Trump Bullies FIFA, NATO

Summary

Pod Save the World: "Trump Bullies FIFA, NATO" — Episode Summary (July 8, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This week, Tommy Vietor (Pod Save the World) is joined by special guest Mehdi Hassan, founder of Zateo News and Zateo UK, for a wide-ranging, incisive episode. The duo dives into the extraordinary intersection of global sports, geopolitics, and crumbling norms—dominated by Donald Trump’s recent interventions at the FIFA World Cup and the NATO summit. They discuss mounting tensions between the US and Europe, Trump’s coziness with authoritarian leaders like Turkey’s Erdogan, the implications for the so-called "rules-based international order," and chaotic developments in UK and European politics. Central themes include political corruption, the failings of international institutions, democratic backsliding, and the rise of the far right.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. FIFA World Cup: Politics, Corruption, and Trump’s Interference

• Trump’s Involvement with FIFA: Trump personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to request the suspension of a red card given to U.S. player Flo Balogun—a violation of FIFA rules barring state interference.
  • Quote, Trump (08:59): “I didn’t know what the hell a red card was… I said, you gotta be kidding. This guy, just hands up, okay? Your best player is not gonna play next week or in the next game. I said, wow, that’s a lot of power. That’s terrible. So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA…”
  • Tommy and Mehdi lambast the move as mob-boss behavior, likening it to open transactional corruption rather than the backroom dealing FIFA was historically known for.
• VAR and Refereeing Controversies: The pair discuss Egypt’s heartbreak in their match against Argentina—goal disallowed via questionable VAR usage, fueling accusations of favoritism.
  • Quote, Egypt’s Coach (05:51, paraphrased): “If they want Argentina to win so badly, why do they invite everyone to come and participate?”
  • Mehdi (06:25): “The double standards are insane… people are just fed up with FIFA. They’re fed up with Gianni Infantino, and after Donald Trump’s intervention, where he tainted the U.S. men’s National Team.”
• FIFA’s Endemic Corruption: Both call FIFA a “criminal organization,” referencing the 2015 DOJ indictments and persistent scandals with host country selection (Qatar, Russia, and upcoming Saudi Arabia—all surrounded by allegations and visible Saudi Aramco sponsorship).
• Impact on USMNT and Global Perceptions: Trump’s intervention is blamed for derailing U.S. momentum, epitomizing the destructive pattern captured in Rick Wilson’s “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”
  • Mehdi (11:49): “Trump just does it brazenly in plain sight, just brags about it… that is a metaphor for international relations right now.”

Timestamps

• [02:24–08:59]: Introduction, World Cup context and Egypt-Argentina controversy
• [08:59–13:10]: Trump’s FIFA intervention and organizational corruption

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2. US-Europe Tensions and the Future of NATO

• Trump’s Antagonism Toward NATO:
  • At the summit, Trump refuses to reassure allies over Article 5, browbeats them over defense spending (demanding a hike to 5% of GDP), threatens troop withdrawals, and repeatedly insults European leaders.
  • Mehdi (21:04): “There is nothing. This guy, treat him as he is… the village idiot. He couldn’t find Greenland on a map if his life depended on it.”
• European Leaders’ Response:
  • Leaders like NATO Secretary Mark Rutte try to flatter Trump (even mimicking his text/communication style) in an effort to mollify him.
  • Quote, Rutte (21:32): “I had a very good visit with him… what he is doing for NATO is great news… Trump is now achieving what since Eisenhower, American presidents tried to achieve, which is to equalize the defense spending between the US and Europe…”
  • Mehdi (21:52): “Look at him now. How does he look his wife and kids in the eye? Complete sycophant… That’s their strategy, to try and suck up to Trump, not piss him off. I don’t think it works. This will always come back to bite you.”
• Policy Substance vs. Performance:
  • Critique that Trump’s policy demands (such as the 5% spending figure) are arbitrary and mainly serve to feed US defense contractors.
  • Tommy (24:33): “Within that 5%, like 3.5%… the rest can mean anything—recategorize shit, 100%.”
• Strategic Contradictions:
  • Trump’s anti-European bluster sits at odds with his affection for Putin and Xi (while raising alarm about Chinese/Russian ships at Greenland, for example).
  • Mehdi (27:30): “Looking for consistency with Trump is insane. He attacks France and Germany for not supporting the war in Iran, praises Erdogan who didn’t either…”

Timestamps

• [15:44–25:15]: Tournament fallout, European mockery of Trump, and NATO defense spending
• [25:57–28:32]: US military posture in Europe, contradictions in Trump’s logic about allies and adversaries

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3. Trump and Erdogan: Strongmen, Transactions, and F35s

• Trump-Erdogan Relationship:
  • Both despise democratic checks, have history of bullying, and maintain fiercely transactional relationships. Trump has longstanding personal/business ties (e.g. Trump Towers Istanbul).
  • Mehdi (34:40): “He loves these transactional relationships. He loves Erdogan for the money and he loves Erdogan for the power. He said today he’s a strong leader—he said it twice, Tommy. When Donald Trump repeats himself, pay attention.”
• F35 Controversy: Despite prior US sanctions for Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 missiles, Trump expresses willingness to resume F-35 transfers, ignoring Israeli protests.
  • Quote, Netanyahu (33:06): “He harbors Hamas, the Hamas terrorists… not exactly a model ally of the United States…”
  • Mehdi (34:38): “That was not a Trump decision, I suspect. I think that was one of the many things that happened in the first term that he didn’t really pay attention to or try and stop.”
• Regional Power Games: Discusses Israeli alarm at Turkey’s growing regional role and open talk (by Israeli leaders) about targeting Turkey next. Warns of risk for US/NATO if such a conflict erupts.

Timestamps

• [31:45–38:05]: Erdogan-Trump ties, Netanyahu’s objections, and the looming risk of conflict

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4. Iran, War, and a Fraying Ceasefire

• Khamenei’s Funeral: Massive public mourning for the assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader, but also an undercurrent of public anger at his repression. His son and successor notably absent from ceremonies.
• US Airstrike Controversy: CNN report: US ignored warnings about outdated intelligence and struck a girls’ school, causing mass casualties.
  • Mehdi (41:10): “They’re not going to take responsibility. They’re going to hope that people just move on and forget about it. Obviously the rest of the world is not.”
• US-Israel Trust Issues: NYT exposed that the Trump administration warned Iran (via intermediaries) that Israel might target peace negotiators, revealing deep strategic divergences.
  • Mehdi (44:15): “Joe Kent… made the point that even if you supported this war, the American goal was to get regime change done quickly… The Israelis want the complete and utter destruction of Iran.”
• Ceasefire in Question: The current lull described as a “fake ceasefire,” easily prone to derailment. Reports of continued violence in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, and deep skepticism about the prospect of a nuclear deal.
  • Mehdi (47:41): “Post November we’re going to be in a lot of trouble… We have a fake ceasefire in Gaza, a fake ceasefire in Lebanon, a fake ceasefire in Iran… Israel is basically undermining those ceasefires.”

Timestamps

• [38:53–49:48]: Iran’s funeral, US strike blunder, US-Israel tensions, precarious ceasefire

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5. UK and European Politics: Farage, Corruption, and the Far Right Surge

• Nigel Farage, Corruption, and Bluster: Facing corruption scandals (undisclosed gifts from billionaires and fraudsters), Farage resigns as MP to force a by-election, copying Trump’s populist playbook.
  • Quote, Farage (52:21): “This will be a people versus the establishment by election… a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment… I will fight to continue the political revolution that reform has started.”
  • Mehdi (54:25): “For the first time in his life, as he's seen as a serious contender for Prime Minister, a bunch of newspapers have done great investigative reporting… Now all the parties have called his bluff and said, we’re not running against you… he's running in this by election against one candidate called Count Bin Face.”
• UK Labour Turmoil: Starmer on his way out; Andy Burnham poised to become PM—charismatic, but relatively untested.
  • Mehdi (57:57): “He ran for labour leader in 2010… 2015—came second to Jeremy Corbyn... He’s the most popular politician in the UK. But we know that can change fast.”
  • Critique of centre-left’s habit of “love-bombing the right,” failing to present a bold alternative vision.
• Far Right Surges Across Europe: Marine Le Pen’s embezzlement ban shortened, paving her way to another presidential run in France. AFD in Germany, Meloni in Italy, Musk-backed far right parties in the UK and Germany—across the West, the right is on the march.
  • Mehdi (63:38): “These parties are heading for power, in some cases have power… the left has to offer a vision… a story, a purpose, a community—or we are effed across the West.”

