Countdown to War With Iran?

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to Potsay, the world. I'm Tommy Vittor. - I'm Ben Riggs. - Great to see you. We're in studio. I think we've been in the same room since I was in Auckland and-- - Welcome back. - You're in Munich. Welcome back to you, pal. - Yeah, well, I didn't miss a pod in the studio, man. I flew Tuesday night to, that's how dedicated I am. I left Tuesday night and came back Tuesday morning. - One up in me. I'm usually the one in the hotel, so I know that is. - Oh, oh, you're staying in the studio. Oh, I mean, I skipped the second one. I don't know, I was just two. The time change is wild. LA was negative 19 hours from us, I think, something that, anyway. It was fun to be on the road, but good to be back. We're recording this a few hours before Trump stated the union. PBS, I saw a reporter just say that the speech could be over two hours long, potentially between two and a half to three hours long. I mean, make it four hours. Let's have him give a feed-outcaster a performance. I'm sure that I'll win over a lot of people. - Hopefully it's bullshit, and listeners will already know whether it is or not, but it does feel like cruel and unusual punishment. - I would not go. If I had the out, I'd be at the rally, the people, city union, or whatever is the alternative to sitting in the room. - I'd just be like streaming whatever sports run, TV or something. We got a great show for you guys, though. We got a cover. The Trump administration's rushed to war with Iran. - Great. - Still going. - We're gonna come and hat on this city to go. - Interesting, warned. - Still trying to understand why now? What the goal is? Why we're doing this massive military build-up? What hope there might be for diplomacy? What did the oil even look like? So we'll get into all of that. We're also gonna cover the global fallout from Trump's tariffs getting struck down by the Supreme Court and what it means that he's lost his favorite foreign policy tool and for all these countries that cut deals already. Then we're gonna dig into this interview that Tucker Carlson did with the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. It is a truly wild two-hour experience that created an international incident. - I texted you, I listened to all two and a half hours when the day came out and I thought, I'll just listen a little bit of this 'cause I'd seen the dust up and then I just got sucked in. - The first 20 minutes is just sort of like him talking about how the interview came to go. It's like so conspiratorial and crazy. It's like, is this real? It's not real. - I don't. Anyway, we're gonna explain. Then we're gonna dig into this fight between an AI company called Anthropic and the Pentagon over the use of its model Claude. And what it means for all of us, we're trying to figure out how this technology will shape our future. We're gonna talk about an ISIS prison escape in Syria and the ongoing follow-up from FBI director Cash Patel's "Eat, Pray, Chug, Trip to Italy" to go fuck around at the Olympics. Gladys to do that. - Let the boys come in the boys. I'm sure they love to see him. Anyway, then I talk with Carlos Zunica about the shocking Cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend, the death of a Cartel leader named El Mencho, which sounds like a Larry David. - He was a real mencho. - And then we also talk of the area and then about the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to starve the entire island of Cuba. For those who don't know, Ben and Ricardo led the negotiations to create the opening between the Obama administration and the Cuban government at the time and Trump had just unwound that and El Marco Rubio was just single-handedly trying to I guess starve them all up. - Yeah, it's one of the more grotesque that's happening in the world doesn't get a lot of attention, but we are actively trying to starve to death an island that poses no national security through everything in the United States, whatever. Whatever you think of the Cuban government, name me the national interest in starving those people. - Hasn't for a long, long time. One story we're not gonna cover today is the truly historic arrest of the creep formerly known as Prince Andrew. And that is because we covered it last week on the Paz de The World YouTube channel. So please, subscribe to Paz de The World on YouTube. We do tons of great bonus episodes like that one. And check out this episode if you wanna know just how much this incident is rocked the British royal family, the political system. And then since we recorded, things got even hairier over there because the former British ambassador to the US, Peter Mendelssohn has been arrested on similar charges. Remember the saw stems from them being mentioned in the Epstein files. We explain what this misconduct in public office charge means, what it would take to convict them. It's a great episode, but also please, just follow us on YouTube for the love of God. Support Paz de The World on YouTube, follow us on YouTube, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Otherwise, it's just right when crap out there. - It's a good content too. - It's a good content. - We had Prince Andrew, we did this on Jonathan Pollard, who we'll talk about. - Oh yeah. - Talker interview. So we pop up with some good ones. - Jonathan Pollard makes an early appearance in the Tucker Huckley interview. It's just wild. Anyway. All right, Ben, so we're recording this on Tuesday afternoon. At this moment, it seems less a question of if Trump will go to war with Iran, but when? - And why? - And why? Another good question. There are talks between the US and Iranian sides on Thursday, maybe they'll get to a deal. But again, it's not even clear what kind of deal Trump wants at this point. Like every day, there is a new leak about his thinking or the military options. One report says he wants no enrichment. No nuclear enrichment from Iran. And then the next day, there's a report that says Trump might allow a deal where Iran has some sort of like token face saving amount of nuclear enrichment. Other stories are focusing on the kind of wide range of military options he's considering. So yet Alex Ward over at the Wall Street Journal had the scoop that Trump was considering a quote, initial limited military strike designed to pressure Iran into cutting a deal. But then there's been other stories that say he's considering this like massive range of strikes that include hitting nuclear sites, hitting missile sites, hitting baby bombing the IRGC headquarters. Axio said Trump was presented a plan to kill the supreme leader and his son. So that's nice. They're keeping it in the family. The only good news is it does seem like he's rolled out commando raids or boots on the ground in Iran, at least for now. But I know it could change tomorrow. This does like, it feels like the final days before the Iraq war in 2003, except to your point earlier, we don't know why they want to start the war now. What the end game is, I guess maybe Trump doesn't either. Regardless, the US has accumulated a truly massive amount of military assets in the Middle East. So in January, I remember Trump sent the USS Abraham Lincoln from the South China Sea to the Gulf. That is an aircraft carrier that comes with three guided missile destroyers and 5,700 or so sailors. Then Trump ordered our largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford to the Middle East. They had been deployed in the Caribbean as part of the Venezuelan operation. The Ford also travels with three destroyers in about 5,000 more troops. I think that brings the total to like 14 Navy ships in the region. There's also a guided missile submarine floating around there. Somewhere I'm not sure if that's part of the 14 or not. On top of that, the USS sent 50 additional fighter jets, AWACS, Command and Control Plains, the EA, 18G, Growler Plains that do electronic warfare. Then according to the AP, 85 fuel tankers, 170 cargo planes, more missile defense systems. And then on Monday, the US Embassy in Lebanon ordered all non-essential staff to leave the country. So Ben, long wind up there. But my question is, what do you think Trump's goal is here? And like, I think there's a lot of people who feel like, when you assemble this much military hardware, like kind of on the brink of war, it almost becomes inevitable that is going to happen. Do you agree with that theory? Because I'm certainly concerned about it. I think it'd be very hard for him not to do something. First of all, on the deals, we should note that Woodcoff said that the nuclear program is one week away from developing a fuel for a nuclear weapon, which completely contradicts the claim that they had obliterated the nuclear program. Then a face-saving enrichment capability, we used to call that the Iran nuclear deal under Barack Obama. So amazing that we have to go through multiple wars to get back to a deal that he just pulled out of. And look, the other things that have come out for negotiation are beyond the nuclear program that Iran has to give up its boasting missile program. They won't do that. To them, that's their insurance policy to survive. That's what allows them to defend themselves. That has been a major ask for Israel since the Iran nuclear deal in 2014. People may remember when BB flew to Washington to give a speech opposing the Iran nuclear deal in front of Congress. And he said, no enrichment capability, no boasting missile program, no support for proxies. And that is essentially a deal. And we said this at the time. I'm not just saying this now. That's BB wanting to go to war with Iran. 'Cause he knows that the regime will never agree to that. And so those are the terms that they're trying to negotiate. They'll never get that. They could get a nuclear deal. They don't need a massive armada to get a nuclear deal, though. Or another like a pin-pric tiny strike. You bombed them last year, dude. You bombed them in June. Yeah, and this is what's so strange about this, is that should we break this into two things. One is, what are the negative consequences that could happen then why we're doing this? 'Cause I think it's worth it. I think people have begun to digest just how catastrophic this could be. I'm not saying it definitely will be. But essentially, if you do the regime change strike or even if you do the limited strike and Iran hits back this time, because they are tired of getting bombed and feel like they have to hit back or else they're gonna keep getting bombed, then you could have an implosion of that regime. There's not going to be some scenario where in a couple of weeks, Reza Palavi, the son of the shawl, that goes in, man, is a democratic transition. This is a country of over 90 million people, heavily armed factions, besieged militia, revolutionary guard corps. These are not people that are just gonna step aside for a democratic transition. The place will probably descend into some kind of civil conflict with a lot of violence. they could all have. also strike and lash out with those ballistic missile capabilities and hit Qatar, hit Jordan, hit Israel, hit just whatever, just fire in every direction in the Middle East to kind of send the point that like we're not going to go down without a fight, this is existential where ideological people are. We're hit like, you know, Saudi oil infrastructure or, you know, I was talking to a smart person yesterday who reminded me that Iran is really good at offensive cyber operations and there was concerns in previous administrations about them doing things in the U.S. homeland or critical infrastructure. They also pointed out that Iran's Navy was pretty much left unscathed in the 12-day war. It makes you wonder if that will be put to use in the street or her moves, which could shut down, you know, why it was at 20 percent of the world's oil goes through the street or her moves. So, you know, maybe the U.S. is just so much more powerful than the Iranian military and they're so decimated that they will just get a missile off the ground or maybe something really bad will happen. But remember, it only takes one missile getting through the missile defense