Ben Rhodes (3:49)

Well, it's great news again, it doesn't change anything we said though, because threatening genocide, even if it was part of a madman diplomacy strategy is just as morally important. A few thoughts on Mike. Number one, I'm genuinely curious about what the Iranian we'll have to hear from them. But who is he negotiating with in Iran? Does whoever he's negotiating with in Iran have the ability to control the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps? Who are the ones that control the Strait of Hormuz? What does he mean by he says a full opening of the Strait of Hormuz? I, I'm very curious if that's true. Where are they going to let all traffic through there, whether they're going to continue to meter it and charge a toll because they've turned this into a

Tommy Vietor (4:36)

toll road and if it's been mined, like, who's going to get rid of the mines?

Ben Rhodes (4:40)

Exactly. This is much more complicated than just saying, oh, problem solved. I created this problem by launching a war that closes the strait and now I've solved the problem and ended a war and now I've ended nine wars. No, that's all bullshit. So a lot of questions about whether the Iranians have agreed to this in the short term. I mean, they've clearly agreed to something. But whether that's the full opening of the strait remains to be seen. I'm also curious, Tommy, how much pushback he got today. Threatening genocide, I think probably got the attention of Republican lawmakers. It probably got the attention of world leaders. We don't know what calls were made to Trump today.

Tommy Vietor (5:18)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (5:19)

I also genuinely have been wondered, and I, we didn't. I actually didn't say this on the pod, so I'm glad. Whether the military would follow his orders. I think there's a non zero chance that, you know, Petexith was giving them the target list or whatever of civilian infrastructure and that. I don't know if it's Dan Kane or somebody.

Tommy Vietor (5:37)

You can see mass resignations through, like, the kind of.

Ben Rhodes (5:39)

It's possible that they're like, we won't do it. Yeah, we won't do it. Because you know what? Like, hopefully there's still some honor in the US Military. I mean, hopefully. I believe there is. I just know they've been purging generals. So it's also possible the military is like, we're not going to do this. And, and so he kind of scrambled to. To do this. Right. We don't know. We'll see. I'm sure some of it will leak out. So it's a reprieve, but it doesn't solve these underlying questions. And again, we talk later in the show about the fundamentally diplomatic questions about the Iranian nuclear program, about the war in Lebanon, which is still ongoing, about the Strait of Hormuz and whether the IRGC is going to control it and charge a toll, whether it's going to fully reopen. So this is not like some victory of diplomacy yet. It's only like getting a delay in Trump's threats, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (6:29)

And, like, look, the idea that these objectives, that the war's objectives are close to complete is crazy. I mean, again, that's crazy. The key priority is supposed to be the highly enriched uranium, the 900 pounds of it, it's still sitting.

Ben Rhodes (6:40)

And regime change,

Tommy Vietor (6:43)

the regime change. War has gone from one Khamenei to a younger Khamenei who is even more hardline. Trump says that, you know, Iran's ballistic missiles have been totally destroyed. We've seen intelligence reports that suggest it might be close to 50% destroyed. So, like, I just.

Ben Rhodes (6:59)

And they might have just launched some at Israel, too.

Tommy Vietor (7:01)

Oh, really good reports.

Ben Rhodes (7:02)

That's wonderful. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (7:03)

So I just have a very hard time believing that Bibi Netanyahu is going to be ready to end this War. Trump might want to find an off ramp and save face because he is, I think, looking at polling and realizes that his presidency is slowly withering and dying before his eyes. But as we talk about later in the episode, the Iranians have now found a pretty remarkable source of leverage and possible revenue for them. And a lot of people would argue, look, in many ways they're doing way worse now, the regime, but they're making more money now off oil sales. They have more power now by finding this choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. So there's all these structural challenges when you look at the Iranian demands and the US Demands for each other that are so, so far apart. It just doesn't feel like we're close to ending this war.

Ben Rhodes (7:48)

And there's one other thing that I think is really important in that post that, you know, might fly under the radar. He refers to the Islamic Republic of Iran, not Iran. The Islamic Republic is the regime. Like it's a de facto recognition of the Islamic Republic. That's the system with a supreme leader with the irgc. That is Donald Trump accepting that the people he's going to be dealing with are the same regime. Even if he killed the supreme leader and that, trust me, like, as someone who's worked on this, and we were very careful in the Obama administration about when we said Iran or Islamic Republic, that's a concession that he's making, which again, is just a bowing to reality. But this is no longer a regime change war.

Tommy Vietor (8:36)

Yeah, it's a double sided ceasefire, whatever that is. Like the tape I used to put on my hockey sticks. Okay, Ben? Well, unfortunately for the world, I really don't think this war is close to over. There remain all these huge political and structural problems that could lead to the war escalating, dragging out for a very long time. All those problems still exist. We cover all the big picture questions in this episode. Just know that we recorded most of it before this most recent Truth Social post announcing the two week extension on the war crimes bonanza tonight. So there will be times where we kind of sound anxious and uncertain about what might happen. On Tuesday night. We play a clip. We play a clip from Brett Baer where he is assured by Donald Trump that there will be no extension this time. We should have known at the time that it was brought, which is useful

Ben Rhodes (9:21)

because it shows you the chaos.

Tommy Vietor (9:23)

It shows you the chaos. It shows you that Trump lies and that Fox News is just his useful idiots who will repeat whatever he says. But here's what we cover in this episode. So we're start with Trump's threat to commit genocide on the country of Iran, literally. We'll explain the consequences of that. We'll explain the consequences of these proposed strikes on all kinds of civilian Iranian infrastructure, what they would mean legally, morally and strategically. We'll give you the highlights of some extraordinary new reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times about how Trump decided to go to war with Iran. Then we'll listen to some clips from an equally incredible monologue from Tucker Carlson where he really firmly breaks with Trump over the war with Iran on a deep moral level and talks about why he is concerned that Trump could end up using will end up using nuclear weapons. It's very a conversation that is very important, worth having. Then we'll talk about all the talks and the secret side deals that are happening with the Iranians. Obviously we just talked about some of the fruits of some of those, but we're kind of looking at signs of things happening diplomatically that could lead to a permanent end game, a permanent end to the war and a permanent path out of this mess. And then we're going to talk about these enormously consequential elections coming up in Hungary and how insane it is that Vice President J.D. vance is in fucking Hungary on a Tuesday in April doing a campaign event for Viktor Orban. Ben, I've truly never heard anything like this in the middle of a war, middle of a conflict, in the middle of a political crisis for the White House. J.D. vance is over in Hungary, so that is bonkers. We did not have a guest today because we just wanted to go really long on Iran stuff and I'm just getting back from vacation and so we'll pick that back up next week.

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Tommy Vietor (13:56)

when there's breaking news, Ben and I often record things where we just Jump on the pod Save the World YouTube to put up a bonus really quickly. So please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube so you don't miss any of those. Also, if you want to support everything we're doing here at Crooked Media and help us push back on the pro war propaganda from Fox News and the Daily Wire and so many others, please consider becoming a friend of the POD subscribers. You'll get ad free episodes. You'll get tons of bonus episodes and bonus content. And it's really just the best way to help us grow as an independent progressive media company. So go to crooked.com friends to learn more. Or you can do it directly on YouTube by pressing the join button. All right, Ben, so let's get to the show. In the past 24 hours, the president of the United States went from threatening to commit massive clear cut war crimes to threatening genocide, literally on a country of 90 million people. On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote unquote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. So that's something he just put in writing and then perversely ended the message with God bless the great people of Iran. So what we all assume Trump is talking about there in that post is that a threat to blow up all of the bridges and power plants in Iran, though he could do far worse. We'll get to that in a little bit. But here are some just of Trump's actual comments about the war in Iran from Monday. Then Fox News Brett Baer is talking about a conversation he had with Trump on Tuesday that I think gives us some more insight into his thinking. And then finally, JD Vance weighed in on all things Iran from Budapest. So let's watch.

J.D. Vance (15:24)

We have a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o' clock tomorrow night. Where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean mean complete demolition by 12 o' clock. And it'll happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to. It will take them 100 years to rebuild. The entire country could be taken out in one night. And that night might be tomorrow night. I just got off the phone with the president. He said 8pm is happening.

Pod Save the World Announcer (16:03)

Whether it's positive or negative, we're going to get a response from the Iranians by 8 o' clock tonight. We've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use. The President. United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their force of conduct.

