AOC on the World Stage, Trump Starves Cuba

right now the midterms are the biggest story in american politics but however they go the democratic party is going to have to do some serious soul searching join us washington dc november 5th through 7th the second annual crooked con it's going to be the positive america hosts and some of the smartest people in politics we're going to try to answer some big questions stuff like if we won how did we win if we lost how could we possibly have lost and with 2028 around the corner where do we go from here if you believe in democracy community and fighting for the future now's the time to grab your tickets to crooked con at 2026 head to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now welcome back to pod save the world i'm ben rhodes and right now tommy is about 35 000 feet over the pacific flying back from pod save america's australia and new zealand tour but with me today to help steer this ship is my friend amin mohildin amin thanks so much for being here great to be with you ben thanks for having me so amin uh if you're not watching he's the host of the weekend prime time which are saturdays and sundays on ms now at 6 p.m eastern uh and amin we are now colleagues not just at ms where i'm a contributor but now there's this crooked ms uh you know they were crossing the streams as they say um so some crooked content is going to be on a show on ms maybe this i don't know maybe you you pop up on your own network uh here that would be great yeah i actually when i saw the news i i was very excited um you know i think uh you know cross collaboration uh crooked media is breaking new grounds and doing incredible things now for a couple years i think there's so much uh i think there's so much uh i think there's so much uh synergy between the two organizations uh and you know honestly the way the media landscape is changing now people are getting information and news and content and conversations in so many different places so the more platforms you're on and the more places you are seen the better it is for everyone so i can't think of a better partnership than crooked media and ms now yeah you got to show up everywhere and uh we may have to get you here for a podcast man anytime i got a couple pitches a couple pitches for you well look we've got a great show lined up uh we're going to cover the news out of the munich security conference uh where i saw firsthand the kind of post-european freak out uh from uh the greenland dust up we'll talk about i really want to unpack with you uh israel's escalation in the west bank uh the latest on negotiations with iran um trump's attempt to collapse the cuban government uh via uh oil embargo but really kind of starving the the population there um and then just briefly some succession news out of north korea and uh i don't know amen if you saw a piece about the downfall of twitter troll and leader of the uh trump kennedy center rick grinnell so hopefully we can get to that chief construction officer is what he's going to be he was going to be secretary of state now he's running he ran intelligence agencies for america now he's in charge of construction projects and it just shows you what happens if you suck up to trump it doesn't usually work out um but let's start in munich uh so i'm just going to give a little rundown here uh where the security conference took place over valentine's day but uh no love there's really nothing more romantic amen i have to say than being in a windowless series of rooms with a bunch of technocrats and government officials uh talking about the collapse of the rules-based order um i will say that there were a couple of speeches that that kind of shadowed everything one was jd vance's from last year which people were still talking about where he went there defended kind of right-wing nationalism told the germans to accept the far-right afd and then trump's uh usually you know grotesque and long-winded scolding and and self-adulating uh threats about greenland davos although you know he did say he wasn't going to invade it uh now um this year at the conference uh the role of proxy for the trump administration was played by secretary marco rubio yeah who offered a more subtle uh version of the jd vance message although he slipped in plenty of uh nationalist imperialist dog whistles um after listing the crimes and his view of the post-world war ii international order um including trade and investing in welfare states and other good things like dealing with climate change uh he got down to business so i want to play a clip from this rubio speech for us to respond to the united states of america will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration and while we are prepared if necessary to do this alone it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you we are part of one civilization western civilization we are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share forged by centuries of shared history christian faith culture heritage language ancestry and so this is why we americans may sometimes come off as uh a little direct and urgent in our council this is why president trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in europe the reason why my friends is because we care deeply we care deeply about your future and ours we in america have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the west's managed decline all right uh so i wrote something up on subsec about this but i was there and one of the strange things i noticed was on the one hand the europeans uh in private you know and sometimes in public are you know furious alarmed uh freaked out about the u.s uh and what trump's doing on the other hand there was a lot of thank you for kicking us in the ass and we were going to spend a little more on defense and it's all because of you and they gave rubio a standing ovation it felt like a kind of abusive relationship you know they've been kind of you know uh well abused and they're now they're like kind of thanking us for for kicking them in the ass but i mean what did you think of rubio's speech and the kind of the vibes coming out of munich i mean the first thing that comes to my mind is instead of saying that you know us americans can be a little direct and urgent at times it's perhaps that us americans can be a little bit arrogant uh and you clearly see that when you are talking uh about american foreign policy in so many parts of the world like uh what you just uh described in in uh in munich because if you look at so many of these issues case by case if you look at how america is dealing with ukraine if you look at how donald trump is talking about greenland if you look at how donald trump uh is praising people like victor orban the authoritarian leader who has rolled back democracy in hungary that is not about shared values that is not about heritage and culture that is about autocracy and that is about america telling the europeans what we want them to do and you wrote about that a little bit in your sub stack right you you kind of highlighted about the the perspective of america when you kind of look back at where america's viewpoints were about ukraine during the biden administration and where they are now and how much uh young germans that you spoke to were saying that look the united states and by extension europe are expecting to be in direct conflict with russia within five years um you know and i think for me that was jarring that europeans see themselves now as the front lines of this russian expansionist or potential war and the americans are lecturing them arrogantly about you know we're going to take over greenland we're going to take over uh