Foreign Policy and American Hubris with Ben Rhodes

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart, and I will be your host and guide on this week's episode. It is Tuesday, May 12th. We won the war in Iran. It is over. The only slight hiccup is apparently Iran believes they also won the war in Iran. And so we're a little bit of a stalemate as we're trying to figure out who is correct in that environment. And it does get incredibly confusing to some extent. So we thought today, rather than speculate, we want to unravel the past a little bit in terms of, how has America gotten here where we feel as though we need to intervene in every different area of the world, whether through covert coups or bombing raids or sanctions or all these other methodologies to control the world, none of which seem to do that at all. They just seem to sow an increased level of chaos. So we thought, well, who knows about that kind of stuff? Maybe somebody who's been in the room when those interventions, are being discussed, and that's who we're going to talk to today. The author of the upcoming book, All We Say, writer, political commentator, national security analyst, currently co-host and Pod Save the World contributor, MSNOW, Ben Rhodes. What's happening, man? Hey, John. Good to see you. Good to see you. Now, you're a speechwriter for President Obama. You're a deputy national security advisor to President Obama. In this current moment, that we find ourselves, where we are in a war to hopefully coerce the Iranian regime to give us something that vaguely resembles the JCPOA that was negotiated how many years ago? Over 10 years now, John. 10 years? Over 10 years. Yeah. What has it been like for you to watch, to watch this play out, having been involved with a similar scenario of attempting to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? Well, I've had to do my breathing exercises and work on my serenity, if you remember the bruising debate over the JCPOA. And look, I think the couple of things I would highlight about this is, first of all, when we looked at this problem, right? Let's just take the Iranian nuclear program. We should put aside the fact that Trump clearly thought he was also going to change the Iranian regime with this war, and nobody talks about that anymore. But when we looked at this problem, we basically determined there are two ways that you could prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. One is through a nuclear deal in which, you know, they agree to accept restrictions on their program, inspections on the program, but they're not going to dismantle their entire program. They just weren't going to do that. Or you could try to bomb their program, out of existence. Every scenario that we looked at, every scenario we looked at, we war-gamed it. We were briefed by Bibi Netanyahu on what a great idea it would be to bomb the Iranian nuclear program. We got the same version of the same presentation Trump did. He has a very consistent briefing on that. Yes, it's very consistent. I mean, Obama got it so much that sometimes in these lengthy phone calls, you would see his attention wander because, you know, Bibi was going right to the same place. But every time we looked at it, what was clear is, first of all, if you can't bomb a nuclear program out of existence, it's too scattered. It's knowledge that the Iranians have. It's scientists that they have. They know how to do the nuclear fuel cycle. You can't destroy that from the air. Maybe if you occupied the country, you could. And also, we saw the extraordinary costs that would come with any war. In every war game I ever looked at, the Iranians would shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's fossil fuel energy flows. In every scenario, they were likely to lash out. Oh, but Ben, that's not realistic. You know, that's just war games. That's just permutations from a computer. In reality, how could they shut down the Strait of Hormuz? It's not a very large body of water. And so what's so insane about watching all this is this was very clear to anybody who in good faith assessed the problem when we were there. And frankly, I think probably even other presidencies and administrations, probably even Trump's first term, and for some reason, known only to him and maybe to Bibi Netanyahu, he decided to give it a try and see if we can eliminate this regime by bombing them and destroy their nuclear program. Right. We could just wing it. We could wing it. And here we are where the best version, he's caused incalculable damage to our reputation, to the global economy. Thousands of people have been killed. I mean, real consequences. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. I think the costs of this were much higher than we know. No, I believe it's 25, Ben. 25 billion is, that's all it is. That's the official figure. Even though they asked for 200 to pay for it. You always got to have a cushion, a little rainy day cushion. Pete Hexeth always likes to go out with a little extra money in his pocket. You got to have steak, lobster, and those little mini vodkas that you get from the airplane. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, we're right back to a place where the best thing Trump could get, literally, the best thing that he could get out of this war, which still I don't think would have been worth anywhere near the cost that we paid, is something approximating the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, in which they, guess what they did under the deal, John? They shipped their stockpile out of the country. What? The dust, the nuclear dust that Trump keeps talking about. That was routinely shipped out of the country. Plus they only, it was enriched at what, 3%? Yes. During the deal? That's right. And there was an inspection regime, yes, that went in and checked on all, all these things for the Iranians? There was an inspection regime. Or they never got in? They always got in, and the inspect, because some of it was inspectors, like people, some of it was cameras. We had inspections of their uranium mines and mills, so we could make sure they weren't diverting their uranium to some covert program. The enrichment facilities, the storage facilities where the centrifuges were, all these places were inspected. They had limitations on how many centrifuges they could operate. They shipped the stockpile out of the country. They destroyed their plutonium reactors so that they didn't have, that is a possibility for getting a weapon. restrictions. But importantly, you also had the UN Security Council, Russia, China, the United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, European Union in on the deal, and the International Atomic Energy Agency verifying the deal. Now, you've got Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner flying to Pakistan for reasons that are mysterious, unless you think that it's because Pakistan has invested in Trump crypto. So you don't have the whole world in on even what's happening. And so the best thing he can get is, you know, something that is very much like the deal he pulled out of. And why do we go through this? Which you won't take. I mean, part of it is he's hemmed in by his, his dislike of Obama. I mean, unfortunately, his ego has created an environment where he is unable to make decisions based on the kind of realpolitik or what he can get, because he's already come out and said, well, we can't give the Iranians their money back, because we don't have the money. Yeah. And he claims that every, you know, dollar in the banks in Washington, which is just a completely made up story. But, but you're right. He, he, he, the only thing he, the deal is what we did. You know, the Iranians get some money, like they get some unfrozen assets, their own money, by the way, is what we provided them with. It wasn't US taxpayer money at all. It was, they sell oil on the market and that money gets frozen in accounts because of our sanctions. So you release some of that to the Iranians. Or the 1.7 billion was money that we owed them from the pre-1979, when the Shah bought a bunch of military equipment from us that we never delivered. It was a refund on military equipment. It was, because they sued us in the international court. But anyway, the point is, you're right. He keeps wanting there to be some military action he takes that kind of forces the appearance that the Iranians have lost somehow, and they come, come out with their hands up and surrender something. But the reality is he can't do that because he's killed some of the Iranian leadership. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the most hardline aspect of that regime is calling the shots. They're the one who've closed the straits. They're not going to want to concede anything that, you know, goes beyond something like the JCPOA. And so Trump either has to kind of take his vast military armada and go home, or he's going to go home. And so he's going home, having humiliated himself before the entire world, done none of the things he promised when he launched this war from his golf club. And he kind of can't come to terms with that. And so we're in this crazy place where we're on the precipice of like a potential global economic calamity. If these shortages continue to persist in countries around the world, Americans can't afford the price of gas, nevermind fertilizer and other things that depend on that strait. And so he's caught between the. Political costs he's going to pay if this continues, and he's already paying, and his ego. And it's an uncomfortable place for the entire world to be stuck. And did he, you know, hasn't this war to some extent had the sort of counterintuitive effect of by raising the price of oil to such an extent, has he not replenished some of the coffers in Iran, you know, far beyond 1.7 billion that he would complain about? Wouldn't. He's raised the price of oil, which benefits not just Iran, but Putin, but. Russia. Importantly, what Iran has done is they've begun to treat the Strait of Hormuz like a toll road. You know, they're already getting paid just to let tankers through. And crypto, mostly. Melania coin. I think they get Melania coin. Well, they've done what Trump did. Hey, we've got a coin too. Sure. And it's not, you know, it just, for history, it's kind of what the Egyptians did with the Suez Canal after they fought a war in which they wanted to nationalize the. Suez Canal. And they're still getting paid. Now, I thought there was a. Isn't there a maritime treaty that suggests free navigation and that charging those types of tolls, is that against international law? Yes, but guess what? So is invading and bombing another country. Wait, what? When you dispense of international law, your adversaries also stop paying attention to international law. Interesting. And I think this is important too, though, because the Iranians have now demonstrated that their ability to control. To control that strait is kind of like a nuclear deterrent, right? Is America likely to attack them again? I don't think so after how this one went. And so we've given them also not just additional revenue sources, we've actually given them in some ways greater security because they've demonstrated a deterrent that they have through that strait. And because they've demonstrated that, then they've sort of. Now, UAE, Oman, I guess they're the. They also border that strait. Do they think. Well, geez, why didn't do that? Or is the part that they're at just too wide for them to be able to get a cut of that? Well, Oman is closer, right? But it's also just the fact that their stakeholders in the American-led petrodollar security in global economy, right? So they're playing by the rules. And they also don't have the kind of military strength. That everything is traded. And petrodollars coming through there. Exactly. And the transaction. Because this is another thing, a geopolitical thing that is happening, which is that the Chinese have wanted to do trades not in the dollar to weaken our control of the global economy. The Iranians want that, the Russians want that. And increasingly, other countries are like, ah, I'm not sure why I want to give the Americans control over our economy because that's what the dollar gives us. We can sanction whoever we want. But importantly, I think those other countries, particularly in different ways that you're talking about, like the UAE, Saudi and Qatar, are likely to kind of look at us who, we're their security guarantor. Like their whole model is, you know, we have these monarchies, we get to stay in power, the Americans provide our security, and we provide our people with a measure of prosperity and stability. That model has been kind of shattered by this war. And so you could start to see them hedging against us and drawing closer to China or Russia or just looking for other options so that they're not overly reliant on a country, the United States that started a war that caused, predictably, drones and missiles to rain down on them. Right. Because they are, you know, they're sort of presenting themselves as the cities of the future, these sort of, you know, Jetsons-esque, we're going to build islands out of nothing in the sand, we're going to build buildings. And then when you see drones and missiles hitting those cities and people fleeing these casinos of wealth and power, it does tend to diminish it. It does. I mean, the Dubai model, that's the UAE's, like, you know, that's the ultimate Jetson city. That's their jewel. Their model depends upon the idea that this is a safe place to visit. This is a desirable place to live. If you're an oligarch, come live here and put your money here. Come do business here. Duty-free. It's a duty-free shop, the entire city. It's a duty-free shop. Yes. And it's gone from the situation being that the Emirates would literally pay influencers to come and post pictures of themselves on social media enjoying Dubai to nobody there is allowed to post anything or else they get arrested. I was going to say, to jailing influencers for doing that. Yeah. And I think what that tells you, though, and this is, I think, another important part, believe it or not, John, the Pete Hexeth Department of War has not been transparent with you about the extent of damage that has been done. Wait, what? Hold on. Yeah. I know it's hard to believe. Ben? What? I know. I know. It's shocking. When you get older, you got to have yourself a little bit of the comfort. And that's where the avocado green mattress comes in, man. And unlike most mattress brands, they'll only sell you online. They do have stores, too. You can go in the store. You can try them out. Unbelievably comfortable. Avocado mattress is designed for comfort, support, helping your body stay aligned. You know, the last time my body was aligned, it's been, I think it might have been the last time the Mets won the gold medal. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. 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housing insecurity a one-for-one model with over 200 million donations and counting and here's the thing i don't know if you're a good person you might not be a good person you might be a good person chances are you're like a normal person but here you are doing something you're not a good person you're not a good person you're not a good person but here you are doing something you're buying socks and you're helping the world beat that deal you can't head over to bombas.com weekly and use code weekly for 20 off your first purchase that's b-o-m-b-a-s.com weekly code weekly at checkout the reality is that the damage done to u.s facilities military bases and diplomatic facilities across the gulf and i think to these gulf countries is much worse than we know we're not being given accurate battle damage assessments from the pentagon about our facilities and the fact that these countries won't allow people to even post pictures of what's gone on there tells you something about the fact that a lot of those iranian drones and some of those iranian missiles got through and it's talk we're talking on order of billions and billions of dollars and billions of dollars and billions of dollars and billions of dollars of repairs that are going to be needed but also incalculable damage to their economies because you know just take qatar the the liquid natural gas field that is the biggest in the world iran bombed that gas field that qatar uses took it offline that's going to take years to get that up and running the entire infrastructure of it in the scenario where the war ends and because that's offline not only is qatar taking an economic hit but you know they're they're people that you know in the the uk that are sliding into poverty because they're dependent on that gas for power and it's going to create food shortages and all kinds of different scenarios so have we is the up uh shot of this war that we have created a new regional hegemon in iran and just out of curiosity you know saudi arabia buys billions and billions of dollars of the highest tech military equipment that the united states can possibly produce you know i understand we are their security guarantors but um have they unwrapped any of that shit do they do they gas it up like or did they use it all on yemen like you know we have military bases all over there we sell them a ton of military hardware the most sophisticated stuff in the world and then something finally happens in the region well not something happens we we israel and the united states you know just decide to go on a bombing spree where where are these guys why are they so passive i mean you know they they do not like to get directly into conflict with a country like iran for a number of reasons uh if you're if you're sitting in saudi arabia um one of which is just yeah like their their militaries are kind of designed to be plugged into ours uh to kind of work uh off of our military uh and and you know they joined us in something like the counter-isis campaign right when we're taking out you know terrorist infrastructure but iran is a country of 94 million people that is right across the body of water from them and if you look at how iran has conducted itself in this war the most hawkish gulf state is the ue they're the ones that led the uh abraham accords alliance with israel they're the ones that have been the most active in places like iran and sudan and libya right um and have been apparently attacking iran you know secretly for the past couple of months yeah and here's the thing if you look at who iran has hit they've hit all these gulf states but they've hit the ue much more than anybody else sure they could there's a kind of quiet signaling that happens between these countries where the saudis know that iran could do far more damage to their energy infrastructure