Trump’s MAGA Militia

Summary

Pod Save the World – Episode: “Trump’s MAGA Militia”

Release Date: June 11, 2025

In this compelling episode of Pod Save the World, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes delve deep into the multifaceted developments surrounding the Trump administration’s policies, their ramifications on both domestic and international fronts, and the broader implications for global stability. The episode weaves together discussions on immigration, military actions, corruption, humanitarian crises, nuclear diplomacy, and the pervasive influence of disinformation, culminating in an insightful interview with former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

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1. Trump’s Immigration Policies: The Evolution of the Muslim Ban

The episode opens with a critical examination of the latest iteration of President Trump’s travel ban, often referred to as the "Muslim ban." Tommy outlines the scope of the ban, which now affects citizens from twelve countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Additionally, seven other countries face heightened travel restrictions. The hosts highlight the incoherence of these policies, pointing out contradictions such as prohibiting travel from Haiti while simultaneously attempting to deport Haitians back to the same nation.

Notable Quote:

Tommy Vietor [04:20]: “It’s a pretty broad blanket ban. I do think, Ben, just to start, it’s worth pointing out how incoherent Trump’s immigration policies are.”

Jacinda Ardern underscores the racial and humanitarian shortcomings of the ban, emphasizing how it disrupts families and disregards the historical context of U.S. involvement in these nations.

Notable Quote:

Jacinda Ardern [08:51]: “This is separating families, essentially through your immigration policy, to keep certain people out for seemingly arbitrary reasons.”

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2. Migrants and ICE Agents Trapped in Djibouti: A Humanitarian Disaster

Tommy narrates the harrowing situation of migrants and ICE agents stranded at a U.S. Navy base in Djibouti. The migrants, originating from various countries, have been confined to repurposed shipping containers, facing extreme heat, health risks, and security threats without adequate protection or resources. The administration’s failure to find a viable solution, such as returning the migrants to the U.S., exacerbates the crisis, showcasing a blatant disregard for human life and safety.

Notable Quote:

Tommy Vietor [12:43]: “It tells you that the administration doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s life and safety, including their own people.”

Jacinda adds that this situation reflects the administration’s short-sighted, “shoot first, aim later” approach, ignoring legal and humanitarian implications.

Notable Quote:

Jacinda Ardern [13:51]: “They don’t think two or three steps ahead, ever. It’s a very shoot first, aim later approach to everything.”

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3. Trump’s Military Parade: Symbolism and Authoritarian Undertones

A significant portion of the discussion centers on President Trump’s extravagant military parade scheduled for his birthday. Valued at an estimated $45 million, the parade features thousands of soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and rocket launchers, drawing uncomfortable comparisons to authoritarian regimes like North Korea and Russia.

Notable Quote:

Tommy Vietor [21:02]: “If George Floyd had happened now, that would be it. We’d have martial law in this country.”

The hosts express deep concern over the militarization of American streets, particularly in Los Angeles, where deployments of the National Guard and Marines signal a disturbing shift towards the normalization of military presence in civilian spaces.

Notable Quote:

Jacinda Ardern [23:24]: “The extreme risk of the Trump presidency is the total personalization of the power of the American presidency, and in particular, the personalization of the US Military as an instrument of power.”

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4. Corruption and Incompetence within the Trump Administration

Tommy highlights stories of corruption and incompetence, such as Jared Kushner and Rick Cornell’s failing hotel project in Serbia, illustrating the chaotic and unprofessional nature of Trump’s inner circle.

Notable Quote:

Tommy Vietor [29:47]: “These guys are bumbling idiots.”

Jacinda echoes these sentiments, describing the corruption as “incompetent corruption,” emphasizing the administration’s failure to maintain ethical standards and effective governance.

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5. Gaza Humanitarian Crisis and the Freedom Flotilla

The hosts turn their attention to the escalating humanitarian disaster in Gaza, highlighting the failed aid distribution managed by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Freedom Flotilla, featuring activists like Greta Thunberg, attempted to breach Israel’s naval blockade to deliver essential supplies but was intercepted, leading to arrests and deportations.

Notable Quote:

Tommy Vietor [31:13]: “It was like a PR stunt. They’re trying to raise awareness.”

The aftermath of the flotilla’s interception is discussed, emphasizing the recurring violence and the international community’s inadequate response to the humanitarian needs in Gaza.

Notable Quote:

Ben Rhodes [35:03]: “How do we address radicalization in the online environment.”

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6. Trump Administration’s Nuclear Deal with Iran: Internal GOP Conflicts

Tommy and Ben explore the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran, drawing parallels to the 2015 JCPOA. The internal Republican Party is split, with figures like Mark Levin advocating for aggressive military action against Iran, while others like Tucker Carlson push for diplomatic solutions. This division is intensifying disinformation campaigns and hampering effective foreign policy.

Notable Quote:

Tommy Vietor [44:04]: “A Twitter war between Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson could determine whether we go to war with Iran.”

Jacinda and Ben criticize the administration’s handling of the nuclear deal, labeling Trump’s approach as “totally stupid and self-defeating,” while also pointing out the hypocrisy within the GOP regarding sanctions and immigration policies.

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7. The Pervasive Influence of Disinformation

A significant theme of the episode is the rampant spread of disinformation, exacerbated by domestic and foreign actors like Russia. The hosts discuss how disinformation undermines trust in institutions, fuels political polarization, and exacerbates societal grievances.

Notable Quote:

Ben Rhodes [75:31]: “We have to understand the algorithmic journey that individuals are on in the online environment.”

Jacinda stresses the importance of maintaining content moderation and combating hate speech, drawing lessons from New Zealand’s response to the Christchurch shooting.

Notable Quote:

Jacinda Ardern [85:32]: “We have to have people at the table to address these issues comprehensively.”

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8. Interview with Jacinda Ardern: Empathetic Leadership in Turbulent Times

The episode culminates in an intimate interview with Jacinda Ardern, author of “A Different Kind of Power.” Ardern shares insights into her leadership philosophy, emphasizing empathy, humility, and the importance of addressing the root causes of societal issues rather than merely responding to crises.

She reflects on her response to the Christchurch shooting and the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting how empathetic leadership helped New Zealand navigate these challenges effectively. Ardern also discusses the impact of disinformation and the importance of fostering trust in institutions to combat societal divisions.

Notable Quote:

Jacinda Ardern [62:48]: “If it could be, if lives could be saved, we should be saving them.”

Ardern underscores the necessity for progressive politics to focus on delivering tangible solutions that improve lives, rather than succumbing to fear and blame, thereby fostering a more unified and resilient society.

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Conclusion

This episode of Pod Save the World offers a thorough analysis of the Trump administration’s contentious policies and their far-reaching consequences. Through expert commentary and real-world examples, Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes illuminate the complex interplay between domestic governance, international relations, and societal challenges. The interview with Jacinda Ardern provides a refreshing perspective on leadership, emphasizing the enduring need for empathy and integrity in navigating an increasingly polarized world.

For listeners seeking to understand the intricate dynamics shaping current global affairs, this episode serves as a vital resource, blending incisive analysis with thoughtful discussion.

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Transcript

[Tommy Vitor]

Pod Save the World is brought to you by the Council on Foreign Relations. Podcast why It Matters the world of international relations can sometimes feel intimidating, but why It Matters breaks things down in simple language and opens the doors so that everyone, not just the elite, can understand what's happening and take part in deciding what should be done. In each episode, host Gabrielle Sierra asks about the basics of the topics with a bit of humor and an eagerness to learn alongside the listener and expert guests. And no prior knowledge of foreign policy or international relations is needed so you can start to get more informed. Right now, tune in to learn the ins and outs of US trade policy, or how tariffs are affecting American farmers or other topics to understand everything from nuclear security to the make or break importance of Taiwan's semiconductor industry to unpacking how food diplomacy has created lasting international partnerships. Get informed by visiting cfr.org podcasts or subscribing to why It Matters. Wherever you get your podcasts, that's cfr.org or subscribe to why It Matters. Today.

[Ben Rhodes]

In the 90s, my friend and fellow journalist Dom Phillips was at the centre of the UK's dance music explosion. By 2022, he had mysteriously disappeared in one of the remotest parts of the Amazon jungle with his friend Bruno Pereira in 2025.

[Tommy Vitor]

So many questions remain. I'm Tom Phillips, the Guardian's Latin America correspondent. Listen to Missing in the Amazon wherever.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You get your podcasts.

[Tommy Vitor]

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I'm Ben Rhodes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Ben, it's great to be back. Should I do the whole episode in French?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yes, that'd be super impressive.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oui. Well, unfortunately I can.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Bien sur.

[Tommy Vitor]

I can say things like, you have a cute dog and can I have some more wine, please?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Bordeaux.

[Tommy Vitor]

I was over in France at a wedding. I tell in the Lovett and John this. I did a little Tom Friedmaning of asking people what they thought about politics.

[Jacinda Ardern]

And Uber drivers and the like.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes. Not a lot of Macron fans at the moment, at least in southern France.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Which is more conservative, more rural, but probably not anywhere. He's one of those guys who's a little more popular outside of France than actually in France.

[Tommy Vitor]

I think that's right. His international adventures maybe don't wear that well.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

In the. In the farmlands. But thank you, Ali Velshi for. For guesting. Fantastic as always. Just such a smart, thoughtful guy.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Great dude. Super clear, you know, super able to distill complicated things into. Very understandable.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And just has a deep experience covering it all yeah, Ben, while I was gone, a good friend of ours sent a message to me for our listeners, for you, somebody called, a gift even that he wanted me to air on this show. Let's listen. Very fair, very balanced.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I, I saw this and I, this is Bret Baier, right.

[Tommy Vitor]

Brett Baer, at some, some outdoor event on stage.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You know, I've become very serene about these people winning so much. And then you see something like that and you're just too offended by it. That the, the Walter Cronkite of our time, Bret Baer, is, feels so on top of the world that he thinks that's cool.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's cool. Yeah. FOX News host Brett Barry. I don't know where he is. He looks like a drunk wedding guest who decided to kind of commandeer the DJ booth against the wishes of the bride and groom. Those of you who are watching on YouTube can actually see Brett and can see the clip. So that's another reason to subscribe to the YouTube. You'll get some exclusive content on top of that and also help us build up a broader subscriber base so we get better information into the algorithm. But mostly it's to see Brett's really weird shirt because it's white on the front, in the back. It's like a pattern.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, he's always been a tight shirt kind of guy, too, which, you know, so it's like showing off the workout routine. Like he'd come to interview Obama, you know, swollen up. Yeah. It's like just, just, you know, it's all right. Just chill out. We get it. You, you do your reps. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

You don't have to tailor all of those shirts. We got a great show today, Ben. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of immigration news, including the latest version of Trump's Muslim ban, a crazy story about a bunch of migrants and ICE agents getting trapped in Djibouti. There's an update on some of the migrants who were trapped in El Salvador as well. There's. Then we're going to talk about Trump's military parade this weekend and why it's hitting a little different here in Los Angeles.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, yeah. Seriously.