other parts of what we need in terms of global powers whether it's cuba venezuela or elsewhere um well yeah and actually amen uh you know rubio went on to hungary to endorse uh victor urban uh and i'm glad you brought up ukraine um because you know there's the rhetoric but then the substance and the substance there is is pretty grim um and you know zelensky showed up uh he tried to talk about you know new packages of support for uh europe ahead of the fourth anniversary of the war but really they're dealing with relentless attacks on their power grid um russia and ukraine met on tuesday in switzerland for more talks but we don't really see an end to the war in sight i didn't hear anything in munich that was optimistic at all about either the battlefield um or the talks there's a feeling that you know the us isn't obviously providing the same kind of assistance that biden administration did and um as you said i i i was really struck amen that when you're in in europe there are these russian sabotage operations happening i mean in poland the whole shopping mall was burned down by uh russian uh agents um and yeah i met with some some germans who were you know literally thinking that that they're already in an asymmetric war with cyber attacks and sabotage i mean you've you've been following ukraine uh where do you see this going i mean do you do you have any hope for an end of the war in 2026 i mean how are you thinking about ukraine these days look i mean there's so many layers to it right and i think um you kind of have to take a step back and look at it from a few different angles right if you look at it from the perspective of an american vantage point the idea that you would let a country like ukraine even if by the worst description it can be considered a failure a fragile democracy or a budding democracy the idea that you would rather see a country and its territorial integrity completely broken up and set a new precedent in which a country like russia can take sovereign territory by force and what that means for other countries around the world i think is extremely dangerous so i think from an american you know just from an american perspective that's not the type of precedent that you want to set and look there's other examples that we can talk about in the middle east china is watching this closely a lot of countries are watching what the united states does because if the united states is willing to wake up and say you you know what, Russia can take that territory by force. We tried to stop it. We couldn't stop it. Then you're really setting a dangerous precedent for what happens next in a series of domino effects in Europe. From a European perspective, I think that what you were describing, this idea that Donald Trump is kicking us in the ass to kind of wake us up and take our security, it's so humiliating, right? It's so humiliating that the Europeans are being kicked in the ass by the Americans to wake up and realize that they have to take care of their own territory, not just, by the way, from Russia right now, but watching Donald Trump talk about taking over Greenland and being, you know, hell-bent on taking over Greenland really puts Europe at large in a very interesting position because let's say hypothetically the U.S. does take control of Greenland and they do so for the articulated reason that it's good for American national security in potentially confronting Russia or potentially confronting China. Where does that put Europe? It puts Europe in the middle of this unbelievable fight, cross-fight that's going to potentially. It's going to potentially happen between the United States and Russia, and the Europeans are just sitting there ducks with no say whatsoever. And you can kind of attribute that to Europe over the last several years, just conceding more ground to the Americans, letting the Americans run all over them in a series of issues, whether it's foreign policy in the Middle East, whether it's things in Central Asia, whether it is what we see now in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. That's the end result of always acquiescing to the United States and specifically with somebody like Donald Trump. Who doesn't give a damn about European alliances or transatlantic relations, only cares about enriching his pockets and his family's pockets and putting America on this path of, I would argue, just complete and sheer corruption on a scale that we've never seen before, but putting America on a path of totalitarianism and authoritarianism that I think is extremely dangerous. Yeah. I mean, it's actually, you mentioned the precedent set by kind of validating the annexation of big chunks of Ukraine. I mean, maybe that's a precedent for Greenland annexation by the U.S. And look, one more thing. Well, I'd also say, by the way, the defense spending thing that everybody was crowing about, it's going to take years for Europe to do that. If they do, it's not going to be relevant to Ukraine. But speaking kind of the future, one more thing from Munich I wanted to get to, which is that there were as many as eight potential 2028 Democrats, people who might run for president in 2028 who were at the conference. There was a lot of buzz about this. The Europeans were very curious about these people because they don't know all that much. And I think that's one of the things that's going to happen. So we had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, obviously. We had Governors Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, who is now dipping his toe in the water, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Melissa Slotkin of Michigan, and former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. I will say that all the buzz in Munich was about AOC because she had not been on the world stage this way. She spoke about what you mentioned, which is the danger of authoritarianism. She also had some missteps. I want to play a clip that has kind of both the strength and the thing that people are picking on her about from AOC. So let's hear that clip. I think one of the the connections and relationships that is under discussed, particularly in the security space, is the fact that I believe we're seeing an economy across economy around the world, including in the United States, that extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and drive rise in a sense in authoritarianism, right wing populism and very dangerous domestic internal politics. And that is a direct outcome of not just income inequality, but the failure of democracies over decades to deliver. Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move? You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a this is, of course, a very longstanding policy of the United States. So, look, we're not picking here on AOC, but I want to say, first of all, that, you know, the Europeans are pretty, you know, when they talk to me, disappointed and Democrats, where are you guys? What's the plan? In a way, we're like the Europeans and I'm the Democrat here. You're the Democrat. journalists, but like we haven't figured out a way to stand up to Trump either. I will say there was a lot of excitement about AOC. She's just as popular with young Europeans as she is with young Americans. And I just, from my perspective, you know, I thought her presentation on authoritarianism was really strong. Yeah. She flubbed the Taiwan question, but look, the benefit for her is to just get some reps, right? She's out there. She's not been in a conference like this. You're not going to nail every answer. She does need to bone up on Taiwan, but like, I'm glad she was there. What did you think of AOC and what did you think of kind of the way in which the Democrats seem to be groping for not just the person for 2028, but some, a message that can resonate on the world stage? Actually, I think there, you know, I'm glad that you picked examples from AOC for two reasons. And I actually think two of AOC's most strongest soundbites or comments were not the ones that you played. And those were, those were good for, for the reasons that you outlined, but there's two other important ones. One, she talks about the rules-based order, not working for everyone. A couple of weeks ago, you know, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada spoke at Davos and he talked, the rules-based order is done and that it's, you know, right versus might. And right now what we thought is the international rules-based order of the last several decades since World War II has collapsed or was on the verge of collapsing. And a lot of people took issue with that because it was only when Canada or European countries became in the crosshairs of America and Russia or powerful countries around the world when it came to the issue of trade, did he then speak up? But nobody was talking about the collapse of the rules-based order from any of these Western world leaders over the last two years when we were watching the genocide in Gaza. So what AOC did was actually smart. And I think that's part of the reason why young people in Europe, like young people here in the United States are drawn to her. She speaks with a little bit of moral clarity. And the issue of Taiwan is a political issue. And perhaps there is some moral issue to it, but it's certainly a national security issue. And so, as you said, she needs to kind of flush out that idea and see how the Taiwan issue fits into a moral foreign policy in which you could have had a very strong international rules-based order. Because she could have said, look, if we would have upheld international rules and norms and order, we would have been able to have a much stronger alliance to say to China, you cannot overtake Taiwan with military force. But because the rules-based order has been eroded and destroyed for a variety of reasons, that idea of like the only way to defend other territory right now is purely by America committing troops. And I think that's why that answer landed flat. The second part of the soundbite that you played, which was good, I think it was really important. But another soundbite that she talked about that was so important, which I think is why young people are drawn to her, is that she said the United States has effectively enabled the genocide in Gaza for the past two years without any restrictions on weapons to Israel. And again, it's a moral litmus test. And that's why when young people who are consuming news and are much more plugged into the world in a globalized way are listening and watching what is happening, coming out of places like Sudan and Gaza and Congo, they're questioning what is happening at the highest levels of government. And when she talked about that, when she made that point and that connection between the United States' foreign policy and the genocide in Gaza, I think that's why she has such an appeal and such a buzz. Could you potentially get a presidential candidate who is going to run on the major Democratic Party ticket and speak with such moral clarity and authoritative nuance on some of these issues? I think is why she has such an appeal. And I got to say, you know, I've watched Gavin Newsom, and I think he's done an amazing job on so many issues. And he is no doubt a contender. And he has such a smart appeal in the way that he is speaking to Donald Trump and communicating in an effective way. But he also has an effectively communicating on a lot of issues regarding the Middle East, and certainly not when it comes to Israel or APEC or dark money in the United States. And, you know, I don't know if he thinks that there's an added value in speaking to Ben Shapiro or other conservatives, but that's a whole other ball game, you know. But I'm just giving you like, I know there's buzz around the two of them, but I think that's what I kind of walked away from having listened to AOC at the Munich Security Conference. Yeah, they were definitely the two people that the Europeans were interested in. And in a strange way, I mean, it's super early, but they feel like the two most interesting people to be watching now. You're right about Gaza. And I mean, to me, it's not just Gaza, as important as the issue is, and we're about to talk about Gaza and the West Bank. It's also, that is the litmus test to me as to whether you have any morality in your foreign policy. You can't carve out a genocide. You can't say we're for a rules-based order, but we will arm a government committing genocide over here. Right now, the midterms are the biggest story in American politics, but however they go, the Democratic Party is going to have to do some serious soul-searching. Join us, Washington, D.C., November 5th through 7th at the second annual CrookedCon. It's going to be the Positive America hosts and some of the smartest people in politics. We're going to try to answer some big questions. Stuff like, if we won, how did we win? If we lost, how could we possibly have lost? And with 2028 around the corner, we're going to try to answer some big questions. And with 2028 around the corner, where do we go from here? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to CrookedCon 2020. 2026. Head to CrookedCon.com to get your tickets now. Okay, Eamon, let's turn to the occupied West Bank, where Netanyahu's far-right coalition government has moved to expand and solidify Israeli control and really squeeze the West Bank. And let's be clear, the goal here is not subtle. We had the finance minister, Smotrich, who's usually the id of this right-wing government, say about these recent steps, we are deepening our roots in all parts of the land of Israel. And he sees West Bank as part of Israel. And we are burying the idea of a Palestinian state. So this is not subtle. I want to go through these moves and then ask you about them. And they may sound a little bureaucratic. And the press are often described as administrative, even though they're really about annexation of other people's land. And cumulatively, they're just destroying what is ever left of the idea of a Palestinian state. So to give people some context, the Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three areas. Area A, which is 18% of the West Bank, that's under the control of the PA, the Palestinian Authority. Area B, that's 22% of the West Bank, that's joint control of the PA in Israel. Area C, that's 60% of the West Bank, that's under Israeli control. So first of all, a lot of people don't know this. Israel controls most of the West Bank. People like to talk about the weak, feckless Palestinian Authority. Well, one of the reasons they're weak and feckless is they don't even control the territory. They don't control the territory. They don't control the territory that they're supposed to. But now the changes. In the last couple of weeks, the Israeli government has made a series of announcements to make it easier for Israelis to purchase land from Palestinians, to expand Israeli enforcement, including the power to demolish Palestinian buildings, which they regularly do, into areas A and B, so the Palestinian controlled areas, for violations involving, to quote the Wall Street Journal, water-related offenses, damaged archaeological sites, and environmental hazards. So basically, pretexts for them to just go in and demolish Palestinian structures. Made Israel the sole authority for planning permission near important