systems, which by the way, are badly depleted both on the U.S. and on the Israeli end. Yeah, that's right. I mean, of course, it's possible it could go well, but I think we need to surface these consequences before war because that's what we haven't done in the past. One other thing I talked to some people in the region that they've been pointing out, which is that you could have a massive refugee crisis. I mean, something that dwarfs even the Syrian one. This is a country four times the size of Syria. If Iran implodes into kind of civil conflict and violence, I mean, you could have 10 million refugees, you know, people flowing into Afghanistan and Pakistan, people flowing into Turkey and into Europe. You know, how would that go in today's politics, right? There are ethnic groups, minority groups that have separatist ambitions, right? The Balookistan region of Iran, for instance, well, Pakistan could come involved because they don't want to see a separatist, Balookistan movement that could spread across their borders. I mean, this thing should could get real very fast. I think what's happened is a lot of the countries in the region, basically everybody except Israel and the UAE will come back to them. So that's Saudi, that's Turkey, that's Egypt, that's Qatar. They're calling Trump up and Trump listens to those guys and they're saying, this is fucking crazy. You're putting our stability at risk. You're putting this whole region at risk. This is totally unnecessary. Why are you doing this now? And it's at least causing him to pause. But Tommy, here's, this gets to the Y and I think we have to just deal with this because what you're seeing is a lot of leaks about who does not want this to happen. So yes, because we already know, like, Tucker Carlson, Maga doesn't want this to happen, right? We also know that these countries in the region don't want it to happen. Now we see these leaks that I thought are important that said General Cain was warning Trump that this could go very badly, like we were just saying, like even a well-excited military operation could end in disaster and draw us in more. Trump denied that, but it seems pretty clear based on the number of reports that this is the case. You look at Trump's cabinet, Marco Rubio does not seem that jazzed about this. No, he's reportedly kind of keeping his cars close to his vest and JD Vance is pushing back. I mean, I think they all realize that this is a much tougher operation than as well. Yeah. And so the question is, like, who is for this? And there are really only two factions I can think of, but I'm really curious what you think. In this country, there's this kind of absolute hawkish dead enders who just like they've had it in for the Iranians is 1979 and the same way they've had it in for the Cubans is 1959. And, you know, this is Lindsey Graham. This is just your kind of garden variety hawk or Neocon who is just like, we ought to finish the job because they're weak. And so the timing is, they're weak now. Trump can do whatever the fuck he wants and we won't have a president like that again. So let's do it now. And then the other one is BB and again, like we have to talk about this. The Israelis are interestingly being pretty quiet about this because I think they know that this is unpopular. But in the physical reality of this world, I can tell you that BB Nya is one of the United States to remove the Iranian regime for as long as I've been in politics. Yeah. And there was a lot of reporting I think back in December when Trump initially threatened to bomb Iran again that the Israelis were saying, well, well, well, don't do it. And that was interesting and surprising. And now it's clear that that was only because we did not have the force posture in the region to defend Israel from an Iranian response. And again, this person I was talking to yesterday said, part of why you want the USS Gerald Ford there is because of the warships that travel with it that have tons of missile defense capabilities and can fire up interceptor missiles that take down ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv. And now we are postured there. And there's also F-15s and F-16s and Patriot missile batteries that have all been moved into the region that can do what the Biden administration did when there was that massive barrage fired at the Israelis, which is trying to shoot down basically everything. That's right. I mean, that a lot of those assets in the region are there for defensive purposes as well as offensive. And look, I just think that there's something fundamentally broken when what the polls show 80 percent of people are against this in this country, that we're going to do this because some hawks want to get it done, and Lindsey Graham in this country and then journal editorial page and Bebe Nanyahu, this kind of, the absolute dead ender, let's keep fighting wars people. And I just also want to say, I think this is, that's not good for Israel in the long run. What if we do this and it goes poorly, and that the region descends into chaos? What is that going to do to the long term support for Israel in this country that's already on thin ice? So I just, I can't for the life of me think of some other reason, Iran is not posing any, like Iran has always been adversarial. It's always been a shitty regime. We'd like the Iranian people over time to change that regime. The Supreme Leader, by the way, is 87. He's going to die any day in his own regime. And the regime can evolve now. That threat does Iran pose today to the United States of America that it didn't pose six months, two years, six years during Trump's first term, like there's nothing different. If anything, they're less dangerous. Yeah. Look, there's not any kind of existential threat, that's for sure, right? Like the nuclear material was the biggest concern. That's when we were always told it's one week, we're two weeks away, we're four hours away from them having a nuclear weapon, like Trump, as Trump said, they set back that program several years. Completely and totally obliterated, but it certainly set back. You're right, that fundamentally hasn't changed since what was it June of last year. They certainly, they've developed more ballistic missiles. They've probably rebuilt some of their defenses. But my sense in talking to some experts is that they're still pretty weakened. My gut on what's happening is that you have people like Lindsey Graham, who are in Trump's year all the time, and saying to him, Mr. President, if you take out Maduro, if you take out those communists down in Cuba, and you take out the Iranian regime, you are the greatest president in history, you are historic, you are this, you are that. And all he sees is like kind of the easy good outcome, right? Because this guy has gotten super lucky in the Venezuelan operation. He got really lucky after the Cosm Soleimani assassination back in 2020 that no service members were killed in those operations, and it didn't become this escalator, like major war. And so he thinks like the cost of war is really low. When it's easy. I think you're exactly right. I think there's these consolation of forces, right? Because the regime is weakened, and so, and then you have this protest movement so that weakens them further, but not enough to topple the regime. And so I think that the Lindsey Graham argument is make your mark in history. Be the one that finally got rid of this regime that has bedeviled the United States for a long time. Beebe's probably saying in version the same thing. He's wanted to get rid of this regime for a long time. I will say the ballistic missiles, if people, they're not a threat to us. Now are they a threat to Israel, yes. But one of the things we've learned for the whole history of the Islamic Republic is they're not just firing those ballistic missiles at Israel. And in fact, they've been methodically weakened. I mean, what we've learned is that the regime cares about its survival. That's its principle objective is to survive. And so I don't think, just because they're manufacturing ballistic missiles again, that they're going to launch an offensive war against Israel. There's defensive weapons that can shoot those missiles down. Israel's bombarded and broken a lot of the Iranian proxies without Iran doing that. Iran only fired ballistic missiles at Israel after Israel attacked them. And so I just, you know, I don't think that there's an offensive threat. If the reason is to do this to protect Israel, first of all, Israel can protect itself. And also, and with our support, by the way, their missile defense systems are provided by us. But also, I just, I don't think this regime is like on the precipice of launching an offensive preemptive strike on Israel. And largely because they know that they would be, the response would be the fall forward to the United States government. I think the only, yeah. And like every sort of response, they had, look, they're bad actors, they, they fund terrorism. They do all kinds of shitty stuff. None of us like that. You know, their responses to getting bomb constantly has been relatively measured, like warning us in advance before they shot missiles at our base, because they don't want to get actively fucking designated. Because they want to survive. And it's like, at some point, though, what if like Ali Vias has been sort of making this observation, at some point, they are going to calculate that they need to exact some sort of cost in response, or else they're just going to get bombed every six to eight months in perpetuity. And I think that that might be what happened, Ali also had some good analysis that the more restrained commanders are the ones that were killed. And that the younger people who kind of moved into these roles were like, it was a mistake, not to respond. You see the reports in the times of the Supreme leaders had like name like four levels of succession. It's like sort of that's a great idea in theory, but in practice when like the missiles are raining down on you, I don't know that you're like your carpool, you know, snow day phone tree is going to quite work. One other thing I was going to say, because there's a huge risk to our personnel and people could get hurt and killed. But also, because it doesn't come up in the conversation, a lot of Iranians are very killed and not just the bad guys. I mean, Tehran is a gigantic city. Like there were a lot of Iranians are killed in the 12-day war. And those factors have kicked up again, by the way. There's five days of protests at like a bunch of college campuses. And so the fact that we're being so kind of kind of glib about that, we're so desensitized and we so dehumanized thoroughly these populations that they were just talking about like bombing them with mass military force. And we're not even thinking about the human cost on the Iranian side as well. Absolutely. And there's also like very little discussion of the human cost to the service members. Like, of course, like we all want to protect them and keep them safe. But these guys on the Gerald Ford, I think they've been deployed for eight months now. They've been extended twice. And this deployment might last up to 11 months. And, you know, again, these these this aircraft carrier was in Venezuela for the Maduro operation. They are now in the Middle East. And their toilets don't work. There's like 4,600 guys or men and women on this aircraft carrier. And a bunch of the toilets are broken. So there's 45-minute long lines on a $13 billion aircraft carrier. And it needs to be docked to fully fix it. But of course, they can't because these guys are stuck waiting for Donald Trump to decide if he's going to fucking bomb Iran again. Yes. Someone who we know who's like worked in the security apparatus of US said to me that the toilets on the Gerald Ford may do more to prevent the war with Iran than Congress. And also pointed out that a lot of these people to your point are just being sent over there and have no idea what the fuck they're doing. I don't think they know. I don't think someone on the Gerald Ford has any better idea what they're there to do than you and I do. No, yeah, but the the battles of the places are full of ass wipes