Trump Torches Every Ally

Summary

Pod Save the World: "Trump Torches Every Ally" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: August 6, 2025

In this episode of Pod Save the World, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes delve into a myriad of pressing global issues, centering primarily around the actions and policies of former President Donald Trump and their ramifications on international relations and humanitarian crises. The discussion is enriched with insights from their interview with Ellie Schlein, the leader of Italy's Democratic Party, highlighting the broader implications of rising far-right movements globally.

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1. Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

The episode opens with a deep dive into the escalating humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Tommy and Ben discuss Israel's blockade, which has severely restricted aid from entering the region, leading to widespread starvation and loss of life. They highlight the shift of aid distribution from the United Nations to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), resulting in tragic consequences, including the deaths of at least 859 Palestinians near GHF distribution sites.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [08:29]: “The president, my president, President Donald Trump, who I can promise you, cares as much about your children, the people who are alive and the people who are not alive.”
• Ben Rhodes [11:01]: Criticizes Netanyahu’s approach, stating, “the perpetuation of this war is what you hear from some other people.”

They further explore the conflicting strategies between Netanyahu and Trump regarding the resolution of the conflict, emphasizing Netanyahu's reluctance to broker a comprehensive peace deal that ensures the end of hostilities.

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2. Violent Settler Activities and U.S. Support

Tommy and Ben shed light on the persistent violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the troubling support these actions receive from certain sectors in the United States, particularly among Republicans and evangelical Christians. They recount recent incidents, including the killing of Auda Hathelin and the lack of accountability faced by perpetrators, exacerbated by the removal of sanctions under Trump’s administration.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes: “GHF is doing what it was intended to do, which is to starve the Palestinians.”

The hosts critique U.S. political figures like Mike Huckabee and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for their overt support of these violent settler movements, painting a picture of complicity that undermines efforts for peace and accountability.

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3. Trump’s Trade War: Impact on India, Lesotho, and Switzerland

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to examining Trump’s erratic trade policies, particularly his imposition of tariffs on India, Lesotho, and Switzerland. The hosts analyze the illogical nature of these tariffs, their disproportionate impact on smaller economies, and the broader geopolitical consequences.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [36:15]: “India has not been a good trading partner... you can’t negotiate your way through those barriers overnight.”
• Ben Rhodes [49:07]: Criticizes the 39% tariff on Switzerland, stating, “They couldn’t pay up.”

They discuss how these tariffs not only harm the targeted countries’ economies but also strain diplomatic relations, highlighting the futility and unpredictability of Trump's trade war tactics.

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4. Internet Freedom in Russia

Tommy and Ben pivot to the tightening grip of the Russian government on internet freedom. They explore the recent measures taken by Putin’s administration to throttle access to popular platforms like YouTube and Telegram, forcing citizens to adopt state-approved alternatives like the "Max" app.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes [60:11]: “The right wing pay attention to this playbook that Putin runs.”

The discussion underscores the increasing sophistication of governmental surveillance and censorship, drawing parallels to other authoritarian regimes and warning of the potential erosion of online freedoms.

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5. Political Developments in Colombia and El Salvador

The conversation shifts to South America, focusing on Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe's conviction for bribery and procedural fraud. Uribe's fall from grace is portrayed as a significant moment for Colombia's fight against corruption and paramilitary influence.

Additionally, the hosts discuss El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele's authoritarian maneuvers, including the abolition of presidential term limits and the extension of his tenure, solidifying his role as a dictatorial figure.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes: “It's like we want to show that we have complete double standards...”

These developments are positioned within the broader context of rising authoritarianism in the region, exacerbated by external influences and internal power consolidations.

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6. Interview with Ellie Schlein: Battling the Far Right in Italy

A highlight of the episode is the interview with Ellie Schlein, leader of Italy's Democratic Party. She discusses the challenges her party faces against the far-right government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Schlein emphasizes the importance of focusing on social justice issues such as minimum wage, healthcare, and education, rather than being distracted by the far-right's identity-focused rhetoric.

Notable Quotes:

• Ellie Schlein [83:13]: “What is the situation of the Italians today... the answer would be definitely worse.”
• Ellie Schlein [88:18]: “We need to be radical in our beliefs and credible in our ideas.”

Schlein outlines strategies for progressive movements to rebuild credibility, form effective coalitions, and shift the electoral focus back to substantive social issues, drawing inspiration from successful mobilizations like climate and feminist movements.

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7. Conclusion: Global Far-Right Movements and Progressive Responses

In wrapping up, Tommy and Ben reflect on the interconnectedness of global far-right movements and the necessity for progressive forces to foster solidarity and coordinated strategies. They advocate for international cooperation among progressive parties to counteract the influence and policies of authoritarian and nationalist leaders.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Rhodes: “We have some really interesting left-wing leaders globally... we need to build deeper connections to them.”
• Ellie Schlein [102:15]: “We have to be radical in our beliefs and credible in our ideas.”

The hosts convey a sense of urgency and optimism, stressing that while the challenges are formidable, unified and principled progressive actions can create meaningful change.

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Key Takeaways:

• Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza: Israel's blockade and alternative aid distribution methods have led to severe humanitarian consequences, with limited international intervention.

• Violent Settler Support: U.S. political factions, particularly among Republicans and evangelicals, are undermining peace efforts in the West Bank through support of violent settlers.

• Erratic Trade Policies: Trump's imposition of tariffs on nations like India, Lesotho, and Switzerland is damaging smaller economies and straining diplomatic ties without clear strategic benefits.

• Erosion of Internet Freedom: Russia's intensified crackdown on internet platforms signals a move towards greater authoritarian control and censorship.

• Rise of Authoritarian Leaders: Political developments in Colombia and El Salvador illustrate the consolidation of power by former leaders amid corruption and human rights abuses.

• Progressive Mobilization: Ellie Schlein's leadership in Italy demonstrates the potential for progressive movements to counteract far-right dominance by focusing on social justice and forming strong coalitions.

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This episode of Pod Save the World provides a comprehensive analysis of the current global political landscape, emphasizing the far-reaching impacts of Trump's policies and the rise of authoritarianism, while highlighting the strategies and hopes of progressive leaders like Ellie Schlein in combating these challenges.

Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

Pod Save 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 Lyft ride, and much, 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, VIP treatment at certain fitness studios and enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month. Built is turning a monthly expense into an opportunity to earn more 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, just by going to join built.comworld. that's J O-I N B I L T.comworld. make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. That's join joinbuilt.comworld. welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Ben, we have yet to hit 150,000 subscribers on YouTube. So I'm going full Trump BLS data truther. And I'm firing our producers and whoever our YouTube rep is.

[Ben Rhodes]

We. If you don't want those people to have that kind of calamity, you can hit that easily by hitting that.

[Tommy Vitor]

Subscribe when the chips are down. You got to blame everyone but yourself. That is a lesson of the Trump era.

[Ben Rhodes]

We're close to 150,000.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, we are actually very close. In all seriousness, like, subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. Subscribe on your podcast if you want, because it helps us a lot. And if you're casual, just kind of dipping in, it doesn't cost anything. And also it helps us surface our content in the. In the algorithm over there on YouTube. But also, Ben, this whole BLS conversation about Trump firing, like, his data, his statisticians, it brought me back to our time at the White House and the amount of time we spent freaked out about the Greek debt crisis. How many meetings were you in about that when it was like, Mr. President, sir, an asteroid is about to hit the planet and explode us in the form of this Greek debt crisis? It was, like, seen as catastrophic.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I always tell people that the thing that would surprise them is that in the first Obama term, I think there are more meetings about the eurozone Greek crisis than any other foreign policy issue.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

People forget that foreign policy and economics are not separate, they overlap.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Like for those not familiar with this, the Greek debt crisis, it was seen as maybe about to take down the eurozone. Yeah. The eurozone, if not the global economy. And basically the gist of what happened was in the 2000s, like several subsequent Greek governments systematically lied about the size of their country's budget deficits and debt. And then when the truth was revealed in 2009, it created this debt crisis that spread across Europe. It impacted the entire global economy. The Greeks needed like three bailouts and they had put in place all these harsh austerity measures that led to basically a decade long recession, the rise of all these far right parties, all this political instability. Like it was a huge deal. Which is why nerds like us, when you see Trump firing like the statistician at bls, makes you worry a little bit.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. If you're not making decisions based on like math and data, you're likely to make mistakes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, big time. Also, Argentina had a few issues here too.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And now I will say that, that there was another side that was always interesting. Like because the Greeks kind of got treated like shit by the Germans and kind of.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes. Angela Merkel.

[Ben Rhodes]

The Argentines got scammed by a bunch of American, like hedge funds. Right. So there's always like there was bad math in both directions on these things.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Bad ma, bad actors. All the above. Anyway, nice trip down memory lane there. On today's show, we are going to talk about the ongoing humanitarian crisis of Gaza, an effort to broker a permanent end to the war, and how it all of a sudden. Well, not all of a sudden, but it's quite clear to me now, Ben, that Netanyahu and Trump are on like totally different pages on both accounts. And the question, I guess, is whether Trump is going to do anything about it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Whether it matters. We're also going to talk about violent settlers in the west bank, how they are enabled by right wing evangelicals in the United States, some major internal is political struggles. Then we're going to talk about Trump's tariff war of words with India and how it's bound up with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how the trade war is upending the economies and politics of smaller countries like Lesotho in Switzerland. We'll talk about Internet access in Russia, a major court verdict in Colombia that will have massive political implications. Already has. And why El Salvador is officially now a dictatorship. Yay.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, he's been calling himself a dictator for a while.

[Tommy Vitor]

So yeah, he's Bukele's happy, I guess. And then you did our interview. What are folks gonna hear this week?

[Ben Rhodes]

So I talked to Ellie Schlein, who is a member of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy, but she's also the leader of the Democratic Party, which is the opposition party in Italy, has some things in common with the US Democratic Party beyond a name which is getting clobbered by right wing neo fascist. But Ellie has really revitalized the Democratic Party that was very much on its back foot after Melania won. They performed far better than people thought in the last European parliamentary election. She's kind of breathed life into them. She's moved them to the left, taken progressive positions on things. She's a younger woman leader. So we talk about what's the state of the battle against the far right, not just in Italy, but across Europe. We talk about what Trump's tariffs, how they're impacting things in Italy and in Europe generally, what Maloney's getting out of her bear hug of Trump, which is not much given the tariffs and other things. So if you want a perspective of, I mean, we hear a lot about what's going wrong on the global center left or progressive left. I think Ellie Schlein is a good example of what might go right of someone who's like taking principal positions, finding innovative ways to fight back, has some good ideas both in the policy and the political space. So it was a great conversation. I had it. I was in Italy for this fellowship that Jacinda Ardern, friend of the pod, has for female politicians. Ellie Schlein had been in that last year, so she's kind of part of this network. But yeah, people should check it out. It's really, if you want, it's a little hope, right? It's a little like, hey, there's some good leaders out there, there's some younger leaders out there, there's some women leaders out there that we should get behind.

[Tommy Vitor]

I like, I like to learn about new, young, exciting, progressive leaders globally. And also it's nice when foreign political parties align their names with ours. Like, it always sucks when you're trying to read about some.

