Tommy Vietor: The 'Peace' President

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Bulwark Podcast — "Tommy Vietor: The 'Peace' President"

Date: December 5, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Tommy Vietor (Pod Save the World, Pod Save America)

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Overview

In this episode, Tim Miller welcomes Tommy Vietor for a fast-paced, sharp, and often irreverent look at the latest in American politics and global affairs. They dissect recent events ranging from controversial U.S. strikes in Venezuela to the political ramifications of peace-branding, Democratic fractures over Israel-Gaza, U.S. corruption scandals, and the surreal world of MAGA influencers. The discussion is rich with critique, humor, and candid frustration, especially toward both major parties’ inconsistencies and the media narratives shaping the political sphere.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The U.S. "Double Tap" Strike in Venezuela

Timestamps: [03:07]–[12:22]

• Incident Recap: Tim and Tommy discuss the much-debated “double tap” strike by the U.S. on two alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers.

  • Tim Miller: Describes it as “the murder from sky of two people swimming in the Caribbean Sea.”
  • Tommy mocks GOP justifications: Parodies Tom Cotton’s claim that survivors could somehow revive their ruined drug boat and use proceeds to “buy an F-35…Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my fucking life.” [04:56]

• Illegality & Policy Critique:

  • Tommy: “The entire policy is illegal. It’s blatantly so…Narco terrorist isn’t a term. They are just killing people. It’s extrajudicial murder off the coast of Venezuela, full stop.” [06:42]
  • Media isn’t fanning the flames, but right-wing “anti-anti” commentary frames Dems as soft.

• Florida & Regime Change Politics:

  • Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller are the main regime-change cheerleaders, seemingly to enable extreme immigration moves and curry favor in Florida. Tim notes the unpredictability of South Florida politics and their implications for upcoming elections.

2. "Peace President" Irony: Trump’s Rebranding

Timestamps: [14:01]–[17:54]

• The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace:

  • State Department renames the old Institute of Peace for Trump; Marco Rubio hails him as the “President of Peace.”
  • Tommy: Calls out the absurdity of the move, noting the institute’s actual (now axed) work: “They train people in conflict zones on how to prevent violence, mediation…now it’s a Trump-branded empty shell.” [16:32]

• Trump’s Claim of Ending Wars:

  • Tommy gleefully debunks Trump’s claims of single-handedly resolving conflicts in Iran, Israel, Ethiopia, Kosovo, etc. “Serbia and Kosovo…never been at war [under Trump]…This is just not ending a war. It’s an economic agreement.” [15:24]

3. Israel-Gaza & Democratic Party Fractures

Timestamps: [19:04]–[36:26]

• Ben Rhodes’ NYT Op-Ed:

  • Ben argues for ending U.S. military aid to Israel, supporting ICC prosecutions, and genuine development in Palestinian leadership.
  • Tommy’s take: “It’s about reality…Netanyahu is a corrupt, right-wing authoritarian…and the plan for Gaza’s future is basically permanent occupation.” [20:20]

• Constraints on Democratic Speech:

  • Assault from groups like AIPAC when breaking party orthodoxy; Tommy warns this “chokes off real debate…when that debate is choked off, it goes to a Nick Fuentes type platform.” [32:00]
  • Tim draws a parallel to 2016 GOP immigration debates and Democratic base dissatisfaction on Gaza—leaders may gain credibility by breaking with establishment lines.

• Antisemitism Concerns vs. Criticism of AIPAC:

  • Tim asks about navigating anti-Israel critique without aiding antisemitism conspiracy tropes; Tommy notes that groups who reflexively label critics antisemitic “are making the problem worse with these insane, dishonest, hyperbolic attacks.” [32:00]

  • Personal context: Tommy has a Jewish spouse, daughter went to Jewish preschool—he rejects that substantive foreign policy critique is antisemitic.

  • Notable Quote: “All we can do is try to have an honest conversation about what we believe…Debating whether we should be giving a foreign country $3 billion a year in military assistance is not out of bounds in my view.” — Tommy Vietor [35:58]

4. Democratic Approach to Corruption & Scandal

Timestamps: [37:51]–[44:03]

• Minnesota Welfare Fraud Scandal:

  • Massive welfare fraud in MN (over $1 billion) by Somali-run organizations. Tim criticizes Dems’ tepid response.
  • Tommy agrees: “If you’re going to say, we should have bigger government because it helps people, it has to be effective and competent and there can’t be fraud and corruption like this because it infuriates people and they will destroy you.” [43:10]

• Party Dysfunction:

  • Both note Dems’ reluctance to get tough on internal failures, fear backlash or being called racist, but the political threat is real and requires firm response.

5. Trump’s Pardons, Honduras Corruption, and International Fallout

Timestamps: [44:03]–[50:15]

• Pardoning Corrupt Foreign Leaders:

  • Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), ex-president of Honduras, is pardoned despite massive drug charges and corruption.
  • Tommy notes: “DOJ said that he facilitated the importation of 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.…We’re freeing this guy as we’re pushing Maduro out of [Venezuela]. The whole thing is very weird. It made no sense politically.” [46:22]

• Libertarian Experiments Gone Awry:

  • Honduras was targeted for a ‘charter city’ libertarian utopia—helped by U.S. venture capitalists, exposed as an enclave for corruption and drug/crypto trafficking.

• 2025 Honduras Election:

  • The result remains contested, further muddying U.S. regional policy and “peace narratives.”

6. The Surreal World of Celebrity Influencers

Timestamps: [52:16]–[59:53]

• Candace Owens’ Assassination Claims:

  • Owens claims France and Israel sent assassins after her, escalating MAGA influencer melodrama.
  • Tommy (mocking): “If I had the French Foreign Legion on my ass, I wouldn’t be posting on Instagram…she’s a crazy person.” [56:52]

• Podcaster Impact:

  • Candace’s influence—ahead of major newsmakers—worries Tim & Tommy about cross-pollination of conspiracy theories, antisemitism, and political radicalization.

7. Closing Quiz & Banter

Timestamps: [60:07]–end

• Regular “world quiz,” friendly ribbing, and inside-jokes regarding Central American political trivia, government competence, and libertarian fantasies.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Venezuela double tap:

  • “It’s extrajudicial murder off the coast of Venezuela, full stop.” — Tommy Vietor [06:42]

• On Trump’s “peace” branding:

  • “It’s like in the morning, we’re gonna do some war crimes and bomb people in the Caribbean Sea. In the afternoon…announce Trump as the President of peace.” — Tim Miller [14:01]

• On Democratic Party discourse:

  • “There are these voices who are just trying to shut you down and silence you…Ben is trying to give Democrats some courage in the wake of this catastrophe in Gaza.” — Tommy Vietor [22:11]

• On policing speech and antisemitism:

  • “The groups trying to police speech on this issue are making the problem worse…when that debate is choked off, it goes to a Nick Fuentes type platform.” — Tommy Vietor [32:00]

• On Democratic accountability:

  • “If you’re going to be a liberal and say, we should have a bigger government because it helps people, it has to be effective and competent.” — Tommy Vietor [43:10]

• On Candace Owens:

  • “If I had the French Foreign Legion on my ass, I wouldn’t be posting on Instagram…she’s a crazy person.” — Tommy Vietor [56:52]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro and Venezuela Strike: 03:07–12:22
• Trump “Peace President” Building: 14:01–17:54
• Debunking Trump’s War Claims: 15:10–16:01
• Ben Rhodes/Gaza debate: 19:04–23:29
• Navigation of Antisemitism & Debate in Dem Politics: 28:12–36:26
• Minnesota Corruption/Party Reform: 37:51–44:03
• Honduras Corruption & Pardons: 44:03–50:15
• Candace Owens/Influencer Disinfo: 52:16–59:53
• Political Trivia & Wrap-Up: 60:07–end

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Tone

• Informal, sharp, irreverent, often acerbic but deeply informed
• Frequent use of sarcasm and dark humor to underscore the absurdities and ironies of current political events
• Willingness to challenge orthodoxies of both right and left, and poke fun at political hypocrisy

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Summary for the Uninitiated

This episode is a whirlwind of foreign policy analysis, political snark, and candid frustration over the politics of “peace,” the toxic dynamics of online partisanship, and both parties’ failures of accountability. Tommy Vietor and Tim Miller deliver the reality-based critique with a healthy dose of gallows humor, arguing, above all, for clarity, honesty, and courage in political debate.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show host of Pod Save the World and also Pod Save America. Not that successful in either account so far It's Tommy Vitor. What's up man?

