Trump Is Humiliated by China

Summary

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Pod Save the World – Episode Summary

Podcast: Pod Save the World
Episode: Trump Is Humiliated by China
Date: September 3, 2025
Hosts: Tommy Vietor, Ben Rhodes
Notable Guest: Jasper Nathaniel (Substack: Infinite Jazz)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tommy and Ben dissect the seismic geopolitical fallout from the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in China, where President Xi Jinping orchestrated an event widely seen as a public rebuke and humiliation for President Trump on the world stage. The hosts break down the summit’s substance and its optics, analyze the unraveling U.S.-India relationship, unpack the Trump administration's China policy, and cover major stories in Gaza, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the ongoing Ukraine war. The show also features an in-depth interview with journalist Jasper Nathaniel, offering a crucial primer on the reality for Palestinians in the West Bank and why the two-state solution is more fantasy than policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. SCO Summit in China: A Global Rebuke of Trump

Timestamps: 03:15–18:27

• Summit Context:
  Xi Jinping hosted leaders from 20 nations at the SCO summit in Tianjin, notably including Russia's Putin, Iran’s president, India’s Modi, Central Asian leaders, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—excluding Trump and the U.S.
• "It was one long rebuke of the United States and Donald Trump." (Tommy – 03:22)
• Optics:
  Xi center stage, mocking U.S. hegemony, with anti-U.S. rhetoric showcased in speeches, policy statements, and photo ops of world leaders yucking it up together.
  • Putin and Modi held hands, physically signaling new alignments.
• Policy Announcements:
  • Commitment to AI cooperation
  • Plans to develop a bank to undermine the U.S. dollar
  • $2B in Chinese loans for member states (deemed "not much" relative to need)
• Key Quote:
  “This is billions of people being represented by leaders in Beijing at a show of strength by the Chinese Communist Party... this is not marginal stuff.” (Ben – 11:09)
• Strategic Impact:
  • Demonstrates acceleration of nations shifting away from U.S.-led order.
  • Countries are actively “sanctions-proofing” economies, reducing U.S. leverage.
  • China’s AI push could challenge U.S. technological supremacy and offer geopolitically loaded exports to the Global South.

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2. Trump’s Blunders with India & Modi

Timestamps: 18:27–34:20

• Breakdown:
  The U.S.-India relationship, carefully built over decades, is now crumbling due to Trump’s own vanity and strategic naiveté.
• Trigger Event:
  Trump falsely took credit for a ceasefire between India & Pakistan—trying to leverage it for a Nobel Peace Prize from Modi.
  • "To do that would be to humiliate India... absolutely humiliating to Modi that Trump did that.” (Ben – 27:16)
• Consequences:
  • Modi is now visibly aligning with China and Russia.
  • Trump responded by slapping 50% tariffs on Indian goods, escalating tensions.
  • Underlying issue: Trump’s transactional, zero-sum view of diplomacy and his inability to understand Indian public sentiment or strategic culture.
• Critical Point:
  Policy moves like secondary sanctions on Indian oil imports from Russia, visa crackdowns, and erratic trade demands are alienating India and risking long-term strategic loss.

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3. U.S.-China Relations: Trump’s Record Is All Talk

Timestamps: 34:20–41:43

• Reality Check:
  • Bipartisan D.C. elite consensus portrays Trump as “tough on China,” but his record is marked by major concessions and regulatory rollbacks.
  • Multiple points where Trump undermined campaign promises:
    • Tech: Permitted Nvidia to sell AI chips to China (in exchange for minor U.S. revenue).
    • Taiwan: Blocked Taiwan’s president from transiting through the U.S., signaling deference to China.
    • Human Rights: No Trump focus on Uyghurs, Hong Kong, or democracy issues.
    • Education: Trump quietly backed off plans to revoke Chinese student visas under pressure from tech interests.
• Quote:
  "Trump just gives the Chinese everything they want." (Ben – 41:23)
• Conclusion:
  Trump talks a big game domestically but folds under economic and political pressure, whether on tariffs or technology controls.

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4. “War on Terror” Meets “War on Drugs”

Timestamps: 45:12–52:22

• Incident:
  U.S. military conducted an airstrike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs and gang members from Venezuela, then released video of the strike as a warning.
• Ben’s Warning:
  "This is the war on terror meets the war on drugs, meets the kind of American fascist immigration policy.” (Ben – 48:35)
• Analysis:
  • Trump is using anti-terrorism powers to target narco-traffickers/migrants, possibly laying legal and rhetorical groundwork for further regional military interventions.
  • Dangers:
    • Wrongful targeting, civilian casualties, regional destabilization, and militarization of migration policy—potentially justifying wider “state of war.”
• Quote:
  "It’s a stunt that risks militarizing the region." (Ben – 51:55)

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5. Crisis Updates: Gaza, Afghanistan, Sudan

Timestamps: 52:22–71:13

Gaza

• Leak:
  Details on dystopian White House plan for “ethnic cleansing for profit”: Palestinians offered money or digital tokens to leave, replaced by “AI-powered” smart cities and a 10-year U.S.-run trusteeship.
• Quote:
  “This is genocide by PowerPoint presentation.” (Ben – 57:41)
• Scholarly Consensus:
  Leading genocide scholars now overwhelmingly agree Israel’s actions in Gaza fit the definition of genocide.
• On the ground:
  Famine persists, Israeli escalation continues, aid blocked.

Afghanistan

• Natural Disaster:
  Earthquake and landslides killed over 1,400 people; humanitarian response is gutted due to U.S. aid cuts and refusal to work with the Taliban.
• Quote:
  "What you're hearing... there are people that are going to die or people that are not going to get aid because of the decision to gut USAID." (Ben – 69:36)

Sudan

• Landslide and Cholera:
  Ongoing civil war, famine, and disasters compound misery, while the international community (especially the U.S.) fails to respond.

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6. Ukraine & The Steve Witkoff Debacle

Timestamps: 71:13–77:17

• Trump’s Failed Promises:
  Despite promising to end the Ukraine war in “24 hours,” nothing has changed. Security deals, summit follow-throughs, and substantive negotiations are stalled.
• Witkoff’s Incompetence:
  Real estate tycoon and Trump’s golf buddy Steve Witkoff, made "envoy for everything," appears dangerously unqualified:
  • Meets Putin alone, no staff or official translator.
  • Fails to relay critical diplomatic messages.
  • Regularly disengaged, unbriefed, incommunicado.
  • "Managing these accounts, it’s truly extraordinary incompetence." (Ben – 74:31)
• Corruption Concern:
  Witkoff family’s crypto business entangled with Trump’s sons, raising questions about underlying motivations.

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In-Depth Segment: Interview with Jasper Nathaniel on the West Bank

Timestamps: 79:08–113:25

Main Theme: The grim reality behind the “two-state solution” myth; the West Bank’s de facto annexation is making Palestinian sovereignty impossible.

• Legal Framework:
  The West Bank is legally under military occupation; international law prohibits settlers, but the facts on the ground are the opposite.
• Day-to-Day Apartheid:
  • “There’s two sets of laws and two sets of everything, basically.” (Jasper – 83:17)
  • Palestinians face restrictions on movement, water, roads, justice; Israelis living in settlements enjoy full rights.
• Recent Changes:
  • Far-right ministers (Smotrich, Ben Gvir) now directly run settlement policy, have “shadow governments” inside the military, and rubber-stamp illegal outposts.
  • “All of the guardrails that had been on the settlement movement… are just gone.” (Jasper – 87:57)
• Ethnic Cleansing as Policy:
  • Settler pogroms now state-sanctioned. Palestinian villages face accelerating displacement.
• Two-State Solution’s Death:
  • “To get the settlers out would take a massive war... It’s like climate denial to say a two-state solution is possible.” (Jasper – 96:14)
  • Expansion of “facts on the ground” (outposts, new settlements) make a Palestinian state physically and politically unviable.
• Bureaucratic Weaponization:
  Antiquities laws, formal sovereignty debates all chip away at remaining Palestinian autonomy.
• Case Study:
  Mohamed Zaheer Ibrahim, 16-year-old Palestinian-American, held without charge in Israeli prison, starved and denied communication—ignored by U.S. government.
  • "It's just beyond me how a 16-year-old American being imprisoned, tortured, starved... there’s not a bigger push to get this kid out." (Jasper – 109:19)
• Call to Action:
  Nathaniel urges listeners and officials to push for Mohamed’s release, highlighting shocking U.S. indifference to Palestinian-American citizens.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “This is the cost of having a complete fucking autocratic fascist lunatic as president of the United States, who’s insulted the whole world.”
  (Ben Rhodes – 15:07)

• On Modi’s Break with the U.S.:
  “If you treat someone like shit, they're going to cozy up to your adversaries... this is, like, totally humiliating.”
  (Ben Rhodes – 27:16)

• On China-Trump Reality:
  “Trump just gives the Chinese everything they want.”
  (Ben Rhodes – 41:23)

• On Ethnic Cleansing by Bureaucracy:
  “This is genocide by PowerPoint presentation.”
  (Ben Rhodes – 57:41)

• On Gaza’s Future:
  “They are not asking for digital tokens. They're not asking to live in AI cities. They're asking to live in their homes.”
  (Ben Rhodes – 58:59)

• On Two-State Solution:
  “To get the settlers out would take a massive war... There couldn't be a Palestinian state.”
  (Jasper Nathaniel – 96:14)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp (MM:SS) | |----------------------------------|----------------------| | Show Begins (Post-Ads) | 01:41 | | SCO Summit Discussion | 03:15–18:27 | | Trump–Modi Relationship, India | 18:27–34:20 | | U.S.–China Policy Check-in | 34:20–41:43 | | U.S. Airstrike on Drug Boat | 45:12–52:22 | | Gaza, Genocide Plan | 52:22–61:37 | | Ukraine/Witkoff Segment | 71:13–77:17 | | Interview: Jasper Nathaniel | 79:08–113:25 | | Mohamed Zaheer Ibrahim’s Case | 107:12–112:52 |

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Final Thoughts

This episode laid bare how Trump’s unilateralism, personal ego, and erratic diplomatic style are accelerating a fundamental realignment of the global order—away from U.S. influence and toward a more China/Russia-centered system. Domestically, Trump’s lack of competence and focus on headlines over strategy are eroding even America’s strongest alliances and creating chaos in places of ongoing crisis. Meanwhile, on the ground, the Palestinian cause is left more hopeless than ever, and U.S. inaction—whether on Gaza, the West Bank, Afghanistan, or Sudan—is accelerating humanitarian crises.

To dive deeper:

• Check out Jasper Nathaniel’s Substack Infinite Jazz for reporting on Israel/Palestine.
• Support Uplift Afghanistan Fund for disaster relief.
• Listen for more on Trump’s reversals and blunders in coming weeks.

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For further context, listen starting at the indicated timestamps for each segment.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

Oh, wow.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

Because my bed at home is so comfortable.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Ben Rhodes]

I love it.

[Tommy Vietor]

She's a great one. And your personalized mattress is shipped straight to your door free of charge. Go to helixsleep.comworld for 27% off sitewide. That's helixsleep.comworld for27% off site wide. The this offer is exclusive to Pod Save the World listeners. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com world welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vietor]

Summer is over. Football is back. Ben, do you feel like I do. I feel like I'm a little kid still. Like, there's something in my DNA that makes me depressed after Labor Day because, like, summer's over. I kind of feel like I have to go back to school or something. But we live in la.

[Ben Rhodes]

We don't even have the weather doesn't change.

[Tommy Vietor]

We're grown adults.

[Ben Rhodes]

Nothing changes in our lives.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nothing.

[Ben Rhodes]

My kids are back in school.

[Tommy Vietor]

Lizzie went to school today. It was a little emotional in my house this morning, but all is well. I don't know why she's too dressed on.

[Ben Rhodes]

We were just a little late in My house this morning.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, per usual, we're recording this. This episode a day late. Recording on Wednesday instead of to accommodate for the holiday, to let everyone enjoy themselves. Thanks. Sorry for any inconvenience, but trust me, the product is better this way. It's worth the wait than if we were talking yesterday.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's worth the wait.

[Tommy Vietor]

Also, Ben, apparently we have an apology to make. Clearly, we have a lot of listeners who listen to both Pod Save the World and New Heights, the Kelsey brothers podcast. So apologies to anyone we offended, and thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube so that we can grow big and tall in one day. Book Taylor Swift.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, don't think I don't read those DMs. And you know, if we hit a certain YouTube subscriber level, I don't know what we have to set it at. Tommy, maybe I'll grow a beard. Jason Kelsey.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, that's good.

[Ben Rhodes]

Could you do I have no hair on my head, but I could do a Jason Kelce beard. It's a peculiar thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Will you pop the top at a playoff game in Buffalo?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes, I would do that as well. I'm happy to pop the top.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I will shotgun a beer with you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes, that's right. We'll shotgun beers, too.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'll shotgun beers all day long. All right, we got a great show.