in both cases. So at Ron's for and minister of Osirachi, he's been making the rounds in the US media trying to be like, can someone tell me what you want from us? Here he is. There's a clip from Morning Joe last week. Let's watch one thing I have to emphasize is that there is no military solution for Iran's nuclear program. That has been tested last year and there were a huge attack on our facilities on our, you know, they killed and assassinated our scientists, but they couldn't kill our nuclear program. Why? Because it is developed by ourselves by our scientists. This is a technology developed by us belongs to us and it cannot be destroyed by by bumpings by, you know, militarily. The only solution is diplomacy. This is why the US is back on in the table of negotiation and is seeking a deal. It just feels like we're going to the time warp 10 years, Ben, the same arguments. Yeah. As you mentioned earlier, Steve Wickoff was on Fox News. Even though he was literally interviewed by a member of the Trump family, he was like, Laura, Trump, he still managed to sound like a fucking bumbling idiot. And when he said, they're a week away from industrial grade bomb-making material, which like no expert would agree with. And as you mentioned, completely contradicts Trump's claims that the Iran nuclear infrastructure was totally obliterated. But again, we get back to this question of like, what kind of deal does Trump want? Is it a nuclear deal that he can just sell as being better than JCPOA? Is it what you said earlier, the Israeli position that it has to include nukes, ballistic missiles, support for terror groups? Or is it just full like regime change? I just, it's crazy that we don't even know what he wants. It is. And it's also crazy that Steve Wickoff and Jared Kushner are the people in these negotiations. When we did the Iran nuclear deal, we had like nuclear physicist and Ernie Moniz at the table. We had Iran experts. We had sanctions experts. They're literally sending in two real estate developers to sit across the table from these people. They've no idea what the fuck they're talking. They don't know how to design a nuclear program that is not threatening. It's fundamentally unserious, which makes you wonder, look, what is the purpose of the whole exercise? Now, I hope they get a deal. If they do get a deal, though, it's just going to be, you know, some broad principles on paper. What is the implementation pathway? What are the monitoring inspections regime? Can the Iranians believe that any deal will last more than six months? You know, they're probably just trying to get out from under the war. But again, the problem is they're not going to do the broader one with the missiles because they just see that as negotiating way regime change because they see, once we get rid of our ballistic missiles and our proxy groups and, you know, Israel will come in and just, you know, remove our regime. And you may not like that, but that's the reality. Yeah. And it just, by the way, lasting. I mean, I saw in the financial times, they reported that Rhonda signed a secret 500 million euro arms deal with Russia to inquire a bunch of shoulder-fired missiles to supplement their air defense. They also reported a Reuters reported that Rhonda is close to closing deals with China to buy supersonic anti-ship missiles. Just interesting. You don't hear a lot of criticism in public from Donald Trump about those deals. Also, lastly, Ben, it's just, it's just worth noting that as we're recording, it's the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Trump promised to end that war in 24 hours. Instead, it's gotten so much worse for the Ukrainian people. And meanwhile, now we're entirely focused on a regime change in another place in Iran right after the Venezuelan ones. So just like, speaks to the total incoherence of the policy and the lack of focus and just the lies based on, you know, what he ran on, which Nago was supposed to be isolationists and against regime change wars. And here we are. Yeah. I mean, and it does, he never said he was going to do this. It's not like he ran for president, like, I'm going to go in there and take out the Iranian regime. No, it's a baffling. Yeah, politically baffling, security reasons baffling, all of it is baffling, but here we are, I guess. Okay, so by now, I'm sure a lot of listeners have been following the Supreme Court, striking down the majority of Trump's tariffs. We're going to unpack the foreign policy implications of this decision going forward. So just for context, what the court struck down was Trump's use of a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act or IEPA. So that law lets the president declare a national emergency to respond to foreign threats often it's used to, yeah, post sanctions. But Trump used the authority in an unprecedented and how we know illegal way, which was using IEPA authority to slap tariffs on countries over like random shit, the beta map, like the Swedish leader's tone of voice in a phone call, the prosecution of his buddy, Jair Bolsonaro down in Brazil. But since his court ruling, Trump has promised to use other legal authorities to put his whole tariff regime back into place. One of those is called section 122 of the trade act of 1974 that lets him place tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days. So confusingly, Trump said he was immediately going to do that immediately put in place a 10% global tariff. Then over the weekend, he truth-social that he was going to up to 15%, but then this morning, it seems that the tariff went into effect at 10%, so per usual well-oiled machine. He does have other tariff authorities. There's provisions that let him respond to discriminatory trade practices. Others let him address national security threats, but those take longer. He can't just wield them like a dictator, so he's pissed. But Ben, the rest of the world is just trying to figure out what they should do about all this. Some countries seem to have gotten screwed at first glance, like the UK, Singapore, and Australia had negotiated rates lower than the 15% universal rate that Trump says he will ultimately implement. On the other hand, China, Brazil, and India should see a big tariff reduction in the short term. Then the tariffs on Mexico and Canada will likely remain as is because they are already under some of these authorities that have not been struck down. So it's also confusing for the EU. They negotiated this deal with Trump over the summer. Now they're reportedly having doubts about whether to ratify or not. I bet the Japanese are pissed because I think like two days or three days before the court decision, they cut some deal that offered a bunch of concessions to get down to a 15% rate, and now that's the universal standard. So Ben, the big elephant in the room to me, though, is China. Trump is going to China in late March, early April, but his big stick was being able to slap them with tariffs, even if he's already backed off the early liberation day, trade war. Look, what do you think the impact of losing this tool is for him, on those negotiations, and it's kind of like big picture, his attempt to bully the world with tariffs? I think this is a huge blow to Trump, and that may be one reason why he, you know, threw such a tantrum about it, because we've already seen other countries begin to figure out that maybe it's better to stand up to Trump, and that there's some short-term risk in standing up to Trump, but there's both political benefit, and maybe strategically it's better to be strong and not make concessions and kind of wait this guy out, grinding him down, or wait for his attention to go somewhere else. And that's what was born out. The countries that stood up to Trump are in a much better place today than the countries that rushed to cut deals and kind of crave favor with him. And look, the Chinese are the best example of that. They faced Trump down when he was doing like 200% tariffs for like a few days, because guess what? They don't have a Supreme Court, and so when they just cut off rare earth materials and critical components coming to our economy, Trump folded. And so that's the first point. I think you're going to see more countries be like, you know what? Actually, maybe we just, we stand up to Trump instead of, you know, signing some short-term deal. It reinforces also the idea that deals with the United States right now are kind of meaningless. because already Trump made it such that deals are never seen as lasting more than one administration. So you're already only cutting like essentially four-year deals. And now you don't even know if those deals are going to survive the Trump administration either because he's going to have a different impulse in six months or because his power is getting taken away. And this is the last point, is that this is like the beginning countries can begin to see over the Trump horizon. You know, his power is a diminishing asset. Like he was at the height of his powers around liberation day. It looked like everybody was capitulating to him. The Supreme Court wouldn't stand up to him. Congress is feckless. All these institutions are folding. Well, now you're starting to see like push back to Trump on lots of different fronts. And I think that it's a bit like the Wizard of Oz. Like the curtain gets pulled back and there he is and you're like, "That's the guy, you know?" And so I don't know. I think there'll be economic chaos to some extent because, you know, this is a hell of a way to run a global economy. But I also think you're going to see probably less capitulation. Yeah. And they're already on popular. I mean, 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump's tariffs. I think it was a pew poll like a few weeks ago. So yeah, like any attention to this, it makes me happy because it's wildly unpopular. By the way, if folks want to dig deeper into the legal arguments and the opinions, our friends at Strix, Grootney broke it all down in an episode to check that out. If you want the much smarter legal take on all this, we're going to switch gears, though, because we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee. So last week, Tucker released this interview with Trump's ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, and it was something else. So to set the scene, right? Like I obviously have huge, I know you do too, disagreements with both of these guys on policy and politics, right? Both of them. Tucker had a literal neo-Nazi on the show recently. He had a historian. Not so neo. Yeah. He said Winston Churchill was actually the chief villain of World War II, right? That colors my view of his criticism of Israel. Obviously. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, he's kind of like, you know, a jocular guy, but he is an extremist on policy. He supports annexing the West Bank. He says there's no such thing as a Palestinian. He opposes a two-state solution. So you sit these two dudes down for two hours and it is explosive, but also illustrative of the broader splits we've been seeing in the Republican Party and the DACA movement. So let's start with an exchange that quite literally created an international incident. You have said it three times that God gave this land to this people, and so it is entirely fair for me with respect to ask what land are you talking about? Because I just read Genesis 15 as I have many times. And that land, I think it says from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is once again, basically the entire Middle East. So God gave that land to his people, the Jews, or he didn't. You're saying he did. What does that mean? Does Israel have the right to that land? Because you're appealing to Genesis. You're saying that's the original deed. It would be fine if they took it all. You just said it would be fine with you if the state of Israel took all of Syria, all of Lebanon. That's that's really not exactly what I'm trying to talk about. I'm asking you what you said. I thought that's what you just said. It was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement in that, you know, if that's what you feel like that we're talking about, but it isn't. We're talking about this land that Israel, the state of Israel now lives in and wants to have peace in. They're not trying to take over Jordan. They're not trying to take over Syria. They're not trying to take over Iraq or anywhere else. So for listeners who didn't consume the whole two hour things like Ben and I did because we're freaks. So Tucker clearly came in to this interview with a plan to lay a trap for Huckabee because he knew he skipped asking him like, why does Israel have a right to exist? Because he knew Huckabee would cite both international law and why that particular language rights to exist? Right. Right. Because he knew Huckabee would say, well, there's international law and there's this biblical, you know, right in theology because of Genesis 15. But as you saw there, those two views are totally irreconcilable. You can't believe that Israel has the right to all of that territory is outlined in the conversation, but also that international law holds. So Tucker, Huckabee articulates it there in the worst way he could have for pretty much. And it ultimately those comments were denounced by I think a dozen Muslim countries, the OIC, the the GCC, the Arab League, like everybody. So must have been a very a fun day to have our old jobs in the NSC press office. And I actually think this was an important statement because it for a couple of reasons. If you let me ask you this time, because it's and I'm going to write a sub-stack on this people should check out my sub-stack. What are the borders of Israel? What are they? Yeah, right now. Well, I mean, they're the ones that are on the map and then they've taken some territory recently in Syria. They've taken some land in Lebanon. So it's it's expanded. So you you just got in the point. There's the West Bank in settlement construction there. I talked to some people in the Middle East about this and these are not, you know, rabid anti-Semites or something. But they're saying is that the actually international law, you know, recognized boundaries are the 1967 borders, right? And then Israel is in a military occupation of the West Bank in Gaza. Clearly, they've ignored that. They built all these settlements over the years and this is really government does not recognize that as Palestinian land. They've said they want annex, you know, the Knessetist pastor resolution. They went annexed. So I spank Aiman and I did a long segment on this. But essentially, and Huckabee himself refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samara, which are biblical terms for, you know, what you might call greater Israel, right? So so already he says there is no West Bank. There is no West Bank. So so already it's clearly Mike Huckabee's position and the position of the majority of the Israeli government that that the West Bank should be part of Israel. And then if you're in the region, you see these kind of relentless bombing of southern Syria and this Israeli buffer zone. So Israel is a really controlling part of southern Syria. They've already annexed the Golan Heights from Syria. And then in Lebanon, you have some of the more extreme Israeli settlers who want to go up and build settlements in southern Lebanon, right? So if you're in the region, those if you're those countries that are issuing that response, this is not just performative. Yeah. You generally are not sure where Israel's territorial and this Israeli government's territorial ambitions end. Does it include annexing the West Bank? Does it include Gaza? Does it include parts of southern Syria? Does it include parts of southern Lebanon? So this is not just like an exercise. And I think that's why you saw those statements is that there's not a lot of clarity about what greater Israel is. The one thing that is clear is that there are people in Netanyahu's coalition probably including Netanyahu himself who believe in some version of it. Now I don't think that they want to take a rock up to the Euphrates. I don't but but but there is this question of like how far will this go in terms of territorial expansion? Then the second piece of this is Huckabee is one of these Christian dynast who has this kind of biblical interpretation and Tucker was kind of smoking that out. By the way, this is not about Jews at all. This is actually about a Christian view that Israel needs to kind of reconstitute its control of this land as part of the second continent. It's crazy and I don't think Huckabee is there but there are like some really John Hagee, John Hagee, some really crazy right-wing Christian Zionists. And the conversation kind of happened because I think at some point recently Tucker said I despise Christian Zionists. He repeatedly apologizes for throughout the interview which is they didn't say anything to have to do but anyway. No and look I'm curious like I so so I think it was useful. I was actually useful for Tucker to kind of really pull the thread on this to try to understand. I mean there is a genuine question as to where do the borders end? In the views of Mike Huckabee who represents kind of a faction of pro-Israel support in the United States and frankly in the views of the Israeli government. I don't think that they want to take all the land to the Euphrates but if you are saying that it's a biblical you know you know Huckabee said a biblical deed you know well that's the logic of it and so you how do you need to figure out how to score that with the international? Well I mean look I just think the fact that Huckabee would say that out loud speaks to how insane the policy is right like you are a US government official you are the US ambassador to Israel you should support US policy in international law. Yeah just say yeah like you should be not articulating this extreme. Why don't you say like US policy is we recognize this but we you know yeah you're right like hey I'm a Christian I don't give a fuck what the Bible says about like the borders of Israel yeah that does not how we should be making these. No that's not. And look on the Tucker thing obviously he's a problematic messenger for all the reasons you know Nick Fuentes did not get grilled like Mike Huckabee did. I will say if more journal like one of the interesting things is Huckabee said a lot of things in this interview that you hear a lot like he said the IDF was more you mean. Let's play that let's play that yeah yeah but like what Tucker is brilliant I think what you're getting is he follows up he follows up he's like why why do you think that way so here was that exchange about the Warren Gaza and civilian casualty. I'm merely noting what you just said which was that the IDF takes greater pains in the US our military does to spare civilian lives and I guess my question is when was the last time the US military killed this many civilians do you know well it could have been Nagasaki Hiroshima could have been Iraq Afghanistan or several Hamas operatives how do you feel with their deaths if they participated in that Then God help them. I'm telling you, God help them. I don't know that they have there were 14 years No, but I'm telling you that when someone commits the acts of atrocity and then they hold hostages If these were your children being held hostage in Gaza, what would you do to get them out? I wouldn't want to kill 14 year olds. I'll tell you that. Let me ask you something Would you do whatever it took to get your kids back if they were being tortured rape star would not kill children period Well, I'm just telling you and I would never make excuses for killing children either and I 'm not talking about targeting children I'm talking about. I told me that 14 year olds deserve to die because they're working for him I'm telling you my question is can you hear yourself? It's a great question I mean and again Tucker comes at this in an interesting way for like a mega audience because he's like how dare you suggest that the US Military cares less about civilian casualties than the idea of and that gets you into this conversation where Huckabee Veals himself to be one of the many people who have a totally dehumanizing view about Palestinian people Which is to say there are there's no such thing as a Palestinian children, right? There's there's Palestinian terrorists in his view or Palestinian non-terrorist and if you're a kid with a gun And you happen to be Palestinian you're a terrorist and it's okay to kill you and when you say it out loud like you did there He sounds like a fucking sociopath. Yeah, yeah, and and I think what was so telling about this interview is You know if you go to because this I've heard all these things, you know, I've heard that you all these 14 year olds actually work from us Which there's no evidence of that By the way, we hear oh, we have to get hostages back with a lot of hostages families are like better to get them back through negotiation Because you know, I think I can't believe people are still saying this because the only way we got these hostages home is through a negotiation They won't rescue they won't rescue you, right? Yeah, then then This this could these negative comparisons look. I'm not here to defend the US military But there was not an urban warfare anywhere near Gaza and how can he said Kabul like he literally name checked Kabul's a place where we were worse than it's an insane thing Not meant to say like Raqqa or something Yeah, we're Mosul like you could have said Raqqa or Mosul, but like even that like Gaza like look at it It's utterly destroyed and the thing is you and I've had this conversation a lot There's such comfort, you know, you get up at a pack to give the speech you get rounds of pause or Baby Netanyahu always uses these talking points He'll go on some Sunday show or he'll go on some cable show and they'll say all this shit and nobody fucking pushes back on it And again like Huckabee in this interview is still trying to claim that every time these really is like bombed a site They called the person in advance and it's like they don't even claim that anymore. Yeah, it doesn't claim anymore It's like it's complete nonsense, but he's saying the same shit that Netanyahu says and and he's so unacoust him to push back And I guess my my argument to those who rightly point out all of Tucker's problems, right? From you know plot like the Nick Fuentes interview to the kind of conspiracy theory You know subtext to a lot of what he says to the great replacement theory stuff Which hasn't any semitism to it that did you but if more journalists would do what Tucker did Then Tucker's interview wouldn't be such a bombshell like the way the way to to if you think you need to defame Anti-semitism the on the right right now in their civil war the way they're trying to defend anti-semitism is to tell Tucker to shut up Right no the way you do it is you you create space where people are allowed to ask follow questions without being called in any Semite to be blunt, you know and and and so I I share the concerns That that of where Tucker goes with some of the stuff, but that that speaks to the need to have like People asking actual follow-up questions, you know of people like Huckabee other than Tucker Yeah, I was in London and I think it was January and I literally got there And it was the day that there was like a big departure from like the Tory party MP to reform So I turn on the TV and there's fucking Nigel Farage of course like right in my face But it's a it's a live press conference in the way that those journalists. Yes, we're going after him and kind of mocking him and you know Taking the piss out of him and the exchange is going back and forth. I said God I wish I yes our news media would more like them Finally been they they talked about Iran. Here's just a little clip of that exchange as well I know that if it weren't for Iran, there wouldn't be a mosque There wouldn't be the hoodies. There wouldn't be Hezbollah We wouldn't have the problem on the border with Lebanon We wouldn't have the problem with Yemen. We wouldn't have the problem on the border with Lebanon as I'm an American I'm not having any problems on the border with Lebanon right now. I live in Maine We don't have problems on the border of Lebanon like what are you talking about? No offense? Can I ask