Tommy Vietor (16:18)

Okay, so, Ben, a few thoughts. I'll just kick it over to you. So again, we're recording this a few hours before Trump's deadline, after which he'll, he says he'll bomb Iran into the Stone Age. It's not ideal timing for the show or for humanity, frankly. If Trump goes through with this threat, I think it'll take some time to kind of figure out what exactly was hit, like the scale of the destruction, etc. So we're just going to record today, frankly, just assuming that this war is only going to escalate and then just unpack the implications of that escalation, because I think that's important. There's peace talks are ongoing. There's some, you know, occasional leaks that suggest they're making progress. But it feels like the two sides are very far apart. And this is only going up. But again, and also Iran, I think, cut off the talks with the US at least for some period of time after that genocidal tweet that I just read to you. So anyway, a few thoughts for me and I'll kick it to you. I mean, first, again, this just is a clear cut war crime to say you're going to bomb all the power plants and bridges in Iran. You cannot indiscriminately bomb civilian infrastructure. There has to be proportionality to any military effort. But let's be honest, like, Trump doesn't care about that. He's, you know, the Hague is not going to come arrest him, so he just doesn't give fuck. So I guess do with that what you will. In practice, though, like what it would mean to bomb all of Iran's power plants and bridges is mass civilian death. And I think we should just be clear about that. Like, every baby on a respirator will die. Doctors will not be able to perform surgeries. There will be no power for electric pumps that are critical to getting people clean water. You won't be able to treat water to make it safe to drink. There won't be desalination plants running. There will be no way to move food or essential items around the country if there's no bridges and there's no way of undoing this step. You know, like, millions of people will die. Refugees will flee the country en masse. It will be a catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe. And on Monday, Ben, I don't know if you saw this. Like, Trump made this insane claim that Iran. The only time Iranians are unhappy is when the bombing stops. But then today, you're seeing images out of Iran of thousands and thousands of Iranians lining bridges and apparently surrounding power plants in an effort to make themselves human shields to prevent the United States from bombing their country. That sure seems to undercut what he told us on Monday. And then just what is especially scary about all this is this, like, sense of bloodlust you're getting from Trump. Axios today reported that Trump is the most hawkish senior member of his team. One U.S. official said, quote, the president is the most bloodthirsty, like a mad dog. So, Ben, on just a human level, a moral level, a legal level, this is an abomination. It would be one of the most evil, catastrophic things the United States has ever done. And it also just feels like. And we'll get to this in the Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan reporting. It feels like no one is really trying to stop Trump. No one around him in the White House. And that is equally scary to me.

Ben Rhodes (19:04)

Yeah, I mean, I actually think this is an important day in our history because let's just deal with kind of modern history because we can obviously go back and talk about Native Americans, but. But we now have a president, United States, who has threatened, as a matter of policy, to commit genocide. And I think that the enormity of that reality is something that has been hard for people to absorb in this country, not hard, by the way, for Iranians to absorb, because they're living on the other end of it. But whatever happens, even if he doesn't make good on this threat, just the fact that we are now in a position where the president and commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world is threatening to use that military to commit genocide is something that will change the perception of the United States for a generation to come around the world, because we are now a rogue state. We are functioning as a rogue superpower threatening to kill countless innocents. It's wrong. The degree of pushback from both parties, society in general, like, needs to be at a higher decibel level. It's just a horrifying thing to read that this morning. I think the second thing is the way Trump talks about these things, it's as if they're not people involved. I Mean, every person listening to this podcast has crossed a bridge, has turned on the lights, has maybe had a parent on a ventilator or, you know, maybe a baby in the NICU or. I mean, those people will die if Trump does in Iran, if Trump does what he's talking about. And the kind of lack of capacity, he clearly has no capacity to see himself and his own humanity in these people in Iran. And we somehow, as Americans need to put aside policy and the stupidity of this war and the insanity of it and the high oil prices and all the rest of it, threatening mass murder as a form of policy. It puts us in a more dangerous world. It's kind of normalizing a certain conduct that we saw in Gaza, that we're seeing in Lebanon, that we saw Vladimir Putin pursue in Ukraine. Normalizing this to this extent is truly dangerous, no matter what happens. Also, Tommy, it just made me think we are now in this scenario where we've got this autocratic leader who is dangerous, who is venal, who, you know, maybe he thinks he's doing some form of madman diplomacy. That's like the charitable version. It's pretty scary that we're only a year and, what, two or three months into this Trump term. Like, today's the first day, Tommy, where I was like, how are we going to make it through the rest of this term? And, you know, I know, you know, it's kind of resistance fantasy to talk about impeachment and the 25th Amendment and the rest of it, but. But I don't know if he does this. I mean, you start to wonder, like, who's going to stop him from doing more of this, doing little. So, yeah, anything, because we're kind of in it now. This is not the first war of this administration and may very well not be the last. And so there's a lot that could happen or not happen in Iran. But I do think taking a minute here to just absorb, like, the enormity of this threat and the consistency of it, too. Like, he did this on Sunday, too. It's really unsettling in a kind of deep way. And it makes you wonder where this country and the world is going.

Tommy Vietor (23:13)

Yeah, it's unsettling. It's an evil threat. It suggests someone who is cavalier and indifference to the value of human life. And it's not just unsettling dust. I mean, we're going to dig into what Tucker Carlson said about this, someone who's friends with Trump, who's a huge mag. And also, we shouldn't let the threat of what Trump has said he might do hide the horrors that have already befallen the Iranians. I mean, again, the human rights activist news agency estimates that over 1600 civilians have been killed in the war since it started, including 248 children. Iran's Ministry of Science and Technology says that at least 30 universities have now been struck by airstrikes. The World Health Organization says it's verified at least 20 attacks on medical centers. The UN says that over 3 million Iranians have been displaced. So the cost for the Iranian people is massive already in terms of lives and infrastructure that will take generations to rebuild. One other thing I was thinking about, Ben, I don't know if you watched the entire 90 minute. Trump, Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Dan Cain, victory lap on the rescue operation in Iran. We're basically not even going to talk about it because so many lifetimes have happened since then of news. I mean, it's extraordinary. What our military did to find these two airmen is extraordinary. But I kept thinking about a previous press conference with Hegseth when he was bragging about how the US Military sank an unarmed Iranian ship with a torpedo and how cool he thought that was to put 150 Iranian sailors at the bottom of the ocean. And it just made me think about how those two airmen would have been treated by the IRGC had they been captured. Given, like, the cavalier way that Pete Hegseth not only doesn't give a shit about civilian casualties or rules of engagement, but, like, seems to revel again in the bloodlust, in the killing. And, like, does his fucking, you know, war crimes, beat poetry, Dr. Seuss routine at these briefings. So it was just, I don't know, the whole thing. Again, unsettling is the right word.

Ben Rhodes (25:19)

Yeah. And I think two things. The university. Let's just talk about the universities, because there are these Twitter warriors who've wanted war with Iran for 15 or 20 years who like to say, well, there are scientists that went to that university and so it's a military target. And they also say maybe the Iranian military could drive something across that bridge. That's not how this works.

Tommy Vietor (25:45)

Bomb harbor.

Ben Rhodes (25:47)

This is billion infrastructure.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (25:48)

What are you talking about?

Ben Rhodes (25:49)

Yeah, I mean, you could make under this logic, I mean, you actually do have to put yourself in the shoes of Iranians, which is something that these people seem incapable of doing except to want to kill them. Harvard does plenty of research, including some stuff that reaches US Military. Like, how would we feel if they were bombed by Iran? You know, just some service members might take the train down to A base to deploy. Does that make the like, slippery talking about. Yeah, what are we talking about? Who've we become that we're sitting here post facto? You know what? I can guarantee you that most of the people that went to those universities are just students like you and I were when we went to college.

Tommy Vietor (26:29)

Probably the most progressive people in the country.

Ben Rhodes (26:32)

Yeah. They're the people who fucking protested, you know. And so I just want to call out what bullshit it is to kind of. You can find a crazy logic train to make anything a target under that.

Tommy Vietor (26:45)

Yes.

Ben Rhodes (26:45)

And there's a reason that international law distinguishes civilian from military targets, you know. Yeah, it's, it's, it's like so grotesque.