[Ben Rhodes]

The Liberal Party.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, some Liberal Party is like right wing fascist. How did this happen? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Okay, well definitely stick around for that. And Also subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube for more great interviews. All right, Ben, should we start in Gaza again? I feel like this is, it's hard not to going to be where we're at for a while. So last week we talked about how the world had finally woken up to this horrific, extreme humanitarian crisis in Gaza that resulted from Israel blockading all aid from entering Gaza for several months. And then they took responsibility for aid distribution away from the United nations and put it into the hands of this organization called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, or ghf. And those catastrophic decisions led to widespread starvation and the death of at least 859 Palestinians who were killed in the vicinity of GHS distribution sites, often by IDF soldiers who just shot at them. So Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu tried to say there was no starvation in Gaza. He was literally gaslighting us. But even Trump wasn't buying it. So that still, like this week, leaves us with these two urgent, massive problems. Like, first, the need to drastically increase the amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and second, the need to figure out a way to end the war, specifically pressure Israel and Hamas to end the war. On that second point, Ben Trump's special envoy for seemingly everything, Steve Wyckoff, golf buddy, is now articulating a new approach to negotiations with Hamas. Here's a clip of some leaked audio from a recent meeting Wyckoff had with families of Israeli hostages.

[Ben Rhodes]

The president, my president, President Donald Trump, who I can promise you, cares as much about your children, the people who are alive and the people who are not alive. He cares as much about your children.

[Tommy Vitor]

As he would about any American child.

[Ben Rhodes]

That was in there. So I can tell you emphatically that it is his mission statement that everybody comes home. He now believes that everybody ought to.

[Tommy Vitor]

Come home at once.

[Ben Rhodes]

No piecemeal deals. That doesn't work. And we've tried everything. And that's part of it. You're supposed to try everything. But now we think that we have to shift this negotiation to all or nothing. Everybody comes home and we think it's going to be successful and we have a plan around it.

[Tommy Vitor]

So what he's getting away from there is a deal that's like bring back 10 hostages in exchange for a 60 day ceasefire and instead go into an all or nothing approach, like get everybody back, end the war. But at the same time, Witkoff is saying that to hostage families. Netanyahu, according to Israeli media, is giving up on talks and taking the opposite approach, which is preparing to expand the war and fully occupy the Gaza Strip. So these reports came shortly after Hamas and another terrorist organization called Palestinian Islamic Jihad released truly awful videos of two hostages. Both these men are like dangerously emaciated they're begging for help. One was said he's being forced to dig his own grave in the video. It's like, it's horrifying for context, Ben, like the IDF already controls 75% of Gaza. The majority of 2.2 million people in Gaza now live in tents in southern Gaza. So this is the IDF moving into either turf they had previously occupied or just not gone into yet because they were concerned about the risk of IDF operations killing some of the remaining hostages. Another just sticking point for context in the previous talks has been Israel's demand that Hamas disarm and give up control of Gaza fully as part of any deal. That demand was endorsed by all 22 members of the Arab League, but can understand why for Hamas, that would be a non starter. So, Ben, a lot of wind up there, but it feels like a huge, potentially inflection point to me. Trump either can pressure Netanyahu to cut a deal and kind of make good on Steve Wyckoff's word there that he actually cares about getting these hostages home, or what else is going to stop Netanyahu from just expanding the war, permanently occupying the Gaza Strip and this thing just going on in perpetuity.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, this has been the status quo ante for a long time, which is essentially that Hamas's position in these negotiations has been that the hostages will be released, but the war has to end completely. And Netanyahu's never been willing to say that the war will actually end. You know, he wants to make a deal, get some hostages out, and then continue to prosecute the war. And when Witkoff says, like, we're done with this piecemeal approach. Well, no, the piecemeal approach was Netanyahu because he didn't want to envision an end to the war in Gaza because the war in Gaza is kind of tied up in its political survival. And it's also tied up in what is a pretty clear ambition on the Israeli right to use this war to displace people out of Gaza, to ethnically cleanse some or all of it, and to take that land. They say that what Hamas did in Palestinian Islamic Jihad did in releasing those videos is horrific. It doesn't in any way justify the perpetuation of this war, which is what you hear from some other people. I mean, there are. The fact of hostages doesn't require you to starve hundreds of thousands of people.

[Tommy Vitor]

What do you make of the timing of the release?

[Ben Rhodes]

I think Hamas. I don't think we really even understand what Hamas is anymore. I mean, Their leadership has been wiped out. I don't know if it has centralized control. You know, I don't know if one person who's negotiating even can reach back in. I mean, because the reality is, and this is one reason a million that I think the war should end is that there's not much more Israel can do. Military. First of all, the military operation is not about rescuing the hostages and it never has been. And they're proving that they're now conducting a military operation that's about occupying Gaza. But I think with Hamas, they are a shell of what they. He's not destroyed them, he's not destroyed all their military cap. But the idea that Hamas is going to pose some huge threat to Israel if they stop bombing Gaza and starving kids is just not true.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, and just to backstop you on that, I mean, it's not just Ben Rhodes saying that. It's 600 former Israeli security officials wrote an open letter to Netanyahu urging him to end the war. It said in part, including every former.

[Ben Rhodes]

Head of the IDF in the Shin Bet. That's the internal three.

[Tommy Vitor]

Three former Mossad heads, five former heads of the Shin Bet, three former military chiefs of staff. And some of the quotes from the letter were that Hamas quote, no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel and that the IDF quote, has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force dismantling Hamas's military formations and governance. The letter also argues that the only way to get the hostages home is through negotiations.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, which is so self evidently obvious to anybody looking at this. There's just. Netanyahu is completely out of any justification or rationalization for what he's doing, other than if the rationalization is we want this land and we want these people out and we're gonna do whatever, you know, like that's. Sometimes you have to look at what their actions are and actually listen what they say because some of them will say this out loud. They are now focused on reoccupying Gaza, displacing people, probably annexing and settling some land and continuing the project of, of so called Greater Israel, Right. West Bank, Gaza, who knows, maybe parts of southern Lebanon, southern Syria being a part of Israel. Right. So that's what's happening. And so the disconnect in the Trump policy and the Witkoff, you know, is that Trump, everything is short term. It's like, let's get to a hostage release or let's get to a ceasefire, like, but there's a structural problem of what Bibi and the Israeli Right. Is doing that. He's just not, you know, reconciling himself to and Witkoff. Let's just, you know, name. We actually had some nice things to say about him early on when he got that first ceasefire. And what is this guy's result sheet? You know, like Gaza, Ukraine, like Iran. Iran. Remember that he was going to do the Iran deal. Like, where's his deal making Steve Witkoff, you know, other than his son making, you know, billions of dollars in crypto investments with the Trump kids, What is, what is Witkoff really delivering here?

[Tommy Vitor]

Not a lot. And yeah, a beautiful painting, I guess. That's right. You got a Putin did a nice painting. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The other just sort of. There's one other note is there's apparently reportedly a big break between Netanyahu and the current IDF chief of staff, who Netanyahu hand selected about the idea of expanding the war because the IDF is so strained after, you know, conflicts not just with. In Gaza, but also with Iran.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Reservists don't get called up. And meanwhile, so now he's saying he's against his own IDF person. He's firing his attorney general.

[Tommy Vitor]

You know, I mean, it's not, it's a mess. But also, so like on this aid piece, I mean, there was a report just before we started recording in Axios that Witkoff and Trump discussed plans for the United States to, quote, take over the humanitarian relief effort in Gaza. Other Gulf countries would contribute funds, like Jordan and Egypt would be involved somehow. But this quote from somebody to Axios said the starvation problem in Gaza is getting worse. Donald Trump does not like that. He, he does not want babies to starve. He wants mothers to be able to nurse their children. He's becoming fixated on that. The official continued, I don't believe that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Such a bunch of bullshit, you know, like, like, because if he really cared, like, you just call Bibi and say, like, I'm cutting you off, you know, like, or like he went out and cursed at him on Iran. Like, you just, like you keep hearing how much he cares about this and he's not doing anything. And, and because the problem is not the, this is what drives me nuts. The problem is not a lack of food or money. You know, like, there is plenty of food in that part of the world. Much of it is sitting in trucks. Like, it's just weather can get in. We don't need. Sure. The Gulf countries can write checks. Like they will, like, doesn't matter how much food you have if it's not allowed to get to people. Like that's the problem.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's right. I mean, there's sort of two parts to the problem. One is like, clearly the Israelis have an on and off switch when it comes to allowing aid in, right? They can blockade them when they want and they can unblockade the blockade when they, when they feel like, when the pressure gets too great on them. But second, I mean, it's, it's quite clear that Israel has to fully abandon this GHF system and go back to the UN system because the, the transition to this hybrid GHF fake fucking Israeli US carve out, backed by a security contractor system has been part of the disaster and now like it for a couple of reasons. Like, first of all, it's just like an extension of the IDF and has way capacity than the UN did, right? There's just like exponentially fewer distribution points. Also the getting to these four sites in southern Gaza has led to these massacres. And third, at this point, like the famine is so far along that they're distributing the wrong stuff. Like I was reading about how the, the GHF is still distributing like regular dried food to people. But these are like starving people starving to death. They need heavily fortified, specific types of food. You can't give someone like a bag of lentils, especially when they don't have fuel, shelter, a kitchen, clean water, right? Like none of severely malnourished kids can't eat the stuff the GHF is distributing. They also need health care. And so, you know, there just has to be like a fundamental change in how they're doing business.

[Ben Rhodes]

Look, the provocative thing I'll say here, and you know this is when people, some people start disagreeing, is GHF is doing what it was intended to do, which is to starve the Palestinians. I mean, how else Israel is somehow capable of having a pager operation that minutely targets every member of Hezbollah or pinpointing a general in an apartment building in downtown Tehran, but they can't deliver food into Gaza. You think if Israel really wanted, if the Israeli government really wanted people in Gaza to have food, that that operation would look anything like this Potemkin GHF nightmare? If that's not true, prove me wrong. If you think that Israel's earnestly been trying to feed the people of Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, which like George Orwell, couldn't have invented a better name. It's like the Ministry of peace in 1984, if that was a sincere effort that after months has just proven to not work. Then, yeah, tomorrow they could just say, we're gonna let the trucks in, we're gonna let the U.N. you're right. Like, you have to return to the system that works in distributing aid, and that's the UN system. Even if the US Is quote unquote coming in to take it over with the Gulf countries, they're gonna need that UN system to deliver the aid. We tried building a pier under Biden. We tried ghf, we tried airdrops. Let's just go back to driving trucks into Gaza and having hospitals and distribution centers and. Because if not, then it gets awfully hard over time to look like your intent is to not harm these people. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

And also, I mean, Israel made an enormous strategic error in going to this blockade strategy and the GHF strategy because they wanted to. They said they wanted to disempower Hamas. Right. They said Hamas was systemically stealing the food and reselling it, and it was giving them power and funds. But the impact has been the opposite. I mean, it has trained the world's attention on what's happening in Gaza. It has led to massive outcry at, you know, the Israeli government's policy. It's led to countries like France and the UK and Canada to start talking about Palestinian recognition. Like, it's been an enormous backfiring. And so, you know, also the part of this, this negotiation we just mentioned was this. This demand that Hamas lay down arms, like, disarm, stop being in charge of Gaza. And I, like, I can understand that. I understand, like, how Israelis want that.