you a question? How much does it matter what Americans think? Well, it matters every bit what Americans think that's why Americans vote It's why Americans have the opportunity to set free speech. We want them to have that. Okay, so what percentage of Americans support a war with Iran? I don't know. Do you know I do? It's I think it's run. I saw the numbers yesterday. It was like 21 percent. Okay Is that enough to have a war with Iran? We don't live in a world where you have a Poll taken to find out whether our policy should be a particular Direction what I hear is it matters what they think but it really doesn't matter what they think because now you take it in you certainly ingest that and then would it only once you ingest it then you make sure that you have No, you just got to you it goes out the other end So it's like there's so much there. It's so much there. I hate how he says hoodie. Oh, yeah, yeah, the hoodie rebels Yeah, it's not the blowfish, sir. It's the hoodies. Yeah I live in Maine is such a It's so funny. It's like you to your point earlier You can tell like Mike Huckabee has never had to articulate why this is actually in the US security interests Which is like, you know, well, and he says we wouldn't have these problems on the border of Lebanon. Who is the we? Yeah, it's very weird and also again like Huckabee is not wrong, but you don't poll test every decision you make sometimes you do things as president The things that are unpopular. However I think what Tucker is getting at there is Trump ran against regime change worked you ran against the Iraq war He told us this stuff was stupid and that he would keep us out of world war three You like specifically said that about Joe Biden and now we're about to launch a new war with Iran and no one can explain why Yeah, and just to make this kind of equal opportunity, you know This is the problem with like the Mike Huckabee's in the world But also we have the same problem in the democratic side of the national security establishment in the sense said that answer He gave, you know, we would have these problems the hoodies and the Lebanon I hear that all the time and it's such a bullshit Separated even from the kind of Israel of it all That people say shit like that all the time and nobody's like what are you talking about nobody? Does anybody in America care about the hoodies for that matter? Like that this is Americans in the one thing left right they agree on is they don't understand why we have to do all this stuff Right why are we why are we going to work the hoodies? Well, you know, and again, I'm not even talking about Israel. I'm talking about the kind of mindset where it's just Trust us we have to care about all these things we have to fight all these groups. We have to be here forever. We have to spend billions of dollars and Do we I mean like like and what what's amazing is the American people in election after election Including the one that put us in the White House time into the Nate We're saying like we don't like this like the Iraq war was the end of it We don't want to do this anymore and yet we keep doing it again and again and on the on the Iran side You've got Democrats and Congress who are you know saying that the war powers resolution is like the Iatola protection act, right? Josh Scottheimer and Jared Mosquitz like what the fuck is that? That's a Mike Huckabee answer That's like saying it's such an insulting. We stupid way to I can sound tough and I can name drop a bunch of Groups that you might not have heard of and and therefore trust me and and I think the American people don't trust this way of making policy If Mosquitz and Godheimer Don't support the war powers resolution. That is totally fine. That is their right If they think we should bomb Iran again, that is totally fine. That is their right But don't like don't don't diminish and mock your colleagues who don't want to war by suggesting they're trying to keep the Iatola alive That's just stupid insulting have a real debate make the case. Yeah And why do if you want to know why the American people don't trust the establishment anymore? I mean, it's this kind of mentality and this is why this is so politically dangerous for Trump Because this is not what Anyone elected his people did not vote to fight the Houthis they they voted to lower prices and maybe Seal the border or sure like it's but like not this We must kill the Houthis or the blowfish cross the border was kill Toad and the wet sprocket Kill all the gin blossom the Houthis thing is amazing because he's trying to be like an expert and you can't even you know come close I mean, we're not the pronunciation experts here. No, no really not in that. We do a little better with English than Israel anyway, so the next thing. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break But then I want to ask you first. Where do you get all your polling information? Usually Dan Pfeiffer roller coaster Dan Pfeiffer. Well, you really breaks it down. He breaks it all down It's like our group best in a business. It's our it goes deeper than our group tax didn't really is like the smartest friend We're all like Dan. What do you think about this? I could formulate my opinion if you're looking for something like that Let me tell you about being a friends of the pod subscriber That is our subscription community. You get all kinds of great content We got a pot save America only friends, which is basically like positive America But it's a little more unhinged because it's behind the paywall or it's like only fans except it's It's only Dan's yeah, you pull the coaster with Dan Pfeiffer He's got you know, just keeping you on top of all the latest data There is a great newsletter called open tabs from rechirling. There's terminally online Which is just a totally unhinged story about the weirdest shit on the internet regardless You get ad free episodes of your favorite cricket pods and most importantly you help us here at cricket media build a progressive independent media company that isn't totally beholden to big tech platforms that want to replace us all with AI. So we'd really appreciate it. If you love the show, if you want to be a subscriber, go to crooked.com/friends. That's crooked.com/friends. (upbeat music) All right, Ben. So we just talked about a bunch of Trump stories, but you and I, I think I've said many times on the show that Trump blots up the sun, right? Like he is constantly the story that we are covering, but there are many days when we read about the latest development in artificial intelligence and wonder if we are just completely missing the more important story. So today we're going to talk about a fight about AI and a fight between the Pentagon and Anthropic, which is the AI company that makes the model Claude and what it tells us about kind of the future. So my understanding is that this controversy started after Axios and the Wall Street Journal reported that Claude was used during the raid to capture Venezuela and President Nicholas Maduro. That's right, that works. (laughing) Claude is like, "Gently, may I suggest?" (laughing) How much water did you drink today? So we do know, so we don't know how Claude was used. We know that Pentagon, the Pentagon uses Claude in concert with technology from the big data company Palantir and then Amazon's kind of classified side cloud server on its classified systems. I assume it's like the SIPR system. My guess is that Claude was helping them sort through some sort of bulk collection of data of some sort, but who knows, I'm literally guessing. Regardless though, like those news reports or maybe some conversation between an Anthropic executive and some Palantir executive kicked up this broader conversation between Anthropic and the Pentagon about the use of Claude and when, you know, it violated their terms of service. For context, despite having a Pentagon contract and Thropic is the AI company that seems to be the most concerned with safety and how technology is used and are the most openly in favor of government regulation, although you never know these guys they can change their mind. So the Pentagon has contracts with the four major AI companies, the OpenAI, XAI, Google and Anthropic. Apparently, Hexet's team went to all of them and said, basically, we want to rewrite your terms of service and replace them with language that says, the US military can do anything lawful with your models. OpenAI, XAI, Google, they were like fine. And Thropic said, no, we want to make sure our tech is not used for mass surveillance of Americans or in autonomous killing machines, killer robots. And the Pentagon basically replied, how fucking dare you. - Kind of a tell. - Yeah. And so the Pentagon threatened not only to cancel Anthropics, I think it's like $200 million contract with the Pentagon, but also to designate them as a supply chain risk, which is a step in the past the US has done to Huawei, which is a Chinese telecom company, and Kaspersky Lab, which is a Russian antivirus company. So big like state backed companies that we were where it could be back doors for state actors. That, we don't have to get into all the details, but that could create huge business problems for Anthropic. On Tuesday, the day we recorded this in Thropic CEO Dario Amade, met with Pistol Pete, Secretary Hexet. According to a readout, they leaked to CNN, Hexet gave Anthropic until Friday to get rid of its safeguards or else he will punish them, as I mentioned earlier. Ben, here's a clip of Hexet talking about the Pentagon's AI use last month. Let's watch. - We will not employ AI models that won't allow you to fight wars. We will judge AI models on this standard alone, factually accurate, mission relevant, without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications. Department of war AI will not be woke. It will work for us. - Oh, God. - We're building war-ready weapons and systems, not chatbots for an Ivy League faculty lounge. - Such a fucking goober, man. - Slip it. - I mean, he's just such an unserious motherfucker. - Well, he can't bench press 315, so there's that. Look, we've been talking about this for five minutes now where I've been talking. I can't say I understand it any better, but I certainly don't feel better about our AI future, having watched that clip. - I don't think he was regulating it. - Because what does he know about AI? He probably puts in workout routines or protein shakes. - I'm gonna say that's my sole use case. So this one, it's a great, great personal trainer. - That's what Zaharney's saying. These Ivy League people, he's probably the one who's just, which I'm not even up. Yeah, I mean, give me a fucking break. - Look, this is really important. And there's a world in which we look back on this era and Trump is like the B story to tech an AI. And I think what people have to realize is that more and more the war fighting to use a headset buzzword of the future is going to be done with artificial intelligence. These AI companies and these kind of defense tech startups are the Lockheed Martins and Boeing's of the future because it's not gonna be tanks. It's gonna be AI drones and mass surveillance capabilities and offensive cyber and all these things, right? And these companies have terms of service. And that, in part, is because they know an anthropic better than the Pentagon. And this is one of the things that's interesting about AI, the private companies know better than the government where it's going and what their technology can do. They know what the misuse of that technology could lead to. Mass surveillance with AI of Americans is a truly terrifying thing. I'm very glad that these companies, I wish more companies would wanna put that in their terms of service, right? Anthropic has employees. Those employees may not want the intelligence that they're creating to be used to kill people with robots, you know. They should have the ability to do that without losing all their US government contracts. This is the US government essentially saying, we want your technology, and there's another important context here. It'd be one thing if we were regulating this from Congress. Normally, if we were in before times with international