[Tommy Vitor]

From occupied Los Angeles. Yeah. We'll cover the news out of Gaza, including Greta Thunberg's flotilla and the ongoing disaster of aid distribution there. We'll explain why there's this intra maga war between conservative podcast hosts Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson that might determine whether or not we go to war with Iran. Very fun. Glad it's in their hands. And then finally, Ben Just want to play the listeners a special clip from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. We're big fans of hers here. And then finally we just wrapped a fantastic in studio interview with a very special guest. One of the most special guests we've ever had.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, talking about her new book A Different Kind of Power, and covered a lot with Jacinda. So definitely worth people sticking around for this one.

[Tommy Vitor]

Just a cool, casual, super interesting person, too.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Kind of simultaneously extraordinary and normal person.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You know, those two things coexisting in one person.

[Tommy Vitor]

This incredible. Yeah. And just, you know, you kind of talk about this, but I remember when the horrific Christchurch incident happened and watching her response, and I don't remember what year that was. 2019.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, thereabouts. 18.

[Tommy Vitor]

18 or 19. It's like we were right at the beginning of the Trump administration and seeing a leader who just kind of like, led and modeled with empathy and human decency in contrast to the shit we've been living through. Just remember being so jealous.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, still am.

[Tommy Vitor]

Not of the incident, but of like the leadership level.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I still am, by the way.

[Tommy Vitor]

Still am. Still am. Okay, well, speaking of policies totally devoid of empathy, Ben, let's talk about this immigration news. So the latest iteration of the Trump Muslim ban went into effect on Monday. Trump now calls it a travel ban, but really it's just like the kind of fourth update to the original Muslim ban, although this time they added some additional countries where non white people live to kind of up the racism. The ban applies to citizens of 12 countries. Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. And then people from seven other countries. Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela have more restrictions on travel. If you're outside the US and don't already have a valid visa, the order. There's a bunch of confusing rules and exemptions. I think Afghans who worked for the government during the war are exempted. Athletes and coaches traveling to the US for the World cup or the Olympics are exempted, but it's a pretty broad blanket ban. I do think, Ben, just to start, it's worth pointing out how incoherent Trump's immigration policies are. If you, if you zoom out, for example, the administration says it's not safe for any Haitians to travel to the United States from Haiti, but they're also getting rid of temporary protected status for Haitians and trying to deport Haitians here back to Haiti. Doesn't really make sense to me. Similarly, Libyans cannot travel to the U.S. but the administration is trying to deport a bunch of people from Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, et cetera, to Libya. So, again, pretty fucked up. But, Ben, I mean, I think maybe the most remarkable part about this is just how little attention this is getting. I know there's a lot going on. I know, like, you know, we're dealing with all the stuff we're dealing with here in la, but it does. It just feels like a really depressing example of how much worse things are under Trump 2.0.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. The first time the Muslim ban evoked this powerful response and people were going to airports and people were defending refugees, and now we see very little reaction to it. Just to point out a couple of things about this, beyond the fact that it's just crazy to kind of blanket prohibit hundreds and hundreds of millions of people from coming to the United States, in addition to singling out non white people, which this does, in addition to singling, out, in some cases, Muslims. A lot of these countries are countries that we broke. And bear in mind, by the way, we've already canceled the refugee program. Right. Trump has suspended any refugee admissions. So this is just not wanting these people to even come here. Go on down the list from Afghanistan, which really jumped out to me because they can say all they want about the US Government. I don't believe that they're going to go the extra mile to. It's hard to validate this with paperwork.

[Tommy Vitor]

To get the SIV visa holders. I agree with you. I don't believe them.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Even the Biden administration, which seemed, or said it was well intentioned, had a very difficult time kind of being able to establish in ways that were easy for those people to come here. So to basically be at war in this country for 20 years, 40 years, if you go all the way back to Reagan and. And then we helped contribute to breaking this country and then saying, well, now you can't come here even if you have family here and there are a lot of Afghan Americans here, maybe you just want them to visit your family. There's a cruelty to that. But you can start with Afghanistan and then go all the way back to Laos, which I worked on a lot in government. And by the way, there's not like a lot of Laos. It's not some huge, tiny country. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

Such a bizarre addition to the list.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. And we just, we dropped. We have 80 million unexploded ordnance in Laos, another country we broke decades ago, fighting a secret war. And now we're gonna say again, you can't visit your families here. Cause there are a lot of, from that time, Lao Americans. And so we have to bear in mind that this is separating families, essentially through your immigration policy, to keep certain people out for seemingly arbitrary reasons. And the only other thing I'd say, Tommy, is Marco Rubio. I'm gonna stay on this beat. You know the Cuba piece. Yes, the Cuba piece. This is a guy who, again, built his political career on standing up for Cubans. And now, at the same time that America's policies, again, common theme, America breaking countries and then not letting people in. Same time that American policy is causing huge food shortages, malnutrition. All these challenges for Cubans to try to say, you can't come here. You have to stay in the place that we are hurting with our unlimited sanctions. It exposes, among many other things, Marco Rubio's personal hypocrisy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I mean, I throw Venezuela on that list, too. It's another country where we're crushing economically with sanctions and then telling anyone here who came to the United States often to seek asylum from the Maduro regime, one that the Trump administration suggested they were going to topple militarily in the first term, now those people aren't allowed here at all. And if you're here, you have to go home. Disgusting. Another example of the, I think, absurdity and cruelty and incoherence of Trump's immigration policy that's worth talking about was this crazy story in the Washington Post about eight migrants and about a dozen ICE agents who are now trapped at a U.S. navy base in Djibouti. These guys, I assume it's all guys. They've been literally living out of a repurposed shipping container since late May. Djibouti, for those who don't know, is a tiny little country in the Horn of Africa. It's literally one of the hottest places in the world, like one of the top 10 hottest countries on average. And the people there are. They're at a shipping container again. They have respiratory infections. They're trying to avoid getting malaria. They're at risk of rocket attacks from terrorists in neighboring Yemen. And the administration, the story is even more cruel. The administration had been trying to deport these migrants to South Sudan. None of them are from South Sudan, but a federal judge in Boston ruled that it violated a court order prohibiting the Trump administration from sending people to countries where they aren't citizens. But instead of just flying these guys back to the US and figuring out a plan B, the administration has just been forcing them to rot there and in the process is even putting their own agents at risk. For example, there's smoke from these nearby burn pits that locals are using to dispose of trash and human waste. And the smoke is so bad that ICE officers are sleeping in N95 masks at night. There are three sets of bunk beds for 12 total agents. You do that math. The ICE officers didn't have any body armor to protect them from rocket attacks. So they're just, like, completely helpless, and it's just a disaster. And, Ben, I just thought it was an instructive story because the specifics are absurd, but also it just. It tells you that the administration doesn't give a shit about anyone's life and safety, including their own people.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. And this will connect to what we're going to talk about with the military here, that among many other things, obviously the most grotesque things that are being done are being done to the most vulnerable people, but they clearly don't give a shit about their own people, too. And what it also shows you that's important is they don't think two or three steps ahead, ever. It's a very shoot first, aim later approach to everything. Right. So whether it's the announcement of a major policy without thinking through how to implement it or thinking through the legal. Because they don't care about the legal ramifications or the foreign policy ramifications, even these individual instances, they're like putting people on planes, thinking about what's going to inevitably happen to them, and then when they get stuck, nobody really cares. And in a normal administration, this kind of thing, you'd have a meeting and solve it right away. And they don't seem to give a shit about that. Right. And they love places like Djibouti is a fascinating place because in addition to being this major US Military base, there's a Chinese military base, I think there's a French military base.

[Tommy Vitor]

There's like six bases.

[Jacinda Ardern]

To get money, they just rent land to people, which kind of. It suits the Trump administration's worldview of these places that are just going to become way stations for what used to be way stations for the war on terror are now way stations for immigration policy. It's an interesting way in which you see the war on terror infrastructure, whether it's Guantanamo, Djibouti is now like an infrastructure for moving around their inhumane immigration policy.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's exactly right. I mean, Djibouti is a place where they fly a lot of drones and to your Gitmo point in the ready Fire. Aim. Approach. I just saw that. Politico reported the Trump administration is currently vetting another 9,000 migrants to potentially send to Guantanamo Bay, where they would be held temporarily before getting deported to their country of origin. That could start as soon as Wednesday when this episode comes out. But like, come on, guys, like, do you really think that creating, like sending more people to Gitmo is going to be a simple and easy thing? No. It's going to create massive legal challenges. We've already seen this.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, this was one where, I mean, this is again, to be self critical. This is why we should have like just, I mean, we tried to shut it down, but. But the more that thing stays open, it's just kind of like one problem begets another. Maybe the original sin was like keeping a military base in Cuba that, you know, wasn't really ours to begin with. You know.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, we should concrete the thing. I don't know.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Seriously, we should bulldoze it.

[Tommy Vitor]

One last sort of immigration point, Ben. So after months of being told we couldn't get it back from El Salvador, Kilmar Obrego Garcia has finally been returned to the United States, where the Trump administration immediately indicted him for conspiracy to transport and transportation of undocumented immigrants. All dates back to this traffic stop in Tennessee a few years ago. Listeners probably remember that Obrego Garcia was the Maryland man who the Trump administration admitted was wrongly sent to El Salvador. They made a mistake. He will now be prosecuted and presumably face trial. But Ben, there was a bigger picture thing that I wanted to talk with you about. I was talking to a friend sort of in the human rights world about how Democrats could be going on offense on this issue. And this person pointed out to me that Trump is trying to say that this new partnership with Bukele is about being tough on gangs and tough on terrorism or whatever. But in reality, like what it is, is him getting into bed with Naya Bukele, whose political career is built on the back of cooperation with gangs like ms.13. Like he bukele cut deals with these gangs when he's running for office. They helped round up votes for him in poor areas. He basically he gave, he protected their leaders. And Bukele's ask of the gangs was not to stop murdering people. It was to stop displaying the bodies publicly and just disappear them better. And so right now, nine of the highest ranking Ms. 13 leaders are on trial in New York for these terrorism charges. The prosecutors in that case have detailed the way Bukele partnered with these gangs. And surprise, surprise, now Bukele is trying to cut a deal with the Trump administration to bring back these gang leaders to El Salvador before they can testify against him. And there's a court record from back in April that shows how prosecutors are trying to. They're talking about ways to dismiss the charges against one of the gang leaders for, quote, sensitive and important foreign policy considerations. So clearly, like, they're just saying, like, I don't know, Rubio is telling us we have to do this to get this guy back because Bukele wants him. So I just, it's interesting to me, like there is an opportunity here. It's a complicated story, but we can make the case that this isn't a tough on crime partnership. This is like a dirty, corrupt deal with an autocrat who is now trying to cover his own ass.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. And it speaks to the broader, like corruption thing. And I wrote about this for the Times the other day. But essentially Trump is in league with all these, you know, quote, unquote, strong men from around the world who completely personalize power in their interests. Right. So Bukele, he wants power. And if one way he can do that is he cuts a deal with these guys, they get to take care of a bunch of their most important interests. And people are just being disappeared still. In El Salvador, crime is objectively down, but some people are disappearing into prisons, some people maybe are just disappearing.