[Tommy Vietor]

Hey, good to see you.

[Tim Miller]

Has the pod saved America yet? Oh, I gotta.

[Tommy Vietor]

We thought the name was funny. It was like a bit. Anyway, it was supposed to be like a Reverend Wright quote or something.

[Tim Miller]

I know it's tough. I know I've got some regrets names myself. We can do some navel gazing on that later. There's a lot of stuff happening outside in the world and as a worldo, as you know.

I figured I'd bring you in to talk about it. So.

[Tommy Vietor]

You told me you fall asleep to my show, so I just wanted to.

[Tim Miller]

Make sure that's true. And I did. And I did. On the flight here to D.C. i made it through about the first 26 minutes or so. Great. Before dozing off a little bit. So I'm hoping you can educate me on the stuff that I missed.

[Tommy Vietor]

You missed the Cash Patel part, but.

[Tim Miller]

That'S whatever I did miss. I heard the tease, but I missed it. People can go over to Podcast World and hear the Cash Patel stuff at the end. I'm sure it was gold. Let's start with Venezuela. It's been obviously the big story all week. We did this so called double tap. The phrase I hate, it's kind of bloodless phrase to describe the murder from sky of two people swimming in the Caribbean Sea. And yesterday there was a briefing over in Congress where certain members of the House and Senate got to review the actual video of what happened. Congressman Jim Hines from Democrat from Connecticut for example, said it was one of the most. I think the word was reprehensible things he's ever seen or something to that effect. Just the fact that we took out these two people who were just, you know, after their. After their ship had already exploded. The senator from Arkansas though, Tom Cotton, had a different take. And he went in front of the cameras wearing kind of like a scarf that you would wear if you were. If you're kind of an antiques dealer in Arkansas, like a homosexual antiques dealer. And. And he had this to say about the. About the bombing. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I want to thank Admiral Bradley and General Kane for coming to brief about the strikes on September 2, which were righteous strikes.

[Tim Miller]

Righteous strikes which are narco terrorists who are trafficking drugs that are destined for.

[Tommy Vietor]

The United States to kill thousands of Arkansans and millions of Americans. I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs down for the United States back over so they.

[Tim Miller]

Could stay in the fight. What kind of boat was this? It was like a canoe. These two guys, they must have had the cantaloupe calves, cantaloupe arms, to be able to flip the boat back over. That was on fire. I thought Pete Hegsesth said the boat was on fire and he had to leave because of the fog of war.

[Tommy Vietor]

The boat was on fire for an hour, and then they could finally see these two individuals who were clinging to the wreckage, trying to survive. I guess the plan in Tom Cotton's mind was to flip the boat over, paddle to shore, buy a giant fan to dry out all the cocaine, sell it to the United States, use that money to buy an F35, and then wage war on the United States as a narco terrorist. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my fucking life.

[Tim Miller]

How are they even advancing it with a straight face? The whole thing is so ridiculous. I mean, like, there's kind of the narrow outrage about what happened, you know, with this, you know, bombing of the two shipwrecked, you know, individuals, supposedly drug traffickers. Their whole argument is absurd. He's going in front of the microphone. It's like, well, you know, they're going to kill thousands of Arkansans and millions of Americans. It's like, how. What are you in A lengthier part of the company compares it to what, the same thing we do off the boats of Somalia or Yemen. If people still had bombs or explosives or terrorists or bombs or explosives. Like, they didn't have bombs or explosives. They're not even accusing them of having that. You're saying that they had coke. It's like, how is cocaine killing millions of Americans? Like, what are you talking about?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, they're trying to do this game where they're also suggesting it was fentanyl. And like every expert says, there's no fentanyl coming out of Venezuela. Fentanyl is coming from chemicals created in China, shipped to Mexico, produced there, and then sent to the U.S. i mean, the OLC memo is basically saying that we are in the Office of Legal Counsel over the Department of Justice, that we are in an armed conflict with these drug traffickers. I guess either because.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we've updated the term. We have to call them narco terrorists now.

[Tommy Vietor]

Narco terrorists. Right. I'm sorry, I forgot we invented a term because we are.

[Tim Miller]

It's the Latinx of the right. We have to call them narco terrorists now. We have a new the narco terrorists.

[Tommy Vietor]

I guess the weapon is either the drug which kills the people or the money you make from selling the drug which I guess you can then buy military equipment. I mean, the problem with debating the second strike double tap thing is the entire policy is illegal. It's like, it's blatantly so. It's made up. It's crazy. Narco terrorist isn't a term. Um, they are just killing people. It's extrajudicial murder off the coast of Venezuela, full stop.

[Tim Miller]

Right. And everybody would know what to call it if it was, you know, if we were just yeeting people in Prospect park who are like, selling dime bags. You know, it's like, what do we do? Like, what are we doing? You don't get summary execution for, for drug dealing, even if that's what they're doing. Like, the whole thing is. I've been watching Fox all morning and it's kind of noteworthy.

Fox isn't really like banging the drums of war on this one. I don't know where you're at. I know that you also, like me, monitor the MAGA media a lot and you're not hearing a lot of criticism of them from people other than Rand Paul. You're getting a lot of anti, anti stuff from the right, which is like, these wussy libs don't want us to kill the drug dealers. They just love drug dealers. You hear a lot of that. It's not really reminiscent to me of, you know, O2, Iraq War, who's for it seems to me like Marco is the only person that's for this. Maybe Stephen Miller.

[Tommy Vietor]

Tim, I wanted to ask you this because you worked for Jeb, you know, Miami politics. Every time I reach, like, you know, you know, some of the people in the kind of MAGA world, I reach out to you, they're some of the same ones you do. Whenever I reach out to them, I'm like, what the hell is happening off the coast of Venezuela? What is up with this regime change operation? None of them can explain it. None of them think it's a good idea. None of them get the politics except for saying like, oh, this is Marco Rubio's like 2028 play. But do you really think that this would be popular in Florida? Like, there was an entire Politico story with a bunch of Republican Miami based operatives saying that Republicans will never lose the state again if Trump does a regime change. Which just seems a little shortsighted to me.