Timestamps

• [51:40–57:50]: Farage’s by-election, corruption drama, political ridicule
• [57:50–64:18]: Labour infighting, Burnham’s ascent, European far right, lessons for the left

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s FIFA intervention (Mehdi, 09:55): “He is a mob boss. That is how he approaches every problem in life—bullying, intimidation, threats, corruption, bribery, transactional relationships.”
• On the “rules-based order” (Mehdi, 16:24): “It’s never done anything like this… Getting involved in a game, right? Literally the eve of the game, and the president of the United States and the head of FIFA allegedly conspiring… That again tells you a lot about what is happening in the world with the quote unquote rules based order.”
• On appeasing Trump (Mehdi, 21:52): “I just wonder about these people who suck up to Trump. Do they have no self-respect? What do they do? How do they go to bed at night?”
• On Erdogan and transactional foreign policy (Mehdi, 34:40): “If you want Trump to get off your back… build a Trump Tower in Tehran or some Trump coins… That is how Trump runs United States foreign policy.”
• On American reputation (Mehdi, 25:15): “For those of us who travel abroad, the image of this country is such a joke… you elected this fool for a second time, that he’s doing this crazy stuff, that the American people are tolerating it. It's bad for our country when you become an international laughingstock.”
• On the Left’s task (Mehdi, 63:38): “The left can’t just come along and say, fix the economy. The left has to offer a story, a purpose, a community… Otherwise, we are effed across the West.”

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Conclusion

This episode is a sharp, often darkly funny, and sometimes bleak diagnosis of the global political order—highlighting how Trump’s embrace of strongmen, disregard for norms, and transactional worldview has undermined both international sports and security. The hosts underscore the urgency for progressive movements to offer compelling narratives and tangible gains lest authoritarian and far right forces continue their ascent.

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For further details:

• [02:24–13:10] — FIFA/Trump
• [15:44–28:32] — Europe, NATO, and Trump
• [31:45–38:05] — Trump & Erdogan
• [38:53–49:48] — Iran, war, and ceasefire
• [51:40–64:18] — UK/Europe politics & rise of far right

Essential listening for anyone seeking to understand how politics infects everything—from the soccer pitch to the corridors of power.

Transcript

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

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[Tommy Vietor]

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor and I am joined Today by a very, very special guest. Co host. He's the founder of Zetao News, which just launched Zetao uk. Mehdi Hassan, I believe. Congrats on the launch of both. I think you're the fastest growing substack in the United Kingdom at the moment. Is that right?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Thank you very much, Thomas. Appreciate the endorsement. Yeah, we launched Zatteo UK in London in June, a soft launch. It's our first international expansion since we launched Zatteo here in the US in 2024. And yeah, we're the fastest growing. We've had a guess what the British media needed to be disrupted. You'll be shocked to hear. So we're happy to provide that disruption. But it's great to be back on the show with you.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's great to have you back. The British media really does need some disruption. It needs a little, some punches from the left, shake things up a bit. I do like it's a little more rough and tumble over there than in the U.S. that's why I like talking to you so much, because you come out of that tradition. By the way, if folks want to support independent media, become a subscriber to Zateo News, they're doing amazing coverage of all kinds of stuff, foreign policy, domestic policy. There's great opinion coverage. It is really essential reading. Also, if you like what we're doing here at Crooked media, go to crooked.com friends consider being a paid subscriber. Running ads and reading ads is great. It's one way to build a business. But the single best thing you can do to help independent media companies like ours is to become subscribers. You get ad free episodes, bonus content and lots more. So 100% end of the plug. Mehdi. We got a lot of serious news to cover today. So there's the NATO summit, there's the growth growing split between the US and Europe thanks to Donald Trump. There's a related conversation about Turkey's place in NATO and in Europe and why Donald Trump is such good friends with Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey. We got updates from Iran, the Supreme Leader's funeral, more signs that the ceasefire is kind of a mess. And I also want to get your take on kind of all things British politics because we've been covering the mess that is the Labor Party. But then there's some news today about far right leader Nigel Farage and some of his corruption scandals. That's just fun and worth digging into. But first we have to talk about the biggest story in the world, the FIFA World Cup. We've got nations competing, we've got unbelievable drama on the field. We've got Lionel Messi just being like a superhuman and of course, politics ruining all of it. Mehdi, we're recording this. Tuesday, 2:07pm, July 7th. We both just watched Egypt versus Argentina. Heartbreaking end for the Egypt side. Are you as addicted to watching these games as I am?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Oh, 100%. It's what I look forward to every four years since I was a kid. My first World cup that I have a vague memory of is 1986, when England heartbreak went out in Mexico at the Azteca to Diego Maradona's infamous hand of God and then his other amazing goal. And then the first World Cup I really got Into, I was 11 years old, was the 1990 World Cup. Again, heartbreak for England. We went out on penalties to Germany or West Germany as they were then. So I've been following this. I love the fact that it came back to. I remember watching the 94 World Cup, Tom.

[Tommy Vietor]

Me too.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I was 15. I had to get permission from my mum to wake up like crazy hours because of time difference to watch the games in England. England didn't qualify for the 94 World cup in the US and no one cared about the World cup in America in those days. The stadiums were empty. Obviously, everything's changed now with MLS and with Beckham and Messi, so such a great atmosphere. I went to one of the games last week. The atmosphere in the stadium's amazing and it's just a joy to watch football at its best. Although it's being ruined a bit by var, I think it's fair to say.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, we should talk about var. Instant replay, basically, for the. For the layman, Donald Trump. But also, I mean, like you and I. So we were just watching this game between Egypt and Argentina. There is a feeling that Egypt was robbed because they called back a goal. Argentina made this unbelievable comeback and after the final whistle, Egypt's coach said, I'm going to say what I think, regardless of the consequences. This was clearly a manipulated match and the whole world saw it. I want to say one more thing. If they want Argentina to win so badly, why do they invite everyone to come and participate? What you make of that quote, It's

[Mehdi Hassan]

a powerful quote from a guy who's been giving some great quotes in this tournament. He's also been very pro Palestine at this tournament. He's been talking about Palestine bringing that into the news conferences, which has obviously bothered a lot of people. Look, a lot of people are thinking it. I happen to be a great, great Messi fan. I was at the World cup final in 2022 in Doha, where he performed just miracles in that game to stop Mbappe from taking it back. And, you know, it's amazing to watch him play. But let's be clear, they definitely give Argentina and him a pass. He clearly, almost clearly red carded an Algerian player in the group stages. Got away with it. A lot of Americans, a lot of Trump supporters pointed this out when he came in. When Trump came in a couple of days back to rescue Baligan from his red card, they said, what about Messi? And it's a fair point. Messi got away with that. There was no VAR on that. Today they disallowed an Egypt goal because of a tackle that they claimed was a foul on the other end of the pitch under var, which is not the purpose of var. But they didn't do anything when Mo Salah went down at the end, when they scored. So the whole thing was just. The double standards are insane and people are frustrated with this World Cup. Some of the football has been amazing. I'm an England fan. The England Mexico game was one of the great games of all time. But at the same time, people are just fed up with FIFA. They're fed up with some of the ways that they run this place. They're fed up with Gianni Infantino, and they're certainly fed up after Donald Trump's intervention, where he tainted the U.S. men's National Team. They had a great tournament until Trump came along, stuck himself into the middle of it, as usual. Screwed up, maybe screwed with their heads. Baligan had a great, awful match after coming back, after Trump's intervention. And you just think, I keep telling people, remember the Rick Wilson book from the first term? Everything Trump touches dies. That is the line. That is everything he goes near. And by the way, guys, congratulations. We've got the Olympics coming our way soon, too.