Tommy Vietor (26:52)

Yeah. And it's not even a question. It's just like so self evidently a war crime. A little bit on just how we got to this war. So again, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times have a book coming out on June 23rd about like the new Trump 2.0, the new regime. There's a big excerpt from the book in the Times today that's all about how Trump reached the decision to go to war that is just extraordinary. Like, the, the detail in this reporting is unbelievable to me. So a few things, I mean, Ben and I are coming at this from as news consumers, but also as people who were like threatened every day by Lindsey Graham on Fox News for like allegedly leaking and now that more is leaked about the Trump administration in a few months than has ever leaked about any, you know, other administration in history. So they got all this detail. Haberman and Swan got all this detail about a meeting Trump held with BIBI Netanyahu on February 11 where Netanyahu made the case for war. Apparently this is. Netanyahu was physically in the White House situation room. They zoomed in like the Mossad guys behind him, and they made their case. The Israelis made their case for the war. And it detailed all these Israeli assumptions for how things would go. And my God, were they catastrophically wrong. Then here's a few things that the Israelis told Trump. Iran's ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz. The odds that Iran would hit U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal. And the Mossad assessed that street protests would start again. They also had plans to help foment street protests, and they thought that bombing could then help the opposition overthrow the regime. And then the Israelis, as we have now seen reported elsewhere, were driving this plan to have Kurdish forces in Iraq invade Iran and basically attack the regime from a second front. So Haberman and SWAN report that U.S. intelligence assessed that the Israeli claims about regime change and a popular uprising were delusional. But Trump apparently dismissed those. You know what the US Intelligence said and said it was, quote, their problem. It's not clear in the book whether their problem means Israel's problem or Iran's problem, but that was how seriously Trump considered these. You know, this response from his own intelligence services. They also report that while Netanyahu's pitch was influential, Trump was way more hawkish on Iran than many of his base believed and was like, pretty disposed to wanting to bomb. They report that J.D. vance was kind of all over the place. Like he wanted Trump to enforce the red line that he made in January when the protesters were killed. But Vance is also reportedly the most opposed to the war in kind of like the war cabinet. Vance initially said apparently tried to steer Trump towards limited strikes. But then when he realized that Trump wanted to do it, he made the pitch to go all in with overwhelming force. So, like, great work there, J.D. i guess like profile and courage from you. Hegseth was the biggest proponent of the war shocker. Rubio is described as ambivalent, but didn't try to talk Trump out of it. Again, another profile encourage. And it sounds like Tucker Carlson was like the only person with any real guts here. And he told Trump that the war would destroy his presidency. Last thing, Ben. Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, was, were excluded from the war planning. Might have been good to have someone who was thinking about the global economy, energy supplies, in the intel case, I don't know at those meetings. Ben, takeaways from you from these reports.

Ben Rhodes (30:18)

I mean, first of all, you and I have both over the years and over the last few weeks been called an anti Semite for suggesting that Israel pushed us into this war. I mean, we now have reporting that the Prime Minister of Israel literally flew to the Situation Room to give a fucking presentation about why Trump should get into the war and that most of his own team didn't even want to do it and told him the Israelis were full of shit. I think that's a direct quote from Rubio that it's bullshit or something and he did it anyway. So can we please put to rest this idea that we're not allowed to discuss that Israel and Netanyahu in particular were the principal advocates for the US Doing it? It doesn't absolve Trump at all of responsibility, frankly. It makes him even a bigger idiot.

Tommy Vietor (31:04)

Makes him look a moron.

Ben Rhodes (31:05)

You got plate. Yeah, it makes him look like moron.

Tommy Vietor (31:07)

He's a fucking fool.

Ben Rhodes (31:08)

John Ratcliffe is not some, like, you know, impartial guy. The fact that he was saying like that, you know, the CIA doesn't agree with this tells you a lot. So let's. I don't want to hear any more stuff about. We're not. We have to have a conversation about Israel as an expansionist power that wants to take land from Lebanon and Syria and create destruction in Iran and somehow has got Trump on the caboose of this plan. That's a problem.

Tommy Vietor (31:34)

Yeah, we're not even talking about this week the fact the Israelis are now basically saying that they're going to seize about 15 miles of territory into Lebanon.

Ben Rhodes (31:43)

But that's part of the. I think the plan, right, Is that under the COVID of this big war, we're going to do this in Lebanon and we're doing all this stuff in the West Bank. Then it's also like, it points. It's interesting to react live that presentation from the Israelis because it reminds you that none of the objectives that Trump set are being met. There's no regime change. There's no popular uprising. The nuclear material is still sitting there. The enriched uranium is in Isfahan.

Tommy Vietor (32:07)

It may have been moved.

Ben Rhodes (32:08)

Yeah, yeah, may have been moved. So, like, the stated reasons, like for what Israel was pitching and what Trump said when he launched this war, like, those are out the window. Even in the rosy scenarios. If we get a deal somehow don't address those things, the regime will be more entrenched. It will demonstrated it controls the Strait of Hormuz. It can extract fees from countries that export energy through there. And that. That kind of like. It kind of takes me back to the pilot thing, Tommy, because I had the same feelings you did, and I saw somebody like, attack you online and be like you. You won't be give Trump a win. And look, obviously the people that rescued that pilot, like, did their jobs. But you know what? No, I'm not going to give Trump fucking credit for, like, it's the same thing. If he opens the Strait of Hormuz, we're going to have to hear about the greatest win ever. When the Strait of Hormuz, you know, when was open before the fucking war, you know, and we've seen this pattern where he creates messes and then firefighter.

Tommy Vietor (33:09)

Yes.

Ben Rhodes (33:09)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He sets something on fire and he Puts out part of the fire and once, like the Nobel Peace Prize, like, no, that pilot shouldn't have been there.

Tommy Vietor (33:16)

That's my first of all.

Ben Rhodes (33:17)

That pilot shouldn't have been dropping bombs. It's not his fault. He's got orders. But, like, on Iranian universities. But then he shouldn't have been in that harm's way, as you said. And the Strait of Hormuz, like, the fact that we're frantically trying to negotiate its opening just tells you how much Trump has fucked up this war that should not have been fought.

Tommy Vietor (33:37)

The other thing people were saying to me, like, not. Not to be in my Twitter mentions, but people were saying, like, the people who oppose this war are upset that the pilot was rescued. It's like, I'm sorry, what are you talking.

Ben Rhodes (33:47)

I think if I'm upset that he was shot down, I was.

Tommy Vietor (33:49)

That you shut down. But, like, if you oppose this war, literally the worst thing that could have possibly happened was a hostage crisis where the IRGC has had one or two American pilots. And like, like, because then Trump would have just raced up the escalation ladder, you know, that's what would have happened.

Ben Rhodes (34:04)

Yeah. And the last thing that kind of connects all these things you're talking about is it is interesting to hear that Trump was the kind of bloodthirsty one. And. Because the worrisome thing, and we saw this with Putin. Right. Sometimes you get these autocratic leaders. They're getting older, they're thinking about, like, the sweep of history. Maybe their domestic agenda has run out of gas. This is what happened with Putin. Like, he didn't care anymore about the Russian economy or whatever. He's like, how can I enter history? You know?

Tommy Vietor (34:37)

Yep.

Ben Rhodes (34:38)

Well, by taking territory. And what worries me is that Trump has got the aging autocratic bug where it's like, the way I go down in history is not the big, beautiful bill, you know, which probably doesn't care about Iran. It's. Yeah, it's. I'm going to conquer Cuba. I'm going to conquer. I'm going to break Iran. I'm going to conquer Greenland. Like, this is why this is so dangerous, is he seems to have caught this, you know, this bug that we've seen plenty of other autocrats catch of powerful nations, you know, where I can use the military as this extension of my sense of vengeance and grandiosity, you know?