religious sites, of which there are many. And for the first time since 1967, Israel will begin to designate large portions of Area C as state land. And the goal is 15% of Area C in the next few years, unless the current Palestinian owners can prove their ownership. And as the Israeli organization Peace Now notes, that process requires land owners to prove ownership in ways that are really almost impossible for them to do. So that's a lot impossible for Palestinians to do so. Look, Eamon, what do you make of these steps and what's been going on in the West Bank recently? Something that doesn't get as much attention as it should. You know, it's something that has been going on for years. I think now it's been, it's now official state policy and it's overt and the world can see it. But the reality of it is Israel has been annexing and expanding illegal Jewish settlements since 1967 in defiance of international law. And again, you know, I don't want to sound, you know, repetitive here, but there are a few ways to look at it. The Israeli government has always been, particularly this right-wing government, the most extreme in Israel's history, has always been hell-bent on annexing the West Bank. It's in the party platform of the Likud Charter that there will only be Jewish sovereignty from the river to the sea. That is not new. Israeli politicians, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gavir, Smotrich, they've all talked openly about how Israel will incorporate all of the West Bank. And as we saw previously with the Trump administration overtaking the Golan Heights. So the idea of territorial acquisition for Israel is nothing new. The way they do it over the years and the decades has changed. Sometimes they pay lip service to Western diplomacy and they say, we're going to go along with the Oslo process or the peace process. We're going to do the quartet. We're going to do whatever that we can keep the international community believing that we're committed to a two-state solution. But in reality, we determine what happens on the ground. And what happens on the ground is that we can build settlements. We can build roads. We can create apartheid-like systems. We control the lives of the millions of Palestinians who live in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, and of course the Gaza Strip. So what you're seeing now is the kind of, the veil has been lifted. And now the state is now embarking on this annexation process. And they're kind of doing it piecemeal just to see to what extent the international community is going to speak up or try to do something about it. And they realize that Donald Trump is spread thin. In fact, Donald Trump, who is openly against annexation, has said, look, we've got so much going on right now, we don't have time to think about the West Bank. And that is exactly what the Israelis wanted to hear. They wanted to hear an American president say, because they don't care about whether he likes annexation or not. They just wanted to hear him say, I've got so much on my plate right now, I can't even deal about the West Bank. Because then in their minds, they're like, this is the perfect time. Let's go ahead and start this process of annexing the West Bank and making Israel completely sovereign, take over the complete territory of the West Bank and making it part of Israeli sovereignty. And look, I think as somebody who believes in a one democratic state that incorporates all of the Palestinians and Jews that live from the river to the sea and have equal rights and the ability to protect themselves. I'm not against it. And I know this sounds kind of controversial. I'm not against it. Israel's annexing the West Bank. I'm against the idea that Israel's annexing the West Bank, but preserving this apartheid system that exists, which again, is what human rights organizations around the world have described, is in place in the West Bank. And so you have this system that's in place there. Palestinians don't have equal rights. Their homes are demolished. Their land is confiscated. They're arbitrarily arrested. I can go on and on and on. And there's another system of hierarchy that allows Jewish citizens of the state of Israel to be able to live in a and develop and grow and flourish. And because of that, we have what we have right now, which is Israel controls the entire territory from the river to the sea in a hierarchical structure based on religion and ethnicity. And that's why we have the system that we have. And the international community, by the way, completely sleep at the wheel, completely sleep at the wheel. Condemnation statements from the UN secretary general. But other than that, nothing, maybe a statement here or there. Israel doesn't care about statements. And as we were just talking about in the case of in, you know, the rules based order. Nobody, nobody's going to step in and stop Israel from doing what it is doing right now. Yeah, I mean, you're describing the dynamic exactly. And again, it connects to the Ukraine and Greenland point. I mean, now is the era of no rules and now is the era of annexation. Now is the time to grab while the grabbing is good, you know. And and, you know, you mentioned some of these responses. I mean, Trump says I'm against annexation. We have enough things to think about now. I mean, that's not a good thing. I mean, that's not exactly coming down hard. That's not like, you know, conditioning assistance to Israel or using real leverage. Do you not know as the president United States that he has to have many portfolios? It's not like you only know, you know, you don't just you're not in charge of like two or three things at a time. You actually do have to deal with all the world's crises. Yeah. And including one where, you know, you presumably have a lot of leverage on Israel. The UN secretary general condemned the decision. But I mean, the Israelis just flattened the UN facility in East Jerusalem for UNRWA. It's literally people should look at this online. It's completely destroyed the UN headquarters there. That tells you how much sway the UN has there. The Arab states released a statement, you know, saying Israel's accelerating attempts at illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people. But OK, that's another set of words. So it does feel like there's not really any pushback to these. The Israelis are pushing and testing now, presumably the body that would take up this. Kind of challenge. It is the UN. But Trump, meanwhile, is seeking to replace that with the Board of Peace, which is having its inaugural meeting on Thursday, right in time for Ramadan. That that does. I want to bring in Gaza here, too, because in Gaza we've seen just I'd say violations of the ceasefire from Israel repeatedly. But it's not even really a ceasefire if you're in Gaza. It's not even a ceasefire if you're in Gaza. Hamas has also said that they're not going to disarm in these circumstances. Netanyahu said over the weekend that Israel would refuse to move to the next phase of the ceasefire without that disarmament. Netanyahu's cabinet secretary has said on Monday that the Trump administration has asked for a 60 day grace period for Hamas to disarm. And if they fail to do so, then he says, quote, the IDF will have to complete the mission. Not sure what the mission is other than kind of the complete further destruction. But I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea. So it doesn't feel like the whole peace plan is going well. We have this meeting of the Board of Peace. I want to just throw one more thing into this mix, Amen, which is there's one man who's very excited about what's happening over there, and that's Lindsey