[Tommy Vietor]

In la. Yeah, there were a lot of jokes being made about Trump going to Game 3 of the Knicks series, which is the only one they lost in the NBA Finals. Let's talk about the politics. So I'm sure by now everyone has heard about Trump's intervention to get FIFA to suspend this red card against one of America's best players, Flo Baligan. Baligan got a red card, citizen. Yes. Yes, he is. He got a red card in the US game against Bosnia Herzegovina. Under FIFA rules, if you get a red card, you're out for the rest of that game. Your team has to play a man down and Then you're suspended for the next game. So I think it was a questionable call for reasons we can get into, Medi. About whether it was a red card or should have been a yellow card. But all the reporting afterwards said, you know what it is, what it is, there's no way to appeal this decision. However, that apparently was not true. Donald Trump called. FIFA president Gianni Infantino asked him to reconsider. Here he is talking about all this on Monday, showing his soccer expertise. Let's watch.

[Donald Trump]

I think the referee's call was horrible. And nobody talks about that. They talk about the red card like it's fine. Nobody talks. The referee's decision to red card. I didn't know what the hell a red card was. When I found out, I said, you got to be kidding. This guy. Just hands up, okay? Your best player is not going to play next week or in the next game. I said, wow, that's a lot of power. That's terrible. So, yes, I asked for a review by FIFA. I had nothing to do with the decision. What I did have to do is I said, I think it should be reviewed because I watched the play and he didn't do anything wrong.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

So when the president calls, he's just asking questions about the process. Right. No pressure there on FIFA or John.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Don't know whether to laugh or cry when you watch these clips. If you were in the Netflix writers room, you could not write that scene.

[Tommy Vietor]

No.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Where you're like, he's going to call out the red card, and then he's going to admit he doesn't know what a red card is and be like,

[Tommy Vietor]

no one's blaming the ref for giving the red card. The ref gives the red card, buddy.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

What are you talking about?

[Mehdi Hassan]

No, no. But first he goes off to red card, and then he admits he didn't know what a red card was. Then he goes, I called him up. And then he goes, I don't have anything to do with the decision. But you called him up. I mean, that goes against FIFA rules as well. Any kind of political government involvement, interference. It's just. I mean, he is a mob boss. That is how he approaches every problem in life. Bullying, intimidation, threats, corruption, bribery, transactional relationships. Clearly, he's built a very close relationship with Infantino over the years. Infantino invented a peace prize to make this man child president of ours feel good about himself after he was rejected again for a Nobel Peace Prize. And it's just, I know Ben wrote a great piece on his substat that I saw making this Exact point that it is a metaphor for international relations right now. The stuff we're seeing around the world, the destruction of the quote unquote, rules based order, American hegemony, talking about a Donro doctrine, regime change, wherever he feels like. And now you bring that to the World Cup.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, there's like a little piece of me that doesn't begrudge Trump for like advocating on behalf of his country. But it is impossible to kind of disaggregate the corruption here. Because you said, you know, Trump operates like a mob boss. I mean, FIFA is basically a criminal organization. I mean, 2015, we all got to see, I think it was seven FIFA officials dragged out of a hotel in Zurich, prosecuted by DOJ, I think for about $150 million worth of bribe.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah. Massive correction and crime scandals involved with FIFA. In fact, I'm gonna do a shameless plug, please, Tommy, and say, I just finished recording, we're about to put out part three. We did a three part series called the Dark side of the World cup where we looked at some of those corruption stories and we looked at the relations between FIFA over a hundred years with authoritarian leaders, Mussolini in the 1930s, the Videla regime in Argentina in the 1970s, Putin, all of these controversial World Cups. The difference here is in all of those previous tournaments, there's been all sorts of dodginess, but it happened behind the scenes. Yeah, the thing about Trump is he just does it brazenly in plain sight, just brags about it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's a very good point. It's also just back to FIFA for a minute. I mean, the process for even the host selection for the country selection is sketchy as hell.

[Donald Trump]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, DOJ alleged that Russia and Qatar had bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights. And then this last time, like not to get into all the details of how the selection process works, but FIFA basically compressed the process and made it really short. And they have this sort of informal continental rotation rule that made it so only the Saudis really had time to bid or the ability to bid. They also ignored their own rules around human rights. And I don't know about you, Mehdi, but I've been not that surprised to see all the Saudi Aramco signage around all the venues.

[Mark Rutte]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, there's clearly like FIFA 2034 in the kingdom.

[Mehdi Hassan]

FIFA 2034, that's gonna be an interesting one. Look, Infantino is so mired in scandal and corruption that Sepp Blatter, his predecessor, the guy who was in charge when you mentioned what happened in 2015. The guy who was he's literally banned the former president fee for set Blatter is so corrupt that he's been banned from attending a World cup game till 20. It sep blatter comes out on Twitter and says, what is going on here? This is too much like when SE Blatter says you've gone too far in football corruption and rule bending. That's bad.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's. That's shocking.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

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[Tommy Vietor]

So just stepping back the. Obviously, the Belgians were furious because they had to play the U.S. now, look, this is.

[Mehdi Hassan]

They got the last laugh.

[Tommy Vietor]

They got the last laugh. They won the game.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Mocking they did the Trump dance.

[Tommy Vietor]

They did the Trump dance.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Their team Twitter account put out posts saying, overturn this kind of embarrassing for the US Men's team. And I say that as a support of the US Men's team. It's annoying. It's a horrible way to go out. They had a great World cup up until that point.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. I mean, and so because they lost and they lost so badly, it'll probably be kind of a footnote in history. But do you think that the rest of Europe sees what's happening here and thinks this is a big deal, or is this FIFA being FIFA, like an organization they have always known is corrupt, doing corrupt things for people in power.

[Mehdi Hassan]

But it's never done anything like this. That's the point.

[Donald Trump]

Right?

[Mehdi Hassan]

It's never done, you know, it's different. I don't want to say that's some kind of lesser crime, but like bribes, venue changes, you know, country selections, that's one thing. Getting involved in a game, right? Literally the eve of the game, Belgium, about the US and the president of the United States and the head of FIFA allegedly conspiring to get America's top player back on the pitch, clearly, absurdly went after they'd said there was no appeals process. I think that again, tells you a lot about what is happening in the world with the quote unquote rules based order. And the Europeans, I mean, the Europeans, I have a very low view of all the European governments because they bitch and whine in private. They mock Trump behind his back, but to his face, they suck up to him. They think that sucking up to him is the way forward. I don't know if you saw this astonishing piece in the Wall Street Journal today about how European governments have started texting Trump in language that he recognized, using all caps. They do all caps in their tweet, in their texts. They Use short, staccato sentences. Mark Rutter, the NATO Secretary General who's a big Trump sycophant. He talks so much like Trump that his friends think he's in character and hasn't broken character. You have. The Norwegians are afraid to text Trump because they didn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize. So the Finnish president texts on behalf of Norway. Like, like this is embarrassing for us as a nation that our president is treated like this across. I don't know how maga are so proud of Donald Trump got this done. He is a joke on the international stage in the first term. The United Nations General assembly literally laughed out loud as he was speaking at the UN Trump had to stop and kind of, he couldn't believe that they were laughing to his face. We've had multiple hot mic moments where Western leaders are mocking Trump, not realizing that they're on tape, they're on mic. And now you have this situation where he's abusing European teams at the World cup by acting in this manner. And then he goes to NATO. I know we're going to talk about NATO. And then he attacks European countries again and again says, I'm going to take Greenland.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, so let's talk about NATO because wither the rules based international order and all the sucking up you mentioned. So Trump is there now as we're recording this for the NATO summit. His first meeting is with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. There's a big dinner on Tuesday with, you know, the 30 some odd leaders. I'm sure that'll be a blast. Then Wednesday, I think it's the summit itself. Trump has meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and then Syrian leader Ahmad Al Shar. Yeah, another fun one. So there's a lot of stuff to discuss, a lot of the big ticket items here. Let's just start with sort of the broader US NATO alliance because for years Trump has attacked NATO as an institution. He has, at times he's refused to reaffirm the principle of collective defense, the Article 5 commitments where attack upon one is an attack upon all. He browbeats NATO allies to spend more, which, you know, was not unreasonable at first, but now we are demanding 5% of GDP on defense or defense related infrastructure, which is a ridiculous amount of money. Trump has threatened to remove troops from Europe because he's mad that European countries didn't want to go to war with Iran again, because that went great. And then there's the whole Greenland thing, the whole invading Greenland thing, the whole

[Mehdi Hassan]

stealing A European country's territory.