Tommy Vietor (35:15)

Yeah. It's really. It paints a very scary portrait of Trump. I'm eager to read the rest of the book again, though, just on this excerpt. I mean, look, you and I both had jobs where we were charged with trying to explain to the country kind of like national security issues and decision making while also guarding secrets. And every time we did the former, we got attacked by like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and other people for so called leaks. Even when it was just like basic like press briefings and things. Like after the bin Laden operation, right, Everyone lost their mind and act like, you know, somehow all this secret information was put out and it's like, I, I don't really think that's true. But whatever the shit in this book, the shit in this excerpt is stunning. Like literally direct quotes of what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said to Trump in a meeting of like eight people or something that happened a few weeks ago about the most sensitive decision making around Iran. Again, it's press conference yesterday, like it seems so ill considered the way that Trump and Hegseth and Ratcliffe went out and did this victory lap and like disclosed all the ways that they rescued this pilot because God forbid another pilot goes down, they have to do this again. But you know, the New York Post today, Ben said that they found the second airman using a secret tool called Ghost Murmur to find the weapon system officer. This is how it's described. The secret technology uses long range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise. Two sources close to the breakthrough said it's like hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert. A source briefed on the program told the Post, in the right conditions, it if your heart is beating, we will find you. That sounds pretty fucking cool. It also sounds like the thing you probably don't want out there. But Trump was like essentially disclose this when he talked about the ability to pinpoint the second airmen from 40 miles away on the top of a mountain. The CIA was also talking about running a deception campaign within Iran to fool the IRGC into looking in the wrong places for the missing airmen. And so like there was just so much they were leaking from this press conference. It was so irresponsible. And it's clearly like just an attempt to, you know, put a gloss on this war to the rally around the flag effect to get people on board with the war effort itself. But like the just lack of long term thinking is, I mean it's typical for these assholes, I guess.

Ben Rhodes (37:40)

Yeah. I mean even if you're a casual observer of national security issues or you've seen a Few movies about special Forces, you know, that literally revealing all the sensitive capabilities that we use in rescue missions, which there'll be more of, you know, hostage rescue missions happen, you know, semi regularly. This is just giving the playbook away to anyone who wants to use it. I mean, clear as day. It also just. There's a hypocrisy that it's so extreme that it kind of comes back to the point that when they would attack people for, you know, leaking, it's just projection, because they know that they would leak anything if would make them look good. And in the same way that Trump is using the military as an extension of his kind of personal interests, whether that's, you know, potentially committing genocide or whether that's purging generals, he sees these capabilities that are not his. Right. Like, we taxpayers pay for them. They're American capabilities. They're not his to, like the idea that just this might make him. Because also, the politics, like, do we really think there's gonna be, like, a surge in approval of Trump in the war because he revealed this supersonic, you know, weapon? I mean, it's. It. Like, Even the politics of it make no sense. It's literally like a kid who just, like, wants to brag about something that he had nothing to do with. Like, and this, like, it's not like Donald Trump had anything to do with what those people on the ground did.

Tommy Vietor (39:17)

He's always like, I ordered them to do this. It's like, okay, well, that, yeah, that was the hard part. It wasn't, you know, fucking refueling a helicopter at low altitude, going around Iran as everyone is shooting at you with every weapon they can find. Like, I think that was the harder part. I think that was a little harder media. And also, like, everything they said, every claim they made about, you know, how the war is going is a lie. Like, the New York Times reported that Iran is still launching 15 to 30 ballistic missiles a day, 50 to 100 drones. Iran is now using cluster munitions to defeat certain Israeli missile defense systems. Like, basically the. The. They're firing ballistic missiles that released cluster munitions, which are like, little bomblets at high altitude, which lets you get around some of Israel's missile defense systems, which is why you're seeing those clips of these. Like, you know, looks like, like 50, like, stars kind of sinking on Tel Aviv or whatever, which is doing enormous damage. And meanwhile, Ben, I mean, I saw a report. It was called the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. It's a D.C. think tank that estimates that UAE and Bahrain have expended more than 3/4 of their Patriot missile PAC 3 interceptor stockpiles. And that's one of like the core defensive missiles in their arsenal. So again, this is a way of saying like, you know, there's, it's a war of attrition happening here. Iran does not seem to be losing it. And the numbers of casualties and the damage and the economic fallout is going to go up and up every day this goes on. So it's just, it's not a good setup here.

Ben Rhodes (40:42)

And they will brag in detail about the minute details of a rescue operation while simultaneously they are lying or concealing information about the damage that's being done. We get no credible, transparent reporting from the government about the damage to US Facilities in, you know, across the Gulf, be they military bases or embassies, some of which are just closed or inoperable. Right.

Tommy Vietor (41:10)

Do you see the thing, the Saudi, the hit on the US Embassy in Saudi. I don't know if you guys talked about that last week. I mean, apparently the Iranians put two drones on the same spot on the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia. They, they fired them at night because during the day that area houses like 200 or 300 employees. It would've been a mass casualty incident. And the thing was burning for half a day afterwards.

Ben Rhodes (41:30)

And we've heard nothing about it, Nothing like no briefing. I mean, these are the people. Remember how much they used to care about embassy security, you know, remember Benghazi. We don't know how badly wounded the hundreds of American service members are. Like they are simultaneously suppressing bad news and then just like hyping the shit out of anything they can grab onto as positive news. And that's like a, you know, that's a recipe for Americans to not trust their government. Yeah. And we pay for these things. This is what I hate about this so much is like, again, Trump acts like this is all his to do whatever he wants with. Like, no, an embassy, a military base, like those are, those are national assets. You know, they're just not leveling with us. Yeah, yeah, well, standing. The world is fucking gone.

Tommy Vietor (42:15)

Yeah, it's gone. And they're. Look, they're all doing it because the war is really unpopular. I mean, the public opinion started out opposed to this war. It has been getting worse inexorably ever since. Trump himself is not getting a boost or like a rally around the flag effect like you usually see in wartime. Harry Enton at CNN did a great piece on this. He pulled together some numbers. So George W. Bush got a 14 point bump in the first month of the Iraq war. His father Ben got a 34 point boost in the first month of the previous Gulf War. Even Jimmy Carter was up like 30 points in the first month of the Iranian hostage crisis. But Trump's net approval is actually down four points. That is completely ahistoric. The only sort of, like, similar instance he could point to was the month after Biden left Afghanistan when he went down six points in approval rating and basically it ended his presidency. And so they also looked at the CNN aggregator, the polling on the war itself. It started 12 points underwater. Now it's 22 points underwater. And I'm positive that's going to get worse. Right, because gas prices are only going up, other commodity prices are going up, the price of food could go up, the global economy is slowing down. There could be a collapse. But no matter what, it's slowing down. And on top of that, during the Iraq war, which you and I live through, it was all cheerleading for the war. But now you're seeing major voices in the MAGA media ecosystem loudly opposing this one. And so today we're going to play for you guys a couple clips from Tucker Carlson in his most recent episode that I think are quite important and instructive. And for the record, like, yes, we know all the bad things Tucker has done and said. We know he's a flawed person, we know he's a flawed messenger. But he reaches millions and millions of people who are pro Trump, who are MAGA and who trust him. So what he says to them is really fucking important. And so this first clip is long, but it is worth it, I promise. So again, this is from Tucker's most recent episode that I think came out Monday night.

Tucker Carlson (44:10)

And so the movie Morning of Easter is a uniquely joyful and peaceful moment. And yet that peace yesterday was shattered. That's not an overstatement. It was shattered for many observant Christians by a statement that the President of the United States put out at 8:03am Eastern Time on Easter morning that said this. And we're going to read it in its entirety, not in outrage or self righteousness, but honestly, in horror. Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Three exclamation points. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. All caps. Praise be to Allah. President Donald J. Trump. Now, a lot of people reading that imagined, of course, this can't be real. Did the President of the United States really just write that, and it is real. It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing on every level. It is vile. But then the tweet continues. Pardon me, the ironically named truth continues. There will be nothing like it. Open the effing straight. How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country. Who do you think you are? You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning. You'll be living in hell as if hell is a place. Hell is a condition, and this is an example of that condition. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran. Okay, if you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. This is a mockery not just of Islam, it's a mockery of Christianity. To send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning promising the murder of civilians and then saying praise be to Allah without explaining any of it. You are mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians. Oh, I get it. We can't support that.