[Ben Rhodes]

But they're never going to do that.

[Tommy Vitor]

They're just never going to do it.

[Ben Rhodes]

Of course they're not going to do that.

[Tommy Vitor]

They have to get.

[Ben Rhodes]

But this is what drives me crazy about it, is that precisely Israel rightly is like, these people are terrorists, and they're terrorists that don't accept the basic rules of how things should work and want to massacre people. And they're religious extremists too. If that's true, and that is true, of course that kind of organization isn't going to voluntarily disarm and, and surrender, like, precisely because of their ideology. They're never gonna do that. And so if you're setting as your conditions for ending the war something that you know will never happen, you are setting the conditions for the war to never end. And that is the loop that we're.

[Tommy Vitor]

Stuck in and majority of Israelis back cutting a deal to get the hostages home, even if it means ending the war. And they just have to go down that Path.

[Ben Rhodes]

How are they getting out of this war anyway anymore? Like, they, I mean, like the really telling point, I mean, there have been a few, but one was after Sinwar was killed. Killed, because that would be the inevitable point to say we took out the whole leadership of this group, we've dealt it these huge blows, and now it's not a strategic threat, as literally Israeli security leaders say. But that's when the tell about this war being about more than just Hamas is the fact that it never ends. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Another big issue, Ben, has been the west bank violence. A couple weeks ago, we talked about violence at the west bank and the murder of a 20 year old Palestinian American from Tampa in the West Bank. I believe there still has not been an arrest in that case, despite one stern tweet from U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee this week. Another American died because of settler violence. Khamis Ayad, a father of five who had lived in Chicago died of smoke inhalation after settlers set fire to cars and homes in his village. His family believes that tear gas was also fired by the idf and that was a contributing factor. Last Monday, an activist and father of three named Auda Hathelin was shot in the chest by a settler. He helped make the documentary no Other Land, which won an Oscar last year. This story is, is awful. A settler was driving a bulldozer in this Palestinian community. It damaged the main water pipe that was used. So this villager asked him to stop. The driver got out, knocked him down. Palestinians started throwing rocks. And it prompted this other settler, you know, Levy, to come out with a gun and begin firing, sort of like at random, all over the place, which killed Hathelin, who was just standing a ways away. And this, this settler who fired the shot had been previously sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration for settler violence. Those sanctions were removed by Trump in January. Thank you, Mr. Trump, for that. This guy, the settler was detained. He was charged with negligent homicide, but then released on house arrest on Friday. Since then, the IDF has arrested five of Hathelin's family members who were at the scene at the time. They still have not released his body, even though an autopsy was done. And the women of the village are on a hunger strike until he's returned. So just again, summarize. The murderer was released on house arrest and there's been no accountability. So all of this is a bit of context, Ben, just to get at the ways Republicans and evangelical Christians in the US are propping up and supporting these violent settlers. So Mike Huckabee who we just made fun of the current ambassador, U.S. ambassador to Israel, supports the settler movement, by the way. If you want to waste 15 minutes and get yourself really mad, you should read the puff piece profile of Huckabee in the Times.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, what the fuck was that?

[Tommy Vitor]

Like? It was so weird.

[Ben Rhodes]

It was so weird. I was like, what am I? Is this like newsmax? Like, it was a weird thing to read.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's like in this moment of this horrific humanitarian crisis, you're doing this.

[Ben Rhodes]

Kind of like gauzy beet sweetener with Mike Hakabee.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, you're quoting his like 2008 campaign manager, talking about what a rock star Mike was when you visited Israel with him. So bad. But anyway, sorry. In addition to that though, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is in Israel right now. He's visiting an illegal settlement in the West Bank. His trip was organized by a woman named Heather Johnson. She leads a group called the U. S. Israel Education Association. Johnson is a self described world renowned speaker on the Jewish Christian relationship in modern Israel in biblical prophecy. In English that means she's a Christian Zionist who believes she's helping facilitate unfolding prophecies. Prophecies like the second coming of Jesus Christ and Jews like you, Ben, being converted or burning. The Jerusalem Post quoted Johnson as saying, quote, judea and Samaria are the front lines of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it. This was Speaker Johnson, Even if the world thinks otherwise, we stand with you. So Ben, Speaker Johnson's visit, he's clearly there, like kind of reacting to the pledges from France, the uk, Canada that we mentioned earlier to recognize the Palestinian state. But in practice, he's just propping up like right wing, crazy, violent extremists.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, the Judea and Samara, you know, people should know that that is basically saying there is no west bank, there is no Palestine, there are no Palestinians. Judea and Samarra is the term for basically the Greater Israel that encompasses the west bank to Judea and Samarra being like these biblical lands of Greater Israel. So that's, that's literally Mike Johnson, you know, endorsing the annexation of the west bank as part of Israel.

[Tommy Vitor]

Huckabee said there is no Palestinian, by the way. That was a while back.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, we always have the debate about genocide. This is erasure. I mean, look like you're saying that they, these people don't exist. They happen to live in a place that's not theirs and need to leave. Like so that's at least erasure of Palestinian identity from American politicians like Mike Johnson. And I think what's important for people to realize, probably people who are listening to this podcast or maybe where your algorithm has you on Instagram or X or wherever you are. TikTok, it's a reminder that actually even if it feels like there's this mass movement of opinion against what Israel's doing and in favor of, you know, humanitarian assistance and movement towards Palestinian recognition, that actually really fucking the actual most powerful people in the world, Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, people like that are actually fully on board with this project. And we have to remind ourselves of that. Right. Because of all the images you consumed last week, of all the celebrities, all the statements, the image of Mike Johnson saying Jude and Samara is probably the most important thing that happened. There's the speaker of the House. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

And also there's some recent polling, there's a conservative group called the Vandenberg Coalition, but they release August poll about like Trump voters foreign policy views that found 83% of respondents said they believe Israel has the right to defend itself and that the US should support Israel's efforts to that end. So like, to your point, it does like, like it's been a sea change recently. I'm really glad to see people caring and paying attention. But like Republican voters, especially evangelicals, are hardcore in support of Israel.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And some of that's because of like this deep multi decade commitment in building this kind of evangelical bridge to the Israeli right and the settler movement. And part of that's just like Palestinian lives don't really matter. They're brown people. And part of that's like whatever Trump's for, you know, there's still these multifaceted now there are cracks. Right. And you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan and Steve Bannon, like, so you're starting to see signals. The question is, you know, everybody focuses, it's interesting, everybody focuses on the Democratic Party in Israel, as you know, understandably, given that the Democratic Party's generally been home to Jews and our politicians look like hypocrites. But there might be an interesting like, you know, fight beginning to brew on parts of the fringes of the Republican coalition.

[Tommy Vitor]

Peel away 20%.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And that would make a big difference.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Well, on the Democratic side in Congress, Representative Ro Khan has gotten over a dozen House Democrats to back recognizing a Palestinian state. That's a good thing. I did notice, Ben, that when Canada started talking about recognizing a Palestinian state, Trump took to truth, social to threaten them, he wrote. Wow. Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them. Oh, Canada. So I guess trade deals are now about Israel.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, I read that and I was like, is that America First? No, it's America First. So you. Let's get this straight. You have to pay higher prices because we're going to tariff lumber from Canada because we don't want Canada to recognize Palestine. That's an America first foreign policy. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

And Also for about 10 hours yesterday, it seemed like getting FEMA funds was predicated on your support for Israel. So that was odds.

[Ben Rhodes]

Opposition to BDS is a requirement to get FEMA assistance. Also not very America First. So there is a glaring. I mean, not that there's a tremendous amount of ideological coherence to everything Trump does, but there is a glaring contradiction between his kind of America first ism and his position on all things related to supporting the Israeli right wing. And similarly, we'll get to this on tariffs, too, and Russian nuke subs. I mean, this is not exactly like a guy that is extracting the United States from international conflict. He's just getting us either deeper into existing ones or creating new ones himself.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, he's like literal Twitter fights are leading to submarine deployments, seemingly. So that's. Yeah, you're right. We'll get there.

[Ben Rhodes]

We'll get there. But yeah, sure, we'll get there. I'll save my takes because I've got some sizzling hot ones.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'm excited to hear these just two final kind of internal Israeli kind of political matters. First, on Monday, the cabinet voted to fire the Israeli Attorney General. So Netanyahu hates her, the Attorney General, because she opposed his judicial coup in 2023. You know, for those who. Who were not paying attention. Then there was Netanyahu's attempt to gut the independence of the Israeli judicial system and take control of it. She also blocked Netanyahu's attempt to fire Ronan Barr, the head of the Shin Bet, their FBI equivalent.

[Ben Rhodes]

This all sounds so familiar.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know. Bard also been investigating Netanyahu's AIDS for corruption. And then she oversees Bibi's corruption trial. For now, that firing is frozen by the Supreme Court, but we'll see what happens. But it's a big data point on sort of the Netanyahu as authoritarian leader, selfish political actor sort of docket. Also, Ben, we've talked a lot about this crazy, truly extremist far right minister named Itamar Ben Gvir, who's the National Security Minister currently. Earlier this week, Ben GVIR took a visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, which the Jews call the Temple Mount. It's a holy site for Jews and Muslims, and there's a long standing agreement that Jews can visit but not pray there. So, of course, Ben Gvir's office released a video of him praying there where he said, quote, in his prayers, quote, it's important to convey from this place that we should immediately conquer Gaza, exercise our sovereignty there, and eliminate every last Hamas member. So, Ben, in normal times, like those actions, those comments from Ben GVIR would be viewed as kind of the most dangerous possible political incitement. In the past, things he's done has been seen as precipitating wars. Basically, it seems like in this case, his entire goal is kind of just to blow up any hope of a ceasefire deal. But Jesus Christ, man. Like, it's. It's bad.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's messing with, like, the deepest chords. And once you start, you know, weaponizing the holy sites in that way, you know, when he says every last member of Hamas, he means every Palestinian in Gaza, because Ben GVIR draws no distinction between an ordinary Palestinian civilian and Hamas. And it's just, again, a reminder of, like, who's actually in the driver's seat. You know, it's still these people in the driver's seat.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, this is a man sanctioned by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the uk.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Israeli minister.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, you know, he's a terrorist. I mean, he was convicted, you know, if you find that offense. He was convicted by Israel of terrorism related offenses like this is who's in charge.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, he used to be banned from Israeli political life, in part because he used to have a photo on his wall of a man named Bruce Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians who were praying at a mosque. So that's the kind of guy we're talking about. POD Save the World is brought to you by Strawberry Me. The clock is ticking. Sure is. See what I did there? The days are rolling by, turning into weeks, months, years. Andy Rooney. We spend nearly a third of our waking hours at work. But the unfortunate truth is that for many of us, that's time languishing away in a job we've outgrown or one we never wanted in the first place. But we stick with it and say things like, I've already put years into this place. What if the next move is even worse? I can't afford to take a wrong step. And isn't everyone kind of miserable at work? Don't fool yourself. There's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck. And that's exactly what today's sponsor, Strawberry Me can help you do. They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be. Your coach helps you figure out your goals, create a plan, build your confidence, and keeps you accountable all along the way so you don't leave your career to chance. There's still plenty of time to take action, time to own your future. With a professional coach in your corner. The reasons to do so outweigh the excuses not to head to strawberry me/world to claim a special offer that strawberry me/world stop settling. Start building the career you actually want.