[Ben Rhodes]

We won't marry Taylor Swift, though.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, it's too late.

[Ben Rhodes]

We should ask her for a date on our podcast. Maybe she's one of those listeners who crosses over.

[Tommy Vietor]

I should have made her a bracelet. The book has been closed on that era, as they say over there. All right, we got a great show, Ben. We're gonna cover the huge geopolitical implications of the summit that Chinese President Xi Jinping just hosted in China. We're gonna walk you through what was said, what was announced. We'll talk about the optics, how the event was just one long rebuke of the United States and Donald Trump. We'll dig into how Trump is infuriated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and driven the Indian government closer to the Chinese government. Great work there, everybody.

[Ben Rhodes]

Nice job.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then we're going to take a step back and look at the Trump administration's record on all things China and whether the policy implementation has proven to be as tough as the campaign talk. We're going to cover Tuesday's U.S. military airstrike on a boat in international waters that was allegedly carrying drugs and gang members. It's a huge deal, seems predicted here.

[Ben Rhodes]

On this Podcast predicted here.

[Tommy Vietor]

Predictable. Seems like there's going to be some real trouble ahead on that front. We're going to update you guys on the latest from Gaza, including the new ethnic cleansing for profit plan that is apparently circulating the White House. According to the Washington Post. We'll cover the horrible earthquake in Afghanistan and how that impact has been compounded by U.S. policy both, you know, in terms of gutting USAID, but also the refusal to work with the Taliban in.

[Ben Rhodes]

Any way and just generally paying no attention.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, just not caring. There's a similar horrific landslide in Sudan that we'll talk about a little bit too. And then finally, we're going to walk you guys through some recent really interesting reporting about how Trump's golf buddy termed Envoy for Everything, Steve Witkoff is just kind of a disaster.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, who could have seen that coming? You know, who would have thought that Mar A Lago golfing and some real estate transactions in Florida. And like a crypto scam business doesn't prepare you for high stakes international negotiations.

[Tommy Vietor]

Talking with Putin. And then you're gonna hear my interview with Jasper Nathaniel. So everyone should check out Jasper Substack. Infinite Jazz Jaz. He covers Israel. A great title, right?

[Ben Rhodes]

It's a jazz. I'm thinking of starting a substack. We may need the worldos to workshop a title for my substack.

[Tommy Vietor]

We can do a name storm. We'll get a whiteboard out.

[Ben Rhodes]

No bad ideas in a name storm.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, yeah, that's great. So Infinite Jazz is taken. That's Jasper. He covers Israel, Palestine. He's got a particular focus on the West Bank. A great primer. I think this conversation is a great primer for anyone. And so does the substack for anyone who wants to understand like what is life like for Palestinians in the west bank as compared to settlers. To understand the settler movement, why it's accelerated in recent years and how settlement construction has all but killed off the two state solution and hope for the creation of a Palestinian state. It's hard to say out loud. People get upset with you. They think you're being a doomer. But you'll hear in the conversation that, like there's a lot of facts on the ground that are pretty tough to unwind at this point.

[Ben Rhodes]

You don't want to deny American politicians as talking points that they can hide behind.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's true.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. That's the most important thing about the two state solution. What other talking points will Democratic politicians have.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

To justify their blanket support for ethnic cleansing?

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, we have that briefcase that someone bought in 1973, I think. And when you flip it open, all the dust comes out and you go off the talking points and you just read them verbatim. But Ben, also I just want to tell folks. So I wrapped this interview yesterday with Jasper and then everyone in the studio started talking about how he was easy on the eyes. So yet another reason to check out the Pod save the world YouTube.

[Ben Rhodes]

I didn't know that.

[Tommy Vietor]

And subscribe. I will watch. Look, I'm not telling you, but I'm telling you to check it out. But also please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube. Right wing assholes are killing us on YouTube. And when people search for like Trump Gaza, they find Ben Shapiro talking about how great everything is. And we would like them to find good, accurate information about what's actually going on. So Ben, you remember that feeling in middle school when all your friends have a sleepover and you find out about it but you're left out?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it's not fun.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's basically what happened to Donald Trump over.

[Ben Rhodes]

Especially after you tariff them.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. Just taking like one candy from your friend every time they come over. So when Trump was busy not being dead, apparently Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted leaders from 20 countries for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or SEO summit. The summit was in Tianjin, China. It's about 90 miles southeast of Beijing. All the coolest countries were there. All the coolest leaders were there. You had Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all the stands. You had fitness influencer and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He rolled into China just in time to catch Wednesday's military parade with his daughter. With his daughter, which is very interesting. Apparently she's shown up at like 30.

[Ben Rhodes]

Public events now she seems like the 12 year old successor. And waiting.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's a scary gig. Imagine being 12 and being like, you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Know what I was thinking about? I mean, not to jump ahead here, but imagine wanting to date her. No, I mean, how could any guy, I mean, you know you're going to get killed, right? Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Talk about around to find out. So Kim Jong Un, he showed up for the military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. That parade included all kinds of cool military stuff that will make Trump very sad that he missed it. Like hypersonic missiles, laser weapons, new underwater drones. You know, it's like real envy there. We just had tanks at our military parade. And then again, Kim Jong Un traveled in a souped up train car. Which will make Joe Biden very sad that he was not there. So, lots to cover. We're going to break into the chunks. First, the substance of what was said and agreed to at the summit, the optics and the messaging and what it sends to the world. Then how Trump has destroyed his relationship with Modi and the Indian government and pushed India closer to Russia and China. Then we'll kind of like measure the Trump record, as I said. So, Ben, just quick and dirty on this, like, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a regional security organization founded in early 2000s by China and Russia. It's expanded to about 10 members. Do you think it's fair to say the SCO is like China and Russia's version of, like, creating a Western alliance like NATO, or is that too, too much of a euro focused way of thinking about it?

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, it's not a collective defense treaty like NATO, where you have to come to the defense of the other.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's Article 5.

[Ben Rhodes]

But it's essentially like one of the forums that they, along with the BRICs, to get their team together to figure out how to work around U.S. sanctions, how to work against U.S. foreign policy, how to kind of construct an international order that is not so dominated by the US And Europe. So, you know, yeah, they've made some pretty good use of it over the, over the years.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, especially this weekend. And so, like, you just signaled, like, a lot of the focus this weekend was on criticism of the US Especially trade policy and tariffs. In his speeches on Monday, Xi critiqued hegemonism, the Cold War mentality and bullying practices, all like, very clear shots at the US There were a couple of policy announcements, some like vague commitment for member states to cooperate on developing AI, talk of setting up a development bank to reduce their dependence on the dollar. We've kind of heard this pitch before. China pledged like $2 billion in grants and loans to member countries, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. We'll see if that bears out. And then she rolled out this, like, pitch for creating a more just and reasonable global governance system. Five principles include sovereign equality, abiding by international rule of law, practicing multilateralism, advocating the people centered approach, and focusing on taking real actions. I'm sure Taiwan and China's many neighbors in the South China Sea were swayed by that. There's a new Siberian gas pipeline between China and Russia. There was a communique that condemned U.S. aggression against Iran, but said nothing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, Ben, like, we don't know anything about, like, side deals cut by any of these countries. But did any of the speeches or policy announcements jump out at you as, like, particularly significant?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think people really do need to wake up here. I mean, we're what, seven months into the Trump administration and this kind of meeting is already happening. I mean, you know, wake up, people. This is what happens when you insult the rest of the world and treat it like garbage and demand that they pay tariffs and nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is billions of people being represented by leaders in Beijing at a show of strength by the Chinese Communist Party.

[Tommy Vietor]

40% of the world's population or something.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, so this is not marginal stuff.

[Tommy Vietor]

No.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so this matters. And this is, I think, the continuation and the acceleration of a movement away from the United States. All of these leaders say nice, flattering things to Trump to try to get the tariffs down. Maybe they do a little deal under the table for some Trump coin or whatever, the, you know, prices of corruption, but then they go do this, then they go put their lot elsewhere. And in terms of the policy announcements, I think all of them matter. AI jumps out. To me, the Chinese have just about caught up to the United States in the development of artificial intelligence. We've talked about this a little bit, but the US Thought, well, we have these companies. We've got, you know, OpenAI, and we've got all these other big tech companies like Meta and Google and Microsoft.

[Tommy Vietor]

Your Altman Sam, your Musks, Elon.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. But what the Chinese have done is they have a tremendous amount of talent because they actually have STEM education in their country. They've been prioritizing this for many years. They've been pouring money into AI. They've figured out how to do AI with less computing power. We'll talk about the Nvidia chips in a minute. And why this matters is, number one, the Chinese could basically achieve parity, could achieve AGI. That's when artificial intelligence tips over into superintelligence on basically the same timeline as the US but just as importantly, is China going to become the supplier of AI, or is the US who is going to be selling AI products to the rest of the world?

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's really, really important because that's important in terms of economic opportunity, but it's also important in terms of geopolitical influence, because if you're the AI supplier, don't think that that doesn't come with some back doors and strings attached and.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Or.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. And just think about the data that it would be trained on. Right. If you think ESPN's getting slapped around for, you know, not putting the nine dash line on the screen or whatever. Like, wait till the A trained on China's vision of the world and territory and Taiwan and Hong Kong and everything else.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's right, exactly. So that's one big announcement that jumps out because I think that's real. I think that the Chinese are going to be willing to export their AI quickly. They're focused on things like robotics and industrial efficiency that is frankly, more useful to countries than chatting with your companion, which is what Americans tend to do with it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Tell me. I'm great.

[Ben Rhodes]

AI Second thing is, remember all the geniuses like JD Vance and David Sacks and all the. That guy we covered, what was his name? Vivek Ramaswamy. Remember, he was. What happened to that guy?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, he's running for governor or senator.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, you remember their theory was that we were going to peel Putin away from China because he's white, basically, and he wants to be a part of the West. Well, this cements the reality that China and Russia are completely intertwined geopolitically, infrastructure wise, economically, technologically. Russia is relying on China. So that play is over. And remember, that was a big part of the Trump foreign policy, and it's a complete and utter failure. And then I think this stuff about the dollar matters because what these countries are figuring out how to do, they're not necessarily replacing the dollar as a world's reserve currency. They are figuring out how to increasingly sanctions proof their economy. Russia has been able to completely withstand these sanctions. They don't give a shit when we threaten more sanctions. That has no meaning to them. The Chinese are sanction proofing their economy, and that matters because if they do invade or blockade Taiwan, we're not going to be able to impose much of a cost on them. And then, yeah, $2 billion is much. But already China, through the Belt Road Initiative, has made all these countries come dependent on them for loans, for investments, for infrastructure. So what we are seeing is the cost of having a complete fucking autocratic fascist lunatic as president, United States, who's insulted the whole world. And so now they're making parallel technology supply chains, economic supply chains, resource supply chains. And Xi Jinping does not seem in the slightest bit intimidated by Donald Trump. Quite the opposite.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, no. Yeah. 2 billion is not a lot, but it's also happening as we destroy usaid. So there's context here. Yeah. So, like, the optics in the visuals of this event were not subtle. It was. Xi Jinping was center stage. Like, he's the Conductor of this global orchestra that the US Is not a part of. And he coordinated this series of middle fingers to Trump and the US Policy that includes shots at Trump's tariffs, hence the language about bullying practices and protectionism. You had Putin just like, swanning around the summit, you know, this convicted war criminal, but he was telling his usual lies about the origin of the war in Ukraine. He is, as you said, making a mockery of US Sanctions just through his, you know, presence. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they recreated the Trump Putin photo from the Alaska summit where they hung out in the presidential limo. Although Modi, when he tweeted out a photo of it, had a camera inside the car. So they kind of like one upped it. And then Putin and Modi literally held hands as they walked into a one of the meetings. There was not something I'd want to do with the handholding. Like, I don't want to touch anyway.

[Ben Rhodes]

Putin, you know. Well, Putin, yeah. Well, it's kind of a slippery hand.

[Tommy Vietor]

You could have some. All right. And there could be some sort of isotope or something that kills you six days later. Then there was like, Putin, Modi, she were kind of yucking it up together in a bunch of B roll. Yep, they're. They're a new throuple.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's great B roll from this great B roll.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then if you look at, like, the. The Modi Twitter feed again, he's just pushing all these images out so they're not hiding anything. There's no, like, kind of delicate dance. It's like, here I am. And then you got Iran was there. Kim Jong Un rolls in on his train. So those guys add to the kind of like, rogues gallery vibe of the event. But both those countries are key arms suppliers for Russia that have been critical to his ability to sustain the war in Ukraine. Remember, North Korea has been a source of artillery shells. Iran gives Putin drones. So it's very significant that they're there militarily. And then Trump then got asked about all of this on Wednesday. He was doing a bilat with the President of Poland. Here's his answer.

[Ben Rhodes]

I was very surprised.

[Tommy Vietor]

I watched the speech last night.

[Ben Rhodes]

President Xi is a friend of mine.