Tommy Vietor (46:15)

So that. That is a small slice of an extraordinary 45 minute monologue from Tucker that is. I don't know, how do you view this, other than a pretty firm break from Trump? Maybe he'll come back. A lot of them do. But it is. It is an attack on Trump in the most harsh moral terms. So it includes Tucker attacking Trump for the following pen. He starts at the top. He says, like Trump saying that our motive for invading Venezuela was stealing their oil should have been a moment where a lot of people said, I'm out. And I think Tucker is sort of using that monologue as a moment for saying he wish he had said that. He talks about how Trump didn't put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in at his own inauguration, which Tucker said suggests that Trump, quote, affirmatively rejects what's inside that book. And that and what's inside that book are limits on human behavior. Because if there's one theme that spans

Sponsor/Ad Voice (47:06)

all 66 books in the Christian Bible,

Tommy Vietor (47:08)

it's that you are not God and you cannot assume his powers. You may want them, but in the end, they're not yours. End of quote. So Tucker is not at all subtly accusing Trump of thinking he's now God. He goes in on the Easter truth social post like we just heard there. And then he argues that Trump launched this war because of literal bloodlust, like, because he enjoys the killing itself. And then there's the WMD piece that we'll get to in a minute. And so, Ben, I think both of us, we listen to Tucker now because he's been really compelling on Iran, and it's important to know what he's saying to his audience. We wanted to highlight this because it includes a really. I think it's a strong moral case against the war that's rooted in Christianity. It includes a call for everyone to say that this is unacceptable and unjustifiable and crazy. And then again, most importantly, the message is coming from Trump's literal, close friend, a man who spoke at his convention, who is arguably the most important voice in conservative media. And I just think that is a huge, huge deal. And I wonder what you took away from this, from this episode.

Ben Rhodes (48:17)

Like you, I've been listening to Tucker because it's interesting since the war started. And what I took away is, first of all, in some of the early episodes, he was strongly against the war, but it was. Much of his ire was focused on Netanyahu, and there was almost a sense that, like, Trump was this guy that was like, he left the name Trump out of some of his criticisms.

Tommy Vietor (48:39)

It was the Israelis, you know, kind of pulling all the strings.

Ben Rhodes (48:41)

Yeah. And, and, and, you know, for whatever reason, you know, sincere conviction or opportunism or both, that felt like a total and complete rebuke of Trump from somebody who is deep, deep within the tent. And frankly, I listened to that, and part of me thought, how come Tucker Carlson can mount a clear moral case? By the way, there's no mention of Israel. I'm not here to excuse, you know, platforming Nick Fuentes at all, but the point is that that was a more morally grounded frontal assault on the war than you hear from certainly any elected Republicans other than maybe Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, and frankly, most Democrats.

Tommy Vietor (49:31)

Oh, you think. You think it's better to make a case on values rather than process not coming to Congress?

Tucker Carlson (49:36)

Exactly.

Ben Rhodes (49:37)

Tucker's not saying, like, well, we didn't get a good enough. You should have briefed us, know. Yeah. Like, And. And actually, you know, I think you can learn from people who you disagree with.

Tommy Vietor (49:46)

Yes.

Ben Rhodes (49:46)

And I disagree profoundly with Tucker Carlson about a lot of things, including, you know, the nature of this country inside its borders. But I think we can learn. Just stripping out all the other things and mounting a direct moral case against what Trump is doing lands very powerfully. And frankly, I don't have the standing that, you know, I. I'm not Christian in the same way, but the fact that he and Marjorie Taylor Greene and some other people are really entering this conversation through the doorway of Christianity. Gets it. A real weakness for Trump because as Tucker says elsewhere in that show, he's not personally pious like he's never pretended to be a deep Christian, but he's kind of, you know, gaslit Christians and, you know, delivered certain things for pro life Christians, for instance, overturning Roe v. Wade. But, but if he starts to lose that base of support, Evangelical and Protestant Christians in this country, he's pretty fucked.

Tommy Vietor (50:42)

He's dope.

Ben Rhodes (50:43)

And I should add, by the way, the other American who's been even stronger on the moral basis is the Pope. You know, and the head of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in the US Put out a withering statement today urging Trump to walk back from his threats. So he's got a problem. And again, if people want to say, does this matter? Like, some of the polling shows that maga's behind him. Tucker Carlson, you know, I read the Crooked Reads book by Jason Zangerle. Great book, hated by all the right people. And part of what you learn about Tucker is particularly in the last, you know, decade, the Trump decade, and a little bit before this guy has seen where the puck was going and skated to it.

Tommy Vietor (51:25)

Yep.

Ben Rhodes (51:26)

And so just because the polling hasn't collapsed in Maggie yet, the fact that Tucker is seeing the direction of where the MAGA movement might go or Trump supporters might go, he's always out in front of it. He's always leading it. This is a guy that had the highest rated show in the history of cable news on Fox and then has a giant platform now. And I guarantee you the Republican politicians listen to that show. They also know that Tucker Carlson may be preparing to run for president because it certainly feels like Elaine is open now that J.D. vance is on board with this war. So that's a lot of reasons why this is both interesting. There's again, I hate to say this, something to learn from the kind of moral case he mounts and I think is a real warning sign that if Tucker is, because it's not just him, we see plenty of other people that are kind of following his lead in that kind of podcast space, in Internet space, on the right. I think it's a harbinger that people are beginning to look past Trump.

Tommy Vietor (52:35)

Yeah, look, people will say there's polls, including by CNN's Harry Enton, who you mentioned earlier, that said MAGA voters are not leaving Trump. Yes. If you're self identifying as a MAGA voter, you're basically saying you're a Trump fan. Right. And those people are going to be the last to go, but he's losing Republicans. But I do think like the war is only a few, it's like a few weeks old, right? And I think when gas prices continue to go up and when you have people like Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan or others repeatedly condemning the war in terms like these or mtg, that opinion can change over time and slowly erode. And again, like in American politics, like Trump's never. Trump will probably never get down to a, you know, 10% approval rating, but if his approval rating drops a couple of points, 5% say that could lead to an electoral landslide in the midterms or other elections. So it's very, very meaningful.

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Tommy Vietor (56:24)

Finally, Ben, before we go on to this weapons of mass destruction discussion, I did want to play you one other clip from a MAGA voice who many would argue is more influential than Tucker and the Pope all rolled together. So let's watch how do we 25th

Tucker Carlson (56:38)

amendment is asked the problem is to

Tommy Vietor (56:40)

get the 25th amendment is harder than impeachment.

Tucker Carlson (56:42)

You have to get 2/3 of the

Tommy Vietor (56:43)

House and 2/3 of the so what do we do?

Tucker Carlson (56:46)

Tackle Trump and pretend. Let him pretend he's president and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and Vance takeover.

Tommy Vietor (56:54)

That was Infowars founder Alex Jones, who's been one of the biggest Trump fans ever, screaming how do we do? Fifth Amendment is ass. I just thought that was funny, but

Ben Rhodes (57:04)

it like who's he talking to? Is he interviewing himself?

Tommy Vietor (57:06)

I think I assume that guy wrote something.

Ben Rhodes (57:12)

I didn't know if he created like Glenn Beck when he interviewed like an AI version of himself or something. Dude, we should George Washington we should

Tommy Vietor (57:19)

put in an interview request for AI George Washington.

Ben Rhodes (57:25)

It's good to laugh about something.

Tommy Vietor (57:26)

I don't know if anyone listened to Alex Jones anymore, but, like, just him

Ben Rhodes (57:28)

screaming, how do we do any of

Tommy Vietor (57:29)

the men in his ass? Fucking hilarious to me. But it's not just them. It's also like, I don't know if you ever watched Tim Dillon, like, sort of.

Ben Rhodes (57:37)

Yes, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (57:38)

You know, conspiracy loving, kind of right leaning comedian who endorsed Trump and just,

Ben Rhodes (57:43)

you know, hated Biden, hated Sean Ryan.

Tommy Vietor (57:45)

Sean Ryan, right. There's like a lot of, like, it's not just one person, it's like a bunch of voices saying, hey, you lied to us. Right. This is not what you said you would do. And it's a moral case against Trump about his character, not just the policy. And that's what's so meaningful about it. So Tucker is kind of chief antagonist on all things Iran. Has been a Fox News host named Mark Levin. Levin is very pro war with Iran. He's a huge Bibi Netanyahu friend and fan. I think he, like, literally showed up in the courtroom at Netanyahu's trial for corruption. He advocates for war all the time on his show. He also despises Tucker Carlson and everything he stands for and calls him an anti Semite all the time. They don't like each other very much in this episode. Did you catch when Tucker compares Mark Levin to Jeffrey Epstein? Yeah, like this weird way, but he's like, neither of them have any real talent or power. You know, he's just a mouthpiece. So no love lost there.

Ben Rhodes (58:36)

But.

Tommy Vietor (58:36)

So Tucker's monologue builds to an argument that Trump has exhausted his conventional military options for winning this war, or at least by. For opening the Strait of Hormuz. Right, because you can't just like, bomb your way from the air to getting the Strait of Hormuz open, especially when you can mine the Strait of Hormuz and put mines underwater and blockade that way. Right. So that is obviously correct in my opinion. But then Tucker's next argument is something that's worth debating, which is that the escalation ladder is going up and up and up in a way that will lead Trump, in his view, to using a nuclear weapon in Iran. Here's a clip.