saudis also not reliant on the to get its oil out because it has overland pipelines um and so i think what's happening in part is if the saudis know that if they dive into this the drones are going to rain down on their pipelines get hit exactly exactly but why are we so pissed off that you know we're so pissed off at like sweden and denmark for not jumping in what you know our nato allies haven't uh in any way stepped up to the plate uh with trump utterly misunderstanding what the nato alliance is a defensive alliance the gulf states don't jump in at all and and yet there's been very little pressure put on them to do so there's only just the occasional leak that says uh the saudis complained when trump wanted to escort vessels out of the strait of hormuz and so he stopped well the cynic in me might suggest that sweden uh has not made a two billion dollar investment in jared kushner's uh investment fund um that's what trump wants nato to do just kick in some money to kushner's well i look the gulf states have invested a lot in what trump cares about which is like his businesses his family businesses his crypto he got a new plane from the countries um the emiratis kicked in a lot uh for for his crypto venture um and and and and i think the reality is that uh the the paradigm for these countries for a long time has basically been like what they give us is money and not just the um not just the direct payments to the kushner and and trump and whitcoff families um because remember steve whitcoff's kid is also in on the crypto business but also you know they buy all this high-end military equipment that you mentioned well the implicit deal is kind of like that's good for our economy if in the defense contractors in particular if they're buying tens of billions of dollars worth of planes that they're not really going to use in a conflict the kind of implicit thing is the the americans are kind of the security guarantor they're the ones that fight the wars they're the ones that kind of intimidate our enemies we're kind of paying into the deal um with the defense equipment we buy and the other investments we make in the united states and we're also going to spread some money around trump and his associates too um and and look that model is going to be something everybody looks at i don't think necessarily that iran is going to be a hegemon because they've suffered too i mean their economy is a mess um you know their military capabilities have been somewhat diminished however what they've kind of demonstrated is um we are not a regime that you can kind of come and knock over with your bombing campaigns right we are a country of 94 million people we have not just a religious theocracy we have a military dictatorship that's the irgc i think it's probably more military dictatorship than religious theocracy at this point it's more yeah you know irgc and besiege yes it is than it is council of mullahs and that's changed right in some ways that could make the iranian government more dangerous because you know the supreme leader ali khamenei was no good guy at all but when you kill the 86 year old supreme leader you kill a guy named lara johnny who was also seen as the kind of key political operator behind the scenes a guy that you would have negotiated with um and you demonstrate that the only people that can stand up to the americans control the strait of hormuz and inflict this pain on their neighbors is the irgc those are the ones that churn out the shazad drones the besiege militia that you mentioned are the ones that terrorize the population, to not rise eyes up as Trump seemed to, you know, think they were going to do because he called on them to do that. I think you leave behind a government that is actually more, I don't want to say radical, but more militarized for certain in the IRGC. And with more credibility amongst his population. I mean, it's similar in some ways to what Israel's actions did for Hezbollah and for Hamas by, you know, invading Lebanon and disastrously so, you know, and the Lebanese government being so divided and weakened and Hezbollah standing up for the Lebanese people, you know, they gave them their actions and hostilities, gave those groups, which are corrupt and murderous, credibility amongst the people. We've done the opposite of what we were trying to do. That's right. I mean, I think Israel, you know, it seems like Trump, in part because, you know, he's not surrounded by expertise. There's no process to make decisions. And in his first term, he had some experts around who told him not to do things like this. But he seemed to believe that the regime would collapse and there'd be some transition to something else. I think, I find it hard to believe that the Israelis, given how much they understand about that region, actually believed that, you know, Reza Pahlavi, who was the first president of Israel, was the first president of Israel. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, who's lived in Northern Virginia for decades, was going to, you know, ride in on a white horse and usher in democracy. Maybe they were going to bring Shalabi back from Iraq. Maybe curveball could get it done. Yeah. But I think that they probably thought that the regime would collapse and that you'd have kind of a violent, chaotic situation, like you kind of have had in places like Lebanon, which gave the Israeli government more freedom of action, which diminishes, Iran, Iran. What do the Israelis believe? Like, as somebody, I'm assuming you've dealt with that administration. Are they messianic? Are they controlled by, I find it very hard to understand their so-called strategy of security, especially given the way that they build settlements. I mean, if you're going to disarm Hamas and Hezbollah, don't you have to disarm your own settlers? Like, aren't they the ones creating havoc in the occupied territories? And why would you even allow settlements if your main concern is security? Surely settlements in no way, you know, the amount of money and military you need to protect them surely takes away from the security. So have they been lying the whole time? Is their aim the whole time, Judea and Samaria, we're getting the whole thing. We're the chosen people. This is for us. And also maybe a little piece of Syria and a little piece of Lebanon. And if you don't mind, I wouldn't mind the Sinai. Like, what are we dealing with? Well, I mean, first of all, just on your tactical point, one of the things that happened on October 7th is the border with Gaza was less defended because a lot of the IDF was up in the West Bank defending the settlers who were terrorizing the Palestinians. So to your point, it does deter. Now, look, Israel is many things, right? I mean, Yitzhak Rabin would, you know, being agreeing with you that we need to disarm these settlers and dismantle these settlements. Yeah. And we all know what happened there. Exactly. Right. And so I think if you look at Israel today, there are different strains. Now, there are some, you know, the Ben-Gavirs and Smotriches that these are the more extreme ministers in the Netanyahu government, but they're the finance minister and the national security minister. So not fringe characters. Yeah. They're not marginalized figures by any stretch of the imagination. They're not subtle. Every, you know, time and again, we've heard them say we want full annexation of the West Bank. We want to take southern Lebanon. We want to take, you know, southern Syria. We want Gaza to be ethnically cleansed and we want it to settle that. That is a very real strain in Israeli politics that has frankly been the ascendant strain in Israeli politics. And a lot of Americans don't want to deal with that. They want to look at Israel and see, you know, Golda Meir or Yitzhak Rabin when you have Bibi Netanyahu running a government with these people in it. And by the way, Meir and Rabin, also a little more complicated as well. You really dig into, you know, some of the attacks that they were a part of on Palestinian settlements. I mean, let's, we have to be honest about what the entire project entailed. And look, I think part, what we cannot look away from is that the project clearly entails taking the entirety of the West Bank, taking, I mean, right now in southern Lebanon, just to give you an example too, they're not just ethnically cleansing the population. They are rendering it an inhabitable. They're destroying tens of thousands of olive trees that, you know, they're making it so people can't come back and live there. And so some of this is just pure territorial expansionism. Like we want this additional land, whether people live in the West Bank or they live in southern Syria or they live in southern Lebanon or Gaza or not. And it is, and again, it's what is the claim? It's ours. How do you know that? There's this book. And, you know, if you really look into it, it says, I mean, it's kind of insanity that we are not just allowing it, but enabling it. Yes. Now we are, it could not happen without us. And look, I think on Netanyahu, Netanyahu, I think this is another piece of this. Number one, I think he's accepted a secure, Israel used to want stability, right? We have a peace treaty with Jordan. We want a peace treaty with Egypt. It keeps the lid on things. Now it seems like that's shifted to, we want chaos and violence because it gives us this freedom of action. Like there's a war in Iran. There's