[Tommy Vietor]

But so to your point about the kind of the ass kissing approach, here's NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta trying to put a good spin on some of these disputes.

[Mark Rutte]

Look at President trump in the G7. It was a big success, that meeting. I had a very good visit with him last two weeks ago in the White House. So I have every confidence in this summit.

[Advertisement Voice]

You've been credited as sort of being the Trump whisperer on behalf of this alliance. You're shaking your head.

[Donald Trump]

The point is this.

[Mark Rutte]

I just like the man. I think what he is doing for NATO is great news when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. When it comes to Iran. First of all, all NATO allies agree it was crucial that Trump degraded the nuclear capability of Iran. I think this is massively good news for Israel, for the Middle east, for Europe, for the whole world.

[Advertisement Voice]

At the center of this is the NATO allies committing to an increase of defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. This is, of course, a major priority for President Trump. You've said that the goals of this summit are delivery and implementation of that commitment.

[Mark Rutte]

This is President Trump basically achieving what since Eisenhower, American presidents tried to achieve, which is to equalize the defense spending between the US And Europe, Trump is now achieving. The success story is that when you combine 2025 and 2026, Canadians and Europeans spending more than $250 billion extra compared to 2024. This is amazing.

[Tommy Vietor]

So that was Ruta speaking with Dasha Burns from Politico. Mehdi, it's hard to tell, like, what's real here and what's, you know, Trump being kind of just an asshole. Do you think that the US Is actually on the cusp of a split from Europe and NATO, or is this just like the constant posturing he does?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah, it's hard to say because I don't want to ascribe some kind of strategy to a man who doesn't have strategy. A man who changes his mind based on what side of bed he got out of, what he saw on tv, what he saw on Twitter. The last person who spoke in his ear, like, too many smart people, people, Tommy, have spent years trying to come up with like, oh, but Trump means this. And, you know, I get it. You and I, we move in foreign policy circles. We read long essays in foreign affairs. People, it's their jobs. They have to get paid. They write these things. The Trump Doctrine, the Trump There is nothing right? This guy, treat him as he is right? Treat him as the idiot, village idiot.

[Tommy Vietor]

That he is.

[Mehdi Hassan]

He couldn't find Greenland on a map if his life depended on it. He lied today and said it's surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships. It is not surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships. And this idea that, oh, NATO. He doesn't even understand the NATO budget.

[Donald Trump]

Right.

[Mehdi Hassan]

He thinks that people pay the United States. That's not how it works. Nobody pays anyone. It's your own proportion of your own defense spending as a proportion of gdp. And ruta there, you know, first of all, salivating over the idea of $250 billion extra for defense at a time when people are going through an affordability crisis, when people can't afford to put food on the table, when there's still child poverty across Western Europe. For me on the left, I'm disgusted by that kind of attitude towards defense spending. He's not. It's a necessity. He's excited about it. And number two, the guy was Prime Minister of the Netherlands, right? He was the leader of his country. He was a powerful man. Look at him now. How does he look his wife and kids in the eye? Like complete sycophant. Lives up Trump's backside. Like, what? How do people like this. I just wonder about these people who suck up to Trump. Do they have no self respect? What do they do? How do they go to bed at night? It's just the mind boggles. And look, that's their strategy to try and suck up to Trump, not piss him off. I don't think it works. This will always come back to bite you in the ass. You either stand up to the bully together or he picks you off one by one. I mean, that is something we learned in the playground as children. At one point, the Danish government, Tom, you saw that reporting a few months ago. They had, like, troops ready to mine the runways. They had blood supplies. That's insane. That a European government was preparing for a US invasion and we're all supposed to pretend that everything's fine. And then this guy turns up today, by the way, he turns up in Turkey. He says, I only came because my friend Erdogan invited me. Then he berates Germany, France and Italy for not supporting the war in Iran. Hold on. Last time I checked, Turkey didn't support the war in Iran.

[Tommy Vietor]

Good point.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Funny, funny you didn't criticize Turkey while you were sitting in Turkey. And by the way, Erdogan took him straight to his white palace. This massive complex filled with Ottoman, like soldiers, with Turkish soldiers on horseback taking. And Trump's loving it. Can you imagine how much he's gonna talk about the ballroom when he gets back from Turkey.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh yeah, we're gonna have to build two of them. Yeah, there's sort of the Mark Ruta approach to the ass kissing versus the Mark Carney approach. The Prime Minister of Canada who is arguing we got to stop appeasing this guy. We got to bring together the sort of so called middle powers to forge our own alliances and move forward. I personally would find myself more in the Carney camp, but I don't know how much progress he's made on that yet on the spending thing. Look, I'm with you. 5% is crazy. It's worth just saying two things about that number. First of all, it is plucked out of thin air. It's not based on any kind of defense analysis or need. Second, it's not going to happen even if all the NATO allies agree to it because the target is 2035 when Trump, we all hope, will be long gone, as will many of these leaders. And then third, within that 5%, like 3.5% of the money is supposed to go to military spending. 1.5 is defined as security related investments which could be like roads, bridges, cybersecurity, like anything you want it to be. So you could just recategorize shit, 100%.

[Mehdi Hassan]

They're going to play with fast and loose, of course, and get Trump off their back. In the short term, they want to give Trump a win, right? They understand this guy doesn't do detail, he doesn't do substance, he doesn't understand anything. So you give him quick win, you send him a text with caps, letters. Do you see that story? One of the stories in the Wall Street Journal that the EU foreign policy chief, once she saw Trump got mad that they were talking about sanctions on Russia, she started calling sanctions terrorists.

[Tommy Vietor]

That story's incredible because there's an anecdote in there about all European member head of state meeting that turned into a therapy session. There's a story in there about Trump trying to do a video call with Emmanuel Macron of France and Justin Trudeau of Canada. And he couldn't get the thing to unmute, so he threw the tablet across the table on the child.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I mean, I'm telling you, manchild, it's so embarrassing. Like we can laugh about this, but it really is. You know, I know a lot of Americans don't travel abroad, but for those of us who do travel abroad, the image of this country is such a joke. I mean, people talk about patriotism, you and I and people on the left are lectured By Maga about. Do you love your country? Are you proud of your country on the 250th on 4th of July? Yeah, I'm an American citizen. I love this country. I'm proud of this country. That's why I can't stand what's going on. You think it makes me feel good as an American to go, go visit the UK or visit Europe or go to India and have people just laughing about your country that you elected this fool for a second time, that he's doing this crazy stuff, that the American people are tolerating it. It's bad for our country when you become an international laughingstock.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And look, the elephant in the room on this defense spending is it's gonna go to a bunch of US Defense contractors, probably. Right. Which is why Trump, I'm sure, loves it and is getting donations.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Well, he's trying to increase our own defense budget by insane amounts.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, 1.5 trillion. It's insane. And also on your point about the double standard around patriotism, I mean, it was very glaring to me, the way that Zor Donnie's sort of Fourth of July speech was covered compared to things that Trump says all the time, like, this was a dead country until I came back.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Right.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Like garbage can for the world.

[Tommy Vietor]

No one runs down America more than Trump. One sort of last subject to point about this Europe stuff. I mean, Trump is out there musing about whether he's going to remove US Troops from Europe. The CNN had a report that Trump has considered. They said he mused about cutting the level of US Forces in Europe by a third. Earlier this spring, the US halted some troop deployments to Europe, including 5,000 to Germany, after Friedrich Mertz, the Chancellor, said that US was being humiliated by the war with Iran. There has been reports that the New York Times reported that the US Is going to cut aircraft and warships that they made available to NATO, including F16s and F15 jets, and reallocate other resources. This all becomes more significant in the context of the war in Ukraine, in this Zelensky meeting and Europe's future if the US Backs away from NATO. I think the thing that confuses me, Mehdi, is NATO basically exists to deter a Russian invasion of the NATO allies. Trump clearly doesn't give a shit about Europe or so why does he care so much about demanding that they all spend more money? It doesn't really logically make sense.