[Tommy Vitor]

Apparently they're finding mass graves from these gangs too.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Exactly. So he's now just approaching foreign policy in the same way that Bukele does. He's acting like that. It's like, well, it's all personal. So this guy's my buddy. He's literally in league with the Ms. 13 type gangs that I demagogue relentlessly on the campaign trail. But I'm actually gonna protect him from that being exposed, cuz he's one of my guys. And it's basically Trump being a part of a global cabal of people. They're all kind of looking out for each other, doing favors for each other, like protection racket style. While nothing is, we're not benefiting from this. Our life is not getting better because people have never committed crimes, are being sent to prisons in El Salvador. Right. The fact that we are able to get somebody out of those prisons puts a lie to the fact that somehow we're powerless to ask naive Bukele to do anything. And the fact that Nai Bukele might be able to get Ms. 13 gang leaders sent, I mean, that's the opportunity, I hate to say it, as an opportunity. But if Trump does that, that's when you're like, wait a second. Time out. I thought we didn't like these gangs. Why are we sending them down to, to Bukele?

[Tommy Vitor]

That's what I'd like to see. I'd like to see the entire New York delegation. Maybe Senator Chuck Schumer leads this. Or somebody says like sends a letter to DOJ saying you cannot possibly deport these, you know, these people who have indicted on terrorism charges in exchange for this dirty deal on migration. Like, I do think that's a thing that could break through pod. Save the World is brought to you by American Giant. John, you notice those prices are going up because these stupid, stupid tariffs. The worst. It's a real problem. Globalized, fast fashion has made clothing production complex by sourcing inexpensive components around the world to whoever can assemble them the cheapest. Consequently, consumers now face increased prices. American Giant is about keeping things simple and close to home. They aren't affected by tariffs because their products never left the US Buying from American Giant supports American manufacturers. I've gotten some great stuff from American Giant. I got some sweatpants, some sweatshirts. I got to look at the website. I like it. I like their T shirts. They are good, comfy T shirts. That's good stuff. Mega corporations obsessed with growth are churning out cheap crap from poor materials. Choosing American Giant means taking a stand for hard working people, local communities and quality clothes through American ingenuity and innovation. They went against the current to do better. They believe in a new kind of conscious buying because small changes can add up to something big. It all started with the greatest hoodie ever made. Then came jeans, T shirts and more. Support American made tariff free clothing with American Giant. Get 20% off your first order when you use promo code [e-mail]. that's 20% off when you use code [e-mail].

[Jacinda Ardern]

Here you are, BPM's high sweat dripping.

[Tommy Vitor]

Body moving, tongue panting.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You're working hard, real hard. And you're thirsty. You need vitamins, nutrients for peak performance and energy. And you're playing Plants do too. Aw.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, just look at the little guy.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Water soluble plant food from Miracle Gro is full of essential nutrients. Just a little scoop into your watering can and boom. Instant feeding and bigger, more beautiful plants. It's kind of like a sports drink for your plants. You may have to suffer from heat, but your plants do not.

[Tommy Vitor]

Ben, you just. You mentioned our upcoming military parade. So our listeners in D.C. are going to get to enjoy that parade this weekend. This like kind of North Korea, Russia style fascist parade. It's reportedly going to cost $45 million. I think that number will probably go up once these tanks destroy a bunch more streets in D.C. that were not built for, you know, M1 Abrams rolling around. It's going to feature reportedly 7,000 soldiers, a bunch of tanks, helicopters, even some rocket launchers. I think those like MLRS systems that the Biden administration fought about around Ukraine forever. The Army Golden Knights are going to parachute out of a plane to present Trump with a special birthday American flag. So I'm very excited for him there. Here's a clip of Trump talking about his upcoming military parade from Monday.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You know, we've rebuilt our military largely little low on ammunition. That's because it goes out very fast to other countries, one in particular. But where we'll get that back very quickly. There's no military like our military.

[Ben Rhodes]

We showed that with isis.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I was told by the television generals it would take four years to win and we did it in three weeks. And it was headed by General Raisin Cain, who's now the chairman of the.

[Ben Rhodes]

Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[Jacinda Ardern]

He's great. Just left him.

[Ben Rhodes]

I sort of have to laugh at these people.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, you know, you're going to spend a lot of money. A lot of that money is being paid for by me and people that make donations. I don't know if you know that A lot of it won't even come out of the military. I think I can say that, Susie. Right. And it's not my birthday. It is my birthday, but I'm not celebrating my birthday. I'm celebrating Flag Day. It happens to be the same day. So I take a little heat. Oh my God. So triggering.

[Tommy Vitor]

So we've talked about a dumbness in authoritarian seeming. This is. I do. I'm actually serious though. But like being in LA right now, watching, you know, the federalization of The National Guard, 700 Marines being sent to our streets, it does make it kind of hit different. I'm not suggesting that like the D.C. parade troops are going to like finish their march and then go sack the Capitol. But like.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It'S not impossible, right?

[Tommy Vitor]

Not impossible.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I'm going to be pretty dark about this today, and I think it is because we're like a few miles away from a totally crazy and unnecessary deployment of National Guard and Marines in response to pretty. To protest, largely peaceful, no request for them. But to kind of connect these two dots. Right? The. When you examine the extreme risk of the Trump presidency, the extreme risk of the Trump presidency is the total personalization of the power of the American presidency, and in particular, the personalization of the US Military as an instrument of power. Right? So we've seen how Trump is willing to kind of corrupt all parts of the US Government to serve his interest, right? Tariffs, you know, he can turn the dial on Vietnam, and then suddenly, Eric Trump's over there signing a billion $5 deal, the Emirates. He can go there, get $2 billion in crypto investments for his company through his family, and then, lo and behold, he's improving sensitive technology going to the Emirates. But the military is the ultimate danger here because our whole system is set up that the military does not serve the kind of personal or political interests of the President. It does not serve his domestic interests. It's a institution that serves the United States, United States Constitution. The thing that links These two stories, LA and DC, is he's using the military for entirely kind of his personal interests. So in la, the military is being used to serve his personal interest in his immigration policy and his probably desire to pick a fight with blue state governors in a multicultural city. And that's what's happening. And we, lo and behold, have people like US Military in the streets of the city that we're in right now. This is. Everything he says is bullshit. Like, oh, it's just a coincidence that my birthday's on the same day as, like, the U.S. army's birthday. Everybody knows he's wanted a parade. He's said that for a long time. And it's a sign of how much the Frog has been boiling, that when he first raised this, like, nine years ago, people were like, this is nuts. And now it's like, oh, sure, he's doing it. My concern, Tommy, is it is fucking month five here and we're already at a place where it's kind of normal that there's like a huge parade of helicopters and tanks through D.C. for the President's birthday. And then there's deployment, not just National Guard, but Marines, which is totally unnecessary and totally provocative here in la, just to be the scared guy, what if there's like a mega Kent State kind of thing? How's it gonna feel to live in this country if a bunch of people are shot? What if these people in LA don't go home? Like, what if the troops just stay out and suddenly we've, like, kind of almost semi permanent garrisons in American communities, you know? So, yeah, the far end is like, what if the parade is the COVID for the military takeover? Okay, doesn't even have to be that to start to kind of create a predicate where what you're worried about is in two, three years from now, if he wants to do something super extreme, has he kind of conditioned the military, as led by Pete Hegseth and Raisin Cain, I guess, to be more willing to do these things.

[Tommy Vitor]

And I was just watching his speech at Fort Bragg, where Trump was speaking in front of uniformed members of the military and giving a totally partisan political speech, making fun of trans people, talking shit about la. And these guys are like whooping it up and chuckling behind him, which is. It's just like, look, I know that norms from the before times, like, it's a little quaint to talk about that now, but it is outrageous to give a highly partisan speech like that in front of a active duty members of the military and have them, like, cheering you on at highly partisan statements. And, you know, Ben Trump said Sunday, the military parade, that protesters will be met with, quote, very heavy force. Like, what are they going to do? We're talking about what, they're going to charge the fucking tanks. Like, what are you, what are you talking about here? And, you know, we, I think both of us have a higher level of anxiety. Just to make it even darker, the thing I was thinking about the other day is like, like authoritarians. Bukele, for example, right? There was a horrific weekend of gang violence. He declares what they called a state of exception, suspends civil liberties and uses that as a pretext to just, you know, eradicate civil society and lock people up. That's kind of like the authoritarian playbook, right? You declare a state of emergency of some sort. The thing I've been thinking about is, okay, so what are the big things Trump is going to face during his term? AI maybe they announced that there is some scary advance in AGI and they use that to lead to a huge crackdown that, I don't know, curtails our civil liberties in some ways, maybe cuts off our access to technology or the Internet. There's just all those different weird ways. We could go down a very fascist route that doesn't necessarily require tanks in the street. But you're right that we are the frog that's being boiled right now.

[Jacinda Ardern]

And the scariest one to me, Tommy, is it could be as simple as it's peaceful protest. And so it could be that the more Trump does extreme shit, the more people are protesting and the more the fact of people protesting, that creates the predicate for him to deploy the military. That's what happened here. Those protests were not violent. Yeah, Some people wrote fuck ice on a car. Like, and every sees the same video of a car burning over and over again. Like, there's 10,000 people marching people.

[Tommy Vitor]

There's a level of violence that can be dealt with by the LAPD any day of the week.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Nobody asked for that. Nobody asked. And so the point is, if there's more and more protests of his immigration policy or if the economy goes to shit and people are protesting, and then suddenly he keeps calling in the military to quash the protest, and then it's like, actually, we just gotta declare a big national emergency here. Like, if George Floyd had happened now, that would be it. We'd have martial law in this country. Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

Or 9, 11 happened.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Right. We could cancel the midterm elections. I mean, this is a scary day. But, like, we have. This military part is where it gets. Shit, gets real. The only other one thing I say about this is, like, again, I was writing this piece about corruption. I was looking at some of the other autocrats I've been looking at, and Orban, who comes up on the show a lot, and I realized Trump is doing shit that Orban has never even come close to doing. We're beyond Viktor Orban in this country, if you think about it, including the way he's beginning to use the military. And I just think we have to take this very seriously.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I agree with you. Just a quick note on the corruption beat. There's a very fun story in the New York Times from Monday about how Jared Kushner and Rick Cornell's little hotel project in Serbia is kind of unraveling and falling apart. Highly recommend everyone read it because it shows. It's just a great example of the corruption that's happening, but also how these guys are bumbling idiots.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It's incompetent corruption, corruption.