[Tim Miller]

I think in both points it's related to the immigration policy. And I think that the only reason why Marco has support for his regime change war in Venezuela is because Stephen Miller, who I alluded to can use this as a rationalization for their most extreme desires on deep Right. That's why they're calling them narco terrorists. And in part to, to pretend like this is a justified war and also in part to you, of the emergency powers related to immigration. And so I think that's why they're doing it. I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens in South Florida in the midterms. And I don't, you know, I did spend some time down there 10 years ago, but, like, the politics have changed so much, you know, that I, I think far be it for me to try to like, divine how the Cubans and also Venezuelans and Nicaraguans and others that have immigrated to Florida are, like, feeling about all this, both this war policy and the immigration. But I will tell you, I was talking to somebody in the Haitian community down there who said that obviously there's a ton of outrage about the taking away, the TPS and the deportations, but they said that it hasn't gotten as much attention. But the ICPB stuff is happening in South Florida and some in the Haitian community have had some chuckles a little bit at, you know, people getting their comeuppance and, you know, the Trump supporting crowd more in the Cuban community down there. I think it's a little bit not known. And I don't think anybody really predicted that, you know, South Florida was going to go from being for Hillary in 2016 pretty significantly to being like Trump's, like, best Metro area in 24. Is it not possible that that could reverse? I think it is. Or maybe the opposite. Or maybe they're super excited, you know what I mean? Like, I think that it's a little bit harder to predict than people might think.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, look, the political story kind of got my goat because the suggestion was just deposing Maduro would be clean and it would make a bunch of Venezuelans happy. And that was kind of the only equity here. We don't have a long history of getting dragged into quagmires and places or that the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan men to a torture prison where Andre was raped by guards, that won't have an impact on how they feel about the Trump administration. So it's just sort of like a weird kind of bloodless, sickening argument. I've talked to people, though, that worked for Trump in the first term who said that he genuinely detests Maduro, he genuinely wants the oil. But what's strange is it sounds like Maduro has offered him basically anything he wants like Trump called him. It was like, you have one week to get the fuck out of the country. And Maduro offered all this access to, you know, Venezuelan oil fields or whatever, and that wasn't enough for Trump. It's like someone is pushing him further and further to go for this kind of regime change option.

[Tim Miller]

So what do you think? Will there be bombing on the land?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think Trump wants to do it on the cheap. Like I think Trump wants the pressure to force Maduro out. So far it has failed. We'll see if the CIA starts messing around and doing things on the COVID action side, like, you know, if all of a sudden the power grid goes down, you know, maybe we'll know why. Trump keeps promising to hit targets on the land in Venezuela. I don't know what those will be. Is it going to be like anti aircraft sites, are going to be military sites? Is it going to be like a drug processing plant? We don't know. There's no clarity, there's no strategy, no one can explain it.

[Tim Miller]

It's just drug processing plants.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like some cocaine facilitation, like 10% or 8% of, you know, cocaine goes through Venezuela. So says the State Department, right? Like maybe something affiliated with that.

[Tim Miller]

I was interested to hear who it was. The economist. Oh no, it was David from Not an economist. Said the cocaine prices are down. So it's been one area where Trump's policies are working. We're not feeling the pinch.

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All right. Well, amidst the war crimes in the Caribbean, I do have some exciting news for the President. He's. He's got a name on a new building.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nice.

[Tim Miller]

The State Department renamed the former Institute of Peace to reflect what they said in a statement. Is the greatest dealmaker in our nation's history. And it will now be called the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. Marco Rubio posted that President Trump will be remembered by history as the President of peace. It's time our State Department displays that. So you know, Mark, it's a big day for Marco. It's like in the morning, we're gonna do some war crimes and bomb people in the Caribbean Sea. In the afternoon, his little ribbon cutting where he announces that Donald Trump is the President of peace and he gets his name on a building.

[Tommy Vietor]

Wonderful. Did you see the clip Marco tweeted out of Donald Trump falling asleep as he was speaking? It's just like a funny choice for thing to tweet out.

Can we briefly just talk about the like, Trump ended all war claims because I do find it incredibly galling.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Tommy Vietor]

So three things that he claims. He claims to have ended a war between Iran and Israel. As far as I can tell, they still don't like each other. And Trump wants credit. Trump was engaging in diplomacy with Iran, trying to cut a deal. Then the Israelis started bombing, then we started bombing them, and then there was a ceasefire. I'm not sure that that's like the most Nobel Prizey opt.

[Tim Miller]

That's not a W for you.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's not a W for me. He also claims that he ended a war between Egypt and Ethiopia. Little problem there is they never had an armed conflict in any way. There's a diplomatic dispute over a hydroelectric dam that is ongoing.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, got it.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then he talks.

[Tim Miller]

What about Ethiopia and Eritrea? There's that Tigray conflict. Do we know what the latest is on that?

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I mean, you know, Eritrea and Ethiopia, they signed a peace agreement that was like back in 2019. And then Abiy Ahmed, who got the Nobel Prize for that. Started working with the Eritreans to slaughter his own people. So that was not great. That's not really on the list. But he does include Serbia and Kosovo, who, again, have never been at war during the Trump administration. This is all in the 90s. And when they get pressed on what they're talking about, he says Rick Grinnell brought some economic agreement to the oval office in 2020, which, again, is. That's just not ending a war. It's an economic agreement.

[Tim Miller]

Hmm. Well, I guess I'm going to have to side with you on that one, Tommy. I don't have much to add. I'm curious. I wanted to get your expertise on what exactly the Institute of Peace is. It does feel a little VP ish. The whole thing is vpish. It's like, obviously we're going to name it after, call him the Peace President vpish, but the original name is also a little bit vpish. The Institute of Peace. So can you tell me, like, what happens over there that was kind of under your remit?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's sort of like a quasi ngo. They train people in conflict zones on programs like how to prevent violence, how to do mediation. They advise policymakers and have these, like, field teams in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

[Tim Miller]

I thought we cut all that, though.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I mean, they did. They fired Doge.

[Tim Miller]

Cut all that?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, they doged it in, like, March. Right. I mean, this was. It was created by an act of Congress in 1984. So blame your guy Ronnie Reagan. There is real programmatic work happening on the ground.

[Tim Miller]

It's really the peace president, but. Okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, well, look, they're trying to tell.

[Tim Miller]

People, like, end of the Cold War, no big deal, though, whatever they're saying.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, here's how you train election officials here, how you train civil society groups. Here's how you negotiate a ceasefire or mediate a dispute. The idea was we have all these service academies teaching people how to fight wars. What if we have an organization that trains people how to end them? And you can call it veepish, like.

[Tim Miller]

Whatever, that's a worthwhile effort. I guess I'm just struggling, though, to understand why Donald Trump would want his name on the building of an organization that's roles and responsibilities or something that he doesn't think the government should be doing.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's just.

[Tim Miller]

It's just like an empty. It's like the Atlanta City Casino. It's like having your name on a. On something that doesn't exist anymore. Right. I mean, what's in. Who That's a really good point. Like, what are they doing? Who's working in the Donald Trump Institute of Peace?

[Tommy Vietor]

It is so funny when you think about it. Like, yeah, Marco Rubio went to him is like, sir, we're going to slap your name on this defunct organization and it's going to be great.

[Tim Miller]

Sounds good. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Who does that benefit?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, you know what it's kind of similar to is the FIFA Priest Prize, which he also is being awarded today. I believe it's a storied prize. It's a storied trophy. You know, it goes back generations. Pele, I think, was the first winner of it. Is that right? You're more of a soccer queen than me.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know anything about whether Pele got the FIFA Peace Prize. I can tell you a little bit about FIFA.

[Tim Miller]

I think we made up the FIFA.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think so too.

[Tim Miller]

I'm pretty sure it was made up.