order, we'd be negotiating norms with China and Russia about the use of military AI, none of that is happening. It's the Wild West. So the only regulation of these platforms is coming from the companies themselves. And it's only places like Anthropic, and a few others that actually want to have guardrails. Or states, but the administration's trying to prevent that from happening. You're trying to prevent that from happening. So if this succeeds in removing all guardrails from any AI that's used by the military, I mean, that's scary. And that's, by the way, like Alex Carp the Palantir, like go down a rabbit hole with him on YouTube. - Oh, weirdo. - Terrifying. - Odd duck. I don't know if you saw this, the Reuters reported that. So, remember Deepseek, we talked about the audience, probably remember Deepseek, we talked about them. Was it last year? I don't know, fairly recently. They released this AI model that seemingly had been trained at way less of an expense with less compute that worked nearly as well as like the frontier models in the US. So they're releasing a new model that's set to be released as soon as next week. That, according to this Reuters report, was actually trained on NVIDIA's most advanced new AI chips. - Trump gave them. - Well chips, which are the ones that Trump administration has been talking about giving them. So this whole idea that somehow we are going to keep trying to down by giving them our best stuff is just self-evidently stupid and crazy. - And the Chinese were using AI from Massive Realms. We would all get on a high horse and be like, look at those totalitarians. How is this any different? I mean, think about this technology in the worst hands. And I actually think Pete Agseth is high and the list of the potential worst hands. - Yeah. - You would want a little guard, but you want some terms of service. - Him and Guy were about to talk about a second, Cash Patel. But first, a little bit on Syria before we get to cash. So here's a great headline then that President Trump could highlight at his state of the union tonight if he wanted. This is via the Wall Street Journal. US intelligence says at least 15,000 at large after ISIS detention camp collapses in Syria. Security at Al-Holk camp, which house thousands of radicalized Islamic state family members came apart after last month's government offensive. Huh? Put it in a press release. Another Trump administration win. So we're talking about a camp. - He's sprung 15,000 ISIS fighters. - So it's part of his part. - Yeah. - They paid him off, they bought some crypto. - Yeah, you have the Binance, you know. - So this, you see the story about Binance routing like 1.4 billion. - To Iran. - To Iran. - Yeah, well anyway. So Al-Holk detention camp, it has been in place since like 2016. It's been housing ISIS militants, ISIS supporters, the family members of ISIS supporters. But then also thousands of just totally innocent people who happened to live in the region who were trying to escape ISIS and got swept up during these operations. So at one point this camp held over 70,000 people. The conditions were horrific. And it also seemed like there was just no plan for what to do with a lot of people in the camp is a lot of them were from Europe and other places and countries that absolutely did not want to take them back 'cause they were rather the closest people. It was a policy and humanitarian disaster. This all changed in January. The new Syrian government launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led and U.S. back forces that have been guarding the camp. That led to this chaos, the mass escape. And as of this past Sunday, the Al-Holk camp has been fully evacuated and shut down. So the good news is that just before that happened, the U.S. moved about 6,000 prisoners from Al-Holk to other prisons in Iraq. But they're almost, they're almost certainly hundreds of not thousands of dangerous, erratic-alized ISIS, members or fans, just kind of hanging out in parts of Syria. So that is wonderful news. The Al-Sharah's government blames the Kurdish forces for this mess. But then, I mean, given that the Trump administration just completely pulled the rug out from under these Kurdish forces, the SDF, who are guarding this camp, like I would argue they are directly responsible for anything these ISIS guys do. That's the only thing I'll say about this is that this is not something that happened and Trump didn't stop it. This is something that Trump contributed directly to the outcome because he decided to stop protecting the Kurds in these areas. internal negotiations with al-Sharah and the Syrian government. He got behind the Syrian government when they launched these offensives into Kurdish territory. Of course, this is the outcome of that. The Kurds need to protect themselves. They're knocked back. So this is, he doesn't think through the second and third-order consequences of these decisions he makes. He's like, I like al-Sharah. What do you say? He said all kinds of weird things about him. He had a hot or something, yeah. Like, sweet ass or something. I mean, yeah, pretty much. How many wise do you have? Remember that one? But he likes the guy. And look, you don't need a greenlight and offensive against the Kurds. Just maintain the status quo. Play for time. Like, keep negotiating. The rush to kind of get behind this guy. Now we've got 15,000 ISIS guys wandering around. Not good. Not good. Okay, last story. So we're going to talk in the interview of me and Ricardo about this cartel violent over the weekend that engulfed parts of Mexico and has all these American tourists still trapped and sheltering in place in Mexico. But one person who was not helping rescue them is FBI director Cash Patel, who instead had taken the FBI Gulfstream G550 over to Milan to fuck around and chug beer at the Olympics. Here's a clip of our buddy, Cash. So that's Cash pretending he is a member of the gold, what metal winning men talk you team. Shout out those guys are told that asses. Are they though? I'm going to be that guy that's that's that dumb song about the statue Liberty shaking his fist. I don't know that song. I don't know the team. The team's great. Canadian listeners. I see you. Oh, shut the fuck up. Get out here with that bullshit. What country are you from? No, I root for our guys, but I don't need to like all of them. I mean, do you know any of their names? They're parting with Cash Patel. Dude, okay, this is the bullshit I'm seeing online that I want to push back on. They don't want this fucking loser in their locker room. They look pretty happy to have them there. They're happy because they won the gold medal. Okay, okay. They're getting shit face after we go. I know I'm going to get a lot of shit for this. No, I'm going to get shit. You know, right? Look, these guys, look, these guys are getting ripped on now because Cash came into their locker room and they can just call it Trump. It's like sex is common and like, oh, now I have to invite the women too, even though I was like, well, the women are better. They win more often. All of that is true. And also like Trump is flying them back to go to the state of the union. These are athletes representing the United States. I'll defend our boys, as Cash would say now, because I actually, I don't care what they're called. I would like to get back to a time. I'm sure there's some people I agree with politically on that team and some people I don't. You're right. It is Cash fucking Patel who's politicizing this like and Donald Trump with his like misogyny. Like, like, let them listen to whatever fucking music they want and party. Cash Patel, I mean, the thing about this is it's not just like, this isn't just a situation where like a serious guy who's a serious FBI director, like how to slip up. Like, this is the entirety of his tenure as FBI director is doing shit like this. It's just raging. It's literally just fantasy camp. You know, whether it's like walking around in some jacket that's too big for him that says FBI in the back, whether it's like tweeting arrests that aren't the right arrest or like whether it's like flying to see his girlfriend on a Gulfstream jet. Like, this is the only thing that he does. And now, I was psyched, you know, I'm glad we won the gold medal. And I've got to have this fucking guy like go in the locker and make it about himself. That's the thing. What did he do to win the gold medal? Absolutely. He's a hockey player. Like, he absolutely should not have gone over. Look, the first, like, there's a lot of things to criticize. One, the cost of them, like flying a private jet over there, right? But like, that is far less than the cost of having a clown as an FBI director who's not doing the right thing. And I don't know if you saw this, Ben. Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin today said a whistleblower came to him and said that after Charlie Kirk's murder, the FBI was asked to fly to Utah to aid the investigation. But like, the deployment of the specialized team was delayed because the there was not an FBI plane or pilot available because of cash is repeated personal flights. And that also happened after the Brown University game, right? Which like that shit colors the fact that he this guy like pretended he had some like official business flew over to Milan. So we could, you know, watch this game and party with those guys. I will say I've been on a delegation to an Olympic Games. Now before people are like, "Oh, look, I'm not the FBI director." There's no comparison. There's an official delegation every year. Yeah. I went on the official delegation. It was like Michelle Kwan was on the delegation, poor one out for one of our great figure skaters. But the point I was going to make is I went for like a day and a half. We got there. We went to a couple of events and went to the closing ceremonies. At the closing ceremonies and at the events I sat in the fucking stands like way up. And I didn't go in the locker room. I mean, I mean, this is an important point. It's bad enough that he went. That's the original sin here when he doesn't need to go. He's not in the delegation. He's not like an elected representative. He's not like in even in the White House, which is kind of a political function. What's he doing in the fucking locker room? He's a loser. Like how does he? Because you know he had to ask. I don't think though they were like, "Where's cash, man?" This is not the gold medal voodoo of cash. He says he's a genuine hockey fan. So he may be his friends of the player. I'm the genuine basketball fan. I went to the women's basketball final. I didn't like. I'm not saying this is why he should go. But you were seeing all these people on the internet being like, why would you let him in there and party? You're a 23 year old. You're going to kick the FBI director out of your locker room. Get out of here. I'm like, that's what I'm saying. And he's leveraging this position for just all this fucking. He's the worst. He went. He took the FBI jet to a place literally called the Boondoggle Ranch. He took the FBI jet to Scotland to golf. He took it to Penn State to watch his dumb girlfriend sing the national anthem. And now that girl is suing a bunch of right wingers. And you know he made up this bullshit story that he was going for important security constations and Milan, coincidence of the games. We also know that when he went to London for actual security consultations, all he wanted to do was go to like a premier league game. Yeah, he wanted to be a soccer. So he didn't want to say did he want to go to an helicopter? He wanted to go to a good jet skiing or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like him. No, but we're going to stay on it. How dare you say how dare you pander to Canada on the show? Unbelievable. They don't need your pity. If you've been good at hockey for a long time, if you're just listening and you didn't see the video, the video is like they hang a fucking gold metal around cash. And there's a bunch of guys doing the like the, is it like Toby Keith, like not shake the saturate anyway. I'm sorry. I love our guys. I root for America, but that was not one of our finest moments. Cash Patel