[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, let's turn to tariffs, especially the Twitter tariff war between Trump and India, because I think we're used to like kind of the flailing, you know, tariff by tweet policy. But I was sort of surprised to see India get pulled into the crosshairs given the stakes here. So just to rewind the tape a bit, Ben Last week Trump announced a 25% tariff on India. He said he's angry about trade barriers and also suggested that he would add some sort of additional penalty because India was buying or selling military equipment with Russia. This 25 tariff is supposed to go into place on August 7, but since that additional, you know, sort of threat, Trump has been popping off on India for buying Russian oil and gas. This is from a Truth Social post on Monday. Quote, India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian oil, they are then for much of the oil, purchase it, selling it on the open market for big profits. They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine, end quote. Pretty incredible if you just figured that out. Ben India responded by calling Trump's tariff threats unjustified and unreasonable. The Russians said, quote, attempts to force countries to stop trade relations with them are not legitimate. So Ben Trump went on CNBC Tuesday to try to kind of smooth things Over. Let's listen.

[Ben Rhodes]

So India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us, but we don't do business with them. So we settled on 25%, but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they're buying Russian oil, they're fueling the war machine, and if they're going to do that, then I'm not going to be happy.

[Tommy Vitor]

So India and China have long been the largest purchasers of Russian oil since the Russian invasion. I guess he's just figuring that out. Trump has also announced that August 8th is the new deadline for Russia and Ukraine to figure out a ceasefire deal. Putin is trying to, you know, tap along, as Trump would say, by saying he'd consider a meeting or having Dmitry Peskov as spokesman say he'd consider a meeting. But I don't know. Busy month, I guess. Ben, I thought Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had kind of a bromance going. Where do you think this turbulence is coming from?

[Ben Rhodes]

I don't know. It's peculiar to me because clearly, Trump is not just decided. I mean, the one thing we've always said about terrorists that I think if you want to hold on to one truism, it's that they're never going to go away. That Trump likes to turn the dial up. He likes to focus on a different country every week, and he decided to focus on India and them buying Russian oil and gas is not some new thing that just popped up. I mean, he would have been aware of this in January, February. He would have been aware of this on the original Liberation Day. And so he's kind of grabbed onto this as one of the reasons why he's hammering them with tariffs. There's a number of things that are notable about it. One is just so people know, and the Biden people have said this, they kind of gave India a pass in part because India, remember, there were price caps set on how much you could pay for Russian oil and gas. And the Indians are actually paying at that price cap, so it was a lower price point. Ideally, you'd want them to not buy any, I guess, but they have hundreds of millions of people that need electricity, and they can buy this oil and gas cheap. And they thought they were doing that as part of a U.S. strategy. And so now they're being punished for having kind of agreed to do that. It's also like, Modi could not have gone more out of his way to be a buddy of Trump's. Remember the Howdy Modi rally where Modi basically endorsed Trump's reelection in 2020? I will say there's a whole bunch of constituencies in the United States that falsely thought that Trump was their friend. Some is this kind of pro Modi Indian American community that is, lo and behold, finding that Trump is not a reliable friend. You know, Modi's finding that Trump is not a reliable friend. I don't know what he's doing. I mean, I think, you know, there are a lot of trade barriers that India has, and you want to negotiate your way through those, but you're not going to do that overnight because it's a big, complex economy. The one other thing I want to say about this, so it's really worth, like, putting a pin in, is we are now fighting with the Chinese, we are fighting more with the Russians, we're fighting with the Indians. We're kind of trying to humiliate the Europeans constantly. Yeah. Who we are. Like, where are the French? Like, this is a recipe for the rest of the world to literally gang up on us. I would have at least thought you tried to hug India into your team. Right. You know, if you want to stand up to the Chinese, like, fighting all them together seems like a really dumb strategy.

[Tommy Vitor]

And I think Trump was complaining about, like, agricultural import barriers in India, but, like. Like, that is not a place where Modi can give. Like, so many of his constituents are living on the edge of poverty because they are farmers. And if all of a sudden more US Agricultural products are flooding into India, that will be devastating for him, devastating for the economy.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, you'll remember years ago, there was this, like, strike among farmers that basically shut down India. The most dangerous moment Modi's had as Prime Minister. You've got hundreds of millions of people who rely on agriculture. Many of them are subsistence farmers. And so if you are demanding that the Indians allow all agricultural products to flow in from the U.S. those people are going to fucking strike again and shut the economy down. So this is what happens when you try to negotiate trade deals in 30 days, 90 days. Like, India is not going to be able to do that.

[Tommy Vitor]

And they must just be so confused. Like, what is this guy mad about? This is a completely random aside. Something made me think of it. Did you see that the Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary and now acting NASA administrator, announced plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon?

[Ben Rhodes]

No, I. I somehow missed that. They want to do it.

[Tommy Vitor]

They want to do some sort of, like, 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor. On the moon by 2030. It's so funny to have your. Your acting. Acting. The guy who has no idea what he's doing. Road Rules guy. Acting administrator announcing massive, like, budget cuts over at NASA. And, like, they're firing. They're dojing all these people, but also they want to build.

[Ben Rhodes]

No Medicaid. But we'll put. You know what one of my problems is with the Trump Cabinet is that I, A, I kind of missed a decade of pop culture when we were in the White House. But B, I never watched, like, Road Rules or Good Stuff, the Duck Family or whatever that one was.

[Tommy Vitor]

I didn't watch Duck Dynasty.

[Ben Rhodes]

And these people are all in the Cabinet now.

[Tommy Vitor]

I know, man.

[Ben Rhodes]

Sean Duffy, Road Rules. I'm like, well, I didn't watch fucking Road Rules.

[Tommy Vitor]

You gotta go back.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, there's a lot of people from.

[Tommy Vitor]

There are a lot. They're all like, fox.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it is. It's weird. All right. That was a random thing. Another trade thing we wanted.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, we should be aware if we're going to have a nuclear plan on.

[Tommy Vitor]

The moon, it seems like a big deal.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't want to put nukes on the moon. Also, I don't know. I don't understand power generation, but maybe let's try solar.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

It feels like you have good access.

[Ben Rhodes]

They'll do anything to not use solar.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I know. All right, Ben, so remember in Trump's joint session speech, that's the State of the Union.

[Ben Rhodes]

Who could forget?

[Tommy Vitor]

But it's. We call the joint session when it's the first time for. For reasons I forget, this dorky. In that speech, Trump made fun of an African country named Le Lesotho. He called it a country quote, nobody has ever heard of. So a few weeks later, on Liberation Day, Trump once again decided to kick the out of Lesotho by slapping them with a whopping 50% tariff. And everyone is like, what? Why? Why are we doing this? Because this is a tiny, landlocked country. It's home to, like, about 2 million people. Many of them live in poverty and is the furthest thing from a threat to the U.S. economy or to U.S. manufacturing jobs. So why are we, like, tariffing the life out of them? And Trump's goons at the time pointed to the US Trade deficit with Lesotho to justify the tariff rate. So the US Imported.

[Ben Rhodes]

Insane. Usually they have no money to buy anything from us.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. So we. We import, like, $235 million worth of goods from them, mostly textiles. We imp. They imported, like, $3 million worth of US stuff, which, again, is not surprising.

[Ben Rhodes]

They don't have money to buy our stuff. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's an impoverished country. So ultimately, Trump ends up, well, fast forwarding a bit. He ends up slapping a 15% tariff on Lesotho, which is not insane, like 50%, but it is still enough to do enormous damage to their economy. But some of it was already permanently done, right, because the threat of the 50% tariff, all kinds of other cuts just like, kind of cratered their industries and made companies look other places for textiles. And so the, the textile industry is the largest industry. It employs over 30,000 people, many of them women. It's like clients like, you know, Levi's, Walmart, etc. And so you have these, these, these companies in Lesotho being crushed. And you also have countries more like diplomatic clout taking advantage of the tariffs that Trump's putting in place on others to poach business. You got scammy lobbyists going to countries like Lesotho and trying to demand millions of dollars to pay for lobbying. And so before the tariffs, I mean. Ben, do you want to explain how the African Growth and Opportunity act, which is about to expire, had kind of helped these smaller countries export things to the U.S. yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

No, I mean, the United States deliberately, through the African Growth and Opportunity act, agoa, set up these kind of trade preferences to try to create economic growth by getting rid of barriers for them to sell goods into the United states for the U.S. therefore, to provide investment. And the idea was, if these are growing economies, it's going to be good for them. You know, it's going to lift people out of poverty, but ultimately it's also going to create markets. The way that you actually address in the long term, the trade deficit issue in a place like Africa is you need places like Kenya and South Africa to become rich enough and have a middle class to have middle class. It's suddenly they're also consumers. And then you have a more mature trading relationship. So you have to kind of help them develop to the point when you have a more mature trading relationship and cutting them off. And by the way, what China's answer to that is that we're just going to pour money into your country and build stuff and build infrastructure which they actually like better than these kind of negotiate because they had to agree to a bunch of other steps in order to be a part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. They had to kind of make changes and reforms and kind of set up economies that plug into our capitalism and stuff. Right. So it's not like, we didn't get anything out of this. Chinese come with no strings attached, and they just build infrastructure and maybe pay some people off and they're making investments. And so I think what's so horrific about this is, first of all, you're right, Lesotho can't compete because they can't hire the fake lobbyists that get them out of jail. But they're also not big enough as a textile industry. Bangladesh will be hurt a lot by terrorists, but there's such a big infrastructure of textiles that it's hard for big companies to just move operations out. You know, it's easy to close up if you're looking at where can we cut costs and not want to pay tariffs. You just start with the smaller countries who are also the countries that are more vulnerable to the USAID cutoff.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so we are doubly fucking these countries over in ways that will lead to, like, death and poverty and disease. Like, so this is something that is, you know, not a small stain on the Trump administration and the country.