[Tommy Vietor]

But I thought that the United States should have been mentioned last night during that speech because we helped China when.

[Ben Rhodes]

They, when they did what they did. I thought it was a beautiful ceremony. I thought it was.

[Tommy Vietor]

Was very, very impressive. But I understood the reason they were doing it and they were hoping. I was watching and I was watching my relationship with all of them is very good. We're going to find out how good it is over the next week or two. So I'm not owned. I'm not owned per usual. We'll find out in a week or two. So Ben, again, like just to check ourselves, like the SEO summit, all summit, it's like stage managed propaganda. Right. Like that's part of the point. These guys being together, it doesn't mean they agree on everything or with each other or coordinating. Right. Like India and Pakistan are part of this event. Like they don't agree on a lot of stuff. So we don't want to overreact. But like you, I did feel like there was something different about this event. The timing, the anger over the tariffs. Modi kind of really leaning into his relationship with the Chinese and US competitors and with Russia. It just, it seemed different to me.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. First of all, Trump probably is jealous and got on the phone with Pete Hegseth because he probably Wish that the U.S. troops in the parade goose stepped as well as the Chinese troops did.

[Tommy Vietor]

They were stepping.

[Ben Rhodes]

But let's put the fascism aside for just a moment here. On the Ukraine point, Kim Jong Un met with Putin, reaffirmed his support for the war in Ukraine. He basically got big reaffirmation of support for his Ukraine policy. Now compare that to NATO where they basically have to beg Trump and call him daddy and nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. And he still doesn't provide arms to Ukraine. So scared of guarantee, he humiliates Zelensky. Right. Trump basically treats Zelensky like a piece of garbage when he comes to the Oval Office. And then Putin goes and he's got a bunch of really powerful people validating him. So the message on the war in Ukraine is that this guy Putin actually has a stronger alliance behind him than Zelensky does right now. And that's a real thing. This Modi piece is hugely important. Successive US Administrations for decades have basically invested in a strategic relationship with India, a defense relationship, a commercial relationship, an economic relationship, a technological relationship, in the hopes that this very big swing country of well over a billion people, a massive market, obviously hugely strategically located on the Indian Ocean, there would tilt in the direction of what used to be the world's democracies, the US And European. Well, this was Modi like not being shy at all in response to Trump treating him like garbage. I mean, this is just a rule of human behavior. Some people think foreign policy is really complicated. Sometimes it's not. If you treat someone like shit, they're going to cozy up to your adversaries. And there's Modi signaling, hey, I'm actually moving in the direction of this team, not your team. And that is a massive tectonic shift if that is something that is actually going to go forward.

[Tommy Vietor]

And we'll explain why, because it's way dumber than you think.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it is. It is. It couldn't be dumber. And so we have to take this very seriously. And the other problem, and this is why we really encourage you to continue to join us every week, is the U.S. political and media ecosystem does not seem to be able to hold Trump accountable for any of this. You know, if this kind of thing had happened when Barack Obama was president, Joe Biden was president, or a normie Republican, there would be like a freakout about, you know, how we've squandered our leadership in the world.

[Tommy Vietor]

Fox News, Chiron Fox News would be going humiliation.

[Ben Rhodes]

Fox News would be playing this B roll in a loop, right? But for whatever reason, like, just, you know, Trump's utter failure on Ukraine diplomacy, utter failure geopolitically, his tough talk with China and no follow through, like, he just doesn't stick to him because nobody has any expectation for him. But we're gonna look back 20 years from now and be like, wow, that's pretty amazing that this guy came in and basically in a few months, you know, seeded all semblance of US Leadership. Whatever you think of US Leadership, the one thing that's clear is the rest of the world is no longer on board with it. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Before we get to the Modi thing, did you see that? There was like a hot mic moment that someone kind of clipped and shared on Twitter this morning. It was like CCTV in Beijing. They captured Putin and Xi talking and they were talking about living to be 150 because you can get like synthetic organs or organ transplants. And it's like, I've often wondered what Xi and Putin might talk about. And this perfectly tracks.

[Ben Rhodes]

Apparently it's the same thing that people are talking about, like the tech bros, Peter Thiel, first camp at Burning Man. But I just say that. The other thing I just want to say is that Trump always says this stuff like, she does not like him. None of those people like him. And there's something really sad and pathetic about the fact that these people are literally coming together with the express purpose of trying to humiliate Trump. And he's still like, they like it, she likes it, I like them. Like, guess what? Kim Jong Un doesn't like you. Narendra Modi doesn't like you. Xi Jinping doesn't like you.

[Tommy Vietor]

Iranians don't like you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, like, they don't like Trump. And it's kind of very strange that because he's constantly surrounded by sycophants that he assumes that these other world leaders feel the same way about him that, like, you know, Stephen Miller does. Right, Exactly. Not the case.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly. So, as you mentioned, like, the, the unraveling of the Trump Modi relationship, the US India relationship is fascinating and really, really important. And just for context, like, every president for decades has invested a lot of time and attention into the US India relationship because it's been obvious for, for decades that India was going to be an economic powerhouse. Like it was true for Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump and Trump and Modi. They did seem to get particularly close. They had sort of a shared, you know, Populist, authoritarian. Yes, exactly. Trump spoke at that Howdy Modi rally in Texas. Remember that as this like, huge rally in Houston in 2019. And Trump was just on stage the whole time, just hanging out. Modi endorsed Trump in 2020. But in recent weeks, like, whatever goodwill had been built up seems to have just gone away. Over the weekend, the New York Times, like, kind of detailed the backstory of that unraveling. A lot of it stems from Trump trying to take credit for a cease fire deal between India and Pakistan. So listeners probably remember back in May, we covered this. There was a brief but very serious armed conflict between India and Pakistan. It included airstrikes by the Indian military deep into Pakistani territory. Pakistan attacked Indian military bases. There was like a drone battle. It was like really serious, scary stuff. But after four days, India and Pakistan's military heads, they like got on the phone, they brokered a ceasefire. But right as they're deciding to announce it, Trump front runs the announcement and takes credit for it. And that claim was bullshit. But the Pakistanis were like, whatever, they loved it. Yeah, we're like, we'll play along.

[Ben Rhodes]

Because it made them like this equal partner to the Indians.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly.

[Ben Rhodes]

Made it look like America was on their side.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly. And so like, you know, the Pakistanis even put forward Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. But like, you know, this was obviously a non starter for Modi for reasons we'll, we'll get to in a second. But clearly, like, someone on Trump's team must have told him, hey, India's like, not happy about you taking credit for this ceasefire. But it didn't slow him down. And according to the Times, it got to the point where Trump even called Modi directly and on the phone suggested that India should nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Which, like geopolitics aside, Ben, it's just insane. Like, imagine on a human level, there's two people on this phone call. Both of them know that Trump absolutely did not broker this ceasefire, let alone like, fully resolve the, the conflict between India and Pakistan. But Trump is pushing Modi to, to give him the Nobel Peace Prize or nominate him. It's just like, it's an insane thing to do just on a human level. So Modi says no. Fast forward to last week. Things are now so bad that Trump has slapped a 50 tariff on India. And on Labor Day weekend, Trump was complaining that our relationship with India is, quote, totally one sided disaster. So, you know, Modi, while Modi was hanging out in China, Trump was just whining about him on Twitter. And in parallel, Xi Jinping saw this growing fissure between the US And India. He decided to start some quiet outreach to the Indian government. Bloomberg News reported that she sent India a letter that was received. Well, that led to more dialogue and visits and a thawing of tensions that have been quite bad since this violent border dispute back in 2020, which we covered at the time too, is like these guys fighting at high altitude. Like 20 Indian soldiers died. Remember their reports of them hitting each other with like, baseball bats and shit?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it wasn't good.

[Tommy Vietor]

It was crazy. Anyway, so it was like a very deep wound that was difficult to heal between these two countries. Took five years, but Donald Trump made it happen. So thanks for that. So, Ben, do you just want to give some context and help explain to listeners why Trump claiming that he brokered this ceasefire was so enraging to Modi and then just like, the broader stakes of this, of this rupture.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. So you have to remember, right? I mean, India and Pakistan are, you know, dating back to the partition of India, which led to over a million deaths as Muslims moved to Pakistan and Hindus moved to India. They've basically been enemies ever since then. And Kashmir has been the flashpoint. They both claim this territory as their own, and they've never been able to resolve it. And they fought multiple wars over it. And they all kind of follow a similar pattern where there's a flare up, there's an exchange of violence for a period of days, sometimes weeks, and then it kind of peters out. Because especially since they both obtained nuclear weapons in the 90s, you don't want to go too far over the precipice here. So There's a deep, deeply unresolved issue here of Kashmir and deep antagonism between India and Pakistan that is kind of central to their national identities as well. This is not just like a, you know, a side dispute. This is kind of core to their identities.

[Tommy Vietor]

And it's not just the leaders. Like I remember you and I were both watching Indian TV during this period and the bloodlust for war on every channel was. It's kind of shocking. It's like Fox News pre Iraq war on steroids.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, and you'll remember cuz there was a pretty horrific terrorist attack on a bunch of Indian tourists in Kashmir. And so there was a horrible terrorist attack that precipitated the hostilities that then kind of reached the point where they were going to de escalate. And literally it doesn't seem like anything happened other than like Marco Rubio lobbing in the routine phone calls that any US Secretary, I mean, if doing the basics, if Joe Biden was president, if Barack Obama was president, if Bill Clinton was president, if George Bush was president, if the US Would've done the exact same thing and would not have taken any credit. Because to do that would be to humiliate India because India is the bigger and stronger power. So for them, they're the ones climbing down, which was the right thing to do, but they're the ones climbing down without having like, quote, unquote defeated Pakistan. And so for Trump to come in, it makes India, which is a very proud country of over a billion people, feel humiliated if it's like they're in the same weight class as Pakistan and the US told them to stop it and Trump should get a Nobel Peace Prize. It is absolutely humiliating to Modi that Trump did that. It was a big issue in Indian politics. It was a big issue in the Indian media. Like you said, like the people that usually like Modi, the kind of MAGA of India, they were pissed about it. And the more Trump talked about it, the Pakistanis were basically trolling India when they're nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. So Trump doesn't even understand that this isn't just an inconvenience to Modi. This is like totally humiliating. It totally offends the national sensibility. Whatever you think, by the way, I don't like this kind of antagonism that they have for Pakistan and vice versa, but it is what it is. And so he completely stepped in. And purely because of his ego and vanity and because of something that everybody knows isn't true, he didn't broker Anything like there's no agreement. There's not a piece of paper. There's nothing that the US did other than make the routine diplomatic phone calls. But because the whole world has to play along with this Nobel Peace Prize fiction, he's putting at risk a relationship with a country of well over a billion people. The other thing I'd say is, Tommy, I was in meetings with Modi in the late Obama years. This is a man with a deep, deep skepticism of China. He's worried about China. They're a big neighbor. They have a bigger economy. He's been trying to catch up to their economy and hasn't been able to do it. They've had these border disputes. His natural inclination is actually to get closer to the US to get closer to Europe, to get closer to the Gulf Arabs. And we're literally shoving him in the direction of China. That's how big of a self own this is. And again, like, it's amazing that this is kind of a secondary story that, you know, basically pissing off like a hugely strategic country. One political point I want to make in front of the pod. Ro Khan has made this point. Indian Americans have been trending conservative, Right. A lot of these people bought into the Trump Modi bromance. They kind of like the Hindu nationalism, and they kind of want to be a part of some MAGA adjacent space here. Well, I hope you have some buyer's remorse if you thought that Trump had some sincere desire to improve US Indian relations, because he doesn't. So again, it's not a straight politics show, but every vote matters. And I would hope that there are people in the Indian American community going to their Trump curious or Trump supporting family and saying, what the fuck? This is the wrong bet, guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