[Tommy Vietor]

The marriage between FIFA and the. The head of Aani Infantino and Donald Trump is absolutely perfect because they are just a staggeringly corrupt organization. I mean, like the last two World Cups include Qatar and Saudi Arabia, places that aren't exactly suited climate wise to host a giant soccer tournament in the summer. But, you know, you bring some bags of cash, you pay off the right people and all of a sudden, here we go.

[Tim Miller]

I thought you were going to pick up my sarcasm, but since you did, and I do have to deadpan for the audience, this is why Sam Stein's a better match for me. He's always there with the facts. The FIFA Peace Prize was announced on the 5th of November 2025 by FIFA leadership. What is this? We're on the 5th of December.

[Tommy Vietor]

December.

[Tim Miller]

It's a one month old award.

[Tommy Vietor]

I didn't know that.

[Tim Miller]

It's officially called the FIFA Peace Fries. Dash Football Unites. Its purpose is to honor individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and thereby have united people across the world. The award is meant to be annual. Excited to see who's going to win next year's Peace Prize award. Maybe mbs. Yeah, you could throw him there. You know, they do want to acknowledge, you know, people of different kind of gender identities too. You know, maybe mbs, with his inner circumstances. Netanyahu. We'll get to Netanyahu in a second. I know what you think about Netanyahu over there. Why don't we just do it now, though? Fuck it. Who needs the fucking outline? Your colleague at POD Save the world, Ben Rhodes, wrote a New York Times peace headline was. This is the story of how Democrats blew it on Gaza. It created a lot of a stir, a lot of discussion.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I was like, you know, I should probably have been on the pod to talk about it. I was like, I don't have it in me. It's Friday. That's a long week. So maybe I'll have Tommy on to talk about. To talk about Ben. That's right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, great.

[Tim Miller]

So tell me about the, Tell me about the argument that he's making first and I'll go through a couple things.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, honestly, I think the argument is like, let's just state reality. Like, Bibi Netanyahu is a corrupt right wing authoritarian who before the October 7th attacks was trying to shred Israel's judicial system to basically keep himself out of jail. And Ben recommends that the United States stop providing military assistance to a very rich country, that we support the icc, the International Criminal Court's work, no matter who they're prosecuting, whether it's Vladimir Putin or Bibi Netanyahu that the US very like, loudly and clearly oppose annexation of the west bank or the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and then do take real steps to help develop an alternative Palestinian leadership that isn't Hamas, and then also just generally stand up for democracy in Israel, which I think is a pretty good list when you compare it to what's actually happening right now with the Trump administration.

[Tim Miller]

Obviously there's going to be people that want to color the history of what happened there in ways that benefits them politically. I'm kind of more interested in the forward looking part. Like a big part of what Ben was arguing that was there was a discussion about, which I saw Ro Khanna tweet about it and others, was how Democrats should talk about this going forward. Talk about that a little bit.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think it's worth pointing out that Ro Khanna tweeted Ben's op ed and then got savagely attacked by the APAC Twitter account. And I just think that like, savagely, I mean, like they're dunking on a member of, Sorry, fair enough, he got attacked by a fucking APAC Twitter account. Like why, why, why is AIPAC dunking on a member of Congress for sharing an op ed by someone else? I think that speaks to how much some quarters, some critics of people like Ben or me or whatever want to constrain the speech in, in like kind of the 40 yard lines of the debate on this policy.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, I think that is kind of like the elephant in the room here, which is there, there are these voices who are just trying to shut you down and silence you all the time if you kind of break from the party orthodoxy. And I think Ben is writing this because he's trying to give Democrats some courage in the wake of this catastrophe in Gaza. And again, like, like the United States gives Israel like 3.3, $3.5 billion a year in military assistance. They're about to renegotiate what is usually a 10 year memorandum of understanding that kind of governs how much we'll be giving the Israelis. The Israelis are this time looking for 20 years, right? So as Ben is recommending we cut off this funding, they're demanding 20 years. In the west bank, there are these like constant settler pogroms where, you know, essentially like violent terrorists are attacking Palestinians and trying to take their land. And that is enabled by the plan for Gaza's future is basically permanent occupation. And a leadership board that is run by Donald Trump, Tony Blair, Steve witkoff, Jared Kushner, D.C. axios leaked the kind of board of peace leadership. You get a couple rungs down, there's some, finally some Palestinians in there, but it's just a permanent occupation. And then also Trump is trying to get Netanyahu a pardon. Like that's his primary message he's advancing. When he calls Netanyahu, he's tweeting about getting the guy a pardon. He gave a speech about it in the Knesset. It's crazy.

[Tim Miller]

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I want to get in a second to, like, what the potential criticisms or concerns are related to that. But just first, though, on the political side and on that advice that you're talking about, about going after the Trump administration on how they're handling this and like, being on offense on this issue still, if you're, if you're the Democrats. One thing that I've just noticed kind of out there in the debate and there are a lot of weaknesses to this parallel. So just kind of bear with me and let's, let's not nitpick it. You'll kind of see where I'm going directionally is that, like, Trump benefited in 16 with the Republican base who is frustrated that Republican leadership was not speaking out enough about immigration. Right. And Trump went out there and was like, I and going to take a hard line on this. This is an issue that I care about. You can trust me that I'm going to fight on this. And that, like, gave him a lot of room to kind of go against Republican orthodoxy on a lot of other stuff. And I do see, like, a little bit of a parallel to this. I'm noticing in the discussion on the Democratic side where, like, there are Democratic base voters who are just really upset with how the party handled the Israel Gaza issue and they feel like they're not being heard and that if there are Democratic politicians and leaders that go out and stake out a position on this that has moral clarity about what happened to the people of Gaza, then that might give them credibility with base voters to not toe the party line on everything else. Yes. And I just find that kind of interesting. And you see this a little bit with some of the lefty guys with Platner and Zoran. But I think that would also probably work for people who are not necessarily from like, that, that camp. I don't know, what do you, what do you make of that, that proposition?

[Tommy Vietor]

I agree with the suggestion that, like, there's just a threshold credibility or believability issue if you don't sort of state the obvious about what's happening. I mean, look, there's been a Clip going around this week of Hillary Clinton seeming to suggest that like all young people are kind of like brainwashed or getting bad information from TikTok and that's how, why they feel, how they feel about what happened in Gaza. And I just feel like I, I like do you really believe that? I, I just profoundly disagree with that. Like people who picked up the New York Times were reading articles about like tens of thousands of kids getting killed and people don't understand whether you're a base voter or moderate or whatever else like why the United States was just funneling arms into this conflict. And I do think if you can't be honest about that, if you seem like you are, are scared about upsetting like special interest groups in Washington so you won't state the obvious or just do a better job explaining why it's in the US interest to funnel billions of dollars a year to a foreign country that by the way is rich for weapons that are being used to bomb Gaza. Like I do think people kind of tune you out on other stuff.

[Tim Miller]

The Hillary thing was wild and it felt disrepresentative of how people feel like that the Democratic establishment is just out of touch with what, with where the base is at on these issues. Just like kind of lecturing and being like misinformation on TikTok is the only reason that people are upset about this. Like that's come on like that's just.