[Tommy Vitor]

This is the bigger point I wanted to get at because, like, we've kind of moved on from the Elon Doge madness and the devastation of usaid, but the impact is still rippling out on top of that, like the tariff craziness. The letters, they're kind of like one day stories now because it happens so often, but in a country like, like Lesotho, like, it is going to cause irreparable damage. I was listening to the BBC Global News podcast a couple days ago. They did this story about, like, trying to combat child sex abuse and trafficking in Kenya. And they were interviewing this woman who had been a sex worker for 40 years, and now she's like, dedicated her life to taking in young girls who escape this evil trafficking. And this woman, like, in addition to taking in these girls, she tries to provide HIV AIDS protection to people in the community. Like, mostly condoms, but now all the condoms are drying up and about to be gone. And the people who are employed by USAID to do that work are about to be unemployed. So this whole community is just absolutely devastated because we pulled the rug on them.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And it has political impacts too, because, like, the people I've talked to over the years in Lesotho are kind of, you know, there's a king there, you know, shocker. He's not the best, most benign leader and he's an autocrat. There's a lot of corruption. And what happens when you withdraw, you know, when industry dies up like this and revenue dries up and USAID dries up like the place becomes more autocratic, right? There's less resources that are more under the control of the bad guys and then there's more of a black market, there's more criminality, there's more human. I'm not saying all these things are necessarily definitely going to happen in Lesotho, but I do think across all these countries that are being hurt in this way, the worst actors tend to benefit in a weird way from, you know, this kind of economic collapse or this kind of withdrawal of international support.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's great work, Mr. Trump. Sort of. Related story. I mean, also in the barrel this week, Ben, is Switzerland, which got completely hosed with a 39% tariff rate last Friday, one of the highest in the world. Only Laos, Myanmar and Syria are higher. I think that 40 to 41%, which is a very weird list by the way. I don't understand why that we're tariffing Syria at 40%. But anyway, so what happened here with Switzerland? It seems like it was a lethal mix of Europeans thinking they were negotiating in good faith and Trump's complete and total economic ignorance to back up. So the, the Swiss have been negotiating for months with the U.S. trade Rep. Jameson Greer, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant. I think their goal was to land at like a 10 or 15% tariff coupled with a big investment, 150 billion investment by the Swiss into the US.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, these fake announcements.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, these fake announcements. Trump thinks it's like a sovereign wealth fund for him. But then on Thursday, the Swiss president, Karine Keller Sutter had a 20 minute call with Trump that went terribly and per usual, Trump got fixated on the US Trade deficit with Switzerland. Trump did this phoner interview with cnbc. He talked about a lot of crazy, but this is the part where he started ranting about Switzerland.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's time that they pay up and they have to pay up. We couldn't afford to have the deficits. Look, I did something with Switzerland the other day. I spoke to their prime minister. The woman was nice, but she didn't want to listen. And they paid essentially no tariffs. And I said, we have a $41 billion deficit with you, madam. I didn't know her. I said, we have a $41 billion deficit and you want to pay 1% tariffs. You wanted 1%. I said, you're not going to pay 1%.

[Tommy Vitor]

So after that very happy call with Trump, which I think this all happened coincidentally on Swiss National Day, the country got hit with a 39% tariff. A Swiss tabloid called this Switzerland's biggest loss since 1515 when the French beat Switzerland in the Battle of Marignano. More on that in a bit.

[Ben Rhodes]

So.

[Tommy Vitor]

But, Ben, to just explain to listeners why we have a trade deficit with Switzerland, it's because of gold. Switzerland refines about a third of the world's gold. They export it in the form of gold bars, most of which goes to New Jersey.

[Ben Rhodes]

Bob Menendez. Under the bed.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes, right under the bed. In the closet, in the, in the vest. But gold makes up two thirds of recent Swiss exports to America. It's exempted by tariffs. Their second biggest export is pharmaceuticals, which Trump has been making a lot of noise about, too. Last week, Trump sent letters to 17 pharma companies, two of them Swiss, demanding lower prices. But the administration has yet to set a tariff policy on drugs. So pharmaceuticals are still tariff free. But after this just weekend of, you know, what the hell is going on in Switzerland, the Swiss president had to hop on a plane to Washington to try to fix the damage and get a more attractive offer. But, like, none of this just seems like a good way to run a railroad. It kind of gets back to your question at the top, like, who are our allies again?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, are you really worried about the Swiss? I mean, when you look out at the world, this is not the country that you should be stressed out about. Alps, they've got Alps. They've got cheese, they've got a lot of money. It's fine. They're a small country. Where is this all going? Because it's clearly not going to end in Trump's presidency. There's endless tariffs. These countries are going to take. The Swiss do have, in case you aren't aware, like a relatively healthy banking sector that is strategically important.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'm sure Donald Trump probably likes it, too.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I mean, but they could, they could take that and, you know, deal with the Russians or the, you know, we are just creating so many incentives for these countries to literally, yeah, maybe they'll fly to us and they'll promise to invest $1 trillion in the US economy. And it'd be some fake announcement to get the terrorists down. But then they're gonna fly home and just start really aggressively working to figure out how to be like, treat us like some, like the drunk that, like, they don't want to allow into the, into the, the neighborhood, you know?

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, it also just, they might fly home on an F35 because in 2021, they agreed to buy 36 F35s at a price of $7.5 billion, if not more yeah. So it's like, seems like they're doing some pretty good investing in all the things Trump wants.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, there's no logic to this. I mean, Lesotho, India and Switzerland, the three countries we've talked about, have nothing in common and they're totally different reasons. With India, it's like he's now mad about them buying Russian gas. Lesotho, it's like a trade deficit that makes no sense. Like Switzerland, I don't. None of this makes sense either mathematically or politically.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, it's idiotic. But. But the battle of French versus Swiss, so you get some storied kind of old school programs, like a Big Ten matchup. The Battle of Marignano was the last major engagement of the war of the League of Cambrai, which was part of the broader Italian wars from 1494 to 1559. So I think this is sort of like a bowl game in the old school BCS process. I'm just trying to make sense of any of this and work it in some.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, I just, you know, the only good thing came out of it is maybe the Swiss were like knocked back on their ass and, like, didn't get to be the kind of like, major Catholic power in that part of Western Europe. But, like, whatever sent them into neutrality, like, neutrality worked out pretty well for the Swiss. Like, they kept their head down during those two world wars that happened last century.

[Tommy Vitor]

Got some of that chocolate, too. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but as we mentioned last week, Ben, Crooked Media Vote Save America. We're hosting our first ever Crooked Con. Crooked Con is a chance to join America's smartest organizers and least annoying politicians to strategize, debate and commiserate about where we go from here. Hopefully up. We will be in Washington, D.C. november 6th and 7th. It's going to be amazing. Starting with a Positive America live show at the Warner theater on Thursday, November 6th. Then on Friday, November 7th, we'll be at the Wharf, joined by some of the smartest, most influential names in politics for a full day of conversations, workshops, live pods, interviews, conversation. We're trying to build a big democracy movement here, Ben.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm going to be there and we.

[Tommy Vitor]

Need to talk about it. You're going to be there and it's going to be fun. I think it'll be a really good time. I actually think, like, politics in the online world feel so terrible whenever I get together in person with people. It's fun. Yeah. So go to crookedcon.com crookedcon.com for tick ups lineup announcements, much more. And we have a discount code that you can use to buy your November 7th ticket early. It's freedom and content. So that's the code. Crookedcon.com Freedom and content is the code for getting tickets early. Discount tickets are limited, so act fast. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Listen, you listening to this show right now, you know how scary and terrible the world can be. It's bad stuff happening everywhere. There's new horrors you learn about every day in the news, thanks to me and Ben. Usually there's a lot of reasons to need therapy. There's all that stuff I just said. There's your home life, there's your work life, their life. In between, there's some dark, dark secrets that you've bottled away that you've shoved deep down inside that want to come out. Because as a child, you weren't encouraged to talk about your feelings anyway. These days it feels like there's advice for everything. Cold plunges, gratitude journals, screen detoxes. But how do you know what actually works for you? With the Internet and information overload about mental health and wellness, it can be a struggle to know what's true and what actions to take these days. Using trusted resources and talking to live therapists can get you personalized recommendations and help you break through the noise. With over 30, 000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average of 4.9 out of 5 rating for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. It's also convenient you can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 off their first month at betterhelp.com Crooked World that's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com CrookedWorld Heading back to school?

[Ben Rhodes]

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[Tommy Vitor]

Okay, well, we've talked about Russia a bit. Let's talk about internal Russian stuff. We've always talked about the war in Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it's been a while since we talked about, like, the political climate inside Russia. And this story caught our eye. So it's about online freedom in Russia. Ben. A lot of this came from a recent New York Times piece. And then there was a really interesting broader report from Human Rights Watch on Internet freedom in Russia generally. So I bet a lot of listeners think, like, Russia run by a dictator. Vladimir Putin, he probably cracks down on all news and information like they do in China or North Korea. The reality is much more complicated than that. Before the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there were censorship rules. There was like data monitoring and storage requirements for a lot of companies. But Russians themselves, they could access western news sites. They could use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. Some websites were blocked. But Internet savvy Russians would use a vpn.

[Ben Rhodes]

Vpn, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

They would just figure it out. Things changed a lot in 2022 by like March of that year, I think Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were all blocked, as were some western media sites. But YouTube was widely available. Telegram also remained widely available. But then recently, the Russian government has cracked down even further. YouTube has been throttled. Russians are being forced to kind of squeeze into using a domestic competitor. And that's a big deal because Russian activists like Alexei Navalny used YouTube to gain big followings and disseminate really powerful information about government corruption. I remember you flagged some of those videos for me back in the day of like Navalny's guys flying drones over, you know, palaces. Putin's literally billion dollar Black Sea palace videos got millions and millions million of views. And they're incredibly well done and savvy and like, spread like wildfire.

[Ben Rhodes]

More subs than we have.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, thank you. We got to correct that. And so as of this time last year, I think an estimated 79% of Russians over 12 used YouTube monthly. So it was like, you know, spread everywhere. So killing it would be a big deal. The. The Times also dug into how the Russian government is now building out like a state approved set of apps that can be more easily monitored. One is in messaging app they're calling Max. Starting in September, smartphones sold in Russia will be required to pre install Max. Ultimately, Putin seems to want Max to be like kind of WeChat. In China, which combines messaging, social media, payments, government services, I guess there was a new law mandating that the Russian government services like be offered via Max. Somehow I'm not sure that works. This sort of seems like a signal that Russia might ban WhatsApp, which has 100 million monthly users in Russia. And maybe Telegram. Although the Russian government, they like, they kind of like Telegram.

[Ben Rhodes]

Telegram. Be hard for them.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, they spread their on Telegram too, so we'll see. But VPN use is still prevalent. But the government is taking steps to crack down on VPNs. They're banning them. They're telling Apple to stop allowing VPNs in the Apple Store. In Russia, they're banning VPN ads. You can't Learn about new VPNs if you're a Russian citizen. And now a new law is penalizing not just sharing, but also searching for quote, unquote, extremist content, like stuff produced by Alexei Navalny's organization. So that it was just sort of an interesting window into Putin's brand of authoritarianism. It's not like totalitarian people can still get information if they want, but the question is like, is it too scary to try? Did they maybe not want to really know the truth about the war in Ukraine? And then the online walls are definitely just closing in here.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it's kind of like if the Chinese have the extreme example, right. In China, essentially anything that is online you have to assume is subject to potential surveillance, which creates a self censorship. Right. You don't know what is being watched, but you assume that it can all be watched because it's funneled into these platforms that the government has entry into. And also there's a heavy degree of censorship. So you can't learn about certain things, but you can learn about the great wisdom of Xi Jinping, et cetera. What's interesting here is that, that Putin is kind of creating a model that is moving in that direction. Again, you can have the illusion of connectivity. You can go to a website where there's news. You can do stuff on Telegram. But what's happening over time is the surveillance capacity is increasing. The demonstration cases of people being punished for stuff online starts to circulate. That leads to self censorship where people just aren't gonna say things. Not just online, but also on even things like Telegram, which is ostensibly encrypted. And because there's less and less platforms, it's easier to monitor those platforms, bully those platforms, et cetera.