a war in Lebanon. Pay no attention to what the settlers are doing in the West Bank. You know, if none of this was happening, maybe there'd be a little bit more international attention on the fact that Palestinians are being evicted from their homes. Some of them are being killed. Like land is being taken. They're bombing the shit out of Lebanon and Gaza in a ceasefire. In a ceasefire, in a ceasefire. I mean, Beirut is getting bombed, in a ceasefire. Haiti is not getting into Gaza. And so I think Netanyahu has kind of fully shifted away from being, you know, kind of playing between different sides to saying, all right, all bets are off. But he did that a while ago. He did that. Yeah, he did. That's been going on now for quite some time. But it's what allows him to stay in power, you know, because a permanent war, constant fear mongering about enemies, compromises with these extremists in his own government has allowed him to become Israel's longest serving parliament. And making sure Hamas is fully funded. Like, this has been a double game for a very long time. And unfortunately, I think it's cost them, you know, forget about the moral high ground that was dispensed with years ago. The support of the world, and more importantly, the support of the United States and support of the Jewish community within the United States. No question. Well, yeah. That's cost them. Yeah, because it's cost them. And look, the Hamas piece of this, in the Obama years, you know, what I could not help but notice is he would relentlessly undermine, humiliate the Palestinian authority. While, you know, he at times would empower Hamas. I mean, he did one deal where he gave Hamas a thousand prisoners in exchange for one, right? And really elevated Hamas's stature. Well, that's because if he can point to the Palestinians and say, they're led by Hamas, he doesn't have to have any pressure internationally to do a peace deal. Right. If he wanted a peace deal, he'd be trying to empower the Palestinian authority, but he never did that. Well, Sharon gave him a perfect chance for a double blind study. You know, if you say we're going to pull out of Gaza and Hamas, that's the extremists. And we'll see what happens there. But the moderates in the West Bank, if they had worked with them, it's a perfect double blind study. You say, well, yeah. So you're showing the Palestinians that, oh, if you cooperate with us and you have a more moderate government, look how life improves. As opposed to what's going on in Gaza, where they're run by extremists. And so life doesn't improve. But then they didn't improve lives in the West Bank. They didn't allow that to happen. So what the message is to the Palestinians is you can't win no matter what the fuck you do. Yes, exactly. Because your life in the West Bank, where you've accepted Israel, recognized its right to exist, all those things. Won't be any better anyway. You have checkpoints, you have humiliation. Right. You might get your home destroyed by, burned by settlers. And then the idea of life comes and you get arrested, right? And I think what Americans have to reckon with, because sometimes people say, well, why do you focus so much on this? None of this could happen without us. We have provided, we've lost track of the billions of dollars. Their war machine, it's both financing billions of dollars in assistance that they get, but it's also arms sales. We tend to not sell weapons to governments that commit war crimes as a matter of American and international law. And we have completely thrown that out the door since, you know, Netanyahu's launched these wars. I love the idea that we tend not to. Yeah. Well, unfortunately I have to say it that way. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just a few words, you can use ChatGPT. Just answers. Give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create a real work doc like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. Join for just $20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save. I'm a cereal guy, but I got to tell you, when you're a little older, it's not so easy to find, you know, it's not as cute when you're going through the, whatever they call them there, the stars, clovers, and mushrooms, and being like, oh, right, but my cholesterol is 187. It's just saying, cereal, not necessarily cereal. The best thing for you anymore. Except now, Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon. It gives you that feeling. Saturday morning cereal, well, you get there, 13 grams of protein, zero sugar, five grams of net carbs per serving, which is how I always chose my cereals when I was younger. I used to say to my mother growing up, how many, what's my net carbs here? Five grams, seven grams. What are we dealing with? But this stuff, Magic Spoon, keeps you fueled. Whether it's breakfast. Late night snack, post-workout, whatever it is. They got flavors, too. It's not just one thing. You got fruity, frosted, cocoa, cinnamon crunch, marshmallows, s'mores, all the stuff that you love. Magic Spoon. Look for Magic Spoon on Amazon or at your nearest grocery store. There are plant-based versions of the cereal as well. Even vegans get to feel like they had a challenge. You'll find vegan options at Whole Foods. Or get $5 off your next order at magicspoon.com slash TWS. That's Magic Spoon. That's magic spoon.com slash TWS for $5 off. You know, Ben, I'm curious. So you've been in these rooms, obviously, where all the ramifications and war gaming happens, right? And I'm curious if you could take us through some of the mechanics of it. It's a very complicated world. Because what I want to get into is the idea of, what strategies are still available to us? Because we've tried everything. We've tried invading countries and staying there as their security net until they can rebuild a more stable and democratic society. We've tried bombing the shit out of them from the air until such chaos ensues that there is a coup and that ends up with warlordism. Or we've tried sanctioning to the point where the citizens, the citizens themselves are suffering, but we entrench. I want to walk us through a little bit of the kind of grounding and foundation of American foreign policy. That what options, what can we do anymore? Is it still our hubris that is creating all these difficult situations? Do you understand where I'm going with this? I do understand where you're going. And I want to kind of get us to why I think we need to, to completely dismantle a bunch of the infrastructure of American foreign policy. All right, let's go. Because that's the only way to change things. But to get there first, I think what you have to realize is the United States government is a massive machine. And for well over 20 years since 9/11, we've been building infrastructure to kill people and bomb people and spy on people across a vast swath of territory that runs through North Africa, the Middle East, and into Africa. to South Asia and Afghanistan, Pakistan. And one of the things that happens is when you build that kind of infrastructure of bases, of intelligence platforms, of special forces, you're constantly seeing enemies, right? Look, these guys in Somalia, they just gained some territory. We better go after them. Or there's some bad guy that just popped up in Mali. We have to deal with him. Or lo and behold, Netanyahu comes and says, look, you've got the table all set here. To encircle the Iranians and deliver a blow at them. The problem is you build this massive machinery, it becomes kind of self-sustaining. You can find a threat anywhere. Or all it takes is, you know, apparently Donald Trump waking up with the wrong idea and is suddenly starting a war in Iran. And I think we just have to stop, right? Like this is, nobody wants this. Americans don't want to pay for this. The people in these countries are tired of violence. The war on terror. Has created the refugee crisis. Tens of millions of people displaced in the wake of American violence. That's radicalized European politics to the far right. I mean, and the machinery came home because we had the equipment. You know, what do you think ICE, why they look so scary? Because the equipment that we used in wars, we bring home and give to police forces that are at ICE, and suddenly you've got armored vehicles and dudes in body armor and, some of those guys in ICE were, you know, trained in counterinsurgency tactics in Baghdad, and then they're doing them in Minneapolis. Like, this is what the entire edifice of the war on terror is. And I actually don't think, and if I fault, you know, my administration, we tried to rein it in and bring some of the troops home and follow the law more to the letter. I think it's time to just say, we need to just stop doing this. And guess what? We would, you know, we would stop doing this. And guess what? We would stop doing this. Save, you know, tens and tens of billions of dollars. We could focus on other things. And if people say, well, Ben, what about the terrorist threat? You know what? I think we can deal with it without fighting wars. Like 9-11 happened. You and I are New Yorkers. Like, it was horrible. I witnessed 9-11. I started this career because of it. I think we can prevent a catastrophic attack like that without having, you know, this sprawling edifice that defines our foreign policy and keeps getting us into these wars. Well, you also have a situation where there