It was the wrong bet. And also, like, Trump has been much harder on India than anybody other countries. Yeah, like, why are we sanctioning India? Or secondary sanctions on India over buying Russian oil but not the Chinese? The Chinese buy a lot more oil from the Russians than the Indians do. So none of it makes any sense. And like, the stakes, as you mentioned, are huge, man. I mean, like, India's got nukes. The US Wants to deepen this partnership with India. Like, we want to sell them weapons, for example, and have them not buy them from the Russians. This put that this at. That is at jeopardy now. I think 40% of generic drugs are manufactured in India. So it's like huge ties between the two economies. And I think, like, figuring out how Trump resolves this trade dispute is hard. It's Hard to see the path forward because Trump wants expanded access to U.S. agricultural products, especially like dairy, soybeans, corn, and wheat. But this is another massive political problem for Modi, because something like 40% of jobs in India are tied to agriculture. So that's hundreds of millions of people. And Indian farms are tiny. Like, it's like, you know, 1/100th the size of the average U.S. farm. And so that means that Indian farmers, they don't have the scale or, like, the technology that US Farms do to drive down costs. And so if Trump forces cheap US Ag products into India and Indian farmers are put out of business, Modi won't just lose an election. Like, he might get driven out of the country. You know what I mean? Like, there would be a populist uprising. And also, the Indians won't let in genetically modified food crops, which is like most US Corn in soybeans. So that's a big hurdle. And then on top of that, like, to add to the list of irritants, Ben Trump invited Pakistan's army chief of staff to the White House. The Indians didn't love that. They named this random goober, Sergio Gore, to be the US Ambassador to India. He was doing, like, personnel, which is just, like. It's confusing. Apparently, Trump was planning to go to India in the near future. Now he's not. The crackdown on foreign visas was a big deal for India because I think one in four foreign students in the US Are from India. So there's just, like, a lot of ways where we're. We're poking at these guys.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. One other problem for us, too, is that the US because we have such shitty STEM education, because it's been defunded by Republicans for years, and now we're getting. With the Department of Education, we're wholly dependent on Indian and Chinese foreign students to sustain our technology base, our AI, Things like that. So that could hurt us too. And look, one thing I want to say about this is I'm no fan of Modi. Trump, I think, assumed because these other guys are like, strongmen, autocratic nationalists like him, that they'd get along. The thing I've always been worried about is nationalists are ultimately nationalists. Whether you're Modi or Bibi or Putin or xi, if you're a hardcore nationalist, you're not gonna bend to Donald Trump's will because you actually believe in the nationalism. And I think another mistake that Trump has made is the people that do kiss his ass and nominate him for Nobel Peace Prizes are the leaders of, like, small countries that can't stand up to the US and so they're like, if you're the leader of Azerbaijan or Armenia or Pakistan, you're like, well, I'll nominate the guy for the Nobel, but guess what? Leaders of big countries don't need to do that. And so what Trump is realizing is, you know, nationalism Trumps, like, shared autocratic tendencies, you know, and Modi is always going to bend in the direction of Indian nationalism. He's not going to make these concessions to Trump that, like, some small country would make.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. And he probably feel like. He probably feels like he tried. Right. There's like, how many Trump towers now in India? Like, they've done all the bribing.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I think they had Ivanka over there. Like, they've done all these things.

[Tommy Vietor]

Come on, help it out. So, Ben, we've been talking about how the world's kind of, like, revolved around China and Chinese President Xi Jinping for the last few days. So we wanted to do a big picture check in on, like, the U.S. china relationship because there is this bipartisan consensus in D.C. that U.S. competition with China is, like, the most important issue going forward. And then Trump spent, you know, the majority of the campaign accusing Joe Biden of being soft on China, pledging to get tough. And so, you know, we wanted to just sort of like, check in on how that's going. In the first few months, it, you know, things look pretty dicey. Remember that, you know, in mid April, I think the US tariff rate on China was almost 150% after there was these escalating kind of tit for tat tariffs with the Chinese. But then Trump tacoed. There was that meeting in Geneva where they all sort of agreed to hit pause for a while. And in that moment, I think Xi Jinping realized that, like, Trump mostly just wants a deal and he wants de escalation and was not willing to watch the markets crash. But there's more examples than just that. So in July, the Trump administration refused to allow the president of Taiwan to fly through the US On a trip to South America. That was not the best signal for China hawks who want the US to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. It's also been. I can't think of a single comment from Trump about, like, Hong Kong or human rights or the Uyghurs or.

[Ben Rhodes]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And so that is, like, not something I expected, but it is a concession.

[Ben Rhodes]

Which Marco Rubio used to be the number one leader leader on.

[Tommy Vietor]

So big cheerleader.

[Ben Rhodes]

I guess little Marco checked his principles.

[Tommy Vietor]

Little Marco went quiet. And then in August, Trump announced that the US would allow Nvidia to sell its H20 chip in China in exchange for the US getting 15% of the sales revenue. That reversed the decision that the administration had made in like a couple months earlier to block the sale of that specific chip. Because these chips are powerful tools for training, advanced artificial intelligence and large language models. So the revenue just that we would get from 15% of these H20 sales is like de minimis when you consider like the, the size of our debt. But allowing China access to these chips is a big deal in the AI race. And just for context, and we can dig into this deeper, but the H20 chip is not like the cutting edge chip that's kind of this Blackwell series and it's weaker in raw compute to the H100 series, which is kind of the next one up. But it is pretty powerful and is much better than what China could get from non US sources. So it was a big concession. And then just to make things more confusing, I think the Chinese refused the H20 chip, citing some security concerns. Now they're hoping they get like a downgraded version of the Blackwell top tier chip. So whatever, we'll get into it in a minute. And then a bunch of Trump's most ardent supporters are furious because like a week or two ago, Trump revoked a previous decision to revoke like half a million visas for Chinese students and Instead we'll let 600,000 Chinese students come and study in the US over the next couple of years. So Ben, throw any other data points into the mix here, but when you sum all that up, like, it's pretty accommodating.

[Ben Rhodes]

Accommodating. These are actual concessions. And look, if you compare it to Biden, for instance, he's softened the policy in a number of areas. Right on Taiwan, Biden was more forward leaning in arms sales to Taiwan. We're canceling defense dialogues, constantly saying we.

[Tommy Vietor]

Would go to war.

[Ben Rhodes]

By the way, I'm not even agreeing with all these things. Biden was more out there in Taiwan.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's just funny, the thing back that we covered like four times, but you're this careful policy. Damn right.

[Ben Rhodes]

I go to war carefully.

[Tommy Vietor]

Ambiguous policy owned over decades and by.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like, fuck, yeah, anyway, I'm the guy. But anyway, put that aside. But, but on the chips, for instance, the Biden administration built over years this kind of net of what are called export controls, restrict certain investments or technology and going into China. And it was all designed to kind of preserve this lead for the United States on AI so that we'd be the first to develop the cutting edge language models that that would allow us to kind of figure out what this technology can do before the Chinese have it, and that that would also make us the most likely supplier to the rest of the world, like I was saying earlier. So look, he's not only allowed things to continue to happen that he said he would stop, like foreign students. And look, I'm glad that they're foreign students come here. Right? But he's made like very substantive concessions to Xi Jinping. Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

For no reason, seemingly.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, the only substantive reason is Xi Jinping, I think, was ready for this trade war, unlike the first time around. And that one of the weapons that he realized he has cuz he's developed it is this monopoly of critical minerals.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

And so she was like, all right, you want to tariff me? I'm going to turn off these absolutely essential components for your military industrial base, for your technology base. And Trump folded like a tent when he did that. It also seems to me like the tech guys, like the Nvidia guy, like whoever else got to Trump and were like, hey, we need these students here because so people understand to just go deep on the chip thing for a second. The Chinese over the last decade or two have made a huge bet that they're gonna reorient their economy around technology, particularly AI and quantum computing, which is the next thing coming down the line, and clean energy. And they actually allowed for a lot of hits to Chinese growth and a real estate bubble. They kind of took a lot of pain to kind of reinvest in these spaces. Now when it comes to AI, you need several things. You need capital. And the Chinese have that. The government plows money into this in this country, it's like private capital. In China, it's the government. So they've got that. You need talent. China probably has more talent because they've literally, in the same way that they train athletes to win gold medals, they've been like training engineers to service their AI.

[Tommy Vietor]

They got a lot of people.

[Ben Rhodes]

The one area where the US had a. And data, you need data obviously, to train these language models, to feed into these language models. Chinese obviously have a lot of data.

[Tommy Vietor]

They got data for days.

[Ben Rhodes]

They got data for days. They got over a billion people and they collect everything on everybody. So they've got plenty of data. So they've got data, they've got capital, they've got talent. The one area where they've been behind is they don't have the computing power that the US has the chips, the data centers, all those things. Now they were finding workarounds on that. They were figuring out ways to kind of take open source models like Facebook in their stupidity decided to release their llama large language model so everybody could see it while the Chinese stole it. That's how you got deep. Seq was out like a few months later. Right. But to give them the compute power is to essentially say, sure, it's like giving steroids to someone who's like running right behind you. You know, it's a bizarre concession to make. And I just don't understand why you would do it, other than I think Trump is kind of in bed with these AI guys. I don't know what is going on underneath the table. Sure, there's 15% revenue to the U.S. treasury. God knows what kind of crypto investments are happening. I don't know. This is. Yeah, I don't know.

[Tommy Vietor]

Apparently they made like what, $5 billion this week on their. Their new crypto launch.

[Ben Rhodes]

So this is Trump, this guy, you know, Trump goes and demagogues China and talks tough about it in, like, Ohio. And J.D. vance talks about like a civilizational struggle and Steve Bannon, like, beats his chest for seven hours on the war room podcast. And then Trump just gives the Chinese everything they want.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yep. Yeah, it's. It's not good. So. Bad grade so far, Mr. Trump.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but Ben, before we do, I wanna tell you about a new show. Do you like money, murder, betrayal and revenge?

[Ben Rhodes]

I like revenge.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's entertainment.

[Ben Rhodes]

I like revenge. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is the unbelievable true story of the United Mine Workers of America. The son who took on a dangerous union boss to avenge his family's murder. This is the newest season of Shadow Kingdom called Coal Survivor. Hosted by Nicolo Mennoni. Digs into the rise and fall of United Mine Workers of America under Tony Boyle. Once the most powerful and corrupt labor leader in the country at the height of America's coal wars. It's a political thriller wrapped in a courtroom drama, and every detail is real. Catch the latest episode on the Shadow Kingdom feed wherever you get your podcasts. Or better yet, Friends of the Pod. Subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join [e-mail] Friends.

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[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vietor]

All right, Ben. As we predicted, the global war on terror and the war on drugs have officially merged. On Tuesday, Trump just kind of casually announced during an unrelated like thing about space force that the US Military had carried out an airstrike on a boat that he said had departed Venezuela and was carrying drugs and 11, quote unquote trende aragua narco terrorists. The White House even released a little snuff film of the airstrike on Twitter that you could all watch. The time said that the the something was that whatever was fired at them was either from an attack helicopter or a Reaper drone. Our listeners probably will not be surprised that we've gotten to this point. We've covered this from the beginning. Like, on day one of Trump 2.0, the administration released an executive order saying drug cartels could be designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Then in February, the State Department designated Trend Aragua as a terrorist group. The New York Times reported that Trump signed a secret directive telling the U. S. Military to use deadly force against cartels they deem to be terrorist groups. And then treasury, the Treasury Department designated a group called Cartel of the sun as a terrorist group and said it was headed by Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials. So they've been kind of like constructing this legal framework like such as it is for months now. Legal and air quotes. But either way, like, militarizing the war on drugs, like this is a huge deal for a bunch of reasons. I mean, first of all, it just goes without saying Congress has not authorized military action against Venezuela. Important to mention it doesn't matter if you call them a terrorist group. This is just not how you deal with drug traffickers. Like, normally the Coast Guard would interdict the ship, you would arrest the people on it or at least interview them. And what Trump authorized here was a summary execution for a criminal violation. And then, you know, just again, broader context, like the US has moved all these naval assets south to the southern Caribbean. That includes like amphibious assault ships, thousands of sailors, thousands of marines, which has Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, sounding the alarm about a possible invasion. And, you know, I've talked to some experts this morning, Ben, who said that, like, it's also freaking out a bunch of other countries in the Caribbean because, remember, not long ago, Trump was talking about taking back the Panama Canal or whatever. And so, you know, this kind of rhetoric is going to color how every leader in Central and South America views this major troop deployment, especially, you know, when you consider the broader history of US Intervention in Latin America. So here's a clip of Trump talking about this airstrike today. Again, during that bilateral meeting with the president of Poland on the boat, you had massive amounts of drugs. We have tapes of them speaking. It was massive amounts of drugs coming.

[Ben Rhodes]

Into our country to kill a lot of people.

[Tommy Vietor]

And everybody fully understands that. In fact, you see it. You see the bags of drugs all.

[Ben Rhodes]

Over the boat and they were hit.

[Tommy Vietor]

Obviously, they won't be doing it again, and I think a lot of other.

[Ben Rhodes]

People won't be doing it again.

[Tommy Vietor]

When they watch that tape, they're going to say, let's not do this.

[Ben Rhodes]

We have to protect our country and we're going to.

[Tommy Vietor]

Venezuela has been a very bad actor. So Ben, you know, clearly he's excited to talk about this. He announced it Tuesday, talked about it again Wednesday in this press conference. My fear is that Trump is going to love the kind of media and political reaction to this first airstrike and demand more, and before long, we will be talking about airstrikes in countries directly.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I have concerns because I feel like this is the merger. You're the one who coined the phrase that I really like of this is the war on terror meets the war on drugs. I'd add a third component. It's a war on terror meets the war on drugs, meets the kind of American fascist immigration policy. Because if you remember, trend Aragua and the Venezuelan government was like the basis for the Alien Enemies act being used to deport people to El Salvador.

[Tommy Vietor]

And they're directing this gang.