[Tommy Vietor]

Not real and that's like a widespread belief.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean there were a lot of members of Congress who talked about their motivation for voting for the tick tock ban was because of the anti Israel content. And I'm not saying there isn't like propaganda on TikTok from the Palestinian side, but also like, like there's a pretty well known reporting on the Israelis, like paying influencers to come, you know, report on their stuff.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean Bibi said that he was going to use TikTok as a weapon in an interview a couple months ago, you know. Sure. I mean David from was out a couple weeks ago and pointed out that like some of the viral videos going on about the atrocities in Gaza were actually things from the Syria war 10 years ago. People were in episode. Yeah, like that stuff is happening for sure. But you know, the way that Hillary framed it. I'll put a link for people who want to see all of it. I didn't know you were going to bring that up. So I don't have the audio but for people who want to watch it who are not familiar, I think it's pretty representative of, of some of the tensions on the Democratic side. Here's my worry about what I'm seeing though from kind of the more left anti Israel, anti Zionist, whatever you want to call it, side on this and I wonder what you think this a little bit with Chris Hayes a couple weeks ago. Do you have worries about like how you tread the turf of criticizing aipac, criticizing Israel without like providing aid and comfort to actual anti Semites or providing this sort of, you know, advancing more of the mindset that there's like a secret cabal of rich people that are controlling of rich Jews that are controlling the Congress. And I worry about sometimes about how the arguments against AIPAC end up A leading people down a path towards antisemitism and B, even worse leading people down a path towards Nick Fuente system. And I talked about this a little bit with Chris and how the algorithms are driving people who are watching Gaza content to Candace, we're going to talk about later and to Fuentes and others. What do you think about that word?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, let me start with the APAC and then get to the Fuentes thing because I think they're related like on APAC they're not all powerful. I never, I don't think that, I've never said that. Like they're not even close. But I do think we should just be honest about what this organization believes and the values they're advancing. I mean AIPAC endorsed dozens of insurrectionist Republicans who wanted to overturn the 2020 election. So I don't feel like they really give a fuck about our democracy. So point that one.

[Tim Miller]

They're good company there. I guess, I guess my pushback on that would be short. Yeah, that's bad. That's one of my welcome to welcome One of my welcome to the club of interest groups that supported the insurrectionist Republicans and it's not just the Jews that did that, pretty much everybody but.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like we're the Democratic Party, right? So it's like do you want support from people doing that also? They, they routinely interfere in Democratic Party primaries to attack progressive candidates almost exclusively on issues that have nothing to do with Israel. That's just like a weird thing that happens. It's often through carve outs like DMFI and other super PACs, but whatever. And essentially like they demand that their candidates offer full throated support to Bibi Netanyahu. And I just like I don't think the United States should offer any foreign country or any foreign leader like unquestioned unequivocal support I think that's just bad. And so, like, on the broader point, like, talking about this issue sucks, right? You get savage, you get called an anti Semite by people you've never met or never spoken to. Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the adl, he wrote this op ed that lumped me in with. You remember, you know, Daryl Cooper, the guy who said that Winston Churchill was the real baddie in World War II?

[Tim Miller]

Oh, yeah. He said that Hitler was the good guy and that Churchill is the bad guy in World War II. Yeah. Martyr made, I think is his.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, right, right. So he throws me in an op ed with that guy in the New York Post because I said that Trump got manipulated into doing Netanyahu's dirty work when he bombed Iran. And I would argue that is objectively true. I remember Trump wanted a diplomatic deal with Iran, the Israelis started bombing them, and then we came in to like do mop up work and took out Fordo. So like, there's also these insane groups that are attacking Ms. Rachel. Were you in a Ms. Rachel household?

[Tim Miller]

No, I'm a. I have a. I understand my role as a parent, which is I get to propagandize my own children up until the age of 9 or 10. And so I don't. I didn't put on any annoying music or content in my house because she doesn't know that exists. So I love. Ms. Rachel might be a nice person, but I just.

[Tommy Vietor]

You're slanderer.

[Tim Miller]

My child listens to Lazy Lady Gaga.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, so like, like, Ms. Rachel is a YouTube content creator for kids. 0 of her content mentions anything, any issue. It's like you're saying, hop little bunny. Right? It's like, give me a break. But like, there's an organization that put her lists of its anti Semites of the year because she posted on Instagram about like Palestinian kids. So my response to your question is the groups that are trying to police speech on this issue are making the problem worse with these insane, dishonest, hyperbolic attacks because it's choking off real debate. And when that debate is choked off, it goes to a Nick Fuentes type platform. Right? Like, I watched a two and a half hour debate hosted by Alex Jones between Dinesh d' Souza and Nick Fuentes that was actually very substantive and interesting around the Iran strikes. Honestly, Fuentes beat Dinesh. I. I would argue it's not surprising.

[Tim Miller]

Dinesh is an idiot.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I'm not someone who wants Israel destroyed. Far from it. I thought October 7th was a evil, unjustifiable act of terror. They massacred civilians. It is not some righteous anti colonial event. Like, I find that argument abhorrent, and Jonathan Greenblatt knows that. But when he, like, smears me and other substantive critics of, like, Iran policy and lumps us together with martyr maid or the, you know, the Churchill is the baddie guy, like, I think that's a huge mistake to police speech, and I think it leads to reactionary comments from people like Tucker Carlson, who clearly is just like, look, Tucker's got a lot of issues I don't pretend to get in his head, but you can tell he's really, really angry about the way some of his, you know, policy disputes have been characterized as anti Semitic.

[Tim Miller]

I hear all that. I think obviously there's, like, absurd, you know, arguments. I feel like anytime I talk to somebody who is extremely passionate about this issue on one side or the other, they drive me into the other side's arms.

And I think that's particularly true about the Jonathan Greenblatts of the world.

[Tommy Vietor]

Is that true right now? Is that what you're talking about?

[Tim Miller]

No. Well, you're on the fence. We'll see what your answer is. When I talked to Hayes about this two weeks ago ago, I just got to tell you, we clipped some of it, put it on Instagram, put it on social media. I mean, Chris Hayes is, like, I think was calling this a genocide and saying that Israel should stop the war like, three days after it started. And yet even still, you know, because our conversation was not as strident as some people would like. I mean, there was some stuff in the comments of our Instagram that ostensibly just based on my judgment, like, just looking at their accounts, like, we're coming from lefty people that were just, like, objectively anti Semitic about ending Israel and about how the Jews are controlling us and all this sort of stuff. And so I just. Do you worry about that? Do you just worry about how you talk about this stuff without either drawing or exacerbating from regular people views that are anti Semitic, drawing out or exacerbating their existing views?

[Tommy Vietor]

I see the same stuff you see. I mean, I get constantly.

[Tim Miller]

Does that not worry?

[Tommy Vietor]

Do Instagram comments worry me? No, Usually I. Look, does. Does anti Semitism worry me? Yes. My daughter went to a Jewish preschool for a while. When I would drop her off, I would drive in one layer of security past another, past a third. And it was because this school had faced real threats. So, like, this. It's not an abstraction for me. And it really, like, personally offended me when people suggested Otherwise, because my wife is Jewish, like my daughter went to the school. Like the, the suggestion that like I'm okay with this is up. Like anti Semitism existed long before October 7th. It existed long before the state of Israel, before the Holocaust. It is a centuries old scourge that has plagued humanity. Right. And we should just be self aware about that. I think that there are crazy people on the far right and there are crazy people on the far left and strident people who will. I mean I, I hear the same things you do in the comment of being like, like, like why didn't you say genocide enough times in this clip?

[Tim Miller]

Or.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. You know, or why would you platform or talk about Ms. Rachel because she does X, Y or Z. It's like a lot of it is just what about ism? I think all we all can do is try to have an honest conversation about what we believe. And I think like, it's troubling to me that this is an issue where some things should be treated out of bounds. Like anti Semitism and racism are out of bounds, but like, like debating whether we should be giving a foreign country $3 billion a year in military assistance is not out of bounds in my view.