[Mehdi Hassan]

No, nothing he says logically makes sense. Think about it this way. Trump loves. Who are the two leaders he loves. He loves Vladimir Putin. He Loves Xi Jinping, right. He loves the leaders of China and Russia. He goes out of his way to say, we shouldn't have war. I want to be friendly with Russia. You know, he's talking, he always says, why did Russia get kicked out of the G7? Why did it become G8, G7? He's obsessed with these guys and yet today his argument is I need to take Greenland because it's surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships. Well, that's fine, isn't it? Aren't they your pals?

[Donald Trump]

Right?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Like there's no logical consistency to this guy's arguments ever, especially in international affairs where he's all over the place. I just mentioned he attacks France and Germany for not supporting the war in Iran, while he praised Erdogan, who also didn't support the war in Iran, who also didn't open Turkish airspace to American jets. And now he's offering Turkey F35s even though his own first term administration, Mike Pompeo and company put sanctions on Turkey because you're using Russian military hardware which undermines American military force projection. So there's, you know, looking for consistency with Trump is insane. Yeah, it's a fool there drive you mad.

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[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Donald Trump]

Yeah.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

Oh.

[Tommy Vietor]

He said, oh, that's great because some people have. Kim Kardashian could have passed the bar. No. Wasn't that a thing?

[Donald Trump]

I don't know.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Tommy Vietor]

So let's talk about this Erdogan piece because Politico had a great breakdown of kind of why they they get along. You know, Trump apparently says, you know Whatever. He asked Erdogan for something he delivers. So, sure.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Not true. Not true. As I just mentioned, with Iran.

[Tommy Vietor]

You did mention that. Iran, yeah. They also both, you know, they fancy themselves indispensable strongmen. They both have a contempt for democracy, the rule of law, the press. So I'm sure that that gives them something to talk about. As you said, though, this was not always the case. They were not always buddies. Back in 2017, Turkey agreed to buy this Russian air defense system called the S400. The deliveries of the components of that System started in 2019, at which time the Trump administration said, hey, guys, you can't have this S400 system going and purchase and operate American F35 jets because the Russians could use the S400 infrastructure, the radars, et cetera, to gain a bunch of intelligence about its stealth capabilities, its vulnerabilities, and then use it against us in battle. So Trump cuts Turkey off from the F35 program that cost Turkey billions of dollars. Pissed off Erdogan. In 2020, Congress passed a law that prevented the US from providing Turkey with F35s as long as they have the S400 system. And then fast forward to today. Mehdi. Another person who opposes the US letting Turkey have the F35 is Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Here he is. I know you're a big fan of his. Here he is on Fox News recently.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

I think that everybody understands that, notwithstanding the personal friendship that President Trump has with Erdogan, it doesn't make Turkey a friendly or a friendly state to the United States. To the contrary, it's a regime that's infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States. He harbors Hamas, the Hamas terrorists. He supports them. He finances them. He's thrown his opponents in jail, all of them. He throws more journalists in jail than anyone can understand. So he's not exactly a model ally of the United States. This is not a force for peace and stability. And if you give, you know, this kind of radical regime that admittedly smiles to America when it is necessary or smiles to the president of the United States when it's necessary, when you're given that power, you're going to see aggression in its wake. I wouldn't do that.

[Mehdi Hassan]

The chutzpah of Benjamin Netanyahu saying, erdogan throws journalists in jail. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is the number one killer of journalists on planet Earth today, according to every study done. I mean, I'm not defending Erdogan imprisoning journalists. In fact, I wrote a piece for The Guardian maybe 15 years ago, pointing out that Turkey was one of the top jailers of journalists in the world. But in the last two and a half years, we've seen what Benjamin Netanyahu has done to journalists in Gaza. There's a couple of things here with Erdogan, Tommy. One is, you're right that in the first term there was this clash over the Russian military hardware, but I don't think that was Trump. I don't think he involved himself.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes, probably that was Mike Pompeo.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I think that was the hawkish ring of the part. That was Jim Mattis, that was Mike Pompeo, that was John Kelly. That was a traditional Republican hawks, the NATO hawks, the anti Russia. I don't think Trump gives a damn. In fact, he said today, yeah, I'm fine with giving the place. They asked him today in Turkey, what about the Russia angle. Yeah, doesn't care. Doesn't bother him. So I don't think Trump. That was not a Trump decision, I suspect. I think that was one of the many things happened in the first term that he didn't really pay attention to or try and stop. He's always been powers with Erdoan. In fact, I checked before we coming on the Show 2012. He travels to Istanbul with Ivanka to open the Trump Towers in Istanbul. And then Prime Minister Erdogan turns up as the guest of honor, the VIP to cut the ribbon at the opening of Trump Towers. Ivanka puts a post on social media thanking then Prime Minister Erdogan for supporting Trump Towers in Istanbul. So they go way back. Trump loves these transactional relationships. He loves Erdogan for the money and he loves Erdogan for the power. He said today he's a strong leader. He said it twice, Tommy. When Donald Trump repeats himself, pay attention. He's a strong leader. Strong leader. He loves this idea of strongmen, right? Because he wants to be one. He envies them. He came back from North Korea in his first term and he said, everyone stands to attention when Kim Jong Un speaks. Why don't my people do that? He said on Fox with Peter Doocy at the time. So he loves him for his power. He loves the money relationships. I've always said for years, if you want Trump to get off your back, if Ayatollah Khamenei had wanted to avoid the Iran war and stay alive, all he had to do was build a Trump Tower in terror or some Trump coins. That is the simplest. And you think I'm joking. People listening. I'm not joking. Ahmed Shara president of Syria, former Al Qaeda leader, has been in talks reportedly to open a Trump Tower in Damascus. And Trump now sends him cologne, as we know, their pals, they're buddies, right? So we can laugh about, oh, this sounds crazy, but that is how Trump runs United States foreign policy. Let us be clear about that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, no, the people he loves are all ones with transactional relationships. Like, he loves, you know, whatever. The field marshal of Pakistan, you know, like, loves him. Guy who's been accused of extradition, killing and, you know, horrible, you know, war crimes.

[Mehdi Hassan]

You put a strong man in front of Trump and Trump goes weak at the knees. Very quickly. On Turkey and Israel, though.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Yes.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I've been saying for a while, a lot of us have been saying Turkey is next in terms of Israel's crosshairs, the Israeli leadership. And I'm not just talking about Netanyahu. Tommy and Naftali Bennett, who's one of the opposition leaders, former prime minister, could be the next prime minister of Israel, has said, Turkey, watch out.

[Donald Trump]

Right.

[Mehdi Hassan]

They've all targeted Turkey, the leaders of Israel, the military leadership. There is a lot of chatter in Israeli national security circles that something has to be done about Turkey, quote, unquote, the Muslim Brotherhood, as you heard Netanyahu say, remember, Israel's great Israel vision is to be the top dog in the neighborhood, to control as much territory as it can with as little resistance as there is. It has tried to do that in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, to varying degrees of success and failure. And having taken out Iran, or in their eyes, taken out Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran is still, obviously, still a powerful player in the Middle east. As we've seen for them now, Turkey is the next regional hegemon that has to go. And that's why Netanyahu's pissed off today. That's why he's put out a statement saying this upsets the balance of power in the Middle East. Yeah, no, it upsets the balance of power. And, you know, a lot of people, the Turks are talking openly about the possibility of there being a war between Israel and Turkey. The Israelis are saying it. It's something we, and I hope your listeners and viewers are paying attention to. It could be the next big, God forbid, hotspot in the Middle East. Can you imagine? An Israel, Turkey, war, NATO ally. He's a member of NATO. So what side would the United States be on that?

[Tommy Vietor]

It would be an absolute nightmare.