Graham. He made another trip to Israel. He seems to go there more than South Carolina. He's very excited about all the wars that could be upcoming. I want to play a clip here from Lindsey Graham. The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel, because if you're not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel, because they have to be to survive. So what we're looking at is that Israel is advancing down the road of new weaponry far beyond us, and it would be nice to have a process where we could be partners. So the wars of the future being planned in Israel, there's nothing like a U.S. Senator going overseas to take a jab at America's own military. There's There's nothing that sounds more America first than going to Israel and say, hey, these guys really are doing such a great job with their military equipment. I wish we could learn from them. Let's try to partner up with them. I mean, it's just like, I don't, the optics of it, right? I mean, it used to be a time that when you're a senator, a Republican senator from South Carolina or from elsewhere, that you would talk about the strength of the American military and how America's military is a force for good or what have you. Not go to Israel and say, we got to learn from them. These guys are such amazing warriors, not like ours back home in the U.S. Yeah. I mean, he's just could barely contain his excitement. I mean, you've covered Gaza just as well as any journalist over the last 15 years. I mean, when you look at this Board of Peace meeting, what do you expect out of that? Where do you see this ceasefire process going in the next few weeks? So I think I'll start with where I think the ceasefire is, this so-called ceasefire, because I totally agree with you. I don't think it's a ceasefire. Israel has been acting with impunity. It has divided. It has violated it every step of the way, has not even implemented it, let alone violated it. When it comes to the issue of Gaza, you don't have to take my word for it. You just have to listen to Israeli security and intelligence officials who are very clear that there is no way to destroy the idea of Hamas inside of Gaza. Israelis security officials are openly talking about how they've destroyed the entire upper echelon of Hamas's rank. Let's talk about the latest in Iran, which is, you know, you and I talk to people in the region. That's what everybody is very worried about right now and focused on. There's this ongoing threat of U.S. military action. There's a lot of U.S. military assets in the region. And there have been these indirect nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and the Iranian government, which have been missed. And mediated by Oman. On Tuesday, there were talks in Switzerland. They ended after what Oman's foreign minister called good progress. But we don't really know what that means. The Iranian foreign minister said that both sides had agreed to, quote, a set of guiding principles and told state TV that this round of talks were more constructive and that progress is made. You know, buzzwords of diplomacy without any details. This round of negotiations came after a visit to the White House by Benjamin Netanyahu last week. At that meeting, Trump and Netanyahu met. Trump and Netanyahu apparently agreed to ramp up the economic pressure as if there's anything more you can do to sanction the Iranians. But they talked about targeting oil sales to China, which would be, you know, would involve sanctions on the Chinese, which would be further strain on the global economy. I will say also that nobody's talking about the protesters anymore who, you know, clearly there were thousands of people killed. That was the basis under which Trump said he was going to take military action. But now we're just talking about nuclear issues and ballistic missiles. I know we're reading tea leaves here, Ayman, but what is your read on the kind of state of play with Iran? What are you hearing from the region about, you know, people's concerns or maybe hopes for what's happening? Yeah. I mean, listen, I definitely want to answer that. But I was going to actually ask you because, you know, Reza Pahlavi was speaking at the Munich Security Conference. And actually, I was going to ask you about that in terms of, I don't know if you had a chance to hear him talk, but I'm curious to get your thoughts about how he's kind of been elevated on the global front. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's been on the global stage now, right? All of a sudden. And look, he's always had his followers. The monarchists always supported him. And they've always kind of thought of him as a legitimate replacement to the regime. I don't think a lot of people in the Iranian diaspora, even in the Iranian opposition, necessarily took him seriously. But in the last couple of weeks, and certainly in the last couple of months, there has been this kind of concerted push to elevate him by Western leaders. And so how was he received at the Munich Security Conference? What did he say? Because I think. I think there's been criticism that he's being put in these platforms. He's not being really tested with the questions that he's being asked. He's not giving a very clear vision about what he wants to do. Because the way that I kind of look at Iran, and I can talk about this in a second, is it's kind of about the three Ds, right? Like the day of a potential collapse of a regime, the day after, and then the decade after. What happens in those three periods of time? The day that the regime is gone, the day after the regime is gone, and then the decade after. And I have my reservations about how it will look like. But what. What was your take from listening to Shah Raza speak at. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was fascinating because, first of all, inside the, you know, security conference and all the side events, like, really, the focus was on Ukraine and European defense spending and these issues, you know, Greenland. But outside, there were, like, you know, tens and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people there to see Reza Pahlavi speak. He was kind of. He was on the world stage. He was meeting with leaders. He met with Zelensky, you know, who, I mean, he's trying to kind of, obviously, be on the right side of Trump. We've seen Pahlavi with Netanyahu. So, first of all, the read in the rooms that I was in was that this guy can't really be. Nobody could really explain the scenario by which he's going to somehow become a leader inside of Iran. Like literally nobody I talked to seemed to think there was like a practical way in which, you know, the U.S. bombs Iran. And then, and I should say what Pahlavi was saying was, you know, militarily intervene. So kind of a strange situation where you have somebody asking the U.S. to bomb his country. That's his, you know, that's where he's putting all of his cards, you know, like we need intervention. And then he's, he basically was promising, you know, then you'll have a good regime. And he was saying, not only is that right for the protesters, not only is that delivering democracy, but he was saying, I will be your strategic partner, you know, their oil will be available, you know, and actually a lot of people were speculating, well, maybe Trump's real interest in Iran is the oil, which is actually not something that's discussed a lot publicly, but you know, that it's not the nuclear issue and it's not the human rights concerns. It's that like Venezuela, Iran could be a source of oil for the United States or taking that away from China. That's the biggest buyer. Of that oil. So that was kind of the mood music. I think there