[Tim Miller]

All right, this is good. I want to get you into some more trouble next.

[Tommy Vietor]

I like it.

[Tim Miller]

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I want to talk about the Minnesota welfare fraud story.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, weird story.

[Tim Miller]

This is pretty complicated. The gist of it is there's a welfare fraud scandal where that cost Minnesota taxpayers about a billion dollars. Like these kind of concentric circles of corporations and it was, you know, centered around Somali immigrants to the country. A lot of folks on the right now have used that as part of the anti immigration effort. But there's also very legitimate things. I mean, more than legitimate. It's crazy the amount of money that was taken from Minnesota taxpayers as part of the scheme. Tim Walz is somewhat implicated in that as governor. And part of the policies they put in place made it easier for this. There have been reporting on this for a while and it kind of took them a long time to actually investigate it. They ended up starting the investigation back in 2022 when Walz was governor, you say. So the details of this I think are pretty bad. My interest of it is more in kind of how do Democrats handle it. And you know, there seems to be not, not a full circling the wagons excusing it. But you know, because they'll pay lip service to the fact that this is bad. But you're not really seeing Democrats kind of rail against this. And I'm sort of combining this with what I'm seeing with the chewy situation in Illinois where you had Marie Guzen Camp Perez speaking out against him trying to steal that congressional seat. And then, and then we talked earlier this week about this pardon of Cuellar and Hakeem Jeffries kind of defends, yeah, that was weird. Cuellar after Trump pardons him. And I'm like, I kind of feel like there's room and demand right now for some Democrats to be in the like, McCain spirit. And I mean this in the reform sense, not in the neocon sense like when he ran against Bush and against corruption, against campaign finance reform. You remember McCain, Feingold. And like I would love to see some Democrats like not just say, oh, what happened in Minnesota was bad, but like, what happened in Minnesota is bad. And this is. And like we have a corrupt system that we need to fix and like we need to actually like have outrage over this and, and have moral outrage about the people that. That allowed this to persist for a while and have more outrage about the machine politicians that are protecting each other. Anyway, that's a little rant I have. I just, I'm curious what your response is to all that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, it's a no brainer to me. I was talking to the CEO of Swing Left the other day and they have this program where they're just knocking on every single door in a community. They're not going down like Democratic party lists and doing turnout stuff. They're just trying to like do like deep listening. And the number one issue they heard was not cost and affordable listening.

[Tim Miller]

Is that what you say?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a term of art. I don't know, man. Just let me be a lib for a minute. Like 10 minutes.

[Tim Miller]

I'm trying to think about what deep listening would sound like for me. That's hard.

[Tommy Vietor]

Put on some.

[Tim Miller]

Anyway.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And you.

[Tim Miller]

And you put.

[Tommy Vietor]

Go like this, you do this emoji. That was like 10 or 15 minute conversations, the kind I've never had on a door in my life. Because I'm just like, are you gonna vote? Are you gonna vote? The number one issue they heard was not about cost and affordability. It was about the system being corrupt and broken. That was the number one thing they heard. That is like the most pervasive political feeling they heard from Republicans and Democrats. So Democrats, we need just like the Israel thing. We just need to be consistent here. Right. If we support the icc, it's for Putin, Putin and Netanyahu. Okay. Not to bring it back. And so I think you want to.

[Tim Miller]

Do 20 more minutes on Israel.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nope, I don't. I think identifying the problem like this fraud is awful and they should prosecute the out of anyone involved. They should put more oversight in place. It seems like there was some really lax oversight that allowed these numbers to balloon. It seems like it's spiraling out of a set of actions that happened after Covid that led to a lot of fraud. I mean like the, the PPP program. I think the inspector general said there was like $200 billion in fraud there. So like there was some problem problematic fast spending. Now the weird thing, Tim. So I agree, like Democrats should hammer this. The weird thing is you've, I'm sure seen is Trump's response has been just demagoguing Somalis. It's like collective punishment against all Somalis. Like, he basically fell asleep in that cabinet meeting and, like, woke up and, like, startled himself awake so he could like, spout off some racist thing about a small ease. And then he's yelling at Ilhan Omar for some reason, like, as far as I can tell, she doesn't have over oversight over these programs. It would be the governor or the mayor of the city. But, like, I'm, I'm with you. Like Obama, McCain ran on ethics and lobbying reform really effectively. Obama ran on ethics and lobbying forum in 2006 and 2008. Like, I, I think it's absolutely critical. It's core of our message. Back to your point earlier, it's like the thing that gives you credibility to talk about everything else. If you cannot admit the system is broken and not working for anyone, they don't believe you on anything else.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I like, I hear. I guess this is how I would sum it up is what Trump is doing is obviously racist and his immigration policy is sick. And I just want. I pulled up what walls response was, and he said, we welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime, but pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution. That's true. But I just, like, I want you to be as mad at the people that stole the billion dollars from your citizens as you are at Trump for being a racist. Right. Like, Trump is a racist. I'm mad at that, too. We're both mad at that. Okay. I just also want you to be mad at, you know, at the way that the system was abused. And that is the part where sometimes I feel like you're getting a little bit of punch pulling from Democrats. They don't want to get in trouble. They don't want, I don't know if they don't want, like, activist groups mad at them or like, what is behind that, or maybe they just aren't actually mad about it, so they need to kind of fake it. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I guess that's my, that's my constructive criticism.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, no, they should be furious about this. And this is why when, like healthcare.gov, i'm sure people remember we launched a website for the new ACA healthcare program, and it collapsed and didn't work. And that was the maddest Barack Obama has. Because if you're going to be a liberal and say, like, we should have a bigger government because it helps people, it has to be effective and competent and There can't be fraud and corruption like this because it infuriates people and they will destroy you. And you're right, we have to be mad about this shit. And there was some reporting. I can't remember if it was like the. One of the Minnesota papers or like the Times report on this, that some efforts to conduct more oversight on one of these groups got a response that was like, if you do this, we'll call you racist. And that led them to stop that oversight.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I do think, like, getting past that kind of cynical racial politics is very important because ultimately the people who were hurt here were like Somali kids in this community or like poor kids in Minnesota. And that's what we should be focused on. That's who we should be outraged for.

[Tim Miller]

Speaking of corruption, back to Honduras. Pardon? Not to get to earlier, our guy, Juan Orlando Hernandez Joh, I mentioned this a couple times this week, but a few more things have happened. One thing I didn't realize, I think I learned this from Pod Save the World, as he also is accused of murdering a witness in prison. Prison?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yep.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. In addition to the drug dealing, SBF had a different experience with him in prison. The crypto fraudster, he was tweeting this morning that Joh was the most innocent man he's ever met in his life. He's very gentle and soft spoken, and he said that he never heard him. He never heard him say anything bad except for when he. He taught him a cuss word, so. So that's what SBF had to say. It's a strange situation. There's a lot of layers. In addition to doing the drug trafficking and potentially the murder, he also is a big crypto guy, which is probably why SBF likes him. A lot of Trump's big crypto friends, I'm sure, were lobbying for this because Honduras was going to trying to be a junior El Salvador and have a little safe space for Peter Thiel to trade shitcoins in exchange for twink blood.