is no battle you could fight and win that would prevent 19 people who've gathered in some rooms from plotting harm to something. There has to be a reasonable standard of risk that unfortunately we do our best to mitigate. But at a certain point, you cannot, as you said earlier, bomb your way out of not just a nuclear threat, but of really any threat. You know, that seems to be the posture. Yeah. And look, occasionally, I'm sure there might be some terrorist training camp that raises sufficient alarm bells that you might have to do something. I'm not suggesting that we're in a world of pacifism. I am suggesting, though, that the legal authorization, the authorization to use military force for all these counterterrorism activities is still in place from 2002. End that. And if the president needs to take action against some terrorist cell, make him go back to the military. Go back to Congress and make a case again. Like, bring a bunch of this infrastructure home. It almost strikes me as John Kerry in 2004, when he was running against George W. Bush, he had a vision for special forces being that the idea would be, let's lower our footprint and use targeted special forces when we need to disrupt certain plots. But let's remove this idea of America as being able to control. As opposed. And he was ridiculed for that. Yeah. Yeah. Bush told him that there was a that was a law enforcement approach. And then remember, John, the last ad of the of the 2004 campaign, they were like some wolves in a forest or something. And that was supposed to scare us. Yeah. The Dick Cheney. Yeah. Yeah. But here's the thing. This is where I lose patience with Democrats. We act like the politics are frozen in time from that John Kerry election. I mean, when, in fact, Americans have been telling us, oh, we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. I mean, we're not going to do it. Donald Trump ran as the person who was going to keep us out of forever wars. Like Americans keep trying to elect leaders who will stop doing this. And then the leaders keep doing it. And Trump's done it on steroids. And it hasn't worked. So talk to me about why that is, because it's all right. So let's go through. You know, I think we all understand that Trump, even George W. Bush tried to build a coalition. To do that. And Trump is certainly is making these decisions seemingly more impulsively and with less planning and with less ideas of how to get out. But let's go through. So Barack Obama is surrounded by experts, right? You're war gaming all these different things. But he's still making those same decisions that, you know, let's go through Libya. So Libya has I guess, terror cells. And we think Qaddafi is obviously a bad actor. But Qaddafi says, okay, I get it. I'm not going to try for nuclear weapons. I apologize. I was a bad guy. Let me put on my, you know, sarong or whatever it is that he wears that make him his caftan. And we still end up utterly screwing the pooch on that one. Yeah, we did. So talk about then, And because we keep saying, why does America keep getting into these situations? So how did we get into that situation? Libya was, interestingly, a different situation that highlights a different problem in American foreign policy, because it was not about terrorism. People may not remember. And again, I think it was a mistake. So I agree with the premise of the question. But to explain it, it's the Arab Spring, right? There are these uprisings. People seem like they're trying to throw off authoritarianism. They want a future of democracy. In Libya, this becomes a ground zero for the Arab Spring. And different parts of Libya rise up sufficiently that essentially the government lost control. Benghazi is actually a city. It's not a scandal. It's actually a city of several hundred thousand people. And it was the center of opposition to Gaddafi. And so that city essentially threw off the regime. And then Gaddafi. Gaddafi massed an army and was marching on Benghazi to basically crush his opposition. So there's nothing about terrorism or anything. It's just like this bad guy who's kind of been an adversary of the United States, and we know what he does to his enemies. He tends to kill them, is going, and there's going to be a bloodbath in this place, and we should stop it. And I actually think the Europeans, they were the most gung-ho about this, the French and British, in part because they'd really let Gaddafi in from the cold, and they'd done all kinds of deals with him. And I think. I think Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, ended up going to prison because of some of his own dealings with Gaddafi. And so the idea is, well, let's. This could be a humanitarian intervention. We can all get together, pass a UN Security Council resolution, so it would be legal under international law, authorizing use of force, and NATO's going to go in and stop Gaddafi outside of the gates of Benghazi, save the people in that city. The problem is twofold. One, once we did that, it was like, well, we can't leave him in power. He's a terrible guy. He's a terrible guy. And so we went down this slippery slope of we're not just stopping him there. We're essentially going to keep this up until the Libyans oust him. But I think the main lesson, John, is that whether it's the terrorism issue we've talked about, the nuclear issue we've talked about, or this kind of issue where it's the politics of a country, we cannot engineer those politics through bombing campaigns and through our military. It doesn't work. There's not a record of a regime. There's not a record of a regime change supported by the United States through military force that made a place better. And so I think what we have had trouble coming to terms with is we like to think, and a lot of people, frankly, that work in foreign policy, they sit in Washington and like to think that they can move some pieces around a board and sanction these people and they'll do something or bomb these people and they'll do something. That's the mindset that has failed. I'd like to introduce sanction to this conversation. The most heavily sanctioned countries in the world by the United States in the 21st century have been Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia. Has that worked? Are those places better? I think we're all friends now, aren't we? We are. And their governments are less. The governments are more repressive and more adversarial to us. So I think we should be open to radically different approaches where you may look at Iran and say, you know what might work better? And again, this will be really controversial. I just want to try to stretch the conversation. It might be better to lift sanctions on these people because putting sanctions on this government has made it more repressive, has empowered the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that knows how to trade in the black market and have revenue. It's Iranian people that get screwed. And so this is connected to Libya because it's that fallacy that we can engineer the politics of other countries because we're America. Better to do that over time by setting an example and following international law and trading and conducting diplomacy. The ways that most countries try to influence other countries, that tends to work better. But America gets impatient. And we're like, we don't like what you did. We're going to sanction you or bomb you. And there's just not a track record of that working. Do we get impatient or are we arrogant? Because you just said influence. But what we do is we try and control. And the way we control is almost entirely through military. You know, China's developed. You know, there's this thing called the Belt and Road, and they'll go in and I'm not saying they're not as exploitative as the next guy, but at least somebody gets a road out of it. We go in and give whatever repressive governments of Africa need weaponry and let them just do what they will with it. My question to you is there must be something in the process that continually leads us to the same result. So we keep talking about, look. We war game these things out and we all sit around. But there must be something in that process that removes the barriers to action because Barack Obama bombed Libya. That's what he did. And Qaddafi was decapitated, taken out, and it created a warlord situation. Uh, we are. Armed rebel armies, oftentimes Islamist armies in Syria. That was the methodology there. That's how we were going to deal with Assad. We, Crimea, Russia just went in and took Crimea and we sanctioned. But to be honest, and, and, but here's where we got to be honest about Crimea too. Yeah. Because sometimes people, it was interesting because people didn't like Libya because we intervened there, but then didn't like. They didn't like our stereo policy because we didn't intervene there and thought that we should have done something to stop Crimea and, and, and, and it's that Crimea piece that is, I, I would always, you know, tell people what, how were we going to stop them? Do you want to go to war with Russia over that? You know? Um, and, and, and by the way, by the time we learned that it had happened, it had happened. You know, I say that because part of it is accepting the limitations of control, right? Um, that, you know, sometimes bad things happen in the world. Say that again. Say that again. Yeah. We. Say that again. You know, we need