes]

Hi.

[Tommy Vitor]

The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Molly Lobel. Matt de Groot is our head of product production. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community, cricket.com friends don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus, find Pod Save the world on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Ben Rhodes]

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[Jim Himes]

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