What do you. What do you make of it?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, so you're referencing a thing called Prospera, which was this, like, Charter City or this special economic zone where it was like an island that was considered like a libertarian enclave with low taxes and light regulation. And it was supposed to attract a bunch of startups from, like, biotech and crypto. And they recognized Bitcoin as legal tender. And it was backed by this VC firm that had investors like Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. And then there was a change of administration and the new president Walked back the laws that allowed for these zones and the prosperous backers were suing honduras for like $12 billion. It was like 2/3 of their GDP or something crazy like that. So, yeah, it's clear that, like, JOH had friends in the MAGA world that include crypto billionaires, but also Roger Stone and Matt Gaetz for some reason. Kind of getting back to the weird Miami thing. But either way, like, this is a pretty bad guy. You know, like, Joh allowed. I mean, DOJ said that he facilitated the importation of 400 tons of cocaine into the United States over 20 years. And so we're freeing this by Tom.

[Tim Miller]

Cotton's math that would have killed 600 million Americans.

[Rocket Money Advertiser]

That's right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Or Kristi Noem's math. 10x that and the guy, the president, Honduras. He also had a brother who was so corrupt that he stamped his own initials on cocaine he was manufacturing and went to jail. This is Tony Hernandez.

[Tim Miller]

He went to jail, like on the baggies or.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

How did that work?

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know if these are like pressed pillows.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not sure what we're talking. I never procured one myself. I can't attest to the quality.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Or maybe I do a little follow up on that. I'm not sure how that would work. Yeah, I know.

[Tommy Vietor]

I bet you'll follow up.

[Tim Miller]

I got in trouble earlier this week on the Next Level because I was spitballing and I was like, I mean, what, 15% of Americans?

[Tommy Vietor]

I heard that.

[Tim Miller]

I caught that. The listeners. The listeners are like 15%.

[Tommy Vietor]

What's the real number?

[Tim Miller]

Did you get it? 2, 2 or 3%.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Most people, I was. I was going off the cuff. I was trying to be generous to the. To the Kristi Noem argument about, like, what is the potential number of people who could die?

[Tommy Vietor]

Sure, sure.

[Tim Miller]

Anyhow.

[Tommy Vietor]

But, yeah, smaller than we thought. Got it. But, you know, the ironies are like, we're letting this guy out of prison as we're pushing Maduro out of the country. Also, also, Trump's tweet about pardoning JOH or Orlando Hernandez was in his endorsement of this guy, Tito Esfora, who was running for president in the same party as Hernandez. But, like, Hernandez is loathed in Latin America. So it's just very. The whole thing was very weird. It made no sense politically. I still can't explain it. I guess he probably just got paid off somewhere and we'll find out eventually.

[Tim Miller]

I know. I always, you know, libertarianism was always attractive. To me, obviously as a young man, she's dead. Yeah. And it's just like it's one of those things just never works in practice. Kind like communism. Libertarian island in Central America. That seems nice to me. I feel like I could live a life there. You know, not as many rules. You know, you get the beach.

And then when you see it in practice you're like, oh, okay, well these are the people that I'd have to live with actually on that island. And, and that seems not as, not as great.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it seems like the worst people in the world on your seasteading island.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's tough. What is the Democrats obligation? How do you navigate this? How do you talk about all this stuff? And it's all the, all the corruption, it's all happening so fast. Like do you lean into the pardoning part of it to the drug trafficking? I talked to this little bit with Sam yesterday. Do you actually make it more about like how Donald Trump is in league with these oligarchs and he's get, you know, he's doing pardons for their friends. Like what do you think is the right angle on it?

[Tommy Vietor]

So Tim, I, I was very surprised by the degree to which the like east wing tear down broke through and that people actually care. And you know, the images went viral. So that kind of makes me think that the talking more about the corruption piece is like should be maybe the number one thing we're doing about Trump. I mean it's not just like the, the you know, $300 million cost. It's like bribes from Palantir to pay for this new, you know, monstrosity east wing building. I think we need to focus on that. I think we need to focus on all the crypto corruption and pardoned the people like Joh. You know, there was a guy the other day who just was pardoned as an insurrectionist, was just accused of molesting his nanny, is now going back to prison. So I do think like the message is he's doing deals for his friends. The billionaires, they get off scot free. You know, the justice system doesn't work for them and you're the one getting screwed because he's focusing on these things. It's like that kind of message. It's back to your McCain stuff.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I knew what the other thing I was asking you for. This is really a dark quiz coming at the end of the show. I always like to give you a world quiz. Tito the conservative candidate. It seems like it might win. They're still counting what's the status on the votes down there in Honduras, do you know?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think it was basically tied. It was the right wing party against the center left. The sort of center right party were essentially tied. There's allegations of fraud now, so we'll see. I think sort of an ongoing process.

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[Tim Miller]

Speaking of fraud, Boom. How about that transition? I want to talk about our girl Candace. You said you were watching the Dinesh d' Souza versus Nick Fuentes debate. Which? Boy, that's a Friday night for a dad. I didn't have time for that because I've been spending so much time with Candace. I mean, man, she is a talent. I got to tell you, for folks who've been missing it, it's a big story, both for me as a Candace viewer and also for you in the Pontiff of the World context. Because there's some real geopolitical implications for what's happening with Candace. She has stated she has proof that the French Foreign Legion has sent a baguette wheeling assassin and an Israeli John Wick type figure to kill her. And that is following their successful action against Charlie Kirk. The French Foreign Legion was involved in that assassination as well. She summed up the state of play on her show earlier this week. And I just want to let you guys hear, hear, hear from her yourself.

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[Tommy Vietor]

I do, yes.

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In the wake of me having learned that France apparently paid for my assassination and that the French Foreign Legion was apparently involved and on the ground at UVU on the day of Charlie Kirk's assassination. And we should probably begin there.

[Tim Miller]

I agree. I wanted to begin there with you. Yeah. Did you see the man with the beret on the grassy knoll at uvu?

[Tommy Vietor]

It is interesting how Candace's story just seems to merge with every other story she cares about. Tim, I do want to point out before we get going here that I'm looking at the Apple charts top shows. Candace is at 16, ahead of Bill Simmons, the Bulwark podcast and Pod Save America. So she's doing something right.

[Tim Miller]

She's ahead of all of us. You guys aren't beating her anymore. You guys had her beat for a while.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm looking now. Maybe this is old, maybe this is wrong. This is all categories.

[Tim Miller]

But what number are you at?

[Tommy Vietor]

We were at. Well, in terms of news, we're seven. She's five in news.

[Tim Miller]

Got it. Okay. Okay. Boy, we're all neck and neck. When I was last on Prop Save America, I told you this. That's why I've been trying to continue to mention what I've been hearing about MBS being a hermaphrodite. And I don't have any evidence of that.

And I thought that our investigation and the calipers and all that. Not the calipers, little tinser we were going to try to use to help figure it out. I thought that that might help my spot in the rankings. It really hasn't. I mean, I've gone up a little bit since then, but.

I'm not really doing Candace numbers yet.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, you need a feud. I do think you need to just pick a Midas touch brother and just go ham and Target. Candace's thing is so amazing. Candace's tweet about this was so amazing because she was like, I have heard that there was a French Foreign Legion trained assassin. And by the way, there was an Israeli in there, too. She just had to work in, you know, her hobby horse. Which is clear back to our previous conversation. Clear cut. Anti Semitism.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Are you hearing anything from your friends in France? I know that you are, you know, kind of as a lib in the kind of foreign affairs space. I know that you and the French are probably talking. I mean, have you heard any buzz, any chatter?