[Ben Rhodes]

And in fact, actually, the courts have found against this because basically the legal theory for those who don't remember was that the US Is at war with Venezuela. And so therefore we can deport Venezuelans because we're at war with them.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's an invasion.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, well, now we're actually kind of beginning to go to war with them. So I don't know how much that factors into the decision making here, but it does seem like there's a big target on Venezuela in particular and Maduro in particular. Kind of like reminiscent of an OG American military intervention when we went into Panama to like, arrest Noriega for drug trafficking. Now Venezuela is a much bigger country. Maduro's created like a claims a militia of over 4 million people that are ready to fight.

[Tommy Vietor]

Which he says, yeah, you deployed them.

[Ben Rhodes]

So he says, look, I do just kind of worry that Trump wants a kind of state of war to exist in this hemisphere as part of the legal justification for his immigration policies, too.

[Tommy Vietor]

Interesting.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, maybe I'm got a bit of.

[Tommy Vietor]

A hat on, but it's Stephen Miller's probably.

[Ben Rhodes]

Stephen Miller would probably go there. Right. So that's something to watch. Do they kind of begin to bring their immigration policy into this kind of state of war, then you worry about, like in the war on terror, Once the US Starts blowing things up, we tend not to stop. Highly unlikely. This is the last boat we blow up. Right. And we'll end up blowing up boats that are not, you know, we'll wind up killing civilians.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, that's the thing. Intelligence gets things wrong all the time. Like what happens when we blow up a boat full of innocent fishermen.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Now keep in mind, too, this is a dumb fucking way to fight drug. Look, so long as Americans want drugs, people are going to find ways to get drugs here and sell them. I mean, maybe Trump could call up his buddy Elon Musk and ask him where he gets his drugs, because, like, there's plenty of fucking drugs in this country. And blowing up individual boats, he's just drone burning man. Yeah, exactly. I mean, blowing up individual boats is not gonna, like, stop drugs from coming to this country. It's just not anymore.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nor will it deter them.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Any more than the war on drugs did. When you can make billions of dollars selling drugs in America, you're gonna find ways to get drugs here. Right. I mean, we've learned that for decades. This isn't gonna work. It's just a stunt. But it's a stunt that risks militarizing the region. And then the last piece is. Yeah. This slippery slope idea that the more we're militarizing our relationship and hemisphere. And by the way, this boat wasn't coming to the US apparently, it was going to, like, Trinidad or something. But the more you're militarizing it, the more maybe militarizing a conflict with Venezuela or a regime change, war against Maduro, or taking the Panama Canal, or suddenly you're taking shots in Mexico. This thing could grow across the hemisphere in ways that are really dangerous and scary and. And bad for individual people and will do nothing for drug trafficking and will do a lot to strengthen Trump as an authoritarian leader in this country.

[Tommy Vietor]

And just, it's worth saying, like, in the past, you know, the US has done a ton of work with countries in Latin America to do drug interdiction. But we've cut off cooperation with countries when they did things like this, when they like shot down planes.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

That were suspected of drug running. Now we are just releasing snuff videos of drone strikes on boats.

[Ben Rhodes]

And where does that end? Because you know, how many boats are moving around with drugs? I mean, it's a scary thing to think about.

[Tommy Vietor]

It really is. It really is. So one we will be watching also, Ben. You know, so we, we talk a lot about Israel and the west bank later in the show. So we're going to go a little shorter on Gaza today, but that doesn't mean a lot hasn't happened since, you know, we last recorded. The first update that was just we're sharing with you guys is that the Washington Post had a long story over the weekend. It was a report on a 38 page document that lays out the actual plan for the US ethnic cleansing and takeover of the Gaza Strip to make it the quote, unquote Riviera of the Middle east, as Trump famously said. Whatever. How many months ago. This is called the, the, it's the Gaza Reconstruction, Economic Acceleration and transformation Trust or Great Trust. It calls for Gaza. I know, it's so fucking dark. It calls for Gaza to be put in a trusteeship administered by the US for about 10 years or minimum of 10 years. During that 10 year period, Palestinians would have two choices. A, you quote, unquote, voluntarily depart for another country, tbd. We can talk about where those countries are in a bit. You get a cash gift of five grand and four years of rent subsidies or you get to be confined in a quote, restricted secured zone. So basically this is like ethnic cleansing with a cash stipend. But to make it more like tech douchey and dystopian, people who own land in Gaza would be given a quote, digital token to be used to finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in one of six to eight new AI powered smart cities. AI powered smart cities. So the plan proposes like this could get so much worse. There's like a road circling Gaza called the MBS highway, Mohammed bin Salman Highway.

[Ben Rhodes]

There's an Elon, which I don't think he's agreed to.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, I don't think he wants that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I don't think he wants that at all.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's also an Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone. Again, Mr. Musk is I think on the outs, but so initial financing of the plan.

[Ben Rhodes]

Update the slide deck.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, because. Update your slide deck. It's not that hard to do PowerPoint these days, but so the initial financing of this plan comes from the trust taking ownership of the about 30% of Gaza that is publicly owned and then using that as collateral. So again, it's like just a land grab. And then the plan claims the scheme would see a Forex return over 10 years through all this investment. But again, like ethnic cleansing for profit. So the security piece would come from Israel and Western contractors, they'd provide security for about a decade, at which point local police that are trained during that time would take over that trust. The great trust would also govern Gaza during that period, we think. This plan was talked about in a White House meeting last week that included Jared Kushner and Tony Blair, whose think tank has been connected to this one proposal. The report comes, this report in the post comes as Israel is preparing another major assault on Gaza City. That's the place where the famine is the worst. And as part of that assault ban, Israel has announced that they're going to end humanitarian pauses that were supposed to allow a flood of aid into Gaza City to save people who are starving to death. So I guess Netanyahu is back to a policy of starving kids to death. No one tell Barry Weiss and the team over at the Free Press, maybe they have some pre existing conditions we could, we could dredge up quickly. But Ben, also on Monday, the International association of Genocide Scholars said publicly that Israel is meeting the legal conditions for genocide in Gaza. So 86% of the group's 500 members voted for the resolution. So Ben, like, big picture, obviously, Gaza reconstruction is like a massive generational challenge. Like no one is arguing with that. 90% of structures, housing stock is destroyed. The entire area is littered with unexploded ordnance that will have to be cleared. There's bodies trapped over endless piles of rubble. There is no infrastructure, there's no water. Right? Like there's nothing. You have to rebuild it all. And Netanyahu has refused to engage on any of that reconstruction or how Gaza would be governed after the war. But like Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, digital token, AI douchebag mumbo jumbo. It's like this is one of the most dystopian documents I've ever heard of.

[Ben Rhodes]

It is. And I do want to, I want to talk about the genocide thing for a minute here because look, a majority of genocide scholars are at a determination.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's not really a debate anymore among experts.

[Ben Rhodes]

If you're not American or Israeli too, like you overwhelmingly believe a genocide is happening. I went back and decided to look at the last Trump administration's determination of genocide. You may remember that they made a determination that there was a genocide happening against the Uyghurs, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yep.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's an interesting thing to consider, because nobody ever suggested that the Chinese Communist Party was trying to kill every Uyghur. No, they weren't. They were sending them to re education camps. It was horrible what they were doing. The reason that Mike Pompeo made this determination is he said, quote, we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party state, and again, not by killing them, but through, quote, the eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group. How is this not the erasure of a group? They lived in Gaza. A substantial amount of them were killed, starved, wounded. All of their homes were destroyed almost. And now you're saying that they have to leave.

[Tommy Vietor]

That was ethnic cleansing.

[Ben Rhodes]

That is the erasure of a group. Right. And so people need to realize that just because, I mean, this is genocide by PowerPoint presentation. Right. When you're talking about literally ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, that's what's happening. And it is this kind of spooky, dystopian convergence of AI and crypto and this idea that money can solve any problem and get these people out of the way. And this kind of New Abraham Accords order. Right. You know, because the Gulf Arabs, by the way, aren't even signed onto this because they know politically it's dangerous for them. So you basically got a bunch of people like, you know, from Tony Blair to Jared Kushner kind of speaking for the future participation of these Gulf Arabs, because they're the ones with the money. But it's all these awful forces that have converged in the Trump administration with absolutely no regard. Who are the Palestinian voices that are participating in these discussions? Right. I mean, you're literally having conversations about the future of a whole people without them. They are not asking for digital tokens. They're not asking to live in AI cities. They're asking to live in their homes. And Jared Kushner's role here tells you a lot, too, because this guy's been kind of on the margins, but he's been vacuuming money all over this region.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's getting kickback from the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris or sovereign wealth funds or investment companies tied to those governments.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's right. And the last thing I'd just say about this is when Trump floated the Gaza Riviera thing, everybody kind of chuckled. This is a reminder that this Trump administration, they tend to end up doing the crazy things that they say they're gonna do.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that announcement also gave the political space to every right winger in Israel to come out in support of the full ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which is something they had not done but before this.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's right. So, I mean, there's a direct line from Trump making that comment to Trump posting that weird AI thing with like statues of Elon Musk to this PowerPoint presentation. And so, like, take this very seriously. This is the actual plan of what they want to do in Gaza over the objection of any Palestinians and over the objection of pretty much every country in the world other than the United States and Israel.

[Tommy Vietor]

Man, I was watching and Tony Blair.

[Ben Rhodes]

I guess, whoever he, he seems to.

[Tommy Vietor]

What is he doing? I don't understand what he's doing here. I was watching something. It was Jeremy diamond at CNN is doing some really great coverage of Gaza and all things sort of happening in Israel. He had a piece yesterday and he just somehow got footage of this mom, like fleeing with her two kids. And it was like a little boy. She was like holding a little boy's hand and the little girl was running ahead and she had one of those Minnie Mouse backpacks. And the girl was so little that it like was almost dragging on the ground. And I just saw that. I just like could not not think about my two kids and being a mom in Gaza City. And you're just like, there's literally nowhere for you to go. Everywhere is getting bombed, everywhere is occupied. You've been told to relocate countless times. At this point, there is a fucking full on famine, right? And we were told that Netanyahu cared and he was going to allow this aid into Gaza City to turn it back. And all these American officials and members of Congress seemingly believed him. And now they're just turning off those humanitarian causes. And again, going back to this starvation policy.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, all these Democrat senators like Cory Booker, posing for photographs with Netanyahu as recently as a few weeks ago. And the only other thing I'd say about the kid thing, because I was thinking about this Tommy too, is that imagine the trauma that parents are gonna have for the rest of their lives. Imagine how you'd feel if you couldn't keep your child safe.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, it's your whole reason for existence.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's your whole reason for existence is to protect this child. And you can't what that does to people psychologically. I mean, it's not the kind of thing that Goes away with a crypto coin or something.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, no, your Bitcoin bullshit. I mean, yeah, the deprivation. Look, we are so focused on killing and starvation, but the deprivation we don't talk about for Palestinian communities. Like, these kids haven't gone to school.

[Ben Rhodes]

In just the trauma. I mean, these kids haven't seen a.

[Tommy Vietor]

Dentist or a doctor.

[Ben Rhodes]

Just bottomless trauma that they'll be dealing with for the rest of their lives. And to think you can move them around like pieces on a game board to South Sudan, to Libya, Ethiopia, South.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sudan, Indonesia, Somaliland, people.

[Ben Rhodes]

All places where there have been wars. I mean, these are all. Most of these places have been hot war zones in the last decade.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's just. It's the most mortally dangerous.

[Ben Rhodes]

So you're moving them to another war zone.

[Tommy Vietor]

And by the way, Steve Wyckoff's out there saying that he thinks the war is going to end by the end of this year. This Gaza City offensive is not even scheduled to be done by the end of this year. And meanwhile, Bibi Netanyahu is, like, calling up all these reservists.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like, and by the way, you're building the largest. If you do build the Gaza Riviera, you're building the largest terrorist target in the world.

[Tommy Vietor]

I just. I literally. That was my. My head went right to that, too. Like the ISIS recruiters, the Hamas recruiters, the Hezbollah recruiters, that this plan is what they've dreamed of.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, this confirms every single argument. Well, I don't want. I mean, it doesn't make them right, but, like, literally, this is literally like a cartoonish version of, like, a white supremacist colonial superstructure. Like, I don't know what else you call this.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, it's just horrible. Podcast of the World is brought to you by bilt. Nobody wants to pay rent, but if you have to, BILT makes it worth it. BILT is revolutionizing how millions think about paying rent by rewarding their members with points and exclusive benefits around their neighborhood every single month. By paying rent through bilt, you earn flexible points that can be redeemed towards hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next lift ride, and much more. But it doesn't stop there. Built is about making your entire neighborhood more rewarding. You can dine out at your favorite local restaurants and earn additional points, get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios, and enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month. BILT is turning a monthly expense into an opportunity to earn rewards and discover the best that your neighborhood has to offer. Your rent is finally working for you earn points on rent and around your neighborhood, wherever you call home, by going to joinbuilt.comworld that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.comworld. make sure to use your URL so they know we sent you a few other quick things. It's just worth noting the administration, the Trump administration is not allowing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and any other officials into the US for the UN General assembly, which starts next week. The State Department's going even further by denying visitor visas to almost all holders of Palestinian passports. So again, you're not allowed to participate in any talks about the future of your country.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's insane.