Tucker Carlson (59:12)

Here's what Mark Levin said on his Easter weekend show about what we ought to do next in Iran. Watch. And the casualty numbers, as horrible as any casualty is. Need some context? The Battle of Okinawa. 50,000 plus casualties, over 12,000. Nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what Convinced Truman that we would lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did. Embedded in there is something you need to know. It's an argument that is being test driven. And since no one to our knowledge has pushed back against it, may be in full operation now, it's an argument for nuclear weapons.

Tommy Vietor (59:53)

So, Ben, I don't know about you. I've not seen any news outlets report that Trump or Netanyahu for that matter, are considering using nuclear weapons in Iran. But I do think, like, we should take the conversation itself seriously because in any war or any like terrorism debate, there will always be people who make some version of the argument that it is acceptable to kill as many of them over there to protect us over here. You can sort of insert whatever country you want there, but that's how you end up dropping 2,000 pound bombs on refugee camps in Gaza. That's how you get to Trump threatening to blow up every power plant in Iran. And that is how you could get to a point where the US Or Israel, in the most like, staggeringly hypocritical act in history imaginable, could argue that it's okay for us to nuke them so that they can't one day nuke us. And again, I know like, Tucker is flawed. I'm not going to go through it all again. But like, he knows Trump as well as anyone and it seems like something is freaking him out here about this issue in particular. And in that segment, he even implores White House staff to make the case not only to Trump not to do this, but to ignore orders to use nuclear weapons if it gets to that point, which is pretty extraordinary when you think about the debate over like Seditious six and the way Republicans were attacking Jason Crow and the other Democratic members

Ben Rhodes (61:11)

of Congress who basically made those guys were onto something. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (61:14)

Which is, you know, can't follow an unlawful order. So I don't. What do you make of, I mean, not just Tucker as part of this because clearly he hates Mark Levin and that's, you know, fueling some of it. But like, how worried should we be about this kind of WMD debate?

Ben Rhodes (61:28)

My headline on this, you know, I mentioned you, Tommy. I've heard from some normies in my life, like the kind of people that don't follow, you know, foreign policy that closely, starting to email me or text me like, hey, is he going to use a nuclear weapon? Like it's, it's out in the ether, you know, because of what he's saying. Because when you Threaten to destroy civilization, you know, and you threaten to commit genocide. Like that's the kind of space you're entering. And, and my headline on this is I, I certainly don't think that that's likely, but the fact that it doesn't feel impossible is terrifying because, yeah, I could see a scenario let's say Trump goes through today or two weeks from now or whenever with this threat to kind of mass bomb civilian infrastructure. And then I don't think anything about the Iranians suggest that they will capitulate. The Iranians bomb a lot of Gulf energy infrastructure or desalination plants.

Tommy Vietor (62:23)

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Rhodes (62:25)

And we just keep climbing an escalation ladder and, you know, that's the top of the escalation ladder. And it doesn't feel impossible. And it should feel impossible. It also, you know, there were people on the left who were right during Gaza when they said this kind of violence, if normalized, could migrate to other places. And again, if you look at Gaza, it looks like somebody dropped an atomic bomb.

Tommy Vietor (62:54)

Oh, yeah.

Ben Rhodes (62:54)

I mean, every structure is destroyed. Like you said, they were dropping 2,000 pound bombs on apartment buildings to kill one person, in the process killing scores of people. And here we are in a place where we've already bombed a girls school, we've already bombed a bridge. We're going down this slippery slope. And the girls school may not have been intentional, but the bridge certainly was. We're, we're kind of, Once you start saying we can just start kind of mass bombing, you know, civilian infrastructure, it does lead to that. And the Mark Levin argument, there are two things that are scary about it. One is I hate these guys like him and Lindsey Graham who seem nostalgic for the days when tens of thousands of people died in Iwo Jima in the battle. Like, they literally talk about it like it was, we used to, you know, we used to have the good old days when 12,000 men would die or something. And then, yeah, he's making. So we had to drop the atomic bombs so we didn't have to put in ground troops. And so again, I don't think it's likely, but man, the fact that the President, United States has sole authority over the nuclear launch codes and that we'd be counting on people to not follow a plainly illegal and immoral order is frightening. And suggests revisiting again proposals from the first Trump term about limiting the President's sole authority on the use of nuclear weapons.

Tommy Vietor (64:14)

And also that like, you know, one of his primary advisors is fucking Pete Hegseth, who's A, he's the idiot. He's a clown.

Ben Rhodes (64:20)

That's the guy who's in the chain of command. Does that make you feel any better?

Tommy Vietor (64:22)

Right, like Fox News weekend anchor who's now the. According to the Haberman swan, reporting like the loudest voice in favor of war with Iran. You don't think that guy's. That guy's whole identity and place in Trump's orbit in future rests on this war going well and the US Being perceived as winning it. You think that, like, that can't lead you to advocate for some pretty fucking evil stuff.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (64:46)

I think it certainly can.

Ben Rhodes (64:48)

And remembered his confirmation hearings that came out. One of the things that came out was him, like, getting drunk and like, chanting, kill Muslims. Remember that? Yeah. Well, maybe we should fucking pay attention and not confirm sociopathic drunks who advocate

Tommy Vietor (65:01)

for war criminals in their free time. Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (65:03)

All right.

Tommy Vietor (65:03)

Let's try to end the kind of Ron section in a way that's a little more hopeful and just think about the ways this could end up. End. Obviously it won't end well because since once it started, it can't end well, but end would be good. So, as we said before, there are ongoing talks on the Trump side. Those talks are still being led by Dumb and Dumber Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff, so that's not ideal. There's lots of reporting, Ben, about the Pakistanis facilitating some talks, but I've heard from some plugged in people that the Pakistanis aren't really doing shit. It's all just for show. The Egyptians and the Turks are also facilitating talks. Egypt's intelligence services seem to be the main event here because they have actual IRGC connections and can really get conversations happening with the right people at a time when it's, by the way, incredibly difficult to communicate. I mean, Trump himself said this, like, it's impossible to get a message to Iran right now because they're worried we're going to kill them. So, you know, they're not going to, like, pick up their cell phone and talk to us. Right. So they're. You're doing note passing through children is how he described it. There have been reports that the US has pushed Qatar to facilitate talks, but they have resisted. That could be because both the Israelis and the Iranians bombed them pretty recently.

Ben Rhodes (66:18)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (66:18)

Feels like that would make me not want to get more involved.

Ben Rhodes (66:20)

Pretty good.

Tommy Vietor (66:21)

Yeah. Not the best way to kind of make friends. And then obviously, I bet there's stuff that's still secret, like we don't know what we don't know. Then there's also clearly just side deals happening with the Iranians directly. So, for example, Iran recently said that Iraq is exempted from its restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. They could clearly cut some kind of deal. The Philippines said their ships will get through after some sort of negotiation with Iran. There's other reports that Iran is basically charging a toll in some instances to allow boats through. And then the UK brought together more than 40 countries to build up a coalition to try to figure out a plan to safeguard shipping in the Strait. Obviously that's easier said than done, but long story short, there's just lots of churn out there. There's lots of people trying to figure out a path forward. Ben, did any of that reporting or what we've seen so far give you a sense of what an end game might look like or kind of like a path to maybe a ceasefire that gets extended long term? And then I think, you know, getting the Strait of Hormuz back to where it was might not be an option, but getting it functional to the point where it is not going to lead to a global depression feels like a pretty good goal at this point. So, like, what are you looking at?