[Donald Trump]

You're right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that's why he doesn't want this F35 transfer, because they want to maintain their qualitative military edge in their region and the ability to act with impunity just quickly before we move on. I mean, it's just worth noting, what you mentioned, that Trump repeatedly called Erdogan a strong leader. What does that mean in practice? Well, ahead of the summit, the NATO summit, Turkish authorities arrested opposition members, a couple journalists, even a stand up comedian. I think 200 people in total, according to the Guardian.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Insulting the president.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Yes.

[Mehdi Hassan]

A crime in Turkey.

[Tommy Vietor]

Turkey blocked a gay friendly cruise from docking because apparently that would send the wrong message. And then, you know, not as recently, but you know, Erdogan has jailed his main political rival, the mayor of Istanbul. They sent police to storm the party's headquarters, basically sort of dismantling with force his office.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Basically a Stephen Miller wet dream.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's exactly, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. All right, so you mentioned Iran a couple times there. So let's turn to Iran. In Iran proper, the Islamic Republic is holding the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's historic funeral ceremonies. He obviously was killed many months ago, but his body has been waiting for a safe moment when they could bury him and do all the pomp and circumstance. This is gonna be a week long event. There have been a bunch of dramatic images in the media of like tens of thousands of mourners in the streets of Tehran. There have been also reports about Iranian citizens furious about all the pomp and circumstance given the way he cracked down on protesters. The ceremony started last Friday. His body was laid in state for public viewing. There was a long funeral procession that started Monday is gonna set into Gom where his body will be flown. The ceremonies. I just saw this. I don't know if you saw this, Mehdi. The ceremonies also included Khamenei's relatives who were killed in that initial US and Israeli airstrike, including a coffin for his 14 month old granddaughter, which really just I think hammers home the impact this war had on innocent civilians and kids. Not seen at any of this is his son, the new Supreme Leader, Mujtaba Khamenei. He has not been president at any of these events, raising questions about, about, you know, his fitness, his ability to lead, his health. Families of the 175 people and schoolgirls killed in the US strike in Minab on the same day that Khamenei was assassinated attended the funeral at the Grand Masala in Tehran over the weekend. They went, they traveled about 800 miles to be there. And then speaking of that horrible airstrike

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

on that girl's school.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nettie CNN reported Today Tuesday that U.S. military commanders ignored warnings that their intelligence on military targets in Iran was out of date and they approved strikes on years old intelligence that had not been updated or corrected before the war had started. That included this airstrike on the girls school. Mehdi I know full well that the US Military has a long and troubling record to say the least when it comes to civilian casualties. But what message do you think it sends the world that in this case the Trump administration will not even admit that what is so obvious that this was a US Missile that hit this girl's school?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Not just won't admit, but when Donald Trump was asked recently at the Evian G7 summit, I think it was in France at a press conference, he was asked about this by a reporter and he got annoyed. He goes I don't know why you're asking me that question. It's old news. And whenever he's asked about this, he always diverts it to Pete Hegseth. He's like ask a Pentagon. You know, he's happy to throw someone else under the bus cause even he knows killing 120 school kids is not something you want to try and justify. Yeah, I mean the American military chief has been on Capitol Hill saying there's investigation. We've been hearing words about an investigation for a while. They're not going to take responsibility. They're going to hope that people just move on and forget about it. Obviously the rest of the world is not. It was a crime I believe especially we don't know what the role of the AI was involved in this. There's been a lot of reporting about whether AI was involved in the decision to do this. This was a girls school next to a former military compound. It wasn't part of the compound. It was separate. People could see this from Google Im one point being part of it, but wasn't now. And as I pointed out recently on Al Jazeera show, I did. Do you know how many schools there are on US Military bases across this country? Are we saying now that that's okay now to bomb? Would we be okay with a foreign adversary of the United States bombing a school and say, well it was on a military base, it's kind of our fault? No, no one would say that. So let's not say it about the Iranians. And as for Khamenei's granddaughter, I mean look, whatever you think about Ayatollah Khamenei and people are right to Be critical. And there's been, you know, you know, people in Iran, a lot of people in Iran don't like him. But clearly from the funeral, a lot of people do like him. Whatever you think about Khamenei, just like whatever you think about Gaddafi, whatever you think about Saddam Hussein, whatever you think about whoever enemy du jour is, you cannot just go around killing people because you don't agree with them, don't like them. They're not listening to you. Again, I said Donald Trump's a mob boss. At the start of this show just recently, he threatened the Iranian negotiators who were in Europe for this signing ceremony. He said you could get killed on the way home. I mean, who talks like that? Which world leader. American presidents have killed a lot of people, but who's spoken like that? I don't remember even George Bush, who spoke like a cowboy and threatened people and talked about crusades, but telling negotiators in the middle of a diplomatic negotiation, do what we say or we'll murder you before you leave the negotiations. That language, that approach to politics, that's what we have to call out.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that was a shocking comment. But speaking of killing negotiators, I mean, there was this jaw dropping report in the New York Times last week that I wanted to ask you about, which, which said that the Trump administration was so concerned that Israel was going to assassinate Iranian officials involved in peace talks with the US that the US Asked other countries to warn Iran that this could happen. Now, the two officials were Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Rachi and the speaker of Parliament, Mohammed Galiboff. Both of them had been on the kind of Israeli target list since the beginning of the war. We know that there was basically a decapitation effort early on in the war. But the US had asked Israel to hold back once the negotiations were ongoing, but were so concerned that they would not, that they had to warn them.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Mehdi, like, what do you think this

[Tommy Vietor]

says about the divergence in strategy and the lack of trust between the two sides of the US And Israel, that the US Is warning Iran via an intermediary?

[Mehdi Hassan]

This is a New York Times reporting which Netanyahu are very upset about, of course. I mean, look, some of us have been saying this for a while. You don't have to be on the left, you don't have to be anti war, you don't have to be pro Palestine to say that Israel is not an ally of the United States, it has its own interests. And I get why people, now, some people, some people on the maga, right, are making this point. Joe Kent quit the administration, the former director for counterterrorism for Donald Trump. And he's made this point. He's made the point that even if you supported this war, the American goal was to get regime change done quickly and replaced with a, quote, unquote moderate leader. The Israelis killed all of those people in the first strikes. They were in the next door building apparently. I mean, Trump admitted this, right? He went on camera and said, oh yeah, we had all these number twos and they got killed by accident. That's how either A, incompetent the US and Israel are, or B, the Israelis are of course screwing the US over. Because the Trump administration agenda is not the Netanyahu agenda. We know Trump wants a quick war, in and out glory, rah rah rah, Maduro style. Get the oil prices back down, get the Strait of Hormuz open. That's what he wants. The Israelis want the complete and utter destruction of Iran. They want their failed state, state that can never ever pose any kind of threat to them or support any groups that fight them. So that is a big divergence in strategy there. And yeah, the Israeli assassination policy has been going on for years, Tommy. It went on under the Obama administration and your administration. Unfortunately, the government you were part of didn't do anything about it. When they were blowing up nuclear scientists in the middle of negotiations. That was a problem back then. This has been going on for a long time. When there were negotiations going on in Gaza with Hamas, the Israelis blew up Hamas. In 2012, I think it was. They blew up the top Hamas guy who had just signed onto a truce and the Israelis murdered him before the truce could go into action. Because the Israelis have a long history of killing negotiators in the middle of negotiations. That is why some of us say they are a rogue state. It's not just that they do bad things. Human rights abuses. Everyone does human rights abuses. It's the way they behave on the international stage, openly. Netanyahu is openly saying, if an Iranian leader pops their head up, we will kill you. You again, that is a mob boss attitude. In the post war period, we've not allowed leaders to say stuff like that. The UN doesn't allow you. The UN Charter doesn't say, I can just threaten to kill whoever I like in a foreign country because I don't like the look of their, the cut of their jib.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's actually, there's a great book about Israel's historic use of targeted assassination called Rise and Kill first by Ronan Bergman, a great Israeli journalist. That's worth reading if you want to expand upon this. Last on Iran. Mehdi, There is this, this ceasefire. There have been peace talks in. They're hoping to get a nuclear deal done. I have almost zero hope that that will ever happen. But I'm hoping that the ceasefire holds together and the Strait of Hormuz remains open because we want oil and gas to flow through.