was also another interesting dynamic, Eamon, where, you know, he has gotten a lot of support in the diaspora, but a lot of people I talked to were like, I don't know that that's the same as in the country. And yet people in the country absolutely want change. They're sick of this regime. They want Khamenei gone, like he's old, he's been around forever. But there was a sense that there's this growing gap that's maybe not particularly healthy between the diaspora that is kind of going along with the Pahlavi play and people inside the country. So that was kind of the read I got. Yeah. And listen, I think that's exactly what this issue is. And we can be mature and hold two separate ideas. The people of Iran want this regime gone and the people of Iran deserve to have their aspirations heard and fulfilled, and they should determine their own future. They are entitled to self-determination, uh, free from autocracy, theocracy, like any other, uh, grouping of people in the world. Nobody that has spoken about this issue has offered a clear and concise plan as to what the day after the collapse of a regime looks like. And, you know, I covered the Iraq war. I remember a lot of Iraqi opposition figures who wanted American military intervention to destroy Saddam Hussein and his regime and to get rid of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq. Um, and so what I, as a journalist, learned covering the Iraq war was that for America and American military might, it's probably pretty easy to destroy a regime. It's probably pretty easy to kill the senior leadership of the Iranian regime. And in fact, Israel demonstrated that they were able to do that in July relatively easily, I would say. Um, but it did not destroy the regime. And so any American military involvement to try to top of this regime cannot just be about killing senior figures who, who run ministries or run governments or run various security apparatuses or religious, uh, organizations and institutions. You're talking about an, a regime that has been entrenched in Iranian society for almost 47 years. You're talking about a country of 90 million people that has a regime structure that probably includes about 20 million people. Even if you say 10 million of them or 15 million of them are just servants of the state and, or civil servants of the state are not, not hardcore loyalists. What happens to the 2 million or 3 million loyalists of the regime once the regime is collapsed and then they are now inside this country and are not allowed to be a part of a political process or not allowed to be a part of any kind of process in which a leader is imposed on them and they now reject that leader. That's exactly what we saw happen in Iraq. Now, are you telling me that the Iraqi people under Saddam, uh, yeah, exactly. They were heavily armed. Uh, Paul Bremer and the CPA, of course, at the time dissolved the entire state, dissolved the Baptist. And so you had, you woke up one day and all the people who were working in this state picked up arms and started fighting the Americans. So unless you're willing to put American troops on the ground inside of Iran to preserve the integrity of the state, um, there are a lot of questions as to whether or not the state will fracture along ethnic lines. Um, and you'll have separatist movements in various parts of the country. We're already hearing some troubling language coming out from various parts of the Iranian diaspora that speak to this ethnic division. And, you know, it's, it's important whoever emerges as a potential leader for the Iranian people to emphasize territorial integrity, to emphasize, um, a cohesive country that incorporates Iran's diversity. But I think people who are just saying like, oh, let's get rid of the regime and plant a new, uh, opposition leader who's going to be a transitional leader, but offer no plan and offer no system and offer no insight. Uh, and not be tested and not even talk about what kind of infrastructure that leader has currently inside Iran. I think that's very troubling. Um, and I think it puts a lot of the countries in the region, uh, on edge because if you thought the Iraq war and the refugee crisis that it created across the region for countries like Jordan, for countries like Turkey, for countries in Europe, for countries in the Gulf, if you thought that was a problem, imagine a country of 90 million people. Yeah. Uh, including Iranians spilling over all across, uh, the area and having porous borders with Afghanistan or Pakistan or elsewhere and see then what kind of crises may emerge in terms of national transnational security issues, whether it's in Europe or in the Gulf. Yeah. I mean, this came up and you don't see it discussed much, but you know, four times the size of Syria. And if you have an implosion in Iran, um, you could have refugee millions of refugees into Europe, into Afghanistan. Right. Um, the best case scenario I can, you know, clearly these talks are playing for time. You get a deal. I mean, you know, comedy is seven is 87 years old. He's sick. Um, there, there's a sense that if he's dies or, you know, that that's going to happen relatively soon that there, you could see this evolution of the government, the evolution of the regime in a different direction. Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but first subscribers are loving the new content that we're dropping for friends of the pod pod, safe America, only friends. 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Uh, pre-orders are available now, wherever you pre-order books and you can check out my sub stack. We'll link to both in the new show notes. Right now the midterms are the biggest story in American politics, but however they go, the democratic party is going to have to do some serious soul searching. Join us Washington, DC, November 5th through seventh, the second annual crooked con. Stuff like if we won, how did we win? And with 20, 28 around the corner, where do we go from here? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to crooked con 2026, head to crooked con.com to get your tickets now. Right now, the midterms are the biggest story in American politics, but however they go, the democratic party is going to have to do some serious soul searching. Look, we have a depressing theme here, uh, cause now we're on Cuba. Um, and the theme is places that are on the verge of collapse here. Um, in Latin America, we should note, you know, this is kind of clearly where post, uh, the Maduro ouster Trump is, uh, and Marco Rubio focused on Cuba. Um, and, and really have cracked down on, uh, it's already, uh, you know, decades long embargo on Cuba briefly interrupted, uh, by me in the Obama years for a couple of years. Um, when we normalize things and open things up a bit, uh, but Cubans are suffering immensely. And I just want to spotlight how much Cubans are suffering from this kind of blockade that has now spread very much to cutting off any oil, getting in gas and fuel supplies have been cut off. That's causing long blackouts. That's leaving a fuel shortages. Havana's airport is out of jet fuel. Um, there, there was a recent op-ed from two friends of mine, Emily Mandrella and Maria Jose Espinosa and El Pais that was published today. They, they kind of go through this humanitarian crisis. They analyze satellite imagery and they found, for instance, that light levels, so the ability to of electricity fell by 50% in January, right? So people don't have electricity. That has impacts on hospitals. That has impacts on people's ability to have basic needs met. You've had this kind of collapse in Cuba's GDP. You've had Cubans protesting, but as in Iran, the government still has