[Tommy Vietor]

Trump had some thoughts about Israel during an interview with the Daily Caller that were worth noting. He said, quote, israel was the strongest lobby I've ever seen. They had total control over Congress and now they don't. He also said, quote, they're going to have to get that war over with. But it is hurting Israel. There's no question about it. They may be winning the war, but they're not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them, end quote. So, per usual, Ben Trump says stuff about the Israel lobby controlling Washington that would get all of us labeled an anti Semite by Jonathan Greenblatt and all these fuckers, where is Jonathan Greenblatt? They don't say a word about us.

[Ben Rhodes]

Where's Jonathan Greenblatt? Why don't you go on TV and have a viral moment yelling about Donald Trump's comments on the Israel lobby maybe would help. And by the way, one more thing on this, because it always drives me nuts. It's not a public relations problem. It's an actions problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a kids getting killed problem.

[Ben Rhodes]

I hate it when people are like, Israel's got a real PR problem. No, they have a problem that they've killed tens of thousands.

[Tommy Vietor]

The problem is slaughtering children and starving them to death. That's the problem. Yeah, it's a policy problem. And then last Thursday, Ben, an Israeli airstrike hit the Houthi government meeting in Yemen, killing cabinet members and the prime minister, Ahmed Al Rahawi. The Wall Street Journal reports that Al Rahabi's role was largely administrative with little political authority. The leader of the Houthis is actually still alive and kicking, and the military arm was unaffected by the strike. But it did set off this big conversation about whether the Israeli government had assassinated the prime minister of a sovereign nation. And we know that the president of Iran barely survived An Israeli airstrike during the 12 Day War. So this is now a trend?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I mean, first of all, this isn't going to like, wipe out the Houthis. I mean, you're not going to militarily wipe these people out. Like, they live in Yemen, they're a substantial number of people. And yeah, it's just the, the people that like, get off on this stuff, think it's great, but you're just gonna go around killing people in this region indefinitely, in every country, forever. I mean, that's not security.

[Tommy Vietor]

It reminds me of our kind of failed Al Qaeda policies where every six months the Al Qaeda number three would get killed and everyone talk about how influential that person is, and then the group just metastasizes. I know we're going long, but two more things we should talk about. So it's just been a horrible week for natural disasters in Darfur, Sudan. A landslide hit a whole village, killing at least a thousand people. And there's been some just devastating news and images out of Afghanistan where There was a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. It hit the eastern part of the country. Kunar Province, which borders Pakistan, was hit hardest. But like entire villages, structures made with mud bricks were just flattened. And this is a very remote, mountainous area. These landslides were blocking roads. There's no equipment, there's a shortage of helicopters that has made rescue efforts difficult, if not impossible. So the official number of dead as of this recording on Wednesday morning is over 1400 people with 3000 injured. But those numbers are going to go up because there's just tons of villages and communities that haven't been reached yet, let alone, like, kind of been accounted for. So we reached out to Elaha Omar, executive director of the Uplift Afghanistan Fund, who's been working on relief efforts there. Here's what she had to say. This earthquake is definitely not happening in isolation.

[Ben Rhodes]

Afghanistan is in its fourth year of drought. Crops are failing, and hunger is widespread.

[Tommy Vietor]

At the same time we've witnessed this recently. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been.

[Ben Rhodes]

Forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan, swelling the number of disaster displaced families. Even before this earthquake, 22 million Afghans already needed humanitarian aid. And the hard truth is the international community, including the US has sharply reduced aid to Afghanistan. US assistance has dropped from nearly 3.8.

[Tommy Vietor]

Billion in 2022 to 700 billion, 67 million today.

[Ben Rhodes]

What that means is hundreds of clinics have closed, medical airlifts are grounded, and food programs are cut back for women and girls in particular. This is devastating because without female medical staff, they often can't get access to care at all. The shortage of female doctors and nurses.

[Tommy Vietor]

Means many are going untreated. Amid this devastation, what inspires me most is how Afghans themselves are leading the response in a country often defined by conflict.

[Ben Rhodes]

What I'm seeing is compassion, solidarity, and extraordinary courage.

[Tommy Vietor]

So we're going to put a link to the uplift of Gain, the Stand website in the show notes, if you want to check out the work they're doing, maybe contribute financially or some other way. But, Ben, it's so gutting to see a natural disaster like this and then know it is compounded by US policy decisions like gutting usaid or just the utter refusal to figure out a way to work with the Taliban.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, normally USAID would be like the tip of the spear in disaster response. So what you're hearing from Malaha in that clip is that there are people that are going to die or people that are not going to get aid because of the decision to gut US Assistance, to gut usaid, and to basically ignore Afghanistan after the collapse four years ago. And, you know, given our fingerprints all over Afghanistan, that's just a complete moral failing. I will say Uplift Afghanistan is one of the groups that is able to work with people who are on the ground. So if people do want to support, that's a good mechanism to do that, because they know the people that are there.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, and that's going to be the hardest part, right, of finding someone on the ground to work with. And the Sudan piece of this is also just so bad. I mean, they're like years into the civil war. You have hundreds of thousands of people who have, like, escaped to the Darfur region, to these. These camps. Like, literally like 300, 400,000 people in a camp. And then there are these horrible landslides and monsoons, and no aid is getting to them to begin with. So there's already a famine. There was a massive cholera epidemic. There's no medical care. I mean, it's just like. It's just so unfair what happens to the most, you know, the people in the worst position.

[Ben Rhodes]

And again, when USAID gets cut by big balls and Elon Musk and people laugh at Democrats having a press conference in front of USAID and see it as a political issue. These are deaths. These are preventable deaths. You can prevent a mudslide or an earthquake, but you can make sure that there's resources for people who are dealing with it. People in conflict, guns are always more vulnerable. So we remember there's going to be a Long tail to what Elon Musk and Doge did.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yep. Final topic. So as listeners know, Trump promised to solve the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It is now September 3rd. The war is now worse than ever for Ukrainians. The White House, like, they threw together this Alaska summit with Putin, the big meeting with Trump and Zelensky and the Europeans, and they promised all this follow up, like a, a bilateral meeting between Russia and Ukraine and maybe a trilateral meeting with Russia and Ukraine and the U.S. we were told we'd see details of a security guarantee for Ukraine. And here we are weeks later, Ben, and like literally none of that has happened. So what is going on? Obviously, a lot of this stems from bad strategy. It stems from Donald Trump only caring about headlines and not follow up or substance. But it's also increasingly clear that Steve Witkoff, Trump's golf buddy turned envoy for everything, it's just kind of an idiot. So we gave Witkoff a bunch of credit and the benefit of the doubt early on when Trump got the Gaza ceasefire over the finish line. But things have gone downhill everywhere since. Politico and Reuters did some deep reporting on the impact of Wyckoff's incompetence that was worth highlighting. So a lot of the challenges stem from process. So apparently Wyckoff takes meetings with Putin or other leaders one on one. At least once he used Putin's translator and didn't bring his own, which is insane. At least once, Wyckoff didn't bring a standard State Department note taker to his meeting with Putin. And that led to huge problems because back in August, you had Witkoff telling Trump, telling European leaders that Putin was prepared to withdraw from parts of Ukraine and offer major concessions to end the war. Specifically, Wyckoff had told them that Putin said he if he got to keep the net Donetsk in Luhansk provinces, he would withdraw from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which would have been like a kind of a shocking major concession. But then apparently a day later, Marco Rubio had to call those leaders back and do cleanup and say, actually Putin just said he wouldn't demand that the west formally recognize Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as a Russian territory, didn't offer to withdraw troops. It's a big change. And that confusion, I think led to the rush to Alaska summit and, you know, all we've seen since. And then Politico talked with 13 people, both U.S. officials and foreign official who have dealt with Wyckoff. And here's some of what they reported One, Wyckoff won't meet with or consult with experts, and he doesn't have a lot of staff to help him. And the staff he has often doesn't know where he is or what he's doing because he just camps out in the West Wing while his team is at the State Department, kind of like wondering what's going on. He apparently pops in and out of meetings, like goes to the high profile stuff and then quote off to his life again, end quote. Meaning he's not engaged in like the day to day grinding work of diplomacy. And it also means in practice, other US Government officials don't know where he is, don't know what he said, don't know what he heard from Putin at a key meeting. And then they say Wyckoff reportedly doesn't read daily, his briefings daily, doesn't even check his government email sometimes some days. And the story said that even the Russians have gotten annoyed at Wyckoff at times because he is unable to accurately convey Putin's messages and views to Trump. Though I would note that the Russians specifically chose Wyckoff to be their guy and iced out Keith Kellogg, who was supposed to be the envoy in charge of ending this war. So Ben, of course, like, the only thing that matters at the end of the day is results. If Wyckoff gets good deals over the finish line, I will praise him. But it's pretty disconcerting to read this and know that this guy is not just trying to end the war in Ukraine, he's also in charge of Gaza and all these other big projects.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's pretty extraordinary when you consider the fact that he's sitting alone with Putin in a room. And Vladimir Putin is someone who probably has more or whatever you think of Vladimir Putin, I don't think much of him as a human. Probably has more diplomatic experience than anybody in the world. And Steve Wyckoff's experience is like some real estate properties in Florida. You can chuckle about it, but the common thread of, I think our whole conversation today is these guys, these Trump guys kind of created a bit of an illusion of competence because they came in and they moved so fast and they did so much stuff and people had to kind of kiss up to them. And there was that kind of short term ceasefire in Gaza because Bibi was giving Trump a little gift on the way in. But actually, if you pull the camera back, what you see is just stupendous incompetence and lack of qualification. And it's not hard for Steve Witkoff to grab an expert Take your pick. From the State Department, from the Defense Department, from the CIA. There's a lot of people in the U.S. government. And by the way, they don't even have to be like archon experts. I'm sure there's some MAGA adjacent experts. The fact that this guy is so casual about conflicts as serious as the war in Ukraine or in Gaza, and just because he lathers Trump up and talks about the Nobel Peace Prize and plays golf with him at Mar A Lago, he's managing these accounts, it's truly extraordinary incompetence. And you made the right point, too. Kellogg was appointed the envoy there the Russians literally selected. Wykoff was supposed to be the Middle east envoy, and the Russians literally selected him and iced out Kellogg. And Kellogg's only allowed to talk to the Ukrainians. And if you can't even pass messages back and forth accurately, I mean, that's like the lowest common denominator of what a diplomat does. The last thing that's just worth pointing out is that Steve Witkoff's son is in this crypto business with Eric Trump and Don Jr. What is it? World Liberty Financial or. And so he's, you know, that's part of what's going on too here is like the woodcuff families.

[Tommy Vietor]

Why else do you need to meet alone?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tommy Vietor]

You can talk about stuff like that, right?

[Ben Rhodes]

You can have a little crypto conversation.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, little sidebar. Yeah, I mean, like, to your point about the experts, like, you don't have to do what they say. No, just, you should meet with them. You should hear them out. Yeah, it's like, apparently RFK Jr. Not only did he not listen to, like, the vaccine experts, he refused to even have conversations with them. Yeah, he wouldn't talk to the people at the CDC. See, it's like, also, do you see J.D. vance kind of lost his mind about this story on Twitter, like, wrote an op ed, which does tell you that, like, Witkoff's feelings matter to Trump. So there's some real sensitivity there. But, like, I don't know, man, get your shit together.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, the, the just picking envoys for the Mar A Lago membership rules is probably not the best way to staff a government, but. No, it is where we are.

[Tommy Vietor]

Is where we are. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and when you come back, you're going to hear my interview with Jasper Nathaniel about life for Palestinians in the west bank and the death of the two state solution. Stick around for that podcast. The world is brought to you by Sundays. Sundaze is fresh dog food made from a short list of human grade ingredients. Sundays was co founded by Dr. Tori Waxman, a practicing veterinarian who tests and formulates every version of each recipe. Be Sundays contains 100% all natural meat and superfoods and 0% synthetic nutrients or artificial ingredients. Dog parents report noticeable health improvements in their pups including softer fur, fresher breath, better poops and more energy after switching to Sundays. Look, Luca loves Sundays and I know that very well because the Favros give their dog Leo Sundays as well and every time we go over to their house she sprints in there and eats all of Leo's food as fast as humanly possible. I've never seen a dog eat food faster in my life which tells you that it tastes good. Unlike other fresh dog food, sundaes does not require refrigeration or preparation because their air drying process just pour and serve. Cancel or pause your subscription anytime. With our 14 day money back guarantee, every order ships right to your door so you'll never worry about running out of dog food again. It's so easy to store, it's easy to serve, it doesn't smell, it's none of that goopy wet food stuff. It's just great food for your dog sent to your house and made easy. Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to sundaysfordogs.com or use code world at checkout. That's sundaysfordogs.com world use the code World I'm excited to welcome Jasper Nathaniel to the show. On his sub stack Infinite Jazz, he writes about Israel and Palestine with a particular focus on the west bank, which is going to be the focus of our conversation today. Jasper, good to see you.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Thanks Tommy. Great to be here.