to accept limitations that we can control events and to actually, to get your question about where, why you're not stopped. Libya is an interesting example because there's a way that we might be able to stop this. Okay. In Libya, we actually got the UN Security Council resolution. We did not get an authorization from Congress. And interestingly, when Obama was, you know, under pressure and, and frankly inclined himself to bomb Syria after a chemical weapons attack in 2013, the infamous red line incident, what he did is he went to Congress and said, okay, if you wanted me to do this, you need to authorize it because that's what the constitution says. And Congress would not vote to authorize it. Marco Rubio, right? Who had been, you know, castigating Obama for his weakness and passivity. And not attacking Assad came out and said he would vote against congressional authorization because members of Congress know that war is ultimately unpopular because it costs money. It can cost American lives and it's just bad. I think you don't have to be an expert to know that war is bad. And so the way you stop it is you insist that there will not be a war without congressional authorization. And if there is, the president will be impeached, which is by the way, what's in the constitution in the War Powers Act passed by Congress, because if presidents had to ask for permission from the people's elected representatives for every use of military force, we would use it a lot less. Frankly, the founders left it. It's right there in front of our eyes, John. Like there'd be no war in Iran if Trump needed a vote from Congress before he bombed Iran. If we just followed the way the law, the way that the founders intended, they were pretty smart, those guys. We wouldn't be doing this. I think we're going to have to do it again. food. I don't even know what they're doing. I don't even know what's going on in my bill. MidMobile's here to rescue. with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month 15 bucks a month it doesn't get any better what are they going to pay you no 50 bucks a month is not all plans come with high-speed data unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5g network you think you're on the largest 5g network you're not it's mint mobile get on it if you like your money mint mobile is for you shop plans at mintmobile.com slash tws that's mintmobile.com slash tws upfront payment of 45 dollars for three month five gigabyte plan required equal to about 15 dollars a month new customer offer for first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra see mint mobile for details but that can't be the discussion in in the situation room you can't be the discussion in in the situation room like no i can't imagine that that's in any way the discussion in the situation or that in the situation room because america has proffered these interventions whether it be through military or through covert action look iran is a perfect example the whole reason we got in this situation in the first place is we enabled a coup in iran in 1953 yes and so then we installed a dictator and that's kind of got the ball rolling and we've done that throughout central america and south america and all kinds of other places it seems like absolute power corrupts absolutely yeah and that anybody who sits in that chair suddenly finds the desire to pull strings around the world in a way that i think maybe is a post world war ii maybe we got the wrong message from world war ii that if you know we can control the world and then just rebuild it through a little marshall plan yeah and so we're a lot more in control of events than we actually are that's right i i think look i think we have to come to terms with the fact that we have an empire um we've been acting as if we do you know because if i talk to some friends from other places you know i have a lot of friends from afghanistan and what they say to me is you know this is what you want this is what empires do they break things on the periphery they keep the rest of the world violent and chaotic so that you can dominate things and so in some ways what looked like messy outcomes to us oh all these countries are such a mess that is kind of how empires tend to operate you know we have our core and our core has been europe and parts of east asia and then if everything else is kind of a mess we're going to have to do something about it and i think that's what's going to happen in the future i think that's what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to do something about it and i think that's what we're going to have to do is um that implicitly advantages us it certainly advantages fossil fuel companies and arms dealers and people who do finance capitalism where they sit around and just bet on currencies on computer screens all day to enrich themselves while everything costs more for the american working class it's not the intention and what i would always have to explain to friends of mine like this is i was never in a meeting where people were like let's create chaos today in the world you know they were like let's create chaos today in the world you know they were like let's create the people were well intentioned it was like well let's try to train these security forces and let's try to have the recipe for stability over here or even let's you know intervene in libya to try to prevent a massacre and and support the forces of democracy there but the reality is the machine functions like an empire and an empire tends to create chaos along its periphery and to your point john i think everybody's sick of it americans are sick of paying for it you know i talked to grand platinum recently and he said look you don't have to be a genius politician to know that saying to people hey we should spend less money on bombs and more on schools and hospitals is a winning message right left or center right americans are sick of it people around the world are definitely sick of it now they're kind of scared of the insane person that is running this whole edifice and and you know is greenland next as panama next as canada next and it's it's your point it's like someone needs to put an arm around us and we're going to have to do something about it and we're going to have to say you don't control things you know like like come sit over here let me talk to you about the fact that you need to invest in education in your country like you need to like i i think we're at that point but these are these are the kind of messaging you know we talk about it all the time that you know you never go wrong with the message of let's take that money and focus it on the american people but the truth is that's not how it works out and there's never been an ndaa that got shot down and now they're going for another 500 billion off of it and they're going for another 500 billion off of a trillion dollar budget that's already 10 times what all the other countries spend on military combined because for some reason in the heart and soul of the american people we believe that we are the most endangered country in the world that has to have the most military in the world and so i want to address like some of the contradictions that occur in all that like i'm always of the impression that for business stability and certainty is the greatest asset that they can have whether it be volatile tariff policy or whether it be chaos in certain markets and things that security is it feels like the result of our search for security is instability because of our cavalier attitude about what those interventions regarding security do you made the point earlier that i thought was the perfect point our interventions in uh the middle east created a migration crisis that actually creates instability and political unrest in europe yeah and so yeah when you're in those rooms and these questions come up does anyone say this is going to create instability or do they all go i get it there'll be instability and it's going to cost a lot of money but it's worth it yeah it's always worth it because because action is better than inaction i think that in so in the room yeah um i i think that the problem is that people become fixated on finding some formula to deal with a problem without seeing the whole picture in the sense of we're talking about syria today in the situation room what are our levers you know uh sanctions or arming the opposition or bombing them or diplomacy with the russians or and and everybody's kind of hyper focused on this you know country as if it's something that we control or if we pull the right levers x will happen and lead to y and again what is absent is y is absent and y is not absent and so i think that's the problem and i think that's why are we talking about this at all like why do we control why do we think we can control what happens in syria and that if we do these actions it's good like it's going to cause all these second order effects like a migration crisis now the pressure at the time john is why isn't obama doing anything about syria people are being killed there this is horrible he's weak he's not sitting up to assad you know and so then it becomes there's a pressure to do something like american politics not american people and this is where i would actually challenge democrats to get a spine on this stuff it's kind of this weird mix of the pundit class and the you know uh the the think tank world and