in my locker room. Cash Patel, sir, I think Trump knows about this. And I think he's mad. That is my guess because he does not, Trump doesn't drink. He doesn't want to see his FBI director like chugging a beer. Like he actually doesn't think that's cool. He think like a lot of people are like, oh, he's growing out. It's amazing. Love's America now. I should think. I don't think people want their FBI director to do that. Donald Trump wants you in a tie, right? Like on the weekends, like he is a serious, he's a joke, but he's like a person who cares about optics and how you look. He doesn't want to see that, that dumpy loser in a, in a jersey. Adult men should not, like him, should not be wearing a jersey at a visual event. I just think the whole FBI has gone downhill since Bungie and I left. Bungie and I never would have done that. Never would happen. Never would happen under the Bungie. Never would happen under the Dan. Okay, we're going to think a quick break. We come back. I will talk with Carla Zuniga about this shocking cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend. The death of cartel leader El Mencho. We're also going to talk about Cuba, so stick around for that. Joining me today is Ricardo Zuniga. He's the founding partner of Denamika, America's. If Ricardo is a career member of the Foreign Service, he has served in a bunch of senior government positions focused on the Western Hemisphere. Ricardo, great to see you. Thanks very much. I wish we talked about better things. Usually it's about something awful happening in the world. Today's no exception, because I bet a lot of listeners have the same experience either this past weekend. I woke up to see these images coming out of Mexico, where you had just residential areas looking like a war zone, burning cars, burning stores, images of people running for cover in airports and hotels. There's all these stories of American tourists still trapped in Mexico, a little on the Mexican citizens who are just sheltering in place. It was terrifying. I'm hoping you can help us understand what happened. Let's start with the approximate incident that set this all off was the killing of a cartel leader named El Mencho. Can you tell us who this guy was and how he was taken out and how big a deal that is? So he was the head of the cartel, Halisco Nueva-Hanedación, CJ, NG. It was a split from the, you know, Loa Cartel, which a lot of your listeners probably have heard of, is one of the largest cartels. When people think about a cartel and a drug cartel in Latin America, they think about Pablo Escobar, or like the movies, right? What we saw in Narcos, Mexico, or something like that. And that has changed quite a bit. These are much more sort of fragmented organizations. They have a lot of different and like verticals that operate, they operate like a corporation and they are multinational. This one was as well, Minto operated, Minto operated a massive empire that reached down and to south deep into South America and competed with Stinaloa and other criminal organizations for control of ports as far away as Ecuador. And they had global relationships. This guy was, you know, for all the kind of, like the image of this guy is sort of somebody who hides in the shadows, he had a sprawling network and he was very powerful. These organizations, by the way, earn typically the GDP of a small country per year. These are not small. These are in the billions, multi-billion dollar organizations. I've read, I mean, a couple of things on Minto, I mean, it seems like there's not a lot of bio out there out about him or at least not credible. I mean, I've heard he was a former police officer, is that accurate? And also, there's a lot of reporting that suggests that he was violent and cruel and guilty of atrocities that were shocking even by cartel standards. Is that accurate too? Yeah. Like, Nueva Henrietta Sion, the new generation had a, their approach was, I mean, basically their, their business model was to be more violent than any other organization. They terrorized their competitors and to get immediate acquiescence by local authorities and civilians alike. And so, absolutely. And they wanted that broadcast, they wanted that to be their brand, that's their model. And it was effective because certainly if he or his organization was involved, he would get cooperation because the alternative was pretty bad. They were also, you know, quite showing about trying to, like, put together these armored vehicles with their emblems on them and, and uniformed people. And they have an armed wing as if the whole thing weren't sort of an armed organization. But they, they, yeah, there was a big show around the use of violence, a spectacle of violence was important to him. So often when like a senior cartel leader is killed or arrested, there is violence like this. Is that because other cartels are, the cartels are trying to send a message to the law enforcement, saying like, you know, you can do this, but it's going to, we're going to exact a cost. Is it fighting for control and a power vacuum, some combination of both? Like, what, what are you seeing? Yeah. So, we, you know, what happened in Mexico over the weekend is what was expected to happen. They had threatened a, you know, large scale violence if there was any action taken against the leadership of the organization. They carried it out. Most of what they did, there was a lot of visibility, it was very dramatic. And they did kill at least 25 police officials in Mexico as part of their retaliation. There were quite a few deaths of mostly lower level police that were in more vulnerable locations. And there was a spasm day one, a little bit more, a little bit of violence subsequently. And it should kind of end with that or there, there, there might be other scattered episodes, but for the most part, this is not like the sustained war of attrition against the state. They're making a point about their reach. And then after that, they'll go back to kind of a more business as usual. There was a report this afternoon that his leader, his, his replacement has already been named relative of his who was born in the United States on Carlos Valencia, another, another American export. Maybe it's Orange County. I'm right. Really? Jesus Christ. Speaking of the United States. It reports that the CIA and CIA intelligence help track El Mencho down. He was found and killed after the Mexican Special Forces and National Guard troops followed basically a girlfriend of his to some secluded cabin. The New York Times reported that there was sort of tracking on an associate of the girlfriend who brought them to the girlfriend, whatever. Do you have a sense of what kind of cooperation the CIA may or may not be doing with the Mexican authorities? For example, there's lots of reports about the CIA flying drones over Mexico during both the Biden and the Trump administration. And you know, do you think this happened because Trump is putting all this pressure on the Mexican government to do more to stop the cartels or is this, you know, just kind of like have these things go. Like sometimes you have good until sometimes you don't. Well, so, you know, the, the, there's a long history of the CIA being used against primarily criminal organizations, because remember, they don't just commit drug-related crimes, they're involved in a whole range of organized crime activity, state threatening organized crime activity in Latin America very often. And so there is, there's an intelligence community, yeah, there's intelligence community work that, that is carried out against these organizations. That for example, in Columbia overlap with, with guerrilla organizations as well, political criminal groups as well. And in what there is now is, and has been extensive cooperation between law enforcement, now US armed forces at a much higher scale than what has been true in the past through Northern Command and a new giant of joint interagency task force that's been put together to focus on cartels in Mexico. And, and certainly the intelligence community is a part of that providing analysis, providing sort of information that your partner on the ground, in this case, the Mexican, armed forces and Mexican police wouldn't necessarily have available. It's additive because a lot of the human intelligence comes from local law enforcement, and that's probably the case here, Mexican law enforcement is a much better place than any US intelligence to gather human intelligence on the ground. On the other hand, Mexican organizations are also under a greater level of threat than US security officials are, and so for them it's convenient for the United States to conduct some of the surveillance. Got it. I think a lot of people, you know, who work in Latin American policy, certainly Ben and I on the show, have kind of expected Donald Trump to bomb or have the CIA, you know, drone strike, some sort of cartel site, maybe a fentanyl production site in Mexico's territory. Um, that hasn't happened yet. We had, in fact, we saw a regime change operation in Venezuela before we saw that happen. We might see another regime change operation by the time people are listening to this. So stay tuned. It's always exciting here on the Trump 2.04 policy. But do you think this operation increases, lessons doesn't change the odds of that happening direct action by the US in Mexico? You know, that's a, that's a good question. Clearly, President Shinebaum is doing everything she can to prevent a US direct attack on Mexican territory. I agree right from the very beginning, uh, Mexico watchers, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've completely aligned with the view from before this administration took office that they really wanted to carry out an arm strike, uh, in Mexican territory. I'm not sure it was so much this incident where, where the, where the, where the Shinebaum government showed, oh no, we're taking action. If you'll give us the tools or the information, we'll carry out the action so you don't have to be here. Very much where she wants to be because also there's a, there's a good chunk of the population that wants her to take this kind of action against organized crime in Mexico. There's a belief that that her predecessor did not do enough and kind of left her in a very bad situation. On the other hand, I think that maybe they got the thrill they wanted from, uh, shooting small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. And that was enough to prove the point that they could kill at will and bring military force into what had traditionally been law enforcement. But I think there might be a little, I think there might be less pressure to, to kind of carry out these attacks, uh, in, in Mexico. On the other hand, I think that the president really wants to, um, watching what happened over the weekend made me wonder, um, uh, clearly there was this cartel response to government authorities in Mexico because of this action. Do you think we might see a similar kind of response against US interests or Americans if the US were to take direct action in Mexico? Certainly, uh, but the common wisdom and actually what we've seen documented is that cartels tend to avoid action against US interests to the extent they can to avoid bringing the US more directly into, you know, against them. So they, they see, but look, if their backs are against the wall and they don't see any other way out, you know, potentially they would do that to try to reduce US will, um, but the chances of that backfiring they under, these are sophisticated people. They're not, you know, they're not some, you know, sort of backwards, uh, neophytes. They've been doing this for generations in some cases and they will do all they can to, to avoid, um, having a direct conflict with US forces probably wise, um, we reached out to, uh, Will Grant, a great reporter from BBC News, who's been on the ground kind of covering the aftermath. Um, here is what he had to say about the situation as of, you know, midday, Tuesday, Pacific time. The semblance of normality is beginning to return to some parts of Haliskell. Um, I've been to two of them, um, the state capital Guadalajara where the evidence