the guns, right? And so you're seeing more and more people criticizing this in the national community. The UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, has criticized the sanctions and asked the countries not hold back oil deliveries to Cuba in line with Trump's demands. Mexico is providing some humanitarian aid. Claudia Sheinbaum has been outspoken about this. Pedro Sanchez in Spain, I saw, is going to start to provide some assistance. But really, it feels like we're reaching some kind of breaking point. Now, Trump was asked about this on Air Force One yesterday. Here's what he had to say. We're warning Cuba to make a deal. What does that deal look like? What do you want them to do? Cuba is right now a failed nation. They don't even have jet fuel to get for airplanes to take off. They're clogging up their runway. We're talking to Cuba right now. I have Marco Rubio talking to Cuba right now. And they should absolutely make a deal because it's a humanitarian, it's really a humanitarian threat. And we have a lot of great Cuban Americans and they're going to be very happy when they're going to be able to go back and say hello to their relatives and do things that they should have been allowed to do for a long time. If a deal isn't made, would you consider an operation like the one in Venezuela? I don't want to answer that. Why would I answer that? If I was, it wouldn't be a very tough operation, as you can figure. But I don't think that'll be necessary. All right, Eamon. You're really like Iran, right? I mean, there's not really a government. I mean, you can't just move a government from Miami down to Cuba. The place implodes. We're going to have refugees into the United States. We could have kind of a Haiti. Yeah, yeah. 90 miles from Florida. What do you make of where this Cuba thing is going? And why do you think it's not getting more attention, you know? I mean, can I just say really quickly two things? One, Donald Trump suddenly caring about Cuban Americans being able to go say hi to their relatives is just the absurdity of it. Well, he's deporting them. And by the way, that's exactly what you did. That's exactly what President Obama did. President Obama made it possible for Cuban Americans to go down and say hello to their relatives and actually try to co-opt the country. And they did. And they did. It drives me, you're hitting my buttons, man, because it drives me fucking nuts because those things were happening. And he's making it sound like he's doing it for humanitarian purposes, right? He's like, oh, we want them to be able to go down there and say hi to their relatives because it's a mess. Well, A, there's a similarity between the mess that you're seeing in Cuba and the mess that you're seeing in Iran, because all you have to do is listen to Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, who basically said, look, we collapsed the Iranian currency, which led to the protests taking to the streets. And now you're seeing the same playbook in Cuba, which is we are the ones who are making the economic conditions so miserable for the people in Cuba that they're going to go out to the streets to protest. And what's going to happen is they're going to get gunned down and killed because of a policy that we're trying to implement by collapsing their economies. So let's just be very clear about that and speak very clearly about what the United States is doing in Cuba and Iran is implode these countries economically, make the people suffer. They go out to the streets to demand a better country. They get gunned down and we abandon them as we are now currently doing in Iran. We'll see if whether the president, when he said, you know, we're locked and loaded or we're ready to help. We'll see what that actually means and we'll see what that happens, what that means actually in Cuba. But the idea that the United States and for me, look, the administration has tried to portray Cuba as a threat to America, right, as a national security threat. That's a joke. Let's just be very clear about that. Cuba is not a threat to the United States of America. This is just something that Marco Rubio is personally obsessed with. Marco Rubio wants to deliver the collapse of Cuba to to the United States. And by the way, he doesn't even know that the president of Cuba is no longer Castro's not even his brother. So like here he is kind of clueless, absolutely clueless, a president who's running a country that is clueless. But you have Marco Rubio who's hellbent on regime change in Cuba, just the same way that you have the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hellbent on regime change in Iran. And that's what scares me the most is that these people are just out this, you know, they're doing this for either personal gripes. Or for whatever ideological reasons. But it's clear that Cuba is not a threat to the United States of America. It will be if it collapses. And as you said, yeah, thousands, if not tens of thousands of refugees stream across into the United States. And again, Donald Trump doesn't give a damn about Cubans, migrants, doesn't care about Venezuelans. He revoked their TPS, their temporary protective status in the United States. He's done that for Haitians. He's done. He's deporting people back to the Middle East. He's deporting Iranians back to the regime in Iran. He doesn't care about these people. Give me a break. Yeah, I mean, all right, I'm going to just, you know, say one thing about this because this drives me nuts. But because first of all, you're right about the national security threat. There is none from Cuba. None. They can't even identify. And that's what's interesting about these talks, because with Iran, you at least know they could be talking about nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. Cuba has nothing to trade away in talks like that. There's no threat. They don't support drug, actually very anti-drug trafficking. So what you're trying to negotiate. I guess is regime change, which is, you know, how does a regime negotiate its own collapse? Maybe they can come up with something like release some political prisoners. I don't know what, but it's not going to be enough for Marco Rubio because he wants regime change. And the thing I'm just going to like complain about here, Eamon, is it like, you know, in the Obama years, we get all the scrutiny about, you know, what are you doing on the human rights questions? And we did a lot, by the way. We got a lot of political prisoners out. We got Internet in that country. But you know what? Like you get this focus on like, hey, the treatment of dissidents in Cuba, that's important. But starving millions of people is worse for human rights than even like dozens of dissidents being imprisoned. Why is that not a human rights problem? Why is U.S. policy being a basically collective punishment of Cubans, largely Afro-Cubans, I should note. Why is that not an issue? Afro-Cubans don't have a strong political constituency in the United States. Yeah, they don't. And the constituency that is. Is harder line and supports Rubio. And I get it. Like the Cuban government has been they've mismanaged things. They have outdated economic models. They repress people. It's also the case that if you put a total embargo on a country, they can't change. You know, you're fossilizing it. And there's a reason they drive old cars from the 50s because they can't get parts for any new cars. Right. And it's same thing true with politics. If you can't get exposed to different ideas and different people. Like, how are you going to evolve? But anyway, I could talk about Cuba all day. I just on our tour of repressive regimes. This one, I just want