[Tommy Vietor]

So for nearly two years there was October 7th and the subsequent military campaign in Gaza and that has gotten the most media attention and frankly focus on this show, I think understandably. But what has been happening in the West Bank I think is incredibly important in terms of any hope for a future Palestinian state. So I'm excited to dig into the details with you today, but I was thinking we could just start with some basics for folks who are coming at this new can you describe the status of the west bank under international law and then what it means when you know, you or I, or when people hear someone refer to the west bank as an Area A or Area B or Area C? What do those demarcations mean?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, so the west bank is it is legally under a military occupation you know, Israel is obviously the military, they're the occupier or the occupying force. The Palestinian people are the occupied. And that's important because that actually has to adhere to the Geneva Convention and Hague and all sorts of laws. And what those laws amount to, basically the military occupation laws, are that the occupier is a temporary occupier. They are not allowed to put any roots down, they cannot transfer their population there, they can't build their own infrastructure. There's everything that the occupying force is doing has to be for either the well being of the occupied people or for Israel's security. And so, you know, to state the obvious, they've gone, Israel has gone far above and beyond, beyond those laws, what they're allowed to do. And that is why, like, the settlement movement is fundamentally illegal, because the settlement movement is about building Israeli villages and homes in a place that is not theirs and where they are legally not allowed to do that. The areas A, B and C that you mentioned, this was a later development after or during the Oslo's accord too, in the mid-90s. So basically this is a really important thing because it's something you see people getting wrong all the time on Twitter and everywhere else. Nothing changed about who owns the West Bank. It still is Palestinian land under a temporary military occupation. What the Oslo Accords 2 did was it divided up the west bank into these three different areas for who would have basically administrative and security governance responsibilities over them. And so the vast majority of it, something like 60, 66% maybe, is area C, which is under full Israeli administrative control and security control. Area B is Palestinian Authority administrative control, technically split Israeli and Palestinian security control. And then Area A is technically supposed to be all Palestinian administrative and security control. I think an important thing to keep in mind here, Tommy, is that, I mean, there is certainly like a correlation between where the Palestinians live and like what area it is. But for the most part, the military, the Israeli military goes wherever they want, right? You know, they go into Area abc, it makes no difference to them. And you know, that is sort of like the, the theme throughout the entire history of the west bank is, you know, they, they come to some agreement, they negotiate something, and then the, the settlers or the military in the west bank just, you know, act like the rules don't apply to them pretty much instantly, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

And then, you know, another big picture question, like, can you just describe in broad strokes kind of the difference in quality of life if you're an Israeli living on an Israeli settlement or if you're A Palestinian living in a Palestinian community. And then the kind of difference for the two groups when it comes to rights, especially freedom of movement.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Well, I think the word for it is apartheid. I mean, there's two sets of laws and two sets of everything, basically. So just to give you like one example, Israel controls all the water in the West Bank. Most of it is from the Jordan river, but there's different springs and other bodies of water. Israel has systematically created dams and reservoirs and basically rerouted all of the water away from Palestinian villages and into settlements. The roads, I mean, it's the same thing. Like all the sort of direct, easy access highways are for Israeli only. I mean, you literally cannot go with Palestinian plates. Everything is just more inconvenient for the Palestinians. There's two set, literally two sets of a different criminal justice system. The Palestinians there are subject to military law, which as many people may know, doesn't actually require having charges against somebody. So you can just arrest somebody under what's called administrative detention and you just tell the judge this is a security threat. It would be a security threat to even reveal the evidence that we have against them and then they get to just lock that person up with no due process. Israelis, on the other hand, to the extent that settlers are ever arrested, which is very, very, very rare, they are under Israeli civil law. So just everything is different. All the laws are different in terms of quality of life. I mean, I'll say it was bad. It's been bad for decades for the Palestinians. I mean, you know, they are living with a military that has set up checkpoints to make their lives difficult. And you know, they need to get permits to get to the hospital in Ramallah from Jericho or whatever. So just, just everything's a pain in the ass. But basically the sort of cruelty of all of it got turned way up in 2023, both when the new government, the new Netanyahu government came in and then also after October 7th, obviously.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, and that new government's got some really odious right wing figures in it, like this guy Basilo Smotrich, who we should dig into in a minute. But so I think that context is really important just in terms of helping people understand what that we're talking about when people talk about a two state solution or the creation of a Palestinian state, because the, the west bank, the territory, the physical territory in the west bank would be the core of a Palestinian state. And over time, Israeli settlements have carved up the west bank in a way that is often referred to as a slow motion annexation. And at this point in time, those settlements make creating anything resembling what we would think of as a contiguous state basically impossible. Can you give us sort of like explain how we got to this point? Because I think it is, it is hard for people who hear this constant talk of a Palestinian state to reckon that with like, the reality of what the west bank looks like and the role that, you know, Smotrich and other kind of right wing settler movement leaders have played in that process.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, so I, I think the, the, the right way to think about it is that this, the settlement movement as a, an entity, as a movement is actually, I mean, it's independent from the Israeli military. It is not technically, you know, like a branch of the Israeli government. And for years there, the settlement ideology was not necessarily perfectly in line with the Israeli government or with the Israeli military. And so you see these videos from maybe even 10 years ago, 10, 20 years ago, of the military going in and dismantling an illegal outpost that settlers had built, which is basically when they just decide to build a new settlement without getting authorization from the government. And so a lot of the settlers, Smotrich included, actually were sort of like running around the hills of the west bank just building outposts and kind of being chased around by the Israeli government to some extent, who, you know, at various points, like, wanted to maintain order at the very least. Whereas the settlement movement has just a sort of one, you know, one focus, and that is on annexing the entire West Bank. Ethnically cleansing the entire West Bank.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's an fucking insane concept, by the way. Just. We should pause that. Like, imagine like you get with a group of your buddies, you, what do you grab a couple like tents and stakes and you just run to a community where you don't live, where you have no foundation, and you just build some sort of like ad hoc community on the top of a hill. That is, I think that would sound insane to most people.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yes, and I think that that's a really important point to like, pause on for a minute because that is actually the biggest change in the last two years is that the. Maybe I'll just take a step back and explain sort of the Smotrich takeover and then I'll lead into that. So basically, like the military occupation of the west bank in a weird way has provided some insulation between the Palestinian people and the most extremist right wing Israelis and the settlers in particular. And what I mean by that is it's not to say that the Israeli military in the west bank has ever been a benevolent force in Fact, I think it's been just the opposite for pretty much as long as it's been there. But the military has lawyers, and these lawyers, ostensibly on some level, have to adhere to international law. And people might hear that and laugh, be like, yeah, what does editor care about international law these days? But the fact is there were these sort of bureaucratic procedures that the military was going through for decades to prove that it was sort of like within the guidelines of Geneva and the Hague. So in that sense, these guys like Smotrich, who are running around the hills trying to build these little outposts, they were constantly in violation of international law. And so the military would often chase them around basically, and try to stop them because they had their own way of building illegal settlements in alignment with the, the way the government was doing it. So Smotrich understands from a young age that actually, like, his dreams of taking over the entire west bank, which they call Judea and Samaria because it's the, it's the, you know, the, the old kingdom of the kingdoms of Israel from the Old Testament days. So it has this real, like, biblical value to them. He understood that actually the, the military occupation is the biggest thing in the way of us being able to take over the entire west bank, more so than the Palestinians who are actually living there. And so what happens in February 2023? And this is a part that I think most people don't know about, because everybody knows that after October 7, the violence got much worse there. And I think it's understandable why. But what happened before that basically was after Netanyahu has to build this coalition with these far right leaders to have a majority governing coalition. SMoteric and Ben Gvir, I think people know a lot of these names by now. They're two of the guys that just instantly become ministers. Smotrich is the Finance Minister, which obviously that's like the Treasury Secretary in America. But the other thing that happens is Smotrich works out a deal with the Defense Minister, who at the time was Yoav Gallant. And it's pretty murky exactly how this happened, but it was almost certainly, you know, Netanyahu sort of like gifted this to Smotarich on a promise that he would, like, behave in some different ways. And so Smotarich becomes literally an additional minister in the Ministry of Defense. He's not now, you know, Smotrich is a civilian. He wasn't even allowed into the Israeli military because he was a terror supporter. But he suddenly is just given this arbitrary role as additional minister in the Ministry of Defense. And what he then does is he basically builds a entire shadow government inside of the military that sort of takes. Begins routing all of the decisions around building settlements, around demolishing Palestinian villages, around infrastructure. And it routes it away from those military lawyers who had been a pain in the ass to him for all these years, and just sends him straight to these settler ideologues like himself. And so after that happens, basically all of the guardrails that had been on the settlement movement because of the military occupation and these nominal laws they had to adhere to are just gone. And so the reason this is so significant is because technically and legally, the west bank is still under a military occupation, but it has effectively just been taken over by settler ideologues who have no respect whatsoever for the international law. And so that is even before October 7, why you saw this crazy acceleration in settlement building and why, you know, soldiers sudden became. Suddenly became emboldened and were becoming more violent. And then basically October 7th happens, and smo church immediately, immediately begins framing what happened. You know, the Hamas attack as no different from what the Palestinians in the west bank would have done. There's this quote from him where he says, you know, the Nazis in Gaza are the same Nazis in the West Bank. They want to throw us into the same sea. So he's immediately trying to collapse the distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. So then that allows him to basically use the security justification to supercharge everything that he's already been doing. And so that sort of like, fundamental bureaucratic change in the way the west bank is governed, from the military to smoterich, paired with this new justification after October 7th security, that is what has allowed things to just go absolutely, the settlers to go absolutely wild in the west bank to these unprecedented land grabs. 60 Palestinian villages being chased off their land, over 1,000 people murdered in the last two years. So that's the sort of backdrop and how that all happened.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, and these, like, kind of individuals who are fringe players, right? Like Smotrich was from the Religious Zionism Party. Ben GVIR was from the Jewish Power Party. Parties that were so far right and so extremist and so willing to adopt violent tactics to further their political ends that they were seen as sort of out of bounds in the Israeli political system for a long time. But Netanyahu needed them to get back into power in 2022. And Israel has a proportional representation system, which meant, you know, his Likud Party didn't have enough seats in the Knesset to get to the 50% threshold that you needed to form a government. So he goes in league with all these right wing nuts and now those guys basically have him by the balls.

[Ben Rhodes]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

So anyone listening, thinking like, well, you know, isn't, isn't Netanyahu the one really in control of this? Like, well, kind of like he put together this coalition, but you know, if Smotrich or Ben GVIR kind of pull the plug on it, then he's thrown out of power. And, you know, we won't belabor all of it, but he's also got a bunch of legal troubles coming down the pike that he wants to avoid accountability for by staying the Prime Minister.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