[Tommy Vitor]

Especially with AI.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, because AI, as we've talked about. Like, I used to think, well, it's not like the Chinese government can read everybody's text. Well, the AI can, you know, so, like, AI can filter through everything. I hate to say this, but it's worth watching what's happening in Russia because it's not inconceivable that you start to see similar approaches here. And I mean, what we've seen is this playbook, right. Migrate from Russia to Hungary to the us. So I'm not suggesting we're going to wake up tomorrow and it's going to be like that. But the American right pays attention to this playbook that Putin runs. And you might start to see some aspects of it start to pop up here. Right. Preferred platform. And you already do. Like, there are preferred platforms and there are platforms that are bullied. There's monitoring of social media. Like it's now US Government policy that you have to monitor the social media of, like, students who are coming here.

[Tommy Vitor]

And things like that.

[Ben Rhodes]

So there's a creeping, you know, there's a creeping prevalence of some of these tactics here. And so unfortunately, we may not be, you know, if the Russians are getting closer to the Chinese, we may not be there, but I wouldn't be shocked to see some of these practices start to creep in here.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Also, this is a random aside, but it's kind of funny that Warner Brothers destroyed one of the greatest brand IDs ever and getting rid of HBO and renamed it Max. And that's also the Russian messaging app.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, if you want to watch, like, good content, it's still the Conan o' Brien hot ones rant about the HBO Max name change.

[Tommy Vitor]

What an episode. Full send from that guy.

[Ben Rhodes]

Salute you.

[Tommy Vitor]

I do, too. All right, let's turn to a couple of stories out of Latin America. So, former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was found guilty of bribery and procedural fraud. The gist of the case goes back a long time, but just the gist of it is that a lawyer working for Aribe tried to bribe a former paramilitary member to retract testimony where he said Aribe founded and financed a paramilitary group in the 1990s. This case, this, this verdict is an enormous deal for Colombia. Uribe was president from 2002 to 2010. He's a towering figure in Colombian politics. The case has been going on for over a decade. It started after Arribe accused a leftist senator of slander, after the senator brought witnesses into the Congress to testify about Uribe and his brother forming this right wing paramilitary group in the 90s. But the broader roots of the conflict go back to the 60s. Internal battles in Colombia between the Colombian government, Marxist guerrilla groups, right wing paramilitary groups, drug cartels, others. So, Ben, do you want to just sort of sound off on why this is such a big deal?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it's a. Uribe is the absolute dominant figure in right wing Colombian politics of the last last 25 years. Right. And he was president for eight during that time. He took a very hard line against the farc. That was originally a left wing insurgency. They'd been fighting a civil war for decades. And he kind of has roots. If Latin American politics often have these left right conflicts, the Colombian right has these problematic roots of paramilitaries, death squads. So you had the Colombian military fighting the farc, but you also had these kind of vigilante paramilitary right wing groups that guys like Uribe were kind of swimming in the same pool as Uribe after 2010. He's succeeded by his defense minister, Santos, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a peaceful end to that conflict. Uribe came out against that peace deal. He went full Bolsonaro. Right. He became Trumpy. He was tight with right wing Colombians in Florida, and he was constantly at odds with the increasingly left strain of Colombian politics. So the current Colombian president, Petro, he's kind of emblematic of the Colombian left, Ribe's emblematic of the Colombian right. Always a whiff of corruption around this guy. Always a whiff of being in veteran paramilitaries. So I have not delved into the details of the case, but it's not a surprise that. That this would happen in the sense of him potentially being connected to these things. What is clear is that Lula in Brazil with Bolsonaro and Petro and Colombia with Uribe, don't give a fuck. You know, they're going for accountability. They don't give a shit who they're going to piss off. They're not worried about Trump. And this is a big, you know, fuck you to Trump in some ways, because I don't think Trump's like buddies with Eribay, but that's his guy. You know, if he has a guy.

[Tommy Vitor]

In Colombia, that's his million.

[Ben Rhodes]

The Bolsonaro of Colombia. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

For sure.

[Ben Rhodes]

So it's also Petro saying, I'm not afraid of, like, getting randomly tariffed over this, you know, because I think this guy should be held accountable.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. I mean, on July 28, Marco Rubio tweeted, quote, former Colombian President Uribe's only crime has been to tiresome buddies with Arubi and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia's judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent. So once again, they're coming down hard on efforts for accountability.

[Ben Rhodes]

Coincident only when it's left wing leaders in charge of the countries. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

So, and I think like this lawyer, like, I think they got him on tape trying these paramilitary groups to retract.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

For people wondering, like, hey, why would you want to start a right wing paramilitary group? Well, in 1983, everybody's father was kidnapped and murdered by the FARC. So that's probably the origin story. Like there's some depth here to this, but.

[Ben Rhodes]

And by the way, if you were like, well, what do you care about this? Well, the United States poured billions and billions and billions of dollars into the war against the farc. We set up this School of the Americas in the south that was like training people that also were accused of human rights violations. There's plenty of rabbit holes you can go down on this one. But Uribe was like, guys like Rubio love Uribe because he's kind of their kind of right wing guy. Takes no quarter with the left and hates the Cubans. But I mean, who believes Marco Rubio when he's weighing in on democracy issues?

[Tommy Vitor]

Nobody. He's a clown. We'll get to that in a minute.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's a shitty archivist too.

[Tommy Vitor]

Terrible archivist. Burning emails.

[Ben Rhodes]

Bad Kennedy Center.

[Tommy Vitor]

Where are the Epstein files? Marco, we should put a pin in this, but I was reading some interesting reports about how Colombian mercenaries are popping up in Sudan. Yes, because they're getting hired by the UAE to fight on behalf of the RSF Sudanese Civil War. So it's like these conflicts spill out globally over decades.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, there's all these guys. Look, the FARC became also just narco traffickers too. It's not like they could. Guys on the left on that war.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. They weren't pushing for Medicare for All.

[Ben Rhodes]

It may have started about Medicare for All, but it became about something else.

[Tommy Vitor]

Every good movement ends up in drugs.

[Ben Rhodes]

But these guys in Colombia, like, fought for like decades in these shifting insurgencies, and they pop up everywhere. It's like the South Africans who were fighting all these wars on behalf of the apartheid regime. It does show you, you create this class of people that they. That's what they know how to do.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, not good. Let's also just check in on Trump's closest ally and prisoner pen pal in El Salvador. Naive Bukele Ben. Because last Thursday, legislators in El Salvador abolished Presidential prison terms which will potentially allow Bukele to become the self professed world's coolest dictator that he wants to be for life. The national assembly, where his party, Bukele's party holds a super majority, also extended presidential terms from five years to six years. So Bukele was first elected in 2019. He won re election last year. We've talked about him on the show many times. He's for, for a period was quite popular, the most popular, you know, elected official in, in the western hemisphere because of his effort to combat gangs and gang violence. Those efforts included, you know, cutting secret deals with gangs to get them to try to reduce or hide their violence and then declaring what he called the state of exception which allowed the government to suspense of liberties, round people up indiscriminately, throw them into prison and never even charge them with a crime. And there's many of them are still rotting there. More recently, Bukele has used that power to crack down on journalists, human rights groups, a group called Christosol, where a friend of mine named Noah Bullock works and now was forced into exile. And not long ago, Ben, you know, it's worth noting Bukele was beloved by many people in Silicon Valley because he embraced Bitcoin. Most recently, Bukele cut that disgusting deal with Trump where about 240 men from the U.S. mostly Venezuelans, were sent to El Salvador and left to rot in this nightmare torture prison. They've been, you know, there's been a deal cut to get them out. But we recently learned that one of the men sent there by Trump, by Stephen Miller, by Marco Rubio, brave freedom fighter, was this makeup artist named Andre Hernandez Romero. Andre was tortured and sexually assaulted by prison guards. So the US government paid for this to happen. So Ben, this like just fast track into authoritarianism was not just predictable, it was I think predicted by many experts, by us on the show. I've not seen a lot of outrage from, from Rubio. I'm actually seeing the opposite. I'm seeing people like Matt Gaetz sharing Bukele clips where he's bragging about how he doesn't care if he's called a dictator and calling him a transformational leader.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's kind of like willfully ignoring what the Israeli right says when they announce that they want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And I mean this guy announces he's a dictator, he announces the human rights abuses that he wants to carry out, he announces that he wants to quash dissent. And then the same people that like, if Nicolas Maduro says those things. We put like a $25 million reward on his arrest and sanction everybody in the country and this guy we call a great friend. Right. I mean, it just points up the absolute absurdity. Hypocrisy is like the point now. It's like we want to show that we have complete double standards and all we actually care about is whether you align with our sometimes sadistic priorities like deporting people to be tortured in Nai Bukele's prisons. I mean, the question I have is just like how sustainable the act is there. Because the sugar high of driving down violence is now going to lead into the hangover of corruption, human rights abuses, consolidation of power. We've seen this movie before. I think one constructive thing I'd say for Democrats is to connect some of these stories. There are some really interesting left wing leaders in the western hemisphere right now. And I actually recently had an opportunity to meet a cross section people. First of all, one of the things that stood out to me is Claudia Shanebaum was like a hero of everybody I know. She's wildly popular. We need to talk to this lady. People need to.

[Tommy Vitor]

How do we get her on the show?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, we need to. She's doing interesting things. She's like Zoran Mamdani. She's got interesting policies and political strategies. Right. Like Lula and Petro are kind of the old lions down there in Colombia and Brazil, even though he's kind of nearing the end of his term. I like Gabriel Boric in Chile.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I do too.

[Ben Rhodes]

There's a very cool multifaceted Latin American left that we should, Democrats and progressives should be building deeper connections to and by the way, should be sending the message that someday Democrats, I think are gonna be back in power. And hey, Nai Bukele, we're not gonna forget the what the fuck you did. Truly evil torturing people and trolling people here who care about that. So we have to have a long memory too, like the right does on some of these things.

[Tommy Vitor]

Amen. Two quick things finally. The first one is it's former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dating Katy Perry.

[Ben Rhodes]

I have two friends in my life I'm on a three person text thread with who are completely obsessed with this story. And so I've been able to follow every social media spotting and it is a remarkable journey back in time to like the late Obama second term world when like Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry were like ascendants. You know, they both have roots in a very high amount of popularity In a very particular moment.

[Tommy Vitor]

You just said ascended. But she did go to space recently. Recently.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's true. But that seems like it was part of the highest heights. I don't. What do you think? I mean, there's a question of whether it's real.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And then what your take is about it.

[Tommy Vitor]

I don't really have a take. I think they were photographed having dinner, maybe walking a dog. He went to her concert.

[Ben Rhodes]

They had a cocktail, too, I think. I think there's a cocktail as well as a dinner.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. When did he get. When did he break up with his wife?

[Ben Rhodes]

That was a couple years ago. It was, like, while he was prime minister and was kind of, you know. I don't know. What.

[Tommy Vitor]

Who knows? Apparently his dad, Pierre Trudeau, dated a bunch of celebrities, including Barbra Streisand.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, yeah, And I was gonna say, I mean, Justin Trudeau was, you know, had a bit of a reputation when he was younger.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

For getting out and about and. Yeah. His dad was a famous. Did we say womanizer? Yeah. I don't know. When Pierre Trudeau was prime minister, they called it that, you know, but, yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't bet on this one sticking necessarily.

[Tommy Vitor]

Okay.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'm just gonna say the Orlando Bloom relationship probably lasted longer than the Justin Trudeau.

[Tommy Vitor]

Right. I feel like that ended pretty recently.