[Tommy Vitor]

All right, but let's turn to Gaza. Listeners might have heard about the Freedom Flotilla, which left Sicily on June 1st bound for Gaza. This was a ship that had 12 activists on board, including Greta Thunberg and French Member of the European Parliament Reema Hassan, as well as, like, a sort of symbolic amount of aid. It was like formula for babies and some other diapers. Yeah, stuff like that. So the hope was to defy Israel's military blockade. But the ship was intercepted by the Israeli navy in international waters on Monday. The passengers were taken ashore. They were given medical exams. Israel's Defense Minister, Israel Katz, also ordered the IDF to, quote, show the flotilla passengers the video of the horrors of the October 7th massacre. That's crazy. And as of this recording, some of the members of the group, including Thunberg, had been deported. There were some others who refused to sign deportation papers and remain in Israeli custody. Thunberg accused Israel of illegally kidnapping her in international waters. Trump was asked about this earlier today. This is what he had to say in response by Israel.

[Jacinda Ardern]

As she says, was she kidnapped? I find it. I think Israel has enough problems without kidnapping Greta Thunberg.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's kind of crazy, weird, glib response.

[Jacinda Ardern]

US Answer. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. So Ben is. Israeli officials were trying to dismiss this, calling it the selfie yacht and saying it was a PR stunt. To which my response would be like, yes, because it was about pr. They're trying to raise awareness.

[Jacinda Ardern]

That's what activists do. That's what direct action is about.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. That said, I think people who are kind of mocking this. I just wanted to point out that in 2010, there was a much larger flotilla of, like, six ships that were trying to deliver aid to Gaza. The Israeli navy intercepted them. They boarded the ships. On one of them, they met some resistance. That led to a firefight, and the IDF killed 10 activists. They wounded dozens of others. Israeli soldiers were wounded. So that incident also led to this, like, massive multi year rupture between Israel and Turkey because the Turkish foundation was behind the 2010 flotilla. But it's just a way of saying that, like, okay, make fun of these people all you want. Call it a selfie boat, but, like, these things can go south real fast.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. And I also think that the reaction is pretty telling because first of all, to the people that kind of get bent out of shape about this and they don't like Greta. I mean, what do you have against. Why are you so triggered by a group of people trying to, like, sail some baby formula to Gasa? Like, just take a step back.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. What is wrong with that?

[Jacinda Ardern]

On the merits. Yeah, just. Yeah, sure. Is it gonna, like, fill all the humanitarian needs in Gaza? Of course it's not, but it's designed to bring attention to the fact that aid isn't getting in. And I would say that the people that are choosing to mock this or to somehow be offended by it are choosing to look away from the underlying problem that they're trying to bring attention to. It's a lot easier to sit there and make fun of Greta Thunberg than it is to think about the fact that babies are starving to death in Gaza because Israel is not letting any aid in and is dropping bombs, US Made bombs on them. Right. So there is a place, I mean, to connect this to even what's happening here, like there is a place for activism. Like people and activists are usually not popular actually, you know, like throughout history. Activists are meant to make people uncomfortable. They're meant to, to challenge complacency. They're meant to be creative. It doesn't mean you have to like every tactic. But on balance, if you look at this and you're kind of not on the side of people trying to bring a little bit of aid into Gaza, like you need to think about why and why is it. Why are you sitting around like dunking on a 22 year old Swedish person instead of actually trying to figure out a way to solve this problem?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, like there's a lot that she does and says that it's not how I would do it that I disagree with, but I have a lot of respect for people that literally put their physical safety on the line for a cause like that and just want to make the point that that's what happened here. I mean the Israeli soldiers intercepting your vessel is. It's a scary thing.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, and I have to say. Yes, I mean it's scary. It is a scary thing. And that could go wrong. That could have gone wrong, as you said. I'll also say in defense of her and like even some other activists who like there is a role for some people who are just totally uncompromising. Her role has always been whether it's. And it's pretty telling that when it's climate change, some people are like what a hero Greta is. And then it gets to something like this. Look, if you don't have people like that, she's creating an end to a certain kind of spectrum here and we need people to be doing that. And so that's why. Yeah, I don't know that I like that's not gonna solve the problem. But that's one form of direct action among many. Nonviolent too, by the way. Like it's nonviolent resistance which you know, which is being delegitimized generally here.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, to the underlying problem that we've covered a bunch with this disastrous new aid distribution process in Gaza. So it's via this Israeli American U. S backed organization called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation or GHF for short. That has been. The Israelis have decided to take the GHF and have it replace the United nations and all their expertise in aid distribution. On Tuesday, the day we're recording this, Haaretz reported that 17 people were killed and about 100 were wounded after Israeli forces opened fire near one of the points where the GHF distributes aid. So it's just another disaster. Gaza health authorities say that more than 160 people in Gaza have been killed since the GHF system was put in place two weeks ago.

[Jacinda Ardern]

And.

[Tommy Vitor]

And more generally, it's just. It's not working. Like, aid is not getting to people. People are going hungry. There's chaos all the time. People who are sick or old or young can't get to these distribution points. So it's just. It's. It's a catastrophe. And also, Ben, I did not realize. Did you know that the Boston Consulting Group had worked on this GHF plan?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Not until. But then I saw they pulled out of it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes.

[Jacinda Ardern]

They're like, this is fucking crazy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. So this Washington Post story reported that the CEO of Boston Consulting Group, which, for those who don't know, they're like, one of the big three, like, consulting firms, he apologized to the full staff, and they fired two partners because of their decision to work on this project. I guess I'm mostly just surprised that it was them, not McKinsey, but. Pretty fucking weird.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, the whole thing, I mean, it's interesting. I said last week, I kind of was like, you know, not to be cynical, but it feels almost designed to fail, to. Not only to fail, but to create these scenes of chaos. Right. And then the other thing that's come out over the last week is this Israeli support for, like, this kind of Gaza faction that is, like, you know, stirring up shit. And again, not. It's hard not to be cynical about this stuff, but this is clearly. Clearly, it's not designed to maximize efficient distribution of aid, because if you wanted to do that, you'd just drive some aid trucks across the border and distribute through the hundreds of channels that exist to distribute aid. But when you add together the Potemkin version of this, with them kind of backing these different kind of thuggish factions in Gaza, it does feel like they want it to look like, look how chaotic it is. You can't possibly deliver aid here.

[Tommy Vitor]

Or these people couldn't govern themselves, or these people couldn't.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So not to be super chaotic, cynical about it, but, I mean, I think this Israeli government has given us plenty of reason to be cynical. I kind of feel like they are maximizing these scenes of chaos, which don't need to exist, because if you rolled trucks across the border and gave it to all the existing sites, you could do this.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And like. Yeah, there's. Yeah. The reports you mentioned that they say the Israeli government is arming these clans in Gaza who are opposed to Hamas. So there's no way that that will end badly. Just arming more people in Gaza.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. And those clans are not going to like take over Gaza. It's not an alternative leadership Bill. If you wanted to build an alternative leadership in Gaza, get the, we talked about this like in October, after October 7th. Get the Gulf Arabs together, get all the Arab states together. Find the younger technocratic people.

[Tommy Vitor]

Palestinian Authority.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It's not just like funding clans to like fight Hamas. It's like that's a recipe for internal conflict and more chaos. It's like a bottom up leadership building.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, but don't worry. The State Department is considering donating half a billion dollars to the ghf. And instead of going after the people committing war crimes, Marco Rubio is announcing sanctions on the ICC that's trying to prosecute them. So everything's going great.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, yeah. And sanctions that are like, could obstruct their ability to do other investigations. Right. Including of Russian war crimes. Right. So like, because they're so far reaching that it's gonna be hard for people to travel.

[Tommy Vitor]

Or for Trump, that's a two for the price of one, I guess.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Probably protecting his boy Vlad.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It's a good point. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

We're going to take a quick break, but if you want to help some of the great people out there organizing to try to prevent ICE from ripping people out of communities and deporting people wrongly. Our friends at Vote Save America are fighting back by raising money for immigration defense groups. Go to www.votesave America.com support and donate what you can to help right now. Paid for by Vote Save America. Votes Save America.com not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Foreign World is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Have you ever been on a road trip where one person insists on controlling the music? Yes, you're just trying to enjoy the ride, but now you're stuck listening to nothing but their favorite brand. No discussion, no compromises, just their way or the highway. That's kind of what's happening with Christian nationalism. Some folks want to take over the wheel and force everyone to follow their beliefs, shoving religion into our laws, our schools, and even our personal choices. But hey, this country was built for everyone, not just one group. That's where the Freedom From Religion foundation comes in. Think of them as the gps keeping church and state in separate lanes, just like the founders actually intended. So whether you've always been secular or left religion behind. If you don't want someone else dictating the trip for you, FFRF has your back. Join them. Go to FFRF US Freedom or text the word WORLD to 511511 and become a member today. Text WORLD to 511511 or go to FFRFF US Freedom. Because when it comes to freedom, we all deserve to choose our own route. For membership information, text WORLD to 511511 text fees may apply. Meet Flip she's one half of a Flip Flop. That's me who got left behind at Celebration Key, Carnival's exclusive paradise in Grand Bahama.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Uh, I chose to stay here. It really is paradise.

[Tommy Vitor]

So now Flip spends her time lounging on the beach, swimming in the lagoon and eating.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The only thing more impressive than my.

[Ben Rhodes]

Appetite are all the dining options.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Have you tried food service to your cabana?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Ooh, yum.

[Tommy Vitor]

Flip. Where'd she go?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Book your cruise vacation to Carnival's Celebration.

[Tommy Vitor]

Cayenne, a paradise you want to lose yourself in. Ships registry, the Bahamas, in Panama Switching gears to Iran, Ben so listeners to the show probably know the Trump administration is holding talks with Iran about its nuclear program. Trump is trying to cut a deal that substantively sounds nearly identical to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, just isn't linked to Obama in some way. On the US Side, the talks are being led by Steve Witkoff, Trump's real estate buddy turned diplomat. The sixth round of these talks is going to happen on Sunday in Oman. But Ben, what is fascinating to me is what's happening behind the scenes in this lobbying war for and against diplomacy with Iran that's happening within maga. So Politico had a great piece on this with a bunch of interesting detail like the fact that conservative talk show host Mark Levin had lunch with Trump last week in the Oval Office to lobby him. Levin reportedly told Trump that Iran was days away from getting a nuke, which is not true, and urged him to let Israel strike Iran. Levin was also joined by a Republican mega donor, because why not have a mega donor there when you're talking about blowing up Iran? There's also been this coordinated PR campaign I think we both noticed over the past few weeks in all the Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's publications like the New York Post, attacking Steve Witkoff personally. And then Ben last week, you know, off of the week. But I was on a train, I think, and I was scrolling through and I came across this like op ed length screed from Tucker Carlson Attacking Mark Levin on Iran in this meeting. And it includes some lines like, quote, so why is Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction? To distract you from the real goal, which is a regime change. Young Americans heading back to the Middle east to topple yet another government. That's part of this long thing. Levin responded to Tucker on his show. Here's like a little super cut of some of the more unhinged parts.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Tucker Carlson is a lunatic. And for those of you who think you know him, you do not. He's a false prophet. And by profit, I mean P R O F I T. But I think we'll call him now what Rush used to call him, of course, Chatsworth Osborne Jr. Because he looks like a kook, a nerd. Used to have the bow tie. Why is Tucker a special pleader for Iran? Why is Tucker a special pleader for Qatar? Why is Tucker a special pleader for Putin? He likes to portray himself as an opponent of the elites. But the idea of negotiating with Iran rather than striking its nuclear program militarily is as close as you can get to a Washington elite establishment consensus. By the way, he sounds like a preppy boy, doesn't he? He didn't go to my high school, I can tell you that. What the hell happened to you, you jerk?