[Tommy Vietor]

Not. Not a lot of buzz. I have not reached out to the Macrons lately. We don't talk that often, but we check in every once in a while. I do have. We. A Frenchman married into the family and he. I was talking with him about this over Thanksgiving, and I think the French are a little confused why they're doing this lawsuit thing. They're kind of like, why is our president suing this lady over in the U.S. but yeah, the whole thing is insane. She's a crazy person.

[Tim Miller]

Do you follow Candace on Instagram?

[Tommy Vietor]

No.

[Tim Miller]

Should I? Yeah. Obviously her social life lately has been kind of interesting. I want to pull up some of these pictures for the YouTube crowd. Here she is at a Nashville Christmas party last night. She's with Theo Vaughn, Jason Whitlock, Michael Knowles, a couple MMA guys. And then over the weekend, past weekend, we'll put this up. Here she is taking a selfie with somebody at Dollywood. This Israeli assassin must not be very good at their job. I mean, like, you would think that if she was worried about being assassinated, she probably would not show up to a Christmas party with every other MAGA influencer in Nashville. Like that would. That might be the first place I would start looking, I think if I was the Israeli assassin and I had hacked her phones and, you know.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Had any sort of idea where she might be.

[Tommy Vietor]

If I had the French Foreign Legion on my ass, I probably wouldn't be posting on Instagram. You're right. I would probably ditch my phone somewhere. I'd maybe move out to the desert, maybe to Death Valley. Camp out with Ryan Lizza. Apparently, that's where he's holed up writing telos. You know, maybe you can find some fellowship there.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know what you're talking about with that. The Dollywood. Dollywood. I thought maybe at first when she went to Dollywood, I was like, well, okay, maybe your theory here is that the French don't understand our cultural heritage and they might not be aware that Dollywood is, you know, has this kind of level of import in the country. But I don't know. I mean, those are just two pretty high profile places for her to go if she's on the run now.

[Tommy Vietor]

I didn't realize that Dollywood had like a whole resort type thing where you can do, like, rides and a whitewater rafting thing. I've never been to Dollywood. Have you been?

[Tim Miller]

I haven't. I thought about doing it, taking Toulouse there last year when we had our live Nashville event. It just was like, a little too far. Should we all go? Do you want to go? As a fan, I'd love to go.

[Tommy Vietor]

I love Nashville. The only challenge in Nashville is every other car you see is a bus with a roof cut off filled with some sort of bachelorette.

[Tim Miller]

We could skip Nashville and, like, go to the Smoky Mountains for weekends. You know, go to Dollywood.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm there.

[Tim Miller]

She said that she'd debate tpusa. It doesn't seem like that's going to happen.

[Tommy Vietor]

No.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. I'm excited if that happens. Are you. Are you going to be live streaming that, do you think, or.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm going to be riveted. I will watch every single minute of this. So I watched the. The TPUSA response. I was hoping for a little more substance, but it was interesting to see that they're going to do this live stream now. Candace, I don't know if you saw her response. She said, hey, you guys, you know, you scheduled this when I record my podcast every week, which apparently is immovable.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. She also says she was going to have to find a substitute teacher for her children, that she's homeschooling. Oh, no.

[Tommy Vietor]

That makes me sad.

[Tim Miller]

Well, her Oldest child's four.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, well, you're not doing a lot of teaching.

[Tim Miller]

Just. Okay. Like, as somebody with. I think your 4 year old can misadic.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, you can misad. Kindergarten. That's a.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not sure if that. That's kind of like a. That's like one step below. I have to wash my hair that day. As far as an excuse, that's crazy. My 4 year old can't miss her homeschooling. Or his homeschool. I don't know if it's a boy or girl.

[Tommy Vietor]

Your guy Will Summer has been just dominating the story, by the way, and his piece a few months back about just how deep the legal trouble she is in was quite informative. I got to say, though, Tim. Like, I'm not rooting for a foreign government to silence an American podcaster. Like, kind of no matter how crazy they are. It's a. It's a weird one. Right, Right.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, just to be clear, I know that I may have expressed more Israel sympathies than you did earlier in the podcast, but I'm definitely on Candace's side over the Israeli John Wick and the Baguette and the French Foreign Legion. Okay? I do not want these foreign fuckers coming into our country and silencing podcasters.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't mean with a gun. I mean the lawsuits and the lawsuits.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, you're talking about the lawsuit. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we were clear.

Okay? I don't want Candace coming for me.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, me either.

[Tim Miller]

I want her free to do her thing. I don't think that young people should be following her on TikTok. This is my Hillary Clinton moment. Young people watching this. Tell your friends. Say no to Candace.

[Tommy Vietor]

Say no.

[Tim Miller]

Say no to Candace. Okay, block, block, Candace. There's a lot of other good stuff out there on the Internet. All right, we're gonna close with the quiz, the positive quiz. We always have one for you. World quiz is. This is a long payback, long running payback for the time that George Bush got criticized by the Libs for not knowing the president of Pakistan.

Tommy has a world based podcast. And so I've put in this morning the list of Central American heads of state. I don't know. I'm gonna have to give you Bukele. We all know Bukele now. And so among the other countries, we have Guatemala. Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica.

Felice. Nicaragua. Can we give you Nicaragua?

[Tommy Vietor]

Ortega.

[Tim Miller]

You got Nicaragua. Ortega.

[Tommy Vietor]

Was I supposed to be going, you.

[Tim Miller]

Know, any guesses I just want one from you. Name one. One of those. Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, Honduras is Shomara Castro until they figure out this election.

The former first lady, her husband was what, Zelaya, who was deposed in a coup And I think 2009, I think it was during the Obama administration. Do you say Belize?

[Tim Miller]

Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica.

[Tommy Vietor]

Isn't King Charles the head of state in Belize?

[Tim Miller]

I don't believe so. I mean, I don't believe so. Technically. Aren't they state. He's the official head of state, Is that correct?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think they.

[Tim Miller]

I think that is correct, actually.

[Tommy Vietor]

Westminster model.

[Tim Miller]

That is correct. That is a good poll. The head of government would be Johnny Brykeno, the prime minister.

[Tommy Vietor]

We all know he's not in charge.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, okay. Exactly.

[Tommy Vietor]

Tim, how many people live in Honduras?

[Tim Miller]

Oh, boy. Throwing it back at me. This is like Detective Cruise. This is the Tucker Carlson. How many people live in Honduras? I would say so. Louisiana City has 5 million. So Honduras definitely has what, triple that. So like I'd say 13 million.

[Tommy Vietor]

Close. Like, I think it's like 10 or 11.

[Tim Miller]

It's pretty good. Okay, so now that I know how many you live in Honduras, my opinion on whether or not we should bomb them should be taken seriously. And I don't think so because I honor Honduras. Tommy Vitor, thank you for this. Thank you for not making me have to do this with Ben Rhodes today.

[Tommy Vietor]

What's wrong with Ben?

[Tim Miller]

I love Ben. I love Ben. It's been a week. You know, we had our all staff bulwark meeting. I had some kind of interesting podcasts earlier this week and I just. Ben's serious, you know, Ben ser. We can joke, we can joke, but he's serious. So we're gonna have Ben on next, next year to defend himself and. And his Hamas commentary. Tommy, Vor, appreciate you very much. Everybody else will be back here with Bill Crystal on Monday. See you all then.

[Tommy Vietor]

Thanks.

[Tim Miller]

Bone. Sibo. Sibo. Ss.

Simple.

Ss.

Sam.

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.