Ben Rhodes (67:31)

And again, as of this recording, like the churn was out about the Pakistanis announcing some proposal for a two week ceasefire, a two week or delay in Trump's threat in response to some partial reopening of the Strait. And look, you know, that could happen and that would be great. Just that a civilization, a 5,000-year-old civilization doesn't get destroyed tonight. That would be great. I think what I'm looking at is, okay, what, what, what does the US Want, what does Iran want and what does the world want? Right. I think Trump at this point, you know, he, he has to decide whether he needs some more identifiable win, you know, like, which I don't think he's necessarily going to get, but like seize Kharg island and, or try to get the nuclear material and say you, you know, but at core, what the US Wants is the Strait of Hormuz open, which is again, ironic because we could have had it open if we didn't start the war. What do the Iranians want? Well, the Iranians have already demonstrated that they control the Strait of Hormuz. They've already won something from this war and they're already getting tolls, they're already getting fees to let like a dribble of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz. I think what they will want is some kind of security guarantee that the US And Israel will not attack them. Again, that probably can't just be the US in saying that some constellation of countries, China, others, may have to kind of somehow be a party to these security guarantees that are given to the Iranians. I think the Iranians will want sanctions relief. I think the Iranians will want. I'm not saying they'll get the US to pull out of the region, to not have bases surrounding them. So the Iranians have a list, but at core, they'll want their regime survival to be assured and some kind of economic benefit, and they'll have a list from sanctions relief to reparations. And look, the US May be able to reach some part of that deal to just stop the conflict where it is. But I actually think the more comprehensive reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, we may just see other countries negotiate that, like, Trump is nuts. The Iranians don't trust him. And it may be that Europe and some Asian countries and the Chinese kind of, they're the ones getting together with the Gulf Arabs who desperately, obviously want the war to stop in the Strait

Tommy Vietor (69:52)

to reopen, and they just pay a fee going forward. Like, I'm them at this point. I'm like a dollar per barrel of oil. Fine. That's better than like the 30, you know, the 50% increase I'm paying now. And like the global, global meltdown we're about to experience.

Ben Rhodes (70:07)

And by the way, what a humiliation that would be to BB Neb.

Tommy Vietor (70:11)

Absolutely.

Ben Rhodes (70:11)

The man that said that this would be an easy regime change war. And obviously, Trump, suddenly you've got a regime that is more IRGC controlled, that is profiting more off of the Strait of Hormuz. But again, I just think hopefully we get some kind of partial ceasefire just so that people stop dying and the escalation stops spiraling. And then I actually think it's going to take a lot of other countries kind of trying to land the plane here on something that reopens the Strait of Hormuz. And it's probably going to have to involve the Iranian regime being assured in its security and having more revenue. And that's extraordinary. That's how far Trump has moved things in the wrong direction on his own objectives from before the war.

Tommy Vietor (70:55)

Yeah, way to move the Overton window, sir. And like, yeah, the stakes are so high. And look, it's. It sucks for us in California paying $6 for a gallon of gas, but, like, this energy shock is an absolute crisis for a lot of countries. Right now, like countries in Asia are literally weeks away from running out of fuel. You got like Bangladesh had to close schools, they're imposing fuel rations. Ethiopia is putting non essential government employees on leave. There are like massive like hundreds of cars and lines to get fuel at gas stations. Farmers can't get fuel to, to work their crops. And then things will only get exponentially worse as this fertilizer shortage really hits. Because again, remember, like helium can't get the shoot through the straight or remove the fertilizer, can't get through. The only positive I've seen, Pen, is that there are far right parties all across Europe that are now running from Trump. It's actually interesting to me that Viktor Orban, who we'll talk about in a second, would allow J.D. vance and Trump into his country at this moment when like Trump has created a massive crisis for them. But like the fucking AfD in Germany, the neo Nazis are like distancing themselves from Trump. The Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, who, remember she was like a Mussolini youth fan, is furious she's at the Trump inauguration. Like, she's furious because like, this is causing a massive economic crisis in Italy. Look, the downside of this is that Trump is blaming everything on NATO. For some reason, he's once again threatening to pull out. He's like whining about Greenland. So that's not good. Maybe, you know, Mark Ruta can get down on his knees and you know, do some work tomorrow with Wednesday at the White House.

Ben Rhodes (72:35)

I wonder how many times they'll call Trump daddy.

Tommy Vietor (72:36)

Yeah, yeah, daddy. But you know, it's not good too far.

Ben Rhodes (72:41)

Marc Ruda is such a. It's a comically pathetic way.

Tommy Vietor (72:45)

Sex up to Trump. Yeah.

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Tommy Vietor (74:13)

All right, let's talk about Viktor Orban, one of your favorite people, the Maga world's favorite dictator, who is currently the prime Minister of Hungary. So Hungary has parliamentary elections on April 12. So coming up soon, and for the first time in 16 years, Orban appears to be in some serious political trouble. So he's facing a major challenge from a guy named Peter Magyar from the Tisa Party. Reuters reported that Magyar is polling at 56% while Orban is at 37%, which is most serious threat again to Orban's rule since he took power in 2010. Magyar's political views are not totally clear. I bet our audience would not love them if they saw like a, you know, kind of punch card of policies. He's not a progressive, he's not a liberal, certainly center right, but he used to be an Orban ally and a member of Orban's Fides party until Magyar quit the party in 2024amid this massive, awful scandal involving like horrible sexual abuse of children. And then the way presidential pardons were used to pardon the head of an organization that, you know, turned a blind eye to that abuse. And then Magyar's ex wife and her role, it was like very salacious stuff that involved like leaking audio tapes he made of her, et cetera. But anyway, according to the Associated Press, though, Magyar is really running hard. He's campaigning in six towns a day, he's hammering Orban for corruption. And by corruption, in this case, we don't just mean like this standard corruption or the ways that Orban has enriched himself or his family and friends, but he's talking about the ways Orban. And Ben, you can expand on this. The way Orban has just upended Hungary's political system. The media, the courts, the economy, to make it a way to just further consolidate his own power for himself, for the Fidesz party. So Orban, obviously, as you'd expect, is not taking it well. He's pulling out all the stops to win votes. That includes threats. That includes bribes. Magyar has accused in the past Orban of blackmail and plotting to release a secret sex tape of him. A police officer recently released information about a secret operation by Orban's domestic intelligence service to get data from Magyar and the Tisa party's IT systems. There have been several instances of election interference with ties to Russia, including maybe like a false flag bomb threat. Over the weekend. The Serbian President, Alexander Vucic called up Orban and said that the Serbian army found, quote, two packages of explosives with detonators in northern Serbia that was close to a pipeline that feeds natural gas from Russia to Hungary and beyond. And so, you know, Magyar says this is a false flag. I guess maybe someday we'll find out. And then, finally, Ben, there is the blatant election interference campaign being run out of the White House. Here is Vice President J.D. vance, who, as we mentioned before, is in Hungary in Budapest today, Tuesday, on the stump for Viktor Orban. Let's watch.

J.D. Vance (76:57)

I love Hungary and I love that victor. I'll tell you, he's a fantastic man. We've had a tremendous relationship.

Pod Save the World Announcer (77:04)

The President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the American people, we admire you and we want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do. I'm not telling you exactly who to vote for. Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels? Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers? Then, my friends go to the polls and the weekend stand with Viktor Orban because he stands for you and he stands for all these things. So to answer your question, yes, we're certainly aware that there are elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services that tried to put their thumb on the scale of American elections, on Hungarian elections. This is just what they do. This is part of the cost of doing business within some elements of their system.

Tommy Vietor (78:13)

Okay, so this, I knew this was going to trigger you. So what you heard there was so J.D. vance at a rally the very beginning, he, like, calls Trump on his cell phone and puts it on speaker and holds it up. And then at the very end, that was a clip from a press conference that J.D. vance did with Orban, where he was asked about something and ended up blaming the Ukrainian intelligence services. Ben, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this. The Vance visit, that bizarre clip of him blaming Ukraine there, and then why you think, like, Peter Magyar seems to have a chance while others don't, and what it would mean if Orban actually lost this time.