[Mehdi Hassan]

We're speaking on a day where some tankers have come under attack, where the US has rescinded waivers on Iranian oil sales. Everyone's pretty.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is the question, right? Like earlier this week, once again, there were attacks on tankers in the Straight or Hormuz. I assume it's because these tankers were not going to. Going via the is the Iranian designated route, which is the way that they're going to try to control passage to the Sirto Hormuz going forward. Reuters reported that the US Is going to revoke the general license authorizing the sale of Iranian oil. They also threatened additional consequences. We don't know what that means, but in the past it has meant sort of quote, unquote, targeted airstrikes. I mean, it just feels like this thing is being like this. This ceasefire is being held together by duct tape and the only thing preventing it, it from returning to war is Trump just wanting to keep gas prices low. But, I mean, what's your level of anxiety about resuming conflict?

[Mehdi Hassan]

I think post November we're going to be in a lot of trouble. I think my colleague Swin Soup sang at Z reported several months ago or several weeks ago, excuse me, that US Intelligence believes that the Iranians know they can hold out till the midterms. They know that they have this oil weapon that can cause severe harm to the Republican Party and their prosperity in these elections. And they know that's why Donald Trump's holding off. When I hear Mark Levin and all those other hawks who are mad at Trump for doing any kind of deal with Iran, when I hear them say, well, you know what? Best case scenario, he's just replenishing our munitions, rebuilding our stockpiles so that post November we can go back in and finish the job. And J.D. vance kind of hinted at that recently in an interview. He did. So it is a very cynical position. I wouldn't put it past this administration that that might be the ultimate end goal if they see all other things failing. But look, we have a fake ceasefire in Gaza, we have a fake ceasefire in Lebanon, we have a fake ceasefire in Iran. And at least two of those three theaters. Israel is the one basically undermining those ceasefires. In Gaza, we've had a thousand people killed in this ceasefire. We've had 200 kids. Like it's insane how many people have been killed in a so called ceasefire. We shouldn't forget about that in Gaza. Oh, Gaza's over. No, it's not over. People are being killed every day. Kids are being killed every day in Gaza.

[Tommy Vietor]

So it's not only not over, it's just the people living there are just in a state, sort of constant state of hell, you know, like they can't get the infrastructure they need, they can't

[Mehdi Hassan]

rebuild homes, Aid's not going in per the deal.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, it's.

[Mehdi Hassan]

The Board of Peace has just been immune. Have you seen that, Tommy? That they've given themselves criminal immunity from any kind of lawsuits or criminal complaints for their actions in Gaza, but just on this specific deal. Yeah, I don't think we're going to see a deal anytime soon. Because remember, Tommy, it was ceasefire and then it was 60 days. We'll do some nuclear negotiations, right? You know this better than me. It took Barack Obama, what, four, five years to get the JCPOA up and done. The idea that you can do any kind of deal similar to that in 60 days is insane. Especially when you have Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, dumb and dumber, leading your negotiations. You know, Obama sent Ernest Muniz, an actual nuclear scientist, to negotiate with the Iranians. We send the property developers from Manhattan

[Tommy Vietor]

who just want to cut some deals. I'm sure they're, they're scoping out, you know, some future ways to get rich.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Beachfront property Jared's always obsessed with.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, someone to sell crypto too.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

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[Tommy Vietor]

I want to do a couple things on UK Politics since you covered these folks for a long time. You know, a lot of big week for UK politics. It really is. So we've talked on this show a bunch about the kind of saga of Keir Starmer and the Labor Party and the rise of Andy Burnham, who, for folks who don't know, he's the newly elected Labor MP who is likely to be the next Labour Party leader and thus the next Prime Minister of the uk. Keir Starmer is going to step down soon. Also today though, on Tuesday, far right reformed UK party leader Nigel Farage announced that he is going to resign from Parliament which will trigger a by election and then he's going to go ahead and run again for that seat. We'll explain more in a second, but let me play this clip from Farage before I explain why the hell he would want to do that.

[Nigel Farage]

Today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton on Sea, thereby forcing a by election, which should happen, I hope, in short order. Now I've decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by election. It's a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment to frankly tell them where to go. And that is why I will will be putting my name forward to stand in this by election. I will fight to win. I will fight to continue the political revolution that reform has started. And I would say this to you, the voters of Clacton. If I win, you win. Because if I lose, they win. And we will never, with the two old parties, get the type of fundamental change that we need to fix broken Britain. Thank you.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, so listeners might know that Farage is dealing with a bunch of corruption scandals. First, we Learned back in 2024 he received a 5 million pound gift from a crypto billionaire who lives in Thailand.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

No strings attached.

[Tommy Vietor]

No strings attached. It was just a gift present. The Times of London revealed that he also got a bunch more gifts from a wealthy benefactor, including some fraudster from the U.S. he's also dealing with competition from a new far right party called Restore Britain, led by a creep who I'm sure you know named Rupert Lowe.

[Mehdi Hassan]

They're trying to out just on Joe Rogan, I believe.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, wonderful. Although, yeah, I think Elon Musk is a big fan of Rupert Lowe. They're trying to take votes from reform by outflanking them on the right front on immigration. So, Mehdi, I reached out to a friend in the UK to say, like, why is Farage resigning to run again? This person said, quote, to stop the investigation in Parliament, to try to do a Trumpian style. This is the establishment versus me for the people bs. And because he is an attention seeking tosser. I don't totally know what tosser mean. I love that you should start using it.

[Mehdi Hassan]

It's a good word. I've lived in America too long. Twelve years I've been. I don't think I've said tosser. That's a good reminder. That's a good word to have in your arsenal.

[Tommy Vietor]

Does that sound like a good summary? I mean, and I saw like the Tories. It sounds like no other party's gonna run in this by election because they're kind of.

[Mehdi Hassan]

That's the best part of the story. So this guy Faraj Dikai is a bylaw because he's under pressure like never before. So just for people in the US watching, for liberals in the US who think the media has been soft on Trump and that Trump has gotten away with softball questions and coverage for the last 10 years, times that by a hundred. That is what Nigel Farage has gotten away with for the last 15, 20 years in the UK he has been treated as a kind of, you know, a guy you have a beer with in the pub when he goes on tv, he's treated as a pundit, you know, your everyman voice of the working class. Even though he's. He's a former City Finance guy, went to private school, gets millions of pounds in gifts from billionaire friends and he's had a really soft ride. And for the first time in his life, I think now, as he's seen as a serious contender for Prime Minister. A bunch of newspapers in the uk, specifically the Guardian and the Sunday Times, have done some great investigative reporting and found out number one, this crypto billionaire living in Thailand, Christopher Harbin, gave him a 5 million pound gift that he was supposed to declare, by the way. The gift then became a reward, then became security money. And then it turns out we find out that he also got security providers, Housing provided accommodation provided by a guy called George Cottrell, nicknamed Posh George. American listeners will love this. He's from aristocracy. He's from aristocracy. He's like a character out of a TV show. His mother, I discovered today, used to date King Charles.

[Tommy Vietor]

What?

[Mehdi Hassan]

His father went to school with Prince Andrew. Come on. George Cottrell.

[Advertisement Voice]

Wow.

[Mehdi Hassan]

And listen to this. You wanna hear the best bit? He's so close to Farage that he calls Farage daddy. So this guy has given stuff to Farage that again, Farage did not declare these are the equivalents of money. And he's a convicted fraudster. He was prosecuted in the United States of America for wire fraud, actually indicted on 21 charges of money laundering, extortion. He did a plea deal with the Justice Department, went to prison for wire fraud. He's giving money. He's giving the equivalent of money to fraud. So far is under pressure. So what does he do? He does the most Trumpy thing you could ever do. Look over there. Give people a distraction. Flood the zone with shit. I'm gonna do a bialect. The problem he has now is that all of the parties have called his bluff and said, we're not running against you. So he's running in this by election that's gonna cost a taxpayer or they're saying they're gonna pay for it.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

We'll see.

[Mehdi Hassan]

He's running in this by election against one candidate called Count Bin Face, which is literally a man who has a bin on his face and a cloak around his arms and he goes and stands in every by election.