to kind of give a quick update. South Korea's intelligence service has said that girl dad, Kim Jong Un, is selecting his 13 year old daughter, Kim Ju, I as his heir, which, you know, I guess is the most progressive thing we've seen out of North Korea in a while. But I don't have a lot of hope for change. She's been showing up at events with Kim. You know, that means she shows up and looks at things with him. Which, you know, it seems she's being groomed to be a successor. The Telegraph breathlessly reported that this could spark a power struggle, though, between the 13 year old and her 38 year old aunt, Kim Yo Jong, who had previously been thought of as a potential kind of power behind the throne, if not successor, who the paper claims is scheming for the position herself. So we'll see the soap opera that is the succession in North Korea. I mean, this matters, by the way, just because Kim does not look like he's in perfect health. Amen. I don't know what you think here. But anyway. Well, unless they've managed to, like, smuggle an Ozempic into the country, I don't think his, again, you know, just the optics of it just does not look like he's in healthy shape, you know? No, in fact, like he's playing one on one with Dennis Rodman that we don't know about and is like slimming down. He's one of the few leaders you still see like smoking in public at events. I want to end on one positive note here because we've had a dark thing and we're going to pour one out for Rick Grinnell. Twitter troll. You know, previously, ambassador to Germany in the first term, acting director of national intelligence, the supporter of the big lie after the 2020 election, called, quote, one of the most nasty, dishonest people I've ever encountered by a friend of the pod, Susan Rice, who got to know him in the U.N. context. Look, I don't want to go through Grinnell's bio here, but there have been a number of stories recently that say that he's clearly fallen out of circles. He overplayed his hand. He offended Suzy Wiles, the White House chief of staff. You know, she seems to hate his guts. One embarrassing example that came out recently, I think, was in The Daily Mail. Grinnell thought he arranged for the Serbian president to meet Trump in Florida, but Suzy Wiles blocked the meeting, which left Grinnell looking like an idiot. He can't even seem to do his corruption right. He was working on that half a billion dollar real estate deal in Serbia with Jared Kushner. That's now been called off. Kushner's pulled out of it. So it's not going well for him, other than the Trump Kennedy Center renovation here. Eamon, my question to you. Did you ever cross paths with Grinnell? And are you feeling sorry for him? Not personally, but we've exchanged messages. I think he attacked me on Twitter as you would expect when it was related to Gaza and Israel coverage, of course. Look, Rick Grinnell is a joke of an official on every level. I know people who have had to deal with him. I have never heard anyone. In the spaces that I have interacted with, both at the United Nations, in global diplomacy, who have had to say any nice things. about rick grinnell um he's a laughingstock and he's to some extent he this is kind of like a perfect end to his career with the trump administration this was a man who was kind of like trying to boast about potentially being a vice presidential candidate uh and then was parked at the kennedy center and then the kennedy center uh wasn't selling tickets nobody wanted to attend anything big acts were canceling and rick grinnell was just like sitting there in the kennedy center all by himself so much so that they were like you know what let's just renovate the kennedy center to make it look like the kennedy center is closed for renovations when in reality we all know that the reason why the kennedy center is closed is because it was once a source of national pride and now it is a source of humiliation when people look at it and be like we can't believe that this institution of the performing arts that buried the name of one of america's uh great presidents or certainly one of its most progressive presidents has to now share that with the trump family and rick grinnell the most despised person within this administration even according to suzy wiles who in that article uh says you know i mean you know we don't hate each other but you know we don't necessarily get along more or less uh and rick grinnell has now been basically reduced to a construction project manager he's general he's the general contractor overseeing the renovations at the kennedy center nobody wants to deal with him well you know he is a deep uh long-standing patron of the arts uh so maybe you know he'll uh carry out his passions there but it it's not always nice to see that there is you know accountability that circles back to some of these people um look amen i want to thank you so much uh for you know walking through all this um for co-hosting today again people can watch you on ms where you host the weekend prime time um which are saturdays and sundays at six eastern um also maybe you know some of the content from crooked will make its way on ms now absolutely is there any anything else you're up to anywhere else people can follow you um that we should be looking for listen i'm very active on social media so on instagram m and m uh i post a lot of stuff i do a lot of commentary there we have a lot of clips of the show uh i write for a digital uh column i have an op-ed um that i write for ms now so you can read monthly columns there um and everywhere else you know try to be as uh everywhere as possible these days yeah no show up everywhere well look thank you for showing up here um we really appreciate it and uh we will see you all next week uh time we'll be back thanks very much absolutely thanks ben see ya pod save the world is a crooked media production our senior producer is alona minkowski our producer is michael goldsmith our associate producer is anisha banerjee we get production support from saul rubin our executive producers are me tommy vitor and ben rhodes the show is engineered mixed and edited by jordan canter audio support by kyle seglin and charlotte landis thank you to our digital team dan hefcoat mia kelman william jones david tolls and ryan young matt degrote is our head of production adrian hill is our senior vice president of news and politics if you want to listen to pod save the world ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on supercast substack youtube or apple podcasts don't forget to follow us at crooked media on instagram tiktok and twitter for more original content host takeovers and other community events please subscribe to pod save the world on youtube for access to full episodes bonus content and much more and if you're opinionated like us leave a comment below and we'll see you next week for review our production staff is proudly unionized by the writers guild of america east right now the midterms are the biggest story in american politics but however they go the democratic party is going to have to do some serious soul searching join us washington dc november 5th through 7th the second in the middle of the year and we'll see you next week crooked con it's going to be the positive america hosts and some of the smartest people in politics we're going to try to answer some big questions stuff like if we won how did we win if we lost how could we possibly have lost and with 2028 around the corner where do we go from here if you believe in democracy community and fighting for the future now's the time to grab your tickets to crooked con at 2026 head to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now