Ben Rhodes (78:52)

Yeah. So one book plug ago. So my, my last book after the Fall, I wrote about Hungary, and I'm not just saying this to reference the book, one of the characters. So I profiled some people in opposition. And one of the three or four Hungarians that were kind of characters in my book that I spent some time with in Budapest is a investigative journalist named Sabol Pani. Writes for an outlet called Direct 36. He's a great investigative journalist, and I mention him because he got charged by Orban and the Hungarian authorities with espionage. So it's kind of weird, you know, to write about somebody who's a journalist and then see them being accused of, you know, colluding with the foreign government. It was all bullshit. Right. But it was part of the, what, what, what Sabol Spani had reported on is all the Russian interference in the Hungarian election, which is obvious. I mean, like, they're projecting onto Ukraine what Russia is actually doing. Yeah, right. And, and it's bogus. And people have called out that. But what is so interesting about this is again, Hungary can seem like a smaller country. Viktor Orban is both an ideological leader of this far right brand of, I don't even call it populism anymore, like this kind of far right blood and soil nationalism that we've seen. He has been a propagator of the playbook to enshrine authoritarian power in Hungary that the Republicans have copied. Here he's at the fulcrum of efforts by Russia, Israel and the United States. Putin uses Orban to sow disunity inside the EU related to Ukraine policy. Bibi uses Orban to sow disunity in the EU around Israel and any potential sanction of Israel. And Trump and Vance use Orban as a fulcrum inside of Europe to fuck up whatever they don't like about the eu. And that could be anything from potential tech regulation to just, I don't know, having liberal democratic policies. Right. And so it is quite interesting that this man, who's been in power this time around since 2010, that Putin, Bibi and Trump, all the worst people, are desperate for this guy to win because he's a tool of their efforts to upend European unity and bolster the far right across the continent. So the stakes are very high here. Now Magyar has a chance where previous. One of the problems that we've seen in past Hungarian elections is that the center to the left is very divided. And some of that is, again, almost not their fault. Some that's kind of by design. Like, there's a lot of influence operations by the Fides party of Orban, by the Russians and others to turn people against each other, to create, you know, their version of Dems in disarray there. Some of it is because the legacy was of very deep disgust with the governing center left party before Orban. Right. So there was kind of a stink around some of the kind of more conventional parties. And so to have a guy like Magyar who is a defector from the conservative movement in Hungary creates a new political opening. Because obviously you have. The left is willing to vote for anybody to get Orban out, but then you win over some of the independents. But also, Orban hasn't delivered.

Tommy Vietor (82:16)

Right.

Ben Rhodes (82:16)

Like, if you look at Hungarian standards of living, Hungarian poverty levels, Viktor Orban has enriched himself and become some big international celebrity to the far right. But life for Hungarians, it's not like he's like, not even like the Chinese Communist Party, where they can say, we raise standards of living, like, this is not working. And I think also just people are sick of this guy after 14 years.

Tommy Vietor (82:36)

It feels similar to like, a little bit like Navalny, too, right? Like, in that the Navalny in many ways was a nationalist and attacking, not attacking Putin from the right, but was not like trying to be some big squishy liberal. He thought that, yes, his path to taking down Putin was focusing on kleptocracy and also just coming at him from like, a far more conservative perspective.

Ben Rhodes (82:58)

That's right. That's exactly right. And look, we should just say, like, these guys have put Viktor Orban. If he wins, it's because, you know, he's got the media completely on his side in Hungary. He's God knows what corruption's happening. He's got the Russian intelligence services helping him, whoever. If he wins and ekes out a win, like that's kind of status quo ante. If Viktor Orban loses this election, it is a seismic event. It is a fucking earthquake in global politics. And we should. And by the way, we should insist that it is one. Because you know what? These guys put all the chips on him. J.D. vance flew there to bolster him.

Tommy Vietor (83:37)

In the middle of a war.

Ben Rhodes (83:38)

Yeah, in the middle of A catastrophic war. He's campaigning for a midterm election, Congressional district right before the election. So this will be humiliating to Trump. It would be a huge setback to the far right in Europe. It would be a wind in the sails of Democrats, small D Democrats in Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe where they've been fighting some tough battles. So, like, you know, the pod, Save the world endorsement is with Maggie or like, such as it matters.

Tommy Vietor (84:06)

Yeah. It would be seismic. It would be credible for the European Union. It'd be great for the continent. It'll be great.

Ben Rhodes (84:11)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (84:11)

Be great for like some wind in the sails of progressives all over the world. I want to, I just want to quickly trigger you, if that's okay. I was watching the Vance Orban press conference, and I wanted to play you a little clip that I enjoyed greatly. This is again our vice president in Budapest today.

Pod Save the World Announcer (84:31)

Do you want to say something? One final observation about this election. What has happened in this country, what has happened in the, in the midst of this election campaign, is one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I've ever seen or ever even read about. The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried, tried to make Hungary less energy, independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers, and they've done it all because they hate this guy. But I think that what the people of Hungary, what I would encourage them to do is ask themselves the question, not who's pro or anti Europe, not who's pro or anti the United States of America, but who is pro you? Who is pro the people of Hungary?

Tommy Vietor (85:19)

How about the absolute incredible hypocrisy of the Vice President, United States.

Ben Rhodes (85:25)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (85:25)

Going to stump for Viktor Orban and then complaining about foreign election interference. By the way, with all the context that we know about Trump, you know, remember when he, he offered Argentina a $20 billion bailout and told voters there that like, either, you know, vote with Javier Milei or else, like the US Would cut off support. Like, these guys are brazenly interfering in elections all over the place. And he's still, J.D. vance is still like his, He's a one note, like tiny little man, fucking pathetic little baby loser. And he's whining about bureaucrats in Brussels because that's like all he can. That's his entire playbook at this point.

Ben Rhodes (86:01)

Yeah, I mean, you hit that point. Only I'd add is on the substance. Viktor Orban and his cronies have been stealing EU money for years. The EU provides Billions of dollars in assistance to Hungary because it's one of the poorer countries in the EU for things like infrastructure projects. And all the money just gets skimmed off the top and goes to enrich Orban's cronies and finances politics. So if he's got problems with Brussels, yeah, part of it's that he's way out of step with the Europe on things like Ukraine, but part of it said he's been fucking stealing from Europe. Right? And that's why they don't want to keep shoveling money to the guy. So. Not that J.D. vance cares about that. So. And for him, I mean, the Ukrainians are being bombed and invaded. For him to accuse it is such an atrocity that this guy is sitting there taking potshots at people that are a million times tougher than he is and have sacrificed a million times more than he has for democracy. Spare me the lectures about election interference from Budapest, JD the other weird comment

Tommy Vietor (87:07)

he made, Ben, is he said, like, he was doing some weird bit about how Orban's leadership is a model for how other European leaders should be dealing with the energy crisis in Europe, which, as far as I can tell, like, Orban gave, like, huge government subsidies or basically just like, forced, like, state agencies to absorb a bunch of costs. Then they were super pro Russia, and they just, like, advocated either for purchasing oil and gas from the Russians or removing sanctions from the Russians. And now they're sucking up to Trump even though he is creating this new, massive energy crisis via the war with Iran. It's just like, what does he think vote? Like, I guess he thinks voters everywhere stupid. Maybe that's just the answer he does.

Ben Rhodes (87:46)

I mean, he thinks he can, like, JD Vance, them. You know, and this tick is just growing really old because, like, you know what? Who in America, the only people that give a shit about this are, like, the ideologues at, like, the Claremont Institute. You know, like, it's like far right intellectuals. Like, it's not like, you know, working folks of Ohio that J.D. vance represents or claims to represent are sitting there, you know, in rural Ohio being like, you know what we really need? We need an Orban victory in the Hungarian election.

Tommy Vietor (88:15)

Like, yeah, you're.

Ben Rhodes (88:15)

Who's the fucking elitist cosmopolitan? Like, give me a break, JD Vance go to Back to Ohio and, like, actually talk to people who can't afford their bills instead of, like, spending taxpayer money to fly to stump for somebody that probably nobody in Ohio has heard of.

Tommy Vietor (88:31)

It is very weird. And there is also, by the way, I mean, Remember, Tucker Carlson did his week of programming from.

Ben Rhodes (88:38)

Yeah, that's where we break from Tucker.

Tommy Vietor (88:41)

Yeah. Big, big time. Big time. The way politics is kind of getting reshuffled right now is very interesting. I mean, this was probably inevitable and bound to happen in some ways because Trump is essentially a lame duck president and everyone's kind of, you know, jostling for their spot in figuring out what's next. But there's no doubt that Tucker was right when he told Trump that, you know, the war in Iran would end his presidency and would be the undoing of him and potentially the MAGA project. And it does feel like we are at the beginning of that happening and it's happening more rapidly than, frankly, I would have expected. But not sad about it.

Ben Rhodes (89:17)

Not sad about it one bit.

Tommy Vietor (89:19)

Not sad about. Okay, well, that's it for us today. Thank you for listening. Thanks for subscribing to Pod Save the World, wherever you get your podcasts or here on YouTube, and we'll talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is NG engineered, mixed and

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edited by Jordan Kanter.

Tommy Vietor (89:49)

Audio support by Charlotte Landis thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of dues and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

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Tommy Vietor (90:11)

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