I think it's also worth mentioning that, you know, Netanyahu has pretty much always supported the settlement movement. He's not, it's not his own, like his life's mission to, to take over the west bank as it is a Smotrich or a Ben GVIR or a number of other ministers actually, but he, he has rubber stamped virtually everything they've done. And you know, right now they're talking about some sort of a formal declaration of sovereignty. So like, I just, I don't want to let Netanyahu off the hook, like, you know, the, the inmates are running the asylum or something because on some level, like, yes, the government has been taken over by these right wing fanatics who have this incredible power and pretty much veto power on everything when it comes to the war in Gaza. But you know, Netanyahu is, he's more, he's a politician, he has international diplomacy concerns and his corruption trial, obviously. But I think that he's pretty much like in favor of ethnically cleansing the West Bank. He just has these other sort of considerations as well.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, his passion project has always been bombing Iran. You know, like, we all have things we love and there's things you do for work. And I think bombing Iran was the thing he loved. But you've written about how, you know, because of this context on the ground that we just talked through in terms of the west bank getting carved up and frankly, because of the state of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion after October 7th, talk of a two state solution is almost akin to climate denial. Can you make that case for us?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, I mean, so basically, like, look, for the purposes of this argument, we're going to put aside your view of what happened in 1948 on the sort of legitimacy of the Jewish state or the Zionist project and even what happened in 1967. Forget all the different competing historical narratives and just look at today. So basically the strategy that the settlers have had is one of what they call facts on the ground. Ground and what facts on the ground, what they're referring to is, you know, we can change laws, we can have new politicians come in, we can do this and that, but ultimately it's going to be what is actually happening on the ground. That is going to be what drives policy or what drives the sort of diplomatic situation more than anything else. And so even if there have been laws preventing, you know, these illegal outposts from going up and settlement expansion, they've still done it. And you know, they have, they have now over 100 settlements, somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 settlers. They've cut up the west bank into, you know, it's basically a sea of Israeli territory with a little like dots of Palestinian villages. You know, they're now basically severing it in half with the E1 build and cutting off East Jerusalem. So the point is like, they're literally just, there is not a Palestinian state. Like there couldn't be one. I mean, yes, there could be a sort of theoretical Palestinian state or they could be recognized by the U.N. but I think when most people talk about a two state solution, they're talking about a Palestinian state next to a Jewish state of Israel. And my question to these people is, where is this Palestinian state that you're talking about and what the only real answer is, basically you got to get the settlers out. And that's the part that I think is like climate denial. I think when people hear settlers, they might picture like, you know, guys on the Oregon Trail or something. Like we're talking about three quarters of a million heavily, heavily armed, well organized people who have built entire cities in the west bank. And they have, not for nothing, they have the full backing of the Israeli government. So this idea that you're going to get the settlers to leave the West Bank, I mean, it would take a massive war to get them out. And frankly, if there ever was a war, I mean, the Israeli government would be backing them. I don't know how there would ever be a civil war to get them out because that's just not where the country is. So the point is, I think it's nice to imagine these two states side by side. And I happen to think that for a long time politicians who are sort of, you know, very pro Israel, but want to maintain a sort of like a look of being also for Palestinian humanity and self determination and these things, I think the two state solution is just the sort of like, thing they fall back on to maintain that they do support Palestinians. And I think that it's completely disingenuous and it allows them to not have to answer the difficult questions about what are you going to do about the fact that there is no Palestinian state. There's 750,000 settlers there, they have the full backing of the government, they have tens of thousands of guns. What are you going to do about all those things? And when you just talk about a two state solution, you get to skip all those questions. And so my feeling is for any politician who wants to, you know, claims that they are pro Palestine or at least like for Palestinian humanity, which I think is hopefully a, you know, democratic position, like, we can't let them just say I'm for two state solution anymore, because that to me is just a, it's a move to obfuscate the reality of what's actually happening.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, look, I think there's probably different categories. I think for some it's just like decades of political muscle memory in the thing that you were all for. And it's also sort of like, like the hopeful version of a very bleak situation is you sort of hope that through this process of negotiations there can be some sort of swaps of territory on each side that will lead to the creation of borders and, you know, a Palestinian state that probably, let's be honest, probably was never envisioned as having a military right or having the sort of full sets of rights or power that the Israeli government would have, but that could exist as something independent and on its own. And then I think there probably is a category of people like you just described who were just kind of defaulting to saying they're for a two state solution to avoid having to answer questions about or entertain frankly, the much harder reality that you are describing, which has gotten exponentially worse not only since October 7th, but in the, in the past few weeks. There was this announcement of the E1 settlement which you mentioned just now, which essentially will carve the west bank fully into four pieces and not allow it to connect in any way.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah. And you know, again, it's just like, you know, you mentioned the outpost thing before or you mentioned like anybody who imagine just like you and a group of friends running to some town that wasn't yours and just setting up a tent and like that is now policy. Like, they have it down to a system where basically these settlers will set their sights on a particular Palestinian village that they think is vulnerable. A lot of the time it's the Bedouin community, Shepherding villages. And you know, these places are unarmed. They do not have any weapons, they have no way to defend themselves. And they go and they build an illegal settlement right next to the village. And then they do these nightly pogroms. These are the videos you see of them going in and setting cars on fire, you know, smashing windows, going into homes, occasionally shooting and killing people. And that is now government policy to be able to do that and use that as a way to drive the Palestinians off the land. So what I just described is so far from a two state solution. I mean, it's the opposite. It's quite literally a policy of violent ethnic cleansing. And so I just like, I want to know who are the people in Israel? Even that would be driving this thing forward.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, I think it's fair. And I'm sure their listeners probably screaming at the phone right now reminding me that religious fanatics running into communities they're not from and setting up outposts is also how this country was formed. And yes, of course, you are right, but it's probably why the United States supports the settler project. You've also written though about how just like the evil ways bureaucracy is being leveraged in the west bank, including like laws governing archaeological practices in the preservation of antiquities that is being used to further solidify Israel's hold on the West Bank. Can you explain that?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah. Okay, so, so there's, there's two different routes that the, the sort of pro annexation bloc in Israel, the settlers and whatnot. Two different routes that they take for this, you know, silent annexation. One of them is from inside of the west bank, basically chipping away at Palestinian Authority control, chipping away at, you know, degrading their finances and basically just like softening the Palestinian Authority, literally the pa, but also just like their authority or ability to govern across the entire West Bank. So with archeology, what they've done is they passed. It was actually an executive decision about a year ago or a year and a half ago that just suddenly said archeology sites in the West Bank, Israel now controls not just the ones in area C, but also the ones in area B. Those are also ours to govern. Now the entire west bank is basically an archeology site. I mean, this is one of the most historically rich places on Earth. There have been dozens of civilizations that have been there. The ancient Israelites were one of them. There are many others. There were Islamic ones, there were pagan ones. There were, you know, Samaritans before there even were Jews. And so when you just, you pass this sort of like narrow, it sounds like this narrow antiquities law, like, okay, they just took control of these archaeological sites in area B. We're talking about entire towns that are now not able to build homes, that are now not able to access their water resources or they just can't do anything. Basically, archeology has been used as a zoning tool. So then the second way that they're going about this annexation is not chipping away at the Palestinian Authority, but actually chipping away at the military occupation, like I mentioned. And what that looks like is basically trying to take Israel's laws, like the laws that govern civil life in Israel, and make them the law in the west bank too. And so this, this big thing that's happening right now, which is, is being framed by, I think, like people who just don't know any better, but also disingenuous people as a fight over archeology is actually a fight over dismantling the military occupation and just absorbing the West Bank. And so what's happening is basically there is a governing body in the west bank called the Israeli Civil Administration. This is technically part of the Defense Department and it is the body that oversees, like, administrative things in the west bank, including overseeing archaeological sites, all these zoning laws. This new law that is sort of matriculating through the Knesset right now would take control of archaeological sites away from the Israeli Civil Administration and give them to the Israeli Antiquities Authority. So again, on paper, it's like, what's the big deal? Authority over archeological sites transfers from one department to another. The big deal is that now the Israeli federal government suddenly takes control of huge swaths of the West Bank.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

And that is just like, again, you know, you're chipping away at the military occupation. And the way they think of it is they're trying to erase the green line that separates Israel from its isolation occupied territories so that the settlers can just be considered citizens like everybody else. Israeli law governs the west bank like it does in Israel and archaeology, frankly. It's always been a very strong weapon for Israel to displace and oppress Palestinians, but now they've really sharpened it into a tool that they're using to just, you know, further sort of erase the green line and bludgeon the Palestinians.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's the steady erosion. One last question for you. So we've talked on this show before about your great reporting about a 16 year old Palestinian American boy named Mohamed Zaheer Ibrahim who has been in prison for six months for allegedly, I think, throwing rocks on an empty street. I'm not sure. How that's a crime in any way? Can you tell us a little bit about this case and if there's any updates?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, so Mohamed Zahir Ibrahim, he's a Palestinian American. He is first cousins with Saifola Moussalet who is beaten to death in July. Their moms are sisters, so literally first cousins basically. In February, him and a couple kids were, you know, out being kids and like threw some rocks on, just on an empty street. There was nothing going on there. And that later that night the Israeli military basically burst into each of their homes, masked and bound the kids and took them to Israeli military detention. They were then interrogated and I've seen the interrogation videos. They are trying to get them to say that they were throwing rocks at cars or throwing rocks at people, but there's no evidence that they were and nobody said that they were. But anyway, like I said before, you don't actually need a charge. So they have not been able to charge Muhammad with throwing a rock at somebody or even at a car or property. But they still just said, we're going to keep him anyway. So he has been held for six months in, he was in Megiddo, which is a Israeli military detention center famous for torture, for starvation, by the way. The Israeli prison system is overseen by Ben gvir, who just openly brags about starving them, taking their beds away, sticking eight or 12 prisoners in a four person cell. This kid weighed 100 pounds. He's down to his, his lawyer, last time she was able to speak to him, which was months ago, says he's below £70 now. He's contracted scabies. He has not been able to speak with his parents once in six months. And I think it's pretty clear that Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, probably any number of people could just make a phone call and say, hey, you got the 16 year old kid in there, he's an American. You have no charges on him, you have no evidence that he did anything wrong. Just let him go home, no one would even notice.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

His parents are worried that he's going to die. And the thing is you don't even have to hold anybody accountable, which pains me to say it, because there are so many people who need to be held accountable for Israel's crimes and for the crimes of the settlers. Like in the case of Sifoa, they need to arrest the people who beat him to death. But in this case you don't even have to do that. You just have to quietly let him out and it is just beyond me how a 16 year old American being imprisoned, tortured, starved in a place where just last month somebody his age died, just dropped dead mysteriously. They have not returned the body yet. Why there's not a bigger push to get this kid out? I mean, is right now he's supposed to be in Florida. He was supposed to be in Florida this summer working at the family ice cream shop with his cousin. His cousin's now dead, he's in prison. And it's just, it hasn't broken through. And so, you know, if I may, I, I'm, I'm guessing that there are a lot of people in Washington who listen to this show and I just want to like, you know, give a potential political layup for any of you. You could rescue an American teenager from prison, from a dungeon essentially, who's being starved to death. You could make a phone call and probably get this kid out. And I think people would be really happy about that. I mean, we've all seen the polling that more and more people are supporting, supporting Palestine and are becoming critical of Israel. This is just such an easy one. Just get this kid out. You can even go take a picture with him after. And it's just like, you know, I say it's beyond me why it hasn't happened, but it's obvious why it hasn't happened because, you know, Palestinian Americans are not considered real Americans. Our government just does not care about them.

[Tommy Vietor]

And so, yeah, yeah, it's a horrifying case. You brought it to my attention through your reporting. I know that, you know, Congressman Greg Landsman and some other Democrats who are in Israel had raised it with Ambassador Huckabee and with the Israeli government. I had hoped that that might lead to something prying loose. In this case, I don't know what needs to happen. Does it need to be 500, you know, every single, you know, Democratic elected official in the country calling, does it need to be one Republican calling Huckabee and pushing for this? I'm not sure what we need to have happen here.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

I think that it basically needs to become enough of a nuisance for them that they just decide to make, make the call. Whether that is because, you know, every Democratic lawmaker in the country is calling the embassy every single day, or if it's because we actually get like some of the, I hate to say it, but like a Marjorie Taylor Greene or one of these like America Firsters to call Huckabee and they would already have his ear. But it basically needs to become like, okay, we gotta Just deal with this thing because it's a problem for us. And, you know, credit to Landsman and, you know, Senator Merkley and Van Hollen actually just met with his family last week when they were in Ramallah. But it just. There has not been a sustained push to get him out. Like, frankly, like there was to get the Israeli American hostages out of Gaza, which we heard about every single day on the news. And we know that, you know, both Biden and Trump were putting enormous resources towards trying to get them home. And it's just not happening here. And I think that, listen, this kid could die. This kid could die. A lot of kids have died in prison there. And then we would have an American kid who died in an Israeli prison. And I think that, you know, every American politician should want to be on the side of getting him out.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes, absolutely. So hopefully people are listening and might lob in a call to Marco Rubio, State Department or Huckabee's office or whatever.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Call your representative and demand that they call the embassy and they call the State Department and say that you have to. To push to get Muhammad Zahir Ibrahim out. I have more information about it on my substack, which you can.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, well, everyone should check out Jasper substack Infinite Jazz Jaz. It's excellent, excellent coverage of Israel, Palestine, the West bank, all kinds of fascinating things. Jasper, thank you for doing the show. I really appreciate it.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Tommy. Take care.

[Tommy Vietor]

Thanks again to Jasper. We're Nathaniel for doing the show and thank you guys for enduring us. Coming out a little late this week, but I promise you, our brains are in a better place this Wednesday.

[Ben Rhodes]

Worth the wait, guys? Worth the wait.

[Tommy Vietor]

You're welcome. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Saul Rubin is helping out this summer. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of news and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, 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 much more. And if, like us, you're opinionated, leave us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America East.

[Ben Rhodes]

Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers, and sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

I need a coffee. And you need Lifelock.

[Ben Rhodes]

Because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed. Or your money back. Save up to 40 your first [e-mail] specialoffer terms apply. On New Year's Eve 1969, three men.

[Tommy Vietor]

Snuck into Chip Yablonski's childhood home and gunned down his family while they slept. They killed him. They killed them all. Chip was convinced that the president of the United Mineworkers, one of the most powerful labor unions in America, was behind the murders.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

And I'm saying hang on, you son.

[Tommy Vietor]

Of a bitch, because I want you.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

To get your just desserts.

[Ben Rhodes]

Listen to Shadow Kingdom Wherever you get your podcasts. Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join Friends of the [e-mail] friends or subscribe through the Shadow Kingdom Apple feed.