[Donald Trump]

I love that.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Go Google it. Look on YouTube. He did a great interview with Sky News after the Andy Burnham by election. So this is British politics. Politics. You've got the son of a woman who dated King Charles. You've got Count Ben face, you've got wannabe Trump, Nigel Farage. And in the midst of that, the UK is about to have its seventh Prime Minister in a decade with Andy Burnham is about to take over from Keir Starmer, who is super unpopular. He's more unpopular than Liz Truss, the woman who couldn't outlast a lettuce. Starmer is more unpopular than her. So labor are deciding to switch gears. Middle of a parliament, bring in this guy Andy Burnham, who also won a by election. He's coming in as Manchester mayor. No one quite knows what he stands for, but he looks good in a black T shirt. He's got nice eyelashes, he makes some good lefty sounding noises. He said some good things about why Israel, you know, should have done a ceasefire in Gaza. He's talked about raising taxes on the rich. We shall see.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, so I know like Andy Burnham been around for a while. He was in.

[Mehdi Hassan]

He's been around for a while. I covered him when I was a journalist 15 years ago. What do you make of him?

[Tommy Vietor]

What should we know?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Well, here's interesting. He ran for labor leader in 2010, came last or second? Last. He ran for labor leader again in 2015, came second to Jeremy Corbyn. That was a shock result. Corbyn wasn't supposed to win. The left wing candidate. Now he's running for a third time. And I think of a guy in America who ran for president three times and finally got it. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Although the analogy with Biden is really Starmer, right? So Starmer comes in, he comes in with no real love for him. He comes in because we wanted to get rid of the other lot. Tories were in power for 15 years, get rid of them. Biden comes in really because of a pandemic and people want to get rid of Trump. Not because people. There's some people power revolution for Biden. And Starmer faces the same incumbency issues, the same lack of charisma, the same inability to communicate in an era where communication matters. The same right wing press onslaught and now they are switching midgear to another candidate who's being coronated. Tommy, there's not gonna be a leadership election, really. And I keep thinking, the American in me keeps thinking about the analogies here, where Kamala Harris taking over without a contest and people being really happy at the beginning. But the honeymoon could end very quickly for Andy Burnham. Right now he's very popular with the Labour Party. I think he's the most popular politician in the uk. But we know that can change fast. You and I have seen that with multiple leaders in multiple countries. That honeymoon can end very quickly. So I would like to see Andy Burnham put out a vision very quickly of what he stands for, what he's gonna do, how he's going to be different to Starmer. Remember Kamala Harris's biggest problem? She never said how she would be different to Joe Biden. And I think Burn is gonna come in and say, I'm gonna do these things differently. Because if he doesn't define himself, Rupert Murdoch will define him. Elon Musk will define him. Nigel Farage will define him. His own rebels will define him.

[Tommy Vietor]

I agree with you. Listen, I think Starmer hurt himself by not kind of painting a vision for the future, by trying some big, bold things, by doing something to get the UK out of this rut that it's been in really since Brexit a decade ago. And look, I think also trying to

[Mehdi Hassan]

love bomb the right. My biggest objection to all center left parties, you know, this is you cannot appease the right. Stop trying to appease the right. Be yourselves, offer a positive program to your own base. All that happens, we saw it with the Democrats and now we've seen it with the Labour Party, which is you chase after right wing voters and all that happens is that right wing voters reject you because they go for the real stuff. And your own base then rejects you because they think you've betrayed them and you're stuck in no man's land. And we've seen that in the United States with the Democratic Party, and we're seeing it with the Labour Party in

[Tommy Vietor]

the uk and you got to deliver something on the economy or else people are just going to be rip shit. Speaking of the rise of the far right in Europe, Mehdi, I was not thrilled to see today that a Paris appeals court upheld far right leader Marine Le Pen's embezzlement conviction, but shortened the length of her ban from holding office, which effectively lets her run for president next year. For those who don't remember, Le pen ran in 2022. She got 41% of the vote. This five year ban was put in place in 2025. It got shortened, shortened, shortened. And now she could run again. Now in the past, the non far right parties in France have come together to keep the far right national rally out of power. But that won't happen forever. Le Pen is certainly the front runner right now. And we're kind of staring down the barrel of a 2027 election that could lead to a far right president of France, which is a very powerful position. And over in the uk, we're pretty close to another election where we could see a Nigel Farage as Prime Minister.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

So a little nerve wracking.

[Mehdi Hassan]

It's not great for Europe or the United States, not great for the West. I think the Canadians dodged a bullet only because Trump intervened. Otherwise they were on course for a hard right prime minister as well. Carney got lucky with Trump's intervention, but you look at the rest of Europe, it's not looking great at all. Labor did defeat the Tories in 2024, but now, you know, for the last year or so, Reform and Forage have

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

led in the polls.

[Mehdi Hassan]

There's not another election due for a couple of years, which is some good news. But if there was an election tomorrow, they would be the single largest party in Parliament. They might not win a landslide, they might not win a majority, but they're the single largest party. Look at Germany, Tommy. I just did a show for Al Jazeera, my head to head show in London. London, I interviewed Maximilian Krah, who's a German AfD member. I don't want to. I've refused to have AfD on my show for years because they're kind of so close to the neo Nazi movement in Germany. They're a far right party in Germany, but they are now leading in the polls. They are the second biggest party in Parliament. They are about to win the state elections this year. You can't ignore them. Right. These parties are heading for power, in some cases have power. You have the AfD in Germany backed by Elon Musk. Surprise, surprise. You have restore, backed by Elon Musk in the uk, another far right party. Reform we talked about about then in France, Marine Le Pen. Her party's leading in the polls. She's run for president three times, Tommy. The last two times she came second. As you rightly said, it's because the rest of the French political establishment got together and said, we just vote for the center right guy or the centrist guy. Anyone to stop Le Pen. Now that is becoming increasingly harder to do in France because the left is saying, well, why? What was the point of doing that when we got nothing? Right? So you'll have a lot of left wing voters who will refuse to turn out just like they did in 2024, and they'll say, well, what's the point of this? I don't like the choice I'm being offered. So there's a very good chance that she becomes president of France next year. Which insane statement. You would have laughed at me if I'd said that 10 years ago. But that is where we are. And in Germany, there's a lot of pressure being applied to Frederick Mertz, who's the conservative Chancellor of Germany, the center right leader, to drop their firewall with the AfD. All the German parties say we will never get into a coalition with the AfD because of our Nazi history. But there's pressure coming from some parts of the political establishment in Germany to say, you know what, we should drop that firewall. It's time to just mainstream the AfD. So it's very worrying. Across Europe, obviously, Giorgia Meloni is already Prime Minister in Italy. She's moderated herself since coming to power, but she has a neo fascist background. Her party does. It's not looking good. And that's why I'm saying the left has to offer a vision. I was reading a great book, I interviewed him recently. Omar Aziz, the Canadian author. Mark Carney, speechwriter, has a new book out called Shadow of the Republic and it's all about fighting fascism. And he made the point to me that the left can't just come along and say, you know, fix the economy. And here's some policies the left has to offer A story. A story, a purpose, a community, a vision. Because that is what the right is on offering. As dystopian, as dark as it is, they're offering that story to their followers. And we can't just have bureaucrats and technocrats like Starmer fiddling around the edges. We actually have to give something for people to believe in and for people to vote for. Otherwise, we are effed across the West.

[Mark Rutte]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And the story has to be hopeful and optimistic and patriotic and not just like, hey, remember that shit before Trump 10 years ago? What if we went back to that. That period of time when the Hillary

[Mehdi Hassan]

Clinton line, America is already great. That was her response to make America great again.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. We can't just kind of run it back to the old establishment days. Mehdi, great talking with you. I'm sure we'll be covering all of this stuff on Zateo. On Zateo uk. Boy, you guys picked a pretty good time to launch like a. I know we launched.

[Mehdi Hassan]

And then you had a Prime ministerial resignation, the return of Andy Burnham, and now Nigel Farage resignation. Good timing.

[Tommy Vietor]

That is very good timing. Thank you so much for joining the show, everyone. Subscribe to Zateo. Go check out Zateo UK and talk to you soon.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Thanks so much.

[Pod Save the World Host (likely Tommy Vietor)]

Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffett, David Toles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.