[Tommy Vitor]

So, Ben, very fun to watch these guys fight. Weird to side with Tucker on this one, but a little worrisome to know that like a Twitter war between Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson could determine whether we were.

[Jacinda Ardern]

But there's a real war. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is look to start with the substance and then work our way to this kind of fun intramural activity. All reports are that the Trump people are prepared to accept a deal in which there remains some limited domestic enrichment capability for Iran, Right.

[Tommy Vitor]

With some sort of sunset period, right? Like over the course of a few years before they transition to some other entity that might be internationalized to get.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The materials, which the Iranians don't.

[Tommy Vitor]

They're saving face.

[Jacinda Ardern]

This is a face saving thing because for the Iranians, they don't believe in more than like, certainly more than four year time increments, right? Cause they've seen that no deal because they're smart. Every American President, because they're not fucking idiots. And they've seen what's happened. And so they could promise to do things like eight years from now, like, who gives a shit? Because we've seen America break that promise. But anyway, if they make a deal, whatever they say about it, whatever they say about sunsetting and everything and all the rest of it. If they allow Iran to continue to enrich any amount of uranium on their soil, and that's like spinning some centrifuges to enrich uranium. It's basically the same thing as Obama's Iran deal. And these people like Mark Levin, like, they know that because they lost their minds over that, by the way, knowing fucking nothing. I mean, this guy does not understand. He's not like some expert on nuclear technology, right? Like, Mark Levin is not there scrutinizing, like the distribution of the uranium mines to the mills to the centrifuges and understanding, like, what can ensure that it's not gonna be weaponized. We're not talking about profit. Like this guy's profited off of fear mongering about Iran like for the last 15 years, you know, and so the first point is, I just want to lay the marker down. If they don't dismantle the entire nuclear program, they allow this capability. It's basically just a jcpoa. And the Republicans know that now in terms of their internal.

[Tommy Vitor]

And by the way, it's weird for us to talk about, right, because obviously we want this deal to get cut.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I want it to get done.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'm not giving Trump a pass and pretending that in substance it was a good idea to pull out of the.

[Jacinda Ardern]

No, it's fucking insane.

[Tommy Vitor]

We could have stayed in and renegotiated the terms of the deal and not allowed Iran to enrich enough. Like what, 60% enriched uranium for like eight bombs, which is where they are now.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Trump, like, pulling out of this thing was totally stupid and self defeating. Joe Biden not returning to the Iran deal the first week of his presidency and instead being afraid to touch it was incredibly stupid and self defeating.

[Tommy Vitor]

I assume maybe because they were worried about the Saudi reaction.

[Jacinda Ardern]

No, they were worried about Congress, I think, you know, they were worried about like, you know, losing Bob Menendez gold bars.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, no, not him.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The chair of the Foreign relations.

[Tommy Vitor]

See that prick fucking advocating for a pardon, saying Obama locked him up because he opposed the Iran deal.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, and by the way, lying when he said that too, because he had the dates all wrong. Like the day before the Iran deal was announced. I was. They were robbing charges, in fact, that those were months before the Iran. Everybody's full of shit, Bob.

[Tommy Vitor]

Go buy some Trump coin. Don't tweet. We all know how you get a pardon.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Get your gold bars guys to buy some. Buy some crypto meme coin. And so, but there's as we've talked about. There is a real substantive divide in the Republican Party between the guys like Mark Levin who can't stop playing the old hits. You know, they're still on the, like neocon, like regime change in Iran and like, you know, we gotta go and fight everybody. And then the guys like Tucker and Steve Bannon who are like the populace, like America Firsters. And it's a pretty. There's an interesting intellectual difference underneath this guy. A grown man being like, he is a bow tie and he's a nerd.

[Tommy Vitor]

We call him a nerd.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Cliff is so unhinged. Yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, look, I don't like Tucker Carlson, but goddammit, does he make some sense sometimes. Here's another from his screed quote. A war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of Trump's supporters. It would end his presidency. That may explain why so many of Trump's enemies are advocating for it. So he gets a little crazy at the end by calling Mark Levin an enemy. But it is, it's fascinating that, you know, Tucker is able to spare the truth. Unlike a lot of senior Democrats, by the way.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Who are like, you know, like throwing cold water on a potential Iran deal, attacking Trump over it.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The Democrats should not fucking do that.

[Tommy Vitor]

We should not be doing that, you.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Know, moving to the right of a Trump Iran deal. I mean, attack him for being a hypocrite, attacking him for wasting everybody's time, attacking him for pulling out of the Obama deal, whatever, but attacking him from the right. I mean, this is where Levin is also wrong. The Washington elites, like did not support the Iranians.

[Tommy Vitor]

No.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Like they looked out, they looked down their nose at what is Obama doing, like all the think tanks and like, sure, we held like some our own nerds, like you know, like the non pro experts.

[Tommy Vitor]

I mean, it was like the Plowshares.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, exactly. Like my guys. But like we didn't. The foreign policy establishment was very skeptical, like you know, making a deal with Iran because they're always worried about their right flank. And our party needs to have a more mature version of the debate that the Republicans are having because our reflexive caution on diplomacy, lifting serious sanctions, doing a deal with Iran is incredibly self defeating. And a good test of this will be if there is a Trump Iran deal. The Democrats are like, you know what? This is poorly handled and stupidly done and he's a hypocrite. But I'd rather have this deal versus those Democrats are going to be like, I will, you know, I stand with Israel and we need to, like, not a. Not a screw of Iranian nuclear facilities should exist. Like, that's going to be heard by Americans is like, these guys don't get it. They're still the fucking war party.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes. On the, on the politics, on the merits, like, Democrats need to embrace diplomacy. Friend of the pod, Matt Duss had a great piece on this in foreign policy.com, we should be for Trump's Iran diplomacy. If it fails, it fails. But we should be in favor of diplomacy. We should be in favor of lifting sanctions on this new Syrian government and trying to, like, give it, help it, you know, succeed.

[Jacinda Ardern]

There's plenty of other things that Trump's doing for you to be angry.

[Tommy Vitor]

So many bad things happen. So many bad things he is doing. I could make you a long list if you need it. But, yeah, I don't know why, like, Chuck Schumer is attacking Trump for being all over the place on Iran. Like, I. Just.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Because it's on foreign policy. It's never stopped being, like, you know, November of 2001 to Chuck Schumer. It's so frustrating.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, it's deeply frustrating. Finally, Ben, speaking of foreign policy, Illuminati, the biggest thinkers out there, the most influential and important and brilliant people, we wanted to play you guys some excerpts of this truly insane video that our Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, tweeted out earlier today. Let's listen.

[Ben Rhodes]

I recently visited Hiroshima in Japan and stood at the epicenter of a city that remains scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945, 80 years ago. Yet this one bomb that caused so much destruction on Hiroshima was tiny compared to today's nuclear bombs. Just one of these nuclear bombs would vaporize everything at its core. People, buildings, life itself. And then comes the fallout. Radioactive poison spreading through the air, water and soil, condemning survivors to agonizing deaths or lifelong suffering. Political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. Perhaps it's because they are confident that.

[Jacinda Ardern]

They will have access to nuclear shelters.

[Tommy Vitor]

For themselves and for their families. What.

[Jacinda Ardern]

What the people have access to. So it's up to us, the people.

[Ben Rhodes]

To speak up and demand, demand an end to this madness.

[Jacinda Ardern]

We must reject this path to nuclear.

[Ben Rhodes]

War and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Okay, so many thoughts.

[Tommy Vitor]

The score.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So, yes, that was one of them.

[Tommy Vitor]

It came from her personal account. We cut it down from, like, three minutes to whatever that was a minute 20, because it was just way too long. But there was like no additional context. Like, is she talking about Iran? Is she talking about Ukraine? I share her desire to not live through a nuclear holocaust. She lost me a bit. Like, the elites all have bunkers, fallout shelters. Like what? Like, what the hell was that? I don't know. Why is the DNI doing this?

[Jacinda Ardern]

All right, I have thoughts here. Number one, if you end up. If you and I end up in a white padded cell with no furniture and lights on 24 hours a day, the thing that will happen in that cell is that voice will be piped in with that score and we'll go fucking out of our minds. We'll be like in a fetal position in the corner.

[Tommy Vitor]

That violin at the end, like.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I will never unhear that. That's the first thing. Second, what is absolutely so fucking frustrating about the whole Trump milieu, right, from Maha to Tulsi to Trump to Ben and to Tucker, is they talk about this stuff. I agree. Ish. I guess I do. With what she's saying. She's a part of an administration that is going to spend more and more money building and modernizing nuclear weapons. Part of an administration that has no arms control agenda to negotiate with the Russians and the Chinese to reduce nuclear weapons.

[Tommy Vitor]

Pulled out of a bunch of treaties.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So they pulled out in the first Trump term of the last remaining treaties, except for Obama's New Start treaty with Russia. So they bank the credit for being like, isn't it crazy that we have these nuclear weapons and we have to live in the sphere when then at the same time, they're the ones tearing up arms control agreements and spending trillions of dollars in nuclear weapons. And also, and this is the last thing, the people with the bunkers are their supporters. Like, the people that finance their entire political project are the exact people who've got property in the Canadian Rockies and in fucking New Zealand. The reason that they probably want to conquer western Canada is cuz they already have land there. Because they want to land there. After the nuclear climate apocalypse or whatever apocalypse it is, Tulsi will be on one of her own helicopters up there. And so she's like playing this kind of weird populism about it, but it's their movement, dude.

[Tommy Vitor]

Sorry, the part where she starts talking about how the elites have their own fault shelter, that was the most shocking.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Sort of, you know, stop calling people like you and me elites anymore. Like, we, you guys are the elites.

[Tommy Vitor]

You're in charge.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You're in charge of the U.S. intelligence community.

[Tommy Vitor]

You're in charge of everything.

[Jacinda Ardern]

What's more elite than running the US.

[Tommy Vitor]

Intelligence guys are in charge of the White House, Congress, every agency, the courts, the media. Have you looked at the ratings numbers for Fox News versus, like, cnn?

[Jacinda Ardern]

When does that become the establishment media? They get better ratings than, like, networks.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's wild. It's wild. She is just such a confusing person.

[Jacinda Ardern]

She's confusing because I'm like, well, I kind of agree with some of this. But then like, wait a second. You know, also, what if we just had that score playing behind us?

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I would love to know who.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Made it, I think in your body.