of what had taken place was clear from the moment one leaves the airport. There were still burnt out cars on the road of massive police, uh, law enforcement and military presence on the streets with patrols, circulate, circulating around the city. Um, there was a real sense of unease too, as people didn't return to work on the first day. remained indoors, stayed with their families, few workers were went to their places of employment, there was a lot of businesses where shuttered schools were closed, and a general sense of unease and uncertainty on the streets. People are stoic in Mexico in general in front of these moments, but it wasn't comfortable. There was no nightlife with people obviously fearful of a second flare-up of violence. So, you know, Ricardo, you can hear there like how much this impacted everyone in the region, not just people who are directly harmed or pleased, given that impact. I mean, are these kinds of operations popular with the Mexican people? Do they want to see their government going after cartel bosses? Well, they definitely want to see much more accountability for criminals in Mexico. There's a sense that her predecessor, who was very popular president, he was not popular in terms of the security practices of his government, which were to concede a lot of space, frankly, to organize crime, which under Shimbong has been reversed. And that part is popular. Taking making criminals, sorry, pay a price or be a hell-do-account, is popular because the level of insecurity in Mexico is quite high. People still disappear in large numbers. In some parts of Mexico, it's still quite dangerous for ordinary people. On the other hand, this is going to remind people of the worst parts of when Felipe Calderón, a prior president, basically declared war in the cartels and they declared war on the population. You saw massive violence that really began a period of acute large-scale disappearances, fragmentation, a lot of infighting that led to a lot of civilian deaths as well. So I think that they are fearful of the consequence, but I think in general the idea of being more aggressive against organized crime is popular. So, you know, as you said earlier, like there are members of these cartels who've been doing this job for generations. The drug war, such as it is, has been going on for a very long time as far as I can tell. We have not won it yet. I imagine things are only getting more complicated as you bring in synthetic drugs like fentanyl, because at least, you know, with cocaine, right? At least there was a complicated supply chain that you could find ways to disrupt. If we're just talking about like shipping in a bunch of chemicals from China and then mixing them someplace and then getting them to the US and maybe that is just as complicated, I don't know. But in your opinion, like what policies have worked and what has been effective and how was this threat evolving? Wow. What has been effective? Very little. The reality is that what has been effective is to an extent a demand reduction in the United States sometimes works. Look, you're exactly right about the problem with fentanyl is that it is easy, relatively easy to synthesize in Mexico, once the precursors, or even the precursors to the precursors, have made their way through the very normal industrial supply chain. I was talking to a banking official in Central America who said these organizations know exactly what they're doing. They'll order maybe three or 4% more supply to legitimate industrial sites and then siphon off those supplies to create what to develop what they need. They know what they're doing and I think that that is one of the great challenges. You know what does work is going after them like enterprises. The kingpin strategy is criticized is kind of showy and you remember all those years where the number two and number three of alkaida kept on getting killed and replaced the week later over and over and over again. Number three. Yeah, well, number three. That's right. Today, I saw the number two of the new about a hand in as young was killed today and I thought, yeah, okay. Here we go. But the reality is that when strategies like going after I'm not kidding, their HR departments, the recruiters, that works going after their money works better than anything else. So complicating the business side of the business where we have some skill and not just us like other regulators and other governments have skills at doing that kind of work. That that does work. It's boring. It's not as exciting as putting you know launching a rocket and and blowing up a you know a drug site. But the truth is they're in this for business. And if they're the I'd say actually one of the real risks is I let's say that I don't think that they will manage to significantly reduce the supply of drugs moving into the United States. But if they do, the businesses will turn to other markets and just as they're doing. I mean, frankly, Asia and Europe are booming for the cocaine travel. We're a wash and work cocaine than we've ever seen. Like we're historically high levels of cocaine production. That's not coming to the US or at least not in vast quantities. It's mostly going to Europe and Asia. And when if that doesn't work for them, they'll turn to other crimes. I mean, that's they're a business. And they will adjust. And that means that we have to be ready for that kind of adjustment. Maybe they turned more to fraud. And or I mean, crypto has been a godsend for organized crime. Crypto has made it so much cheaper for them to handle the cash into the business. So much easier for them to integrate there and to launder their cash. That has also changed the equation significantly. They're wonderful use case for crypto. It's helping cartels Iran. There's a report today. I think Binance got like a billion, 1.4 billion dollars via Binance to Iran. And then the Trump family. To your point on Al Qaeda, I always did wonder why why someone at the lower level of the organization didn't just sort of pitch a flatter org chart, you know. That's right. Oh, promotion. No, that's okay. Thank you. This is an egalitarian organization. I'm happy where I am. Yeah, just no no business cards. Finally, since I have you, I'd love to get your take on the situation in Cuba because you and Ben Rhodes led the effort to normalize relations with Cuba during the Obama administration. So since the the raid to capture President Maduro and Venezuela, Cuba has been essentially blockaded. It is experiencing this horrific, you know, fuel shortage, all these blackouts, this economic crisis that's getting worse by the day. I'm wondering if you could give us just sort of your sense of the humanitarian situation on the ground in Cuba. And whether you think they're close to reaching a breaking point or if there's any sense that like there's cracks that might lead to a leadership change because of this blockade. All right. Well, look, let's set aside for one second, the who's at fault conversation, which is normally where we start a conversation about Cuba. And let's talk about what's actually happening to people right now. I mean, the fuel shortages are have kicked in. You're seeing a lot less activity in the streets when you talk to people who are in Havana now or just come back from Havana visited. They say that people are waiting for something big to happen. And the streets are calm. But there is a sense of, you know, that something momentous is it's kind of a foot. The way it's being felt right now is in massive poverty. It's something like 89% of the population is in extreme poverty. In Cuba now, which is historically high levels, there's much more food insecurity. I mean, there's just a lot more malnutrition, a lot more insecurity. The difference between now and when Ben and I were involved is the level of resentment is sky high. There's very little hope. Everything that has been, you know, every potential opening has been snuffed out on the government side. And then in the first Trump administration, with the help of the Trump administration. So all the, all the, all the tools that people had for making their lives a little bit better under these extreme conditions have been shut off one after another, which is why two million people left after the COVID epidemic. Right. Yeah. And most of the, like the, you know, the fuel embargo, the fuel shortages mean more than just not being able to drive around. It's like water filtration, refrigeration or energy. Absolutely. Everything. It's everything. And yeah, yeah, they will prioritize, I think, the health care and so forth. But look, these, these are tiny stopgap measures. So to your, to your other question, when do we get to that magical point where the population has had enough and there's this uprising in the outbreak of democracy? Well, I guess we're going to find out because if, if kind of we, if we kind of keep going forward with this, then we potentially get to a situation where the, the economy is fully broken down and there's no economic activity taking place. And essentially what we have is Haiti, 90 miles from the United States. And so then, right. It feels unprecedented, right? Like Marco Rubio is single handedly making, like running this policy where the, the current policy is star of an entire island worth of people. I mean, is that too, is that unfair? I think that that is what they're trying to do is trying to see if they can force some kind of action out of the government by bringing that entire economy to a standstill. And you can say it's for the purpose of bringing you out of better Cuba. But and I think a lot of Cubans are, are done with this government. That is crystal clear. But in order they want to be the last victims, as you see this kind of period of improvement, take place. So at the same time, in, in Munich, Rubio said, look, if the government shows signs of an opening and the, and the economy and opens its hand a little bit, then you know, that's a positive, we'll interpret that positively. So I, I don't know that there's also alignment between Rubio, knowing what the president is prepared to kind of dedicate to this effort. It's not the same as as well. There's no oil, right? So what's President Trump's interest in this? That's an open question. Ultimately, what it comes down to is, is there a leadership that's adept enough to manage this on the Cuban side and will it be interpreted the right way on the U.S. side that will they take yes for an answer when yes shows up? And that's an open question. And in the meantime, you're going to have all the consequences of that being felt and borne by the population in Cuba. Yeah, it seems just absolutely unsustainable and awful and just, you know, obviously not of us like the Cuban government, but boy, what the impact on the Cuban people, the kids, innocent families is just it's on a match more right now. Yeah, look, I mean, and I think that's the that's the realization. A lot of that is overlooked. I mean, I think people are there's not enough sort of understanding of what that actually means for like ordinary people who in theory are the ones who are trying to help. Yeah, exactly. Well, Ricardo, thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it's great to check in with you and let's talk to you in soon. All right, talk soon. Thanks again, Ricardo for coming on the show and we will hopefully make it through the city of the Indian and tune F hours. I'm not going to watch all of that if it's F hours. The Tucker Huckabee interview maybe. I talked to you guys next week. Potsy of the world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alonam and Kowski. Our producer is Michael Goldspin. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me Tommy Vittor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support by Kyle Seglon and Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team Ben Heffkoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Adrian Hills, our senior vice president of views and politics. If you want to listen to Potsy of the world, add free and get access to exclusive podcasts. Go to Crooked.com/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. 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