and and this you know i called it the blob right but this this kind of discourse uh machine in washington demands that you you solve syria you know and so then you start pulling the levers that you think will make you know and what are those levers doing they're making it more violent and then there's refugees flowing into europe and then you then we better get a plan to to deal with erdogan to to host these refugees and then europeans are paying him and and you're constantly you're chasing your own foreign policy around the map and and if you look at iran and this is what's so insane and i think where we have to not let trump off the hook on this thing is let's say he gets the dust out right and and he's unleashed chaos on a global scale and instability on a global scale and and what worries me in my darkest moments john is that the stock market's gone up maybe the reason this keeps happening is because the people that are actually powerful are insulated from the instability right because they're trading currencies and they're trading world futures and so if financial capitalism can run if the arms dealers uh can uh make their profits if apac is happy because israel is happy because israel is wanted this war if all these in it and it's it's multiple powerful interests here you know this so it's actually two the the tucker version that this is just apac kind of ignores the the capitalism part and the arms dealer part and the fossil fuel companies part but it's all these powerful interests that finance our politics that that benefit from the instability while like literally everybody else in the world is getting screwed and a media that demands action and doesn't yes it never holds itself accountable it never holds itself accountable for the results of the things that it too created the momentum for but you would expect our political leaders to be able to resist narrative momentum as opposed to uh actual you know you know issues there so you know all of those elements combine to push us towards that action is somehow always better than inaction which creates all these downstream chaotic kinds of effects i had i had that's so so right and and and you've been on this better than anyone but i i had a friend in europe once explained something to me that was i thought really interesting which is you know you americans are crazy and there are a lot of reasons why and and and one of them is like if a bad thing happens in the world right yeah i think this was around like 2013 like pick any one of these countries in our in our you know media there's like five paragraphs that describe the bad thing that happened and why it happened and then by paragraph six it's like and and you know what what could we possibly perhaps do to to help address this issue in america it's like bad thing happened where's obama you know um this kind of bizarre and again this really is the media and i i don't fully understand why i mean i remember in libya you know jake tapper you know yelling in the briefing room like how many more have to die before you put in place the no-fly zone and we did you know but i remember thinking like i'm glad he cares about the people of libya today you know but um it's a strange impulse that that the media's thinks its job is to hold the president accountable for every bad thing that's happening in the world and i know i'm sounding sour grapes here i'm not because i think this is a structural problem this is not an obama issue or even a trump issue or like why is it that we in insist that our presidents i think this may be a post-war war to a cold war kind of fear thing where it's like why why do we insist that our presidents i mean is another thing platter told me like there's there's literally like kind of a commander-in-chief test where you have to show that you're willing to bomb civilians to be credible or something you know that that if you don't you know today's the day you became president because you bombed a country or something it's i i think we have to we have to fundamentally change our foreign policy but we can't do that unless we kind of shift this this presumption that we are in control of events right because well it's an arrogance i think there's a there's a primacy that we are the leader of the free world and but but the only one that could possibly accomplish it but on the flip side of that the president united states should not be able to be bullied by jake tapper or yeah i agree the news organizations and and it you know look here's what it should be the american the bar for intervention in foreign countries militarily and otherwise should be the same as the bar to release the epstein files like if they can hold off on that then surely they can hold the line on on bombing on dumb wars on dumb wars and all these other countries but everybody talks about it all the time and yet the military budgets continue to go up and continue to soar and our military interventionism or our covert interventionism continues to expand and i'm not even arguing an idea of let's pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist no quite the opposite right let's engage the rest of the world like grown-ups there you go let's trade with them and have diplomacy with them and fight climate change with them and and and regulate artificial intelligence with them like the opposite of isolations and let's actually rejoin the world you know as a normal place and that's not giving them control over what we do yeah but it's very clear that our current strategy a strategy that we've been you know i think pushing now for as you said more than two or three decades is an engine of instability and chaos that makes the entire world more volatile and then ultimately americans less safe and now we're caught in that battle of well if we're left safe then then i guess we're we got to increase our defense budget and now we're in the cycle yeah and we've spent six trillion dollars with six trillion dollars on the war on terror like imagine what that could have paid for just a fraction of that mind-boggling and and and what have we gotten and it is it is maybe the largest overreaction in the history of you know military and i say that as a new yorker the idea that we went into two country like think of think of how many more people we ourselves kill as americans with gun violence every year and we don't do shit about that yeah so i mean that that's the part that's just i think people are ready to hear this you know in a way i mean to to show a little grace to my former boss like yeah yeah the politics in you know around 2009 were still kind of hyper you know you know zero tolerance of terrorists i remember the guy i remember when the guy uh tried to get light his underpants on fire on a plane sure and actually i remember like it was christmas and this guy gets on a plane he tries to light his uh something on fire and basically all he succeeds in doing is lighting his you know his that part of his body on fire nobody's hurt well it is a wick you know for many yeah yeah i remember getting the call in here okay well great like you know i'm glad that didn't happen and it was like a five alarm fire for weeks of like the christmas day bomber and how did he get on that plane and ah we're afraid and and and and i think now people are like ready to hear like you know what guys like if we have to be able to live with a little bit more risk on the terrorism front and not spend six trillion dollars and create chaos around the world right somebody i think they're looking for effective deterrence but not this kind of all-encompassing skynet deterrence that costs a lot of money doesn't appear to be as effective anyway and creates uh collateral damage in all kinds of of other areas yes and i think i think people are ready for some somebody show up and talk to them like a grown-up boy that'd be nice and the democrats too because they have this thing that they do not all of them but even when this war started was so clearly dumb and it was so clearly illegal but you know they got a throat clear for several paragraphs about how horrible the iranian regime is and they must be dealt with but not this way and right i just just let's just take that it's not that they're not horrible they are but like you're you're kind of feeding the beast here you know like everybody's you know well that's the problem is yeah not only are they horrible but we do deals with horrible people all the time we have horrible people like the iranians are horrible but i'm going to sponsor the saudi arabian golf tournament exactly okay exactly sure why not exactly uh ben what is your you're also didn't you just write a book i did i did it's coming out in uh on may 26th so we're in the two-week window it's beautiful it's a i basically wanted to understand the intensity uh and existential feeling of the argument we're having in this country right now politically by going all the way back to the beginning and through 15 speeches i tell the story of essentially the argument we've been having about american identity and the shorthand is it starts with benjamin franklin at the constitutional convention basically giving a speech in which he doesn't even mention the constitution he just defends the virtue of compromise and on the one hand that was what allowed us to form a union on the other hand we compromised about some pretty big things like who is an american who gets to decide that