[Tommy Vitor]

Some reporters listen to this. If you're still listening, please, someone just dig in, like Alex Ward or someone at Politico. Just dig into how this thing got made, what the context was, why it came out. Now, is this her responding to Mark Levin? What is happening here? I don't know.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Is there gonna be nuclear war or is this like, her, like, we need to side with Russia instead of having like a. I heard it as, like, the elites are trying to get us into war with Russia.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I heard it as, Yeah, I could. I could hear it as Russia. I could hear with you as Iran. I don't know. I don't know. Finally, Ben, before we go to our interview with Jacinda Ardern, we wanted to send lots of love to our producer Alona and her new baby boy, Luca. Yeah, excellent name.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Welcome, Luca.

[Tommy Vitor]

Excellent, excellent name. We miss you, Alona. But we're so happy for you guys.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Very excited.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Very excited for you and very excited for you to get to spend time with that little guy.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And, you know, two kids. It's not one plus one, it's not three, but it's not two.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It's an exponential change. It's simultaneously much easier with the baby and exponentially a logistical challenge.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yes, the logistics.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Logistics. The logistics. Get hard.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, you're lining up like, logistics for you are more like play dates in this.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It's an Uber driver for me. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. For me it's like, is there any chance we could line up like one hour of the naps on Saturday so that I can just lay down?

[Jacinda Ardern]

No.

[Tommy Vitor]

And usually no. Although my kids, like Hannah and I have been so jet lagged from getting back from Europe. Like both of us were up at like 4:15 today.

[Jacinda Ardern]

It's great. And I recommend it.

[Tommy Vitor]

Well, the kids slept till 7, so I feel like I've lived like four days.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

I've gotten so much done.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Love the mornings.

[Tommy Vitor]

I'd read everything before like 6am it's.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The only way to get time is just get up earlier and earlier.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Because the nap time where it kills you is like they'll both. It'll happen, but then It'll last like 15 minutes.

[Tommy Vitor]

Oh, yeah.

[Jacinda Ardern]

And you almost wish you didn't have that 15 minutes.

[Tommy Vitor]

I also. I can't really nap usually. Like, sometimes I can.

[Jacinda Ardern]

No, it's just more the quietude.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's a miracle when it happens. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you'll hear an excellent interview with former prime minister Jacinda Ardern about her fantastic new book. So stick around for that pod. Save the World is brought to you by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The House recently voted to defund Planned Parenthood. That's right. They voted to block care and potentially shut down nearly 200 health centers. Without Planned Parenthood health centers, no other provider can fill that health care gap. Over 1.1 million patients could lose access to birth control, STI testing, abortion, cancer screening, and more. Who would suffer most? People who had already had a harder time than they should getting basic care. Women, people with low incomes, Blacks, Latinos and other communities and people in rural areas. Donate to support planned [e-mail] donate that's plannedparenthood.org donate meet flip. She's one half of a Flip flop.

[Jacinda Ardern]

That's me.

[Tommy Vitor]

Who got left behind at Celebration Key, Carnival's exclusive paradise in Grand Bahama.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Uh, I chose to stay here. It really is paradise.

[Tommy Vitor]

So now Flip spends her time lounging on the beach, swimming in the lagoon, and eating.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The only thing more impressive than my.

[Ben Rhodes]

Appetite are all the dining options. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Have you tried food service to your cabana?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Ooh, yum.

[Tommy Vitor]

Flip. Where'd she go? Book your cruise vacation to Carnival's Celebration Cay, a paradise you'll want to lose yourself in. Ship's registry. The Bahamas. In Panama.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Okay. We are very pleased to be joined by the author of the new book, A Different Kind of Power, Jacinda Ardern. Welcome to Potsy of the World. We have a question tamu's asking me. Are you Prime Minister? Are you Dame Jacinda? What do you do?

[Ben Rhodes]

This is a really common question, particularly in the United States. I mean, my preference is Jacinda, but in New Zealand, we don't hang on to the title of Prime Minister. That is only for the time that you are in office. After that, you depart with right Honourable. But you know that that means nothing. And outside of New Zealand and Dame, I just think is aging, so. Please, Jacinda. It's my preference.

[Tommy Vitor]

That's good though. It's weird that we call former presidents Mr. Or President. Yeah, they're not president.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, it is. Really. It is interesting. I mean, we. This is why I think in New Zealand you end up with a few honorifics, a few titles that are unrelated just to spear confusion because you do find in New Zealand, in the preferred prime minister polls, ex prime ministers will still exist there for a while. So let's just not confuse things by people believing they're still in office.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, well, Dame. When I hear Dame, I think of like Judi Dench or something.

[Tommy Vitor]

Me too.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, a great, wonderful, like privilege and honor to be in that company. But I just prefer to keep it, keep it simple.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, we're gonna get to the book, which is incredible. But I do wanna ask you one question, just to start. You're here in Los Angeles on this tour, like a few miles from here. The US Marines are deployed, the National Guard is deployed. What is it like? As you've been living in the United States for a brief time now, but as someone who's not American, can you share a perspective of what this looks like kind of from the outside in, to see the US military in the streets like this?

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, I've been here, you know, going, going on two years now, and I'm always really aware that I'm an observer and that's a really privileged position to have and always have a little bit of caution, you know, commentating on other people's democracy as an observer. But it really does feel like the United States is the epicenter of a globalization of political culture. And so you are not the only ones who are having this experience of the perfect storm of the disruption to what healthy democracies need. But, you know, having the experience first and in the most extreme ways, you know, when you think from the trajectory of January 6th, then of course through the Trump re election and the manifestation of his particular style of politics and leadership to now what we're seeing manifesting in the streets, added with mis and disinformation on top of that, it's a pattern that we are seeing in other places. But you are seeing it first and you're seeing it in a very extreme way.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, yeah, I mean, I want to take this back into the book because, I mean, one of the things that's been interesting watching your political career is not by any choice of yours, your leadership is sometimes contrasted with our current presidents. But you Know, you write about a different kind of power. You know, you've talked a lot about bringing empathy to leadership, empathetic leadership. And reading the book, which people should definitely. It's personal, it's evocative, it's funny, very. It's not like a traditional political memoir. It's very human, kind of like you were as a leader.

[Ben Rhodes]

Has an excellent blurb on the back from Ben Rhodes.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Forgive me if I'm repeating the blurb. No, I appreciate it, but you trace all the. You know, we learn about your community, we learn about, like, your faith journey from Mormonism, out of the church, we learn about mentors. You don't need to know about New Zealand politics to find this interesting, because you're also taught me, like, I was struck. You're a staffer who became prime minister. It's like every staffer's, like, secret dream. Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

It was not my secret dream, by the way.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, it was unlikely. Right. But the question I want to ask is, on this question of, yes, you have this kind of theory of empathetic leadership, but in writing the book and telling your own story, what did you learn about yourself as a politician by going back and trying to put about where it came from?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, and I think that in itself is something because, you know, you get so used to, as a politician talking about your origin story. How did you end up on the pathway to politics? And people ask you the question because they, I think, understandably, see politics as an unlikely career choice, particularly in these times. So people want to know why you're motivated to be in that place. And for me, there were certain things I could always point to. It wasn't politics itself. It was the fact that politics was a place where you could make change. Most of the politicians I've worked with have been motivated by that more than the cut and thrust. But, you know, as I was writing that story that I thought was really familiar to me, the thing that stood out to me was all of these early manifestations of some traits that I've had my entire life that I saw as weaknesses. You know, imposter syndrome, or you might call in them confidence gap. The fact that I was, you know, always wore my heart on my sleeve. And so that meant from time to time, you know, that I would come out and, you know, perhaps bring a bit of emotion to an issue.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You hug people?

[Ben Rhodes]

I hug people because that's instinctively what, you know, I lean into all of these things that, you know, we're taught and I certainly believed were weaknesses that I had to Somehow overcome, you know, the course of writing the book, I really reaffirmed. To me, actually, they, they brought strengths with it. When you think about what you do to overcome a confidence gap, when you think that you're not the right person for the job or the best person, you prepare, you, you bring in advisors, you bring in experts because you've got a bit of humility in the way that your, your decision making processes work. And in crisis or unknown circumstances, like a pandemic, those are probably pretty helpful traits to have, let alone, I think, the strength of empathy as well. So it was reaffirming, I guess, in some ways.

[Tommy Vitor]

I wanted to ask about what you as a leader learned during COVID about the value that citizens put on life. The kind of jumping off point for this question was there was an article in the New Yorker that said the following. An opposition politician named Brooke Van Velden declared at a medical technology conference that our Durant's administration had put far too much emphasis on saving lives. Quote, when it came to Covid, we completely blew out what the value of life was. She said, I've never seen such a high value on life. Van Velden became a minister in the new government. They wrote in this article that quote is so crazy on its face, but I want to sort of unpack the sentiment a bit and understand like maybe what you learned about what value people put on the lives of others versus their own personal freedom and how that impacted choices you had to make.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, and this is such an interesting question because in policy making and in government policy, you know, there are some areas where there will be called to put a number or a calculation on human life in that way. And when I think about, for instance, we have a scheme called ACC in New Zealand where, you know, you are compensated for injury or accidents or, you know, in some cases loss of life. And so there are some areas of government policy that quantify these things. But the idea of doing that, the idea of saying, well, at this particular point, that investment, that trade off means that, you know, that we'll have this hit to our economy and that cost is too high, that seemed both crude to me, but also wrong. And I think the point that perhaps is being missed in her statement was that she's making a claim that there was a trade off when actually our view was a strong response to Covid, was a strong health response, was the best economic response. If we didn't respond to the fear that people had, people would self exclude from the economy anyway. And so managing and trying to pursue the strategy we did, which was elimination of COVID We felt did both a similar experience. I remember when we were working on mental health, it was a big focus for us as a government, and we were called upon to come up with a target for suicide reduction. And I remember really grappling with that. The idea that setting a target and somehow putting on display that you had a tolerance for something where we clearly had a role to play as government in the provision of mental health service. And so in the end, even though I knew it was unrealistic, we said our target is zero, because why say you have a tolerance? And in many ways, I think we took a similar approach with COVID If it could be. If lives could be saved, we should be saving them.

[Tommy Vitor]

It also made me think about how frustrating it is in politics as a leader to try to get credit for avoiding bad things. Like, I think about the early Obama years, the financial crisis, him rescuing the auto industry. Pointing those things out quickly wore thin with voters because they were just pissed about the recovery not being fast enough, you know, and sort of like the political incentives showing people like, hey, this.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Could have been so much worse.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. Like, how do you get credit for that as a leader? I don't know that. I don't know if you can.