[Ben Rhodes]

I think they announced its formal end. I'm actually up on this Katy Perry news. You'll see when your daughter gets a little older. I know everything about Katy Perry. Sabrina Carpenter.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's good.

[Ben Rhodes]

Chapel Ronan. Taylor Swift, obviously.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'm just checking in on this, Rachel.

[Ben Rhodes]

These days, all you're gonna listen to in a few years is that collection during Billie Eilish. Yep.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And artist T.K. finally, Ben. So we have some amazing producers on the show. Michael and Saul. And Ilona's on baby leave, but she'll be back very soon. They are obsessed with briefings by the State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, who somehow, like, made a living as a radio host, TV person, but just can't talk.

[Ben Rhodes]

We need, like, a dedicated weekly segment.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think we're. We're treading that direction. So this is a super cut they put together. Ben and I have not seen this before. We're watching this cold. So we're going to kind of just watch and react in real time. We're going to leave the mics open here and just see what Tammy Bruce had to say.

[Ben Rhodes]

Speaker Johnson was in the west bank, which he referred to as Judea and Samaria, and said that it rightfully belongs.

[Ellie Schlein]

To the Jewish people.

[Ben Rhodes]

Is that official U.S. policy? And if, if it's not, what is U.S. policy towards the West Bank?

[Ellie Schlein]

Well, I have said this about other diplomats who've spoken their minds, including Ambassador Huckabee. Certainly that's not, if there's a policy in that regard, you would hear it from me.

[Ben Rhodes]

But it's not the opinion of the U.S. government.

[Ellie Schlein]

Well, I'm not going to speak about.

[Ben Rhodes]

Opinion of the government as a reporter.

[Ellie Schlein]

How do I know if he's just expressing his opinion about the settlement being part of Israel and when actually this is a policy.

[Ben Rhodes]

So you want, so we're getting into.

[Ellie Schlein]

A little bit of a conspiracy dynamic here.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's not your question. Circumstances under which the State Department would.

[Ellie Schlein]

Countenance destroying unspoiled food for some reason? Well, I again, don't know of all the circumstances.

[Ben Rhodes]

I can still, in the biggest story in the world, there could be a.

[Ellie Schlein]

Reason of all the things that exist around the world. So, you know, there's, that's our opinion regarding the, the bill. We also. Can I say that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Oh, God.

[Tommy Vitor]

Holy.

[Ellie Schlein]

I think that's as much as I.

[Ben Rhodes]

Can say in that regard. I, I, that's as much as I can say today. You can say more, Tammy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Stop the fight. So it seems like there were two main things there. It was Mike Huckabee, like, endorsing settlements. Again, you have an entire team that works for you. When you're the State Department spokesperson or the White House press secretary who figure out what stories are in the ether, what you're going to be asked and then prepare responses for you. Seemingly they just kind of skip that step there. Also, the fact that this administration is destroying unspoiled food that could go, that was supposed to go from USAID to, you know, starving kids all around the world and they're just like, burning. It is such a scandal that not enough people are talking about it.

[Ben Rhodes]

But there's things I don't. Yes, that's the important point. But I'm gonna be pettier here on this. Please.

[Tommy Vitor]

The petty section of the show.

[Ben Rhodes]

First of all, as I understand it, right, she was a Fox News host and she had like a radio show.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And did she not speak? Did she. Because I didn't consume that show, but I didn't either. Did she speak on the show? Because she seems like someone who has a hard time literally getting words out. But then the other thing I don't understand about some of these people that go in is why did she want to Be the State Department spokesperson in the first place. I don't know, because she clearly doesn't seem like she's having fun up there. It doesn't seem like. I mean, she could have just had her radio show where she yelled about these things. You want to have fun. And if I was a right wing.

[Tommy Vitor]

You want to go on the trips and be in the meetings and you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Could have fun as a right wing troll. Like, just argue with them and not just kind of hemming and hawing and ah. And who speaks for what. And by the way, Mike Johnson's not like a diplomat. He's a member of Congress. And these aren't trick questions like, what's our opinion about the West Bank?

[Tommy Vitor]

You know, you made a good point there, which is that if you're a spokesperson in the Trump era, you should just go in and attack, like, Carolyn Lovett.

[Ben Rhodes]

I get where she's coming from. I don't like it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Like, Tammy Bruce is kind of trying to treat it like the old school serious way where she attempts to. To answer the question in good faith and do policy, but no one's expecting that from you anymore. I mean, I guess credit to her for trying, but she's not very good at it.

[Ben Rhodes]

And how are you not prepared? I mean, you used to prep people. Like, these are questions, you know, you're gonna get. Like, Mike Johnson, we talked about this on the. You know, Mike Johnson goes there and refers to J' Day and Samara. She seems, like, shocked to be asked these things. What did she think that she's gonna get asked?

[Tommy Vitor]

You know, it's baffling. It's baffling. And like, that's a hard. That's a notoriously hard briefing room.

[Ben Rhodes]

Room.

[Tommy Vitor]

And to your point of, why would you want that job? Like, did she watch any of Matt Miller's briefings? Like, that place is brutal.

[Ben Rhodes]

Is Matt Lee still there? I love that guy.

[Tommy Vitor]

The AP guy? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They have a. They have a notoriously curmudgeonly tough and relentless AP reporter who just hammers you.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, he. I did that. I briefed in front of him a few times, and he just, like, you know, when you went up against him, it was like trying to, like, drive on Dennis Rodman. You're. You're gonna get hacked. You're gonna get crushed. You're gonna crush. And he was gonna block the shot.

[Tommy Vitor]

And kind of mock you in the process, which, again, I respect. Okay, that's it for our Tammy Bruce section. Thank you, Tammy, for everything you're doing. When we come back, you'll hear Ben's interview with Ellie Schlein about fighting the far right in Italy and trying to bring back the Democratic Party. So stick around for that. Ponte of the World is brought to you by Simply Safe. What does feeling safe at home really mean to you? Some might think it's enough to have good locks and maybe an alarm that would make a lot of noise if someone actually broke in. But true security takes more than that. Takes a system that actually works to prevent that break in, that violation of your space from ever happening in the first place. That's why you can trust Simplisafe to protect your home and family. It's about security that's proactive, not just reactive. Listen, we love Simply Safe here at Crooked Media. As you all probably know by now, John Lovett set one up himself at his house. Yeah, John. And you know what? Can't believe it. No violation of his space. That's for sure. Incredibly Safe. You can turn it on and off from your phone. It's a simple system, but top of the line technology. Says so right in the name. And again, I'm hoping they'll take me up on my idea to get Roast comics to yell at the burglars when they're breaking in. Because I think it's not enough to deter them. You need to demoralize them, you know, with a well timed comment about their appearance. Most security systems only take action after someone breaks in and that's too late. Simply Safe's new active guard outdoor protection helps stop break ins before they happen. If someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time. Turn on spotlights and call the police. Proactively deterring crime before it happens. Hey, that unibrow. This bit's not really working. Damned best home security system of 2025 by CNET 4 million Americans trust Simply Safe. Ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today. Monitoring plans start around a dollar a day. That gets a 60 day money back guarantee. No contracts, no hidden fees. Visit simplisafe.com crookedworld to claim 50 off a new system with a professional monitoring plan. And get your first month free. That's SimpliSafe.com CrookedWorld there's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Ben Rhodes]

Wanna pull off the season's freshest trends? You just need the right shoes. That's where designer shoe warehouse comes in. Loving wide leg jeans. Pair them with sleek low profile sneakers. Obsessed with the sheer trend. Try it with mesh flats. Feeling Boho comfy sandals. Nail the whole free Spirited thing. Find on trend shoes from the brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at dsw. Ellie Schlein, thanks so much for joining.

[Ellie Schlein]

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

[Ben Rhodes]

So I want to start by asking, you know, from the outside, when people look at Italian politics, Prime Minister Melania looks like a very strong figure. She has a big presence on the international stage. But I wonder if here in Italy, where you see that there might actually be some vulnerabilities, is that the case? Is the image she projects, the image that people are consuming in Italy, or are there some vulnerabilities where she may not be meeting people's aspirations?

[Ellie Schlein]

It's true that Meloni is still strong in the polls, for example, but I think that there are a lot of vulnerabilities, because in the end, if you ask around if people are off well today, after three years of government, they would say no. They will say no. Because this government of Giorgio Meloni, for three years in a row, has done nothing for the cost of living, for example, has done nothing for the low wages we have in Italy, among the lowest wages in the European Union. So our point is, what is the situation of the Italians today after three years of a government? Is it better or is it worse? And the answer would be definitely worse. So how. Why is she so strong? Because as the right wing is doing also in other countries, they are very good not at answering to people needs, but at pointing out an enemy every day. And usually it's the same enemy, immigrants, LGBTQI communities, for example, or journalists, judges, the European Union. So in everything that is not working in this country, according to Meloni, is somebody else's fault. And everything that works is for how she's doing in government. But this, after a couple of years, will stop working. I mean, she still says that if we have problems and people face problems in accessing health care, for example, it's the fault of the previous government. But the truth is that since she was in government, she's cut down the resources for the public health system. So you have to imagine that today, for an Italian that needs, for example, a normal examination, medical examination, you can wait up to one year and a half. And this is something that also the voters of Meloni feel on their skin. So this is something on which we are insisting a lot wages, the cost of energy in Italy, we have the highest energy bills of the whole European Union. And it is not to be like that. But the point is that Meloni does not have the courage to address the extra profits that the big companies of energy production and distribution are making, and that is hampering all the other industries, businesses and families in the country. So yes, she is strong because every day she builds a communication in which they distract the public opinion by pointing the finger at some enemies, some scapegoats to blame for what's not going well in the country. But in the long term, this is not working. And we can see it already when we build an alternative progressive coalition in the local election or regional election. When we stick together, we win. So they are strong, but they are not unbeatable. This is my point. And we will not beat them by running after them on their agenda. So we will not beat them by copying their issues. For example, on security and migration, we need to force them on the ground where they feel less comfortable, which is social justice. Yeah, on social justice, we see that they suffer because they're not answering the needs of people. If you think about her most famous speech in Spain a couple of years, she said, I'm Georgia, I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm a Christian, and I say, good for you. But how does this help Italians that cannot afford their rent or that cannot pay for their bills? So this is the point, social justice on which we are insisting to rebuild credibility and to regain the trust also of voters who voted for Meloni the last election.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's interesting because we see a similar dynamic across Europe in the United States, in the sense that you have far right parties that make elections about identity, about immigration, about a sense of security, even though they don't necessarily have the answers on these cost of living issues that people are concerned about. But it feels like though where they've been successful, including here in Italy, is making the elections about the issues that they want them to be about. And social Democrats, progressives, have had a hard time making the elections about issues that are actually usually more important to people's lives. How do you shift the conversation in the way that you're talking about? What can you do differently? Is it a matter of political communications tactics, coalition building, persistence, new policies? Like how do you shift the basis of an election from those identity issues to those social justice cost of living type issues?