[Ben Rhodes]

Look, I. I don't. Yeah, I don't know if you can either. I mean, in New Zealand, it's often the fact that some researchers said that up to 20,000 lives were saved in New Zealand as a result of the COVID policies. But that won't diminish the fact that it was hard. That won't diminish the fact that, you know, it's caused, you know, ongoing grievance for many. It won't change the fact that people have felt now that there's this uncertainty in their lives, because the thing that you thought you could guarantee is no longer guaranteed. And I think in a way that we just. Politics is about human behavior. We have to accept that that's been a consequence of the pandemic and work really hard to plan for the next experience.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah. And so one thing that impacted views on the pandemic and Covid everywhere was there was this global deluge of Russian disinformation during COVID including in New Zealand. This New Yorker story reported that during the final month of the COVID lockdown in Auckland, consumption of Russian disinformation was 30% higher in New Zealand than in the United States.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes.

[Tommy Vitor]

What do you think the impact of that information was?

[Ben Rhodes]

And why New Zealand? Yeah, I have asked that question, and I cannot answer it. I don't know why. But I do know that our we in New Zealand, interestingly, the claim is also possibly the Solomon Islands as well, were amongst the highest consumers of Russian disinformation at this particular time in early 2022. And the result of that was six days after. Well, one of the results we see in that time period is six days after the convoy in Canada causing the blockade. We had the same in New Zealand. And I think this comes to this wider issue, and this is not to say that government shouldn't take responsibility for whatever contribution may be, the role they're playing for any kind of disquiet in their own country. But at the same time, we are interconnected and back to this issue of the globalization of political culture and the issues, the things that are challenging our, you know, Western liberal democracies. This idea of disinformation, we talk about it almost as if it's just singly, this issue of freedom of speech. But when Russia, when foreign interference is involved, it is much, much more than that. And most countries, and most people, I would have thought, would hate the idea of their people being manipulated. And yet that is exactly what is happening.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, it's interesting. In the book, you kind of re experience this arc of time that on the surface is not super long. Right. It's a few years. But you kind of enter office before all of this, you know, and, you know, you're getting your arms around things, you're doing well, you're up to this job. There's no imposter syndrome. Like, you're in the right place.

[Ben Rhodes]

I had a baby that came in as well.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yes, well, you. It's actually amazing. You. You basically find out you're gonna be the leader at the same time that you find out you're pregnant. So your baby's kind of along for the journey. But then what's interesting, you have this testing and crisis when there's a horrific shooting at Christchurch, and you handle that in your own style. Like you let yourself lead with empathy and you get a lot of kind of positive feedback for that. And then Covid happened, and you kind of bring a similar approach to it, and the results are really good. As time was saying, like, objectively, New Zealand had perhaps the best reaction in the world. And yet, in part because it's disinformation, part for other reasons, you have this kind of negativity starts to pile up. And the question I wanted to take out of that is I met you in part at some of These global conferences where progressives meet and try to figure out the political strategy that's going to lead us out of the wilderness or deal with, with right wing authoritarianism or disinformation. But I keep wondering, and a lot of people obviously have wondered this too, do we even have our minds around how much Covid changed politics globally? The before and after of COVID and not just in terms of like, hey, there are these right wing parties that took advantage of grievances over lockdowns, but that there's something that happened in kind of the society itself or even inside of individuals where things just seemed to get meaner and more us versus them and people got kind of flattened. You know, like we project our worst version of our adversaries and the right wing is always gonna win if it's a fight between people who are otherizing, you know. And I'm just wondering how you reflect on, you know, we can sit here and talk as we do every week about like whether progressive politics and does it look good because the Labour Party won in Australia or the Liberals won in Canada, but are we missing like a full reckoning with does the right understand better than we do that Covid kind of flipped something in ways that.

[Ben Rhodes]

We still don't understand, or did it build on something? And I can't answer whether or not it exacerbated a trend that we were, or a trajectory that we were already on, whether or not it in itself was a triggering event. But either way, you're right that we have seen a change over a period of time. And I'm really interested in what some of the global surveys tell us, and the Edelman survey on trust, for instance, which tries to take a bit more of a global perspective. You know, in there you can see that there has been an erosion in institutions over time that did predate Covid. But now when you look at the 2025 numbers, what's really interesting there is you don't just see the trust issue. You see an increase in grievance, a deep sense of grievance, in fact, 60 plus percent of people with a sense of moderate to severe grievance, not just in governments, but also in private institutions. And then Stemming from that, four out of 10 people believing that hostile action is justified as a result, whether or not that's the deliberate use of disinformation or damage to private or public property as a result. So you can see now so many of the trends that, you know, the reaction that we're seeing in our environments to political acts or indeed you know, to decision making by even private institutions. You see that particular response we're getting now from the public coming through in those surveys. So what does that mean for progressives? You know, I think what we have to understand is they don't feel that their needs have been met, have that sense of grievance and mistrust, you know, is that in part because our political systems have not been as good at delivering to those needs or that we haven't been as good at recognising either way. What the right is really good at is channelling that grievance into fear and blame. And I've always been good at it. And this environment is ripe for that right now. And so I think the challenge is progressives, because there will be, I think, a point where people see that that fear and blame is act actually not leading to a place that improves people's lives. So the role I think the progressives need to play is the much harder one, but the much more sustainable long term solution which is again, mastering the delivery of solutions that will have a positive impact on people's lives.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I mean, one more question on the kind of problem set here though. Cause I think it's important, I mean, cause it's true and we've all talked a lot about it, how institutions have failed and certainly in foreign policy there's ample evidence and we can get into some of them. But tech is a piece of this, right? And Tommy talked about disinformation, but some of this is also just like the design of these platforms. You, after Christchurch shooting led this initiative. That's one of the few initiatives that actually made some progress where you kind of got tech companies together to make commitments to, you know, because the Christchurch shooting, among other horrible things, was kind of live streamed on platforms. And so part of what you wanted to do is reduce obviously those kinds of extreme instances, but also even just hate speech, like better content moderation, better, you know, taking down hate speech. And there was kind of a peer pressure on the tech companies to do that. I'm wondering you fast forward to now and you see, you know, the Trump inauguration, everybody capitulating, you see, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, being his inner maniverse guy, you know, saying he's going to get rid of Di and he's going to get rid of content moderation and kind of going swinging vastly in the other direction. And it's not just meta, but they're easy to pick on and they deserve it. And they deserve it. But like what I mean, because like sometimes I am like, well, yes, it's all true. We need to do better all these things, but it's a little bit hard when, in addition to having like a belligerent far right, it's good at grievance, you have platforms designed to supercharge it. How do you look at some of these people that you partnered with in the Christchurch call as you watch them take down the guardrails and kind of become almost defiantly the worst version of themselves at the most dangerous time for that to be happening?

[Ben Rhodes]

I think one of the reasons why the Christchurch calls was successful was because the railing cry, the unifying factor was the agreement that we didn't want a world where terrorism and violent extremism existed online and in the offline world. And that's still the case now. You know, again, just to put a bit more detail behind the reason that it was established, yeah, we had a white supremacist from Australia who came into New Zealand with the objective of trying to create a pseudo warfare between cultures and groups because he believed New Zealand was too multicultural and inclusive. So not only did he target Friday prayers to maximize the number of victims and took the lives of 51 members of our Muslim community, he livestreamed it on Facebook for 17 minutes. And then that video was uploaded onto YouTube once every second for the first 24 hours. So we had, you know, two goals. On the face of it was if an incident like this happens, how do you stop the spread of it as a further weaponization, as a further victimization? And there the tech companies, we worked closely together, we created a crisis protocol that's been deployed more than 300 times since the crash call. And we just haven't seen that same proliferation that we did in our experience. But more than that, how do we address radicalization in the online environment? And so coming back to that unifying feature of targeting violent extremism and terrorism online, cause we at least surely can all agree that we're safer without that. You know, that has to be the call to maintain people at the table. But we can't have this disconnect where somehow we just focus on the manifestation without any acknowledgement of the environment that's creating that in the first place. And that's what we continue to work on. One of the arguments that we've made is we have to understand the algorithmic journey that individuals are on in the online environment. So let's just give researchers the ability whilst protecting the privacy and of course, the proprietary issues that need to be protected, because we believe in a Free, open and secure Internet. How do we still give though researchers access to understand that journey? Because our terrorists very openly claimed to have been radicalized on YouTube. And if we understand that journey, then we're better equipped to address it. And surely Republican, Democrat, progressive, conservative, surely it is in our interest to answer those questions.

[Tommy Vitor]

The other thing sort of spreading like wildfire on social media has been anti vaccine sentiment here in the U.S. robert F. Kennedy Jr. Our Secretary of Health and Human Services, just fired 17 experts who oversee the data that decides whether you should get a vaccine and when. And he's arguably the most prominent face of this movement, but it's one that is across political perspectives. I mean, Ben, you live in Venice, I'm sure you talk to a lot of acquaintances and friends who are like, I don't know, this kind of Robert F. Kennedy guy. He's saying some interesting things.

[Jacinda Ardern]

He's a little maho.

[Tommy Vitor]

This make America healthy again. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with making America healthy again? Maybe does have a point on these vaccines and I just wonder, again, given your experience living through this, what you make of the fact that we had this miraculous, unbelievably fast development of highly effective Covid vaccines followed by a bump in anti vaccine sentiment. And if you have thoughts on how we can make sense of that, but also get those people back and get their trust in science and.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, and there's so many things at play here. One being that actually for vaccines, this has long been vaccines almost. I feel in some ways like it's in its category of its own because it has been, you know, there's been that push and pull and that, you know, the issue of, you know, particular groups in our communities who have had that hesitancy for decades. You know, I still remember some of the debates over MMR in the 1990s. So I think the bulk of the groups that we're talking about are in the hesitancy category rather than the smaller subset of the anti category. And when you're in the hesitancy category, it is about understanding the question of human behaviour. You know, how do we ensure that people are able to access information that they trust. And so that again plays into all of these other issues that are at play here. When you've got an environment where there's an erosion of trust in institutions, an erosion in trust in government, there's a, a big job to be done to rebuild because the consequence is, I think, a growth in some of these issues and questions by community and the public.

[Tommy Vitor]

And the Elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To a leadership role, not great for us.

[Ben Rhodes]

And all I think about from my own region is the impact of measles outbreaks and the very real consequences on children's lives. And it's devastating to know that these preventable diseases are increasing in prevalence.

[Tommy Vitor]

Yeah, I called our doctor and said, should we vaccinate our one year old now? One year old early because of the prevalence outbreak. One very different question. Vice News described New Zealand as, quote, apocalypse escape destination for America's elite. What's up? Why are all the billionaires building bunkers in New Zealand?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, maybe this is where science kicks in. I've always been told that New Zealand's the best country in the world to be for nuclear fallout. So maybe this is.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Did you get, like, lobbied by people who wanted to like, be building?

[Ben Rhodes]

No, I wouldn't call it lobbying. I get a lot of commentary around how do I come, you know, what's the process? You know, I remember during the first Trump election, there was a spike on immigration, New Zealand's website, for people looking up relocating to New Zealand. So it's been a thing for a while. I think it's probably just carries that perception, understandably as being, you know, as being a beautiful place, a beautiful place to be. So if you're, if you're going to leave home, maybe that's not a. Not a bad alternative.

[Jacinda Ardern]

And do you. Can you put into context for us the friendly or rivalry with Australia? Like, how should we.

[Ben Rhodes]

Canada and the United States.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Okay, yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Okay, Similar.

[Tommy Vitor]

So you're annex them.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So you're Canada in this analogy.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes, that's right.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So at least Australia is not trying to.

[Ben Rhodes]

And look, from time to time there's, you know, jokes about New Zealand as a state of Australia, but the thing that I think might be slightly different, I can't comment on this though, is that we have a very, very, you know, friendly rivalry. Except if we find one another out in the wild in the world, then immediately it's very familial. It's, you know, it's almost as if you've found a fellow, a fellow country person. So it's a very close relationship. We have the ability to reside in one another's countries. So it's pretty special.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So I'm gonna like, pivot off of this to like a much weightier thing. But I did want to ask you.

[Ben Rhodes]

About it as opposed to every other topic that we're gonna hit on this.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, I did want to ask and it actually does connect to the Australia New Zealand point. Right. And so here's how I'm gonna walk into this subject, which is I've seen like Australia, New Zealand, like every other US Ally and traditional supporter of Israel over the course of the last, you know, since October 7th, essentially try to figure out, you know, you can kind of sense a discomfort in some quarters at least, particularly progressive circles, about like, we kind of plug into this global security architecture that routinizes kind of taking Israel's side and supporting them. And yet in certain places, and certainly we've seen this in certain European countries, you can sense that that is creating real tensions inside of their own, certainly the center left to the progressive side of politics. That's also happened here in the United States. States where inside the Democratic Party, there are these splits between people who kind of, you know, kind of instinctively are supportive of Israel, but are then other people who are like absolutely horrified at what's happened in Gaza. And to kind of connect this whole circle we've been talking about, because it does, it connects everything from like prioritizing life, you know, like we were talking about with COVID to addressing the cynicism that people might feel about institutions. The way I want to put this question to you is for people on that center to the left, how do you balance between the fact that you want to maintain kind of a unity in our coalitions? And yet there are people who understandably are just like, this is becoming just fundamentally like a moral question, you know, like the difference between whether or not we should provide military support to Israel while tens of thousands of Palestinian children are being killed and starved is not like a tactical political question. It's like, this is a gut check. Like, do we actually stand for the things we say we stand for? Because if we believe in dignity of every person, it shouldn't be that complicated. To say, hey, what happened on October 7th is absolutely horrific and that should never happen. But what's happening in Gaza is so far beyond the pill, that shouldn't happen either. Like, is there a way to center, you know, foreign policy, which I think is contributed to the cynicism people feel. Like you give these speeches, I wrote some of these speeches about human freedom and dignity. And then you give bombs that are being dropped on children and people say, well, this whole thing is fucking bullshit. The whole enterprise of kind of center left governance, I mean, I know it's a huge wind up. What prism do you evaluate how people should make decisions about an issue like Gaza when it seems like at core we're now in a moral Space. And not just a tactical policy or political question.

[Ben Rhodes]

Children.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

The moment children are at the center of, you know, this question, you know, this, you know, what you've framed as a foreign policy question, and they are paying the price, then you're absolutely right. It is a question of morality. But if I were to pan back a little bit and look at the, you know, the positioning of various, you know, friends or allies of the United States, what's interesting to me is that actually I would say that New Zealand, even for the fact it currently has a conservative government, has maintained a fairly consistent position and not unlike Ireland, you know, long been a proponent and advocated for a two state solution, been fairly consistent on that. And there are a group of countries that I would say have throughout, you know, generally speaking, throughout, since October 7th, tried to maintain the fact that two things can be true. And this is the thing I found so striking around where we find ourselves with the horror of Gaza is that two things can be true. You can both stand against what happened on October 7th and condemn absolutely the violence that was thrust upon people on that in those events call for the return of those who were taken and simultaneously take a position that what is happening now in Gaza is absolutely wrong. Two things can be true and yet we seem to be in a situation where holding one seems in some people's minds to be in opposition to the other. And so interesting to me today that we have now the uk, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia who have placed sanctions on two members of the Israeli government for the fact that they have taken positions which they consider to be inflammatory, inciting violence and creating greater distance from the idea of a two state solution, regardless of how realistic you believe that currently is. Now that's interesting.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

Because you take out Norway and that's usually five eyes minus one.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And so, you know, I do think you see that there are those who are perhaps positioning in a particular way, but in the absence of the United States.

[Tommy Vitor]

Your reflexive answer on how to view this war in the moral way. Just saying, children, it's so obvious to me.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

But in the United States, and it's exactly my reaction too. But in the United States. Do you know you have a six year old, right? You know, Ms. Rachel is.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes, I think so.

[Tommy Vitor]

She's YouTube content creator, has about 100 trillion views. She makes stuff, videos for kids.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes, right.

[Tommy Vitor]

If you need a half hour as a parent to just sit on the couch, Ms. Rachel is your person. She has been just talking about children in Gaza, holding up photos, highlighting their stories. And she's getting attacked for it and told like, how dare you not also talk about October 7th in the same breath? Or like, all this what about ism? And I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the reaction you see, especially online to the war, the fact that someone just highlighting the humanity of children is not only not. What's the word I'm looking for? I mean, it's. She's being attacked for it. That is what I'm getting at.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's like two things can be true.

[Tommy Vitor]

Two things can be true.

[Ben Rhodes]

And actually it's, you know, and here, when you hold to the importance, I mean, of course you should value all lives. But there's something always very unifying when you're talking about the impact of a conflict or a policy decision on children. And you know, and equally, of course, everyone was, should be and is, I would hope, horrified by what happened on October 7 with the involvement of children there and the weaponization of children there. Two things can be true. And, you know, every day that this continues is a day that I do think people lose their belief in systems diplomacy, multilateralism, and, you know, at its more extreme end, their sense of humanity. And as long as kids are involved, you know, that's a feeling we should all carry.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah. And it's ultimately like our, like, if we're building back a different kind of politics that can overcome what we're dealing with a few miles from here. Right. You know, military and streets, all the things we've talked about. Right. Like, it has to be centered on something, not. Not talking points or like some strategy that some people, you know, put together at a conference or it's got to be like, what is this grounded in? Right. I mean, that's like it to kind of come back to where we started. I mean, the reason people should check out your book and follow the work you're doing is I think you're modeling a different. I'm not just saying this. I mean, we talked a bunch over the last couple years. Like, you're modeling a different kind of approach to politics that is less about just trying to find the right set of policies and talking points, but actually like, hey, why are we in this? And how do we treat each other? And we're not going to be meaner than them or more cynical than them. And I think this is what got the Democrats in trouble in Gaza or more while we, you know, we were going to say one thing, but anybody who's watching what we're doing is thinking like, well, they're not prioritizing children if they're giving 2,000 pound bombs. Like, but across the board, I think it's something to think about for people is that sometimes we, you get back to kind of first principles of like, what are we in this for? Sorry.

[Tommy Vitor]

No, no. I was groping around for the word controversial and I couldn't find it with respect to Ms. Rachel talking about kids.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Well, I got it too. Like, I got controversial. I posted something in my Instagram story, just the Greta Thunberg and I actually got all this. People like, she, you know, how dare you support her. She's just, I'm like, she. Whatever you think about the. She's just a 22 year old trying to bring food to some people.

[Ben Rhodes]

Right.

[Jacinda Ardern]

You know, like that if we, if our tent isn't big enough for that, like we gotta, we got a problem. But anyway, thanks for, you know, doing a tour through some very light issues today. Well, it was Oprah a little like, I guess we're, you know, I mean we're, you know, we're, we're halfway into the.

[Ben Rhodes]

We talked a little less about IVF and conception in this podcast than some of the other interviews.

[Jacinda Ardern]

I mean, I've had stick around actually. Tommy knows I got some experience there.

[Tommy Vitor]

Why I went down that road.

[Ben Rhodes]

That's one of the, you know, I didn't want to write, you know, a book that was focused on, you know, the ins and outs of New Zealand politics from 2017 to 2023. Instead, it's just a story of how it feels to lead and what it's like behind the scenes. And for me it was, yeah, it was trying to also balance a surprise pregnancy after not being able to. After failed IVF and all the ups and downs. And maybe a little bit of humor in there as well.

[Jacinda Ardern]

What is she watching if she's not watching Ms. Rachel?

[Ben Rhodes]

We still watch a little, we still watch from time to time a little bit of bluey. Little other plug for.

[Jacinda Ardern]

So that's okay.

[Ben Rhodes]

Can I also put in a plug for. As the bluey. As your bluey cohort moves through investigators and little lunch. Okay, great. Again, another two great Australian shows for probably more a six or seven year old audience. And this is a demonstration that we can get along.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, you can get along.

[Ben Rhodes]

And also that there's a lack of investment in public television in New Zealand.

[Tommy Vitor]

Louis. What a guy. I love Louis.

[Jacinda Ardern]

We really encourage people to pick up the book A Different Kind of Power. And really thank you for dropping by here in person.

[Ben Rhodes]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Best of luck with the rest of the, you know, appearances.

[Ben Rhodes]

Thank you so much. Take care, guys.

[Tommy Vitor]

Thank you. Thanks again to Jacinda for joining the show. I still. I couldn't call her Dame. No way.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Yeah, I mean, these British titles or British Empire, Commonwealth titles, whatever you want to call them, it's hard to keep track. I can't keep track of them either. It's like a different.

[Tommy Vitor]

It's too many. It's like the military. That's it. We'll be back next week. Pod Save World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Hi.

[Tommy Vitor]

The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Caner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David tolles and Molly LaBelle. Matt de Groat is our head of production. 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, tik tok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and more. If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Meet Flip. She's one half of a Flip Flop.

[Jacinda Ardern]

That's me.

[Tommy Vitor]

Who got left behind at Celebration Key, Carnival's exclusive paradise in Grand Bahama.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Uh, I chose to stay here. It really is paradise.

[Tommy Vitor]

So now Flip spends her time lounging on the beach, swimming in the lagoon and eating.

[Jacinda Ardern]

The only thing more impressive than my.

[Ben Rhodes]

Appetite are all the dining options. Yeah.

[Tommy Vitor]

Have you tried food service to your cabana?

[Jacinda Ardern]

Ooh, yum.

[Tommy Vitor]

Flip.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Where'd she go? Book your cruise.

[Tommy Vitor]

Vacation to Carnival. Celebration Cay. A paradise you'll want to lose yourself in. Ship's registry. The Bahamas. In Panama. I love my plants. I talk to them every day. I wish I could take them everywhere with me. So when I got an email saying that my water bill was past due, I panicked. Oh, no. My babies. The email said I had to go and make a payment at a crypto atm. Then I remembered a tip I got from the AARP fraud watch network. Crypto atm. This is a cryptocurrency scam.

[Jacinda Ardern]

Recognize fraud sooner so your money lives longer. The younger you are, the more you need AARP. Learn more at aarp.org fraudwatchnetwork.