[Ellie Schlein]

You have to insist and hit like a hammer every day on these important issues for everyday living of Italians? That's how in a difficult situation, we shifted the debate on minimum wage. For example, Italy does not have a law on minimum wage, despite the fact that, as I said, we have among the lowest wages in Europe. There are 22 countries in the European Union that already have such a law. And we have built a coalition of the opposition forces supporting a law that in a way strengthens the role of the trade unions and collective bargaining. And we saw the difficulties of Giorgia Meloni, because she did not even vote against our law. She tried to kill it and, you know, put it aside in the parliament, because she knows that in Italy, 70% of voters are in favor of such a law. But we have to hit every day, because it's also true that the right wing has invested a lot in communication and media. In Italy, they now control public media, and they have transformed the public television in a machine of propaganda of the government. And at the same time, they own a lot of private media, both television, newspapers. So it's even more difficult for us to set the agenda in the country. So we have to insist every day on minimum wages, access to education and health care, and the cost of energy, which is a problem both for businesses because they lose competitiveness. If you think about it, our businesses pay an energy bill that is three times higher than the businesses of the same sectors in Germany, in Spain, in France. How can you live like that? So it's both a problem for businesses and for families. So on these issues, I see that Meloni, even if she is proud of her ideas and position, is hiding. She's not telling the truth to the country. So I'm mentioning this as an example of a right wing that is very strong and proud on identitarian issues, but then runs away when they have to face the cost of living. The everyday problems of Italy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Italians.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. Do you. You know, we. I'm a member of the Democratic Party, shares a name with yours. We have this constant debate in the United States, too, between kind of the center left and the left. And at a time when people are frustrated with the political establishment and the far right has succeeded in demonizing the political establishment and kind of tying it to the center left. There are arguments from the left that you need to move away from those policies. But then there are arguments from the center left that if you move too far to the left, you'll lose people in the middle. Is there a similar dynamic here in Italy? I followed the party a bit. Seems like you've moved it in a more progressive direction. Is that a matter of policy or is it more a matter of being more willing to fight for your principles?

[Ellie Schlein]

It's the same debate we have been seeing in Italy for the past 15 years, I think.

[Ben Rhodes]

Think, yeah.

[Ellie Schlein]

And that is also one of the reason Why I decided to run as secretary of. As leader of the Democratic Party because we had lost our identity completely. And we were coming from years, difficult years of, you know, large coalition governments, big coalition governments, where obviously from the outside, some political forces, let's say anti system would say, see, there is no difference between the left and the right. So the first thing we needed to do is to rebuild credibility and identity on our core issues, which are also the values of our constitution. As I said, the main platform of our party is insisting on health care because its number one worry of Italian citizens, at the same time about wages and working conditions. Think about all the young people that have precarious jobs. If you have a job that lasts just for six months and you don't know if you have it the next day, how can you build your future? How can you create a family if you're willing to do so? The right wing has. Has been, let's say, effective in telling the country that the most important problem was migration. Okay? And they have been talking about an invasion that is not even there. But they in a way created the idea that was number one priority of the country. For 10 years they have insisted on migration, but they have not seen the migration outside of the country of these young people that has done. Have done sacrifice to study here. But then with low wages and precarious jobs, they have to go elsewhere to build, you know, a dignified future for them and for their families.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Ellie Schlein]

So what I'm saying is that we need to be radical in our beliefs and credible in our ideas. That means also renewing our parties and pushing for a new generation of young female and feminist leadership, I would say. So this is part of the job we are doing. At the same time, we have to be very clear on the issues that are discussed at dinner in the families in Italy. What we are saying is that when you lose track of the difference, of course you also lose votes. And we needed to re. Establish a progressive agenda for the party. And this is interesting because when I won the primary election, it was after the defeat in the 2022 political election, and after the defeat, when Giorgio Meloni won the election and went into government, our party was going down to the lowest in history, 14% in the polls. And then when we start rebuilding credibility on work and health care, after one year, we managed to win the European election with 24%. So this is working. It's still not enough. We also have to build a credible coalition with other partners. But this is working because people feel that we are honest in what we're trying to do and what we're trying to say.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. On foreign policy, you know, at a time when Germany had an election, Emmanuel Macron is nearing the end of his term. It seems like Meloni has tried to position herself as a European leader who has a relationship with Trump. She came to the Trump inauguration. She's been to Mar a Lago. She's kind of in this collection of kind of right wing, I'd say, autocratic type leaders globally. On the one hand, I guess she can tell Italians, hey, look, I have a relationship with Trump. I'm raising Italy's profile in Europe and on the world stage. On the other hand, I can't imagine Trump is that popular here, particularly given tariffs and other things. I was recently here and I had to buy some Italian wine before the tariffs went into effect. But how do you look at that? Is it a vulnerability or strength that she is so close to Donald Trump?

[Ellie Schlein]

It is unfortunately a vulnerability. Right now, according to the polls, Italians do not like President Trump. And what he's doing is already damaging our economy. And it's not only since he signed the tariffs in April, it was even before, because the announcement of the trade war that is threatened, is threatened towards Europe has already started damaging the economy because of the uncertainty. So we have 58% of our businesses who stopped their investment because they don't know what's going to be tomorrow. And in all these months, Meloni was not even able to criticize her friend Donald Trump. And it's not the only issue in which we see that she is damaging the national interest because of her political alliance with Mr. Trump. We've seen this on terrace with the silence of the government. Not only the silence, there was a vice prime minister who said that tariffs are an opportunity. Just to give you an idea, the biggest organization of businesses in Italy said that even if they stop at 10%, it would mean 20 billion less in exports last year, next year for Italy, and it would be the risk of losing 118,000 jobs. So it's not only silence, it's also complicity. Okay? And we have seen the same. When Donald Trump forced the European member states to rise the military expenditure to 5% in the framework of the NATO alliance. And only the Spanish government led by Pedro Sanchez said to Trump, no, I want to stay in the NATO alliance, I can guarantee that I will reach the capacity targets set by NATO. But our military said that we can do that without rising the military expenditure to 5% because that would be the end of our economy, that would be the end of our social welfare. And that would mean today only buying more military equipment from other states like the US of Trump. Whereas what we need in Europe is obviously in this new geopolitical scenario, Europe needs to provide for its own defense and security. But it's nonsense to strengthen 27 different national armies instead of coordinating them, strengthening interoperability, making joint research and joint procurements and going towards a common European defense. So you see, it's interesting because now with, with President Trump, it's even clearer that the right wing nationalists are strengthening each other with the same rhetoric of hatred and walls. Okay. But in the end, they would be enemies on the opposite sides of the walls that they want to build at any border. Okay, so there are contradiction and there is room for us to explain that we as progressive have much more in common in terms of values and policies that we're pushing. For example, on housing, we are facing similar challenges in terms of housing in all the member states of the European Union, in terms of wages, again, education. Okay, we have much more in common, but we have to strengthen up our networks because you can name them in any country and you cannot name the progressive in any country.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, yeah, I mean, this is the last thing I wanted to ask you, and I should say, as someone who worked in US national security, 5% is a crazy defense target, kind of arbitrary. It was bizarre to me to see people pledging something that they're not going to do that makes no sense. But I wanted to ask you on your last point. There's clearly a sense that there's a very networked far right globally and it manifests in common political strategies, convenings, media, online strategies. If you're a progressive anywhere in the US or Europe or even in other parts of the world now, you kind of feel like you're up against not just the right wing party in your country, you kind of feel like you're up against this global wave that is crashing over us. What can be done? Obviously, the most important thing is winning elections. You have to think about building a party and then building coalitions that can ultimately win an election in Italy. That's job one. But what can be done to form some greater sense of solidarity and coordination and common strategy and common momentum really, amongst progressive parties, center left parties, so that we're not all alone in our countries, you know, fighting this machine, that there's a sense that we're all together, helping each other, that we're overwhelmed in a way. Exactly. You know, we're creating our own Momentum and our own wave that can spread across borders.

[Ellie Schlein]

This is an important mission for all of us. And it's an obsession for me personally, because I was a member of the European Parliament before being the leader of Partitudinal Democratico in Italy. Look, I think that we cannot and must not leave internationalism to the nationalists of the far right. This is what is happening. We have common values, common policies. We're pushing common solution. For example, when. When Trump decided to build a wall on the border with Mexico and Orban did the same.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Ellie Schlein]

At the border in Europe.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Ellie Schlein]

They strengthen each other.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Ellie Schlein]

And the way the Trump that Trump's wall and Orban's wall strengthened the rhetoric of Meloni and Salvini in Italy. Why don't we build the same when Pedro Sanchez rises minimum wage of 50% and helps all Spanish workers? You know, facing inflation in the last years, in the middle of the war, the energy crisis, the climate crisis, we have to use and say the same words and also set the same agenda. And I think that since we have our networks, because, for example, we are part of the Party of European Socialists, why don't we organize a rally on the same day in our 27 different countries.

[Tommy Vitor]

Countries.

[Ellie Schlein]

Why don't we do the same with the Democrats abroad? Because we are facing the same wave of extreme right. Look, think about what Meloni is doing in Italy. To sum it up, she is cutting down health care. She is cutting down public school because they are cutting 6,000 teachers in public school in Italy. She is blocking our proposal on minimum wage and making the work, the jobs in Italy more precarious. At the same time, she has built spending 1 billion euros, an empty jail in Albania to deport migrants. How is this helping Italians pay their bills? There is no way. But if you look what is happening in the U.S. it's quite the same. In the first hundred executive orders of President Trump, there was nothing on wages, and he's doing the same to the port migrants by also violating fundamental and human rights. So they are doing the same things. They're all of the same. But we have to have the same answer in terms of social and climate justice and the things that progressive are doing, because they are doing and this is working in some countries must at the same time and in the same way strengthen the others.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Ellie Schlein]

So it's about, you know, organizing, networking, strengthening our network, and also showing that we share the same values and we are a team, we are a family, and we can do it, do it by organizing together. We cannot be. We would say in Italian provincial. We have to in a way learn a lesson from what happened in the last years in the strongest mobilization that we have seen, for example on clients, Climate Fridays for Future or other organization and also the feminist movement. They were effective in setting the agenda of the governments because they have from the start thought of their mobilization like of something that could go beyond every border. That was the strength. On the 8th of March you see mobilization of organization for gender equality in all the different states. And this is working. And without the climate organization and mobilization in those years, we would not have today some climate policies, the green deal, for example, the investment on renewable energies. So this is working and our political forces should aim at doing exactly the same thing, organizing, mobilizing together and showing that we have have the same agenda on social justice and climate justice. And that would strengthen each other and in a way respond to that right wing wave with a stronger progressive wave.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, I love ending on what is both a fighting and optimistic note. Thanks so much for joining us. I really enjoyed the conversation.

[Ellie Schlein]

Thank you, thank you. It was a pleasure.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thanks again to Ellie Schlein for doing the show. And man, Tammy Bruce still stuck in my head. We just listened to that. So it's still fresh.

[Ben Rhodes]

We're gonna make. We have to. People on the Discord. If you've made this long, you're probably on the Discord. Come up with a name for a weekly segment, you know, there we go. Tam.

[Tommy Vitor]

Tam Cam.

[Ben Rhodes]

Tam Cam.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think that's taken the.

[Ben Rhodes]

Bruce. Whatever, you know, like, you know, Bruce is loose. Yeah, yeah, whatever.

[Tommy Vitor]

We'll workshop these. We'll work. Okay. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Ilona 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 Kanter is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groot is our head of production. Adrian Hills, our senior vice president of news and politics. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription [e-mail] friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus, find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and much more. If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America East.