right right and and and basically by you know looking at this mix of you know people you know like abraham lincoln or martin luther king i have a dream or people you don't know like an abolitionist or the vice president confederacy or a kansas populist i wanted to kind of trace how this argument has taken different forms all the way until today and i i definitely learned a lot and had a lot of fun on the journey of writing this man is that up my alley i have to tell you like not to kiss your ass but like that's the kind of thing i would i love that sort of thing the thing i would ask you is because what i feel like i've noticed is our ability for argumentation has utterly diminished yes in the manner when i watch news programs from the 1960s and 70s i am stunned at the level of quite frankly like honest discussion that has occurred and the way that people used to talk to each other so this is really important because part of what's happened is you know americans used to give speeches that were reprinted newspapers and they really favored argument and then there was a speaker circuit that's what people like frederick douglas were on where they traveled the country and gave these speeches uh days on end then there was radio and that favored the kind of clear explanation of an fdr then there was television and you had the kind of charisma and spectacle of a king or a kennedy part of what's happened to us is because the internet has created infinite attention uh you know competition for attention because social media has kind of polarized us in these algorithmically designed tribes we can't make or listen to an argument all the information we receive is in bite-sized pieces that are meant to make us angry or fearful or energized we when's the last time you listened to an entire speech delivered by a politician. And the fact that that, sounds quaint, I think shows that we kind of might need that again. Because speeches in writing this book, I realized how much, imagine American history without speeches, without Lincoln's second inaugural or King's I Have a Dream, or Reagan's Time for Choosing, or Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention. Reagan and Obama are impossible without speeches. That's where we tell stories about who we are and where we're going. And I think part of why our politics is so disorienting right now, and I really didn't realize this until writing this book, is that we've lost that. And when you lose that ability to make an argument, your argument gets poorer because you're not trying to persuade anybody anymore. You're just talking to the people that already agree with you. And you don't listen because you never have to sit and actually absorb ideas. And so I think actually part of what we need is the storytelling that comes through speeches. And even argument now is reduced to, you know, jubilee sessions where you sit and like 20 people raise flags and run in and hit you with the one sentence that's going to own you. The viral moment. Yeah. We've lost any ability to that. I can't wait to read it. And I really appreciate you being here. As always, a fascinating conversation. Ben Rhodes, he's author of the upcoming book, All We Say, writer, political commentator, and obviously national security analyst, co-host of Pod Save the World. Thanks a lot, man. Really appreciate it. Thanks, John. Let's go, Nix. Let's go, Nix. Like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. Hello. First, I just want to say for the people at home, Lauren was unable to join us for today. She'll be back for, for obviously for our next one. But guys, I, you know, it's whenever I'm talking to somebody who's been in the room, I don't want to go off and say, go all Hamilton on you guys. The room where it occurs? No, thank you. It's harder to rhyme, but okay. That's fine. I'm always struck by that where they, like the conventional wisdom is always like, yeah, we've been doing this wrong forever. And we shouldn't be doing that. We shouldn't be doing this. Like, so in the room, does anyone go, I have a question. Should we even be doing this? There are a bunch of girls being like, I can fix him. Um, is that what our foreign policy has become? I'm drawn to Iran. Iran is the bad boy. It's going to be different from me, but it'll be different when I bomb it. I can change him. Yes. Oh, dear Lord. Um, maybe that is it. Maybe, maybe we start to realize like, maybe Iran's just not that into us and we have to back away. But I do think it's a really important conversation to be having of what more progressive foreign policy can look like. Cause it feels like we've, we really gave this version a go and Trump came up and he was America first. You know, we thought it was going to be different, but here we are back to square one of intervention in the middle East. It really does feel like that. If you have those buttons that you can push, you ultimately end up pushing them. The siren song of the thing that I was trying to get at is we've pushed every, every fucking button on the remote and none of them work. And the point that Ben made about, um, sanctions, we have the countries that we have sanctioned are some of the worst actors in the world right now. And all we've done is entrenched these really bad regimes and made life worse for the people of these countries. Bars, bars, unfortunately, unfortunately. So we, we, we're exhausting all, all those. And then the one thing we did do that seemingly had a stabilizing effect, which was sending AIDS drugs to children in Africa. That's the one thing where we're like, yeah, fuck that, that we can't do. No more freebies for you all. That's, that's where the real corruption is that, that, you know, $10 million we spent on iodine to put in. So people don't get rickets anymore or whatever. That's the thing we got to do, but give 500 more million dollars so I can hire my son's drone company to work at the Pentagon. We got monies for that. Yeah. We'll, we'll let China build the roads and we'll just go ahead and bomb them. You know what? Maybe that's the game. Jillian, is that the game? China builds the roads. We bomb them. They have to go back in and build them. We get a kickback. Maybe, maybe we're playing a two man game with China right now. We're keeping them busy while we do other stuff. You're, you're now, you're in that four or five dimensional chess area that I hadn't considered before. Uh, very, very, very interesting. Brittany, what do, what do the kids want? All right. We've got three questions for you today. All right. Let's bring them. Let's bring them. Uh, John, you can only make one media bet on DraftKings. Would you bet on Barry Wise or Stephen Colbert? Oh, come on. That's like the Knicks versus the Sixers. I mean. No, that's like, that's like the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals. Like that's, that's not even modern, uh, NBA competition. That's old school, uh, classic, uh, King v. Clown. Uh, so yeah, Colbert is, is generational broadcaster, talented in so many different dimensions, a lovely human being, not chasing some, uh, outdated kind of, I don't know, preconceived notion of centrism or whatever the fuck it is that they're doing over there. And meanwhile, just nodding to, no, that's, that's not even, although to be fair, uh, Stephen also would have fired everybody at 60 minutes, just not out of ideology, pure vengeance in spite. I always got that vibe from him. Yeah. Bet on Colbert all day long, baby. All day long. All right. Next up, John, have you ever wanted to 86 something, you know, in restaurant terms? I've 86 things. You know how many Mexican restaurants I worked in too many times I've had to 86 the, either the guacamole or, you know, uh, shrimp quesadilla. Cause we run out of, you know, which by the way, shrimp quesadilla, do we really need to shrimp everything in this country? Cheese and fish. We're not doing that. Shrimp quesadilla. No. And have you guys worked in restaurants? Yeah. No, I still get nightmares. Brittany, you've never worked in a restaurant? I've never, no, I was a retail gal. Really? Yeah. Have you ever been fired? No. You've never been fired? Are you firing me right now? No. Let's do it live. Wouldn't that have been a really cool way to do it? Oh, you've never? You're going to do it. He's going to 86 Brittany on this episode. No. Well, today's your lucky day. You've been 86ed. Uh, Jillian, did you get fired? No, I worked in, I worked restaurants, coffee shops. I still, do you still get the nightmares? I get nightmares where I'm just working all night and you have like tables asking for things to get sent back. You're like behind your, it's, I don't know if those will ever go away. I don't think people understand like, and there is a whole lingo of like behind I'm in the weeds. You got an 86 that like, it's all, but you got to marry these ketchups. I still say I get behind anytime I walk by somebody. I'm behind. Behind, behind. Hold on. Or coming out of there. Or coming out of the kitchen. Right. Corner, behind. Uh, I find now that whenever, uh, ketchup is running out, I'm like, somebody marry these. Yes. Yeah. Side work. Got to do your side work. Take your side work. You used to take the two ketchup bottles back when they would leave just the bottle on the table. They didn't have the little refillable plastic and you would plop them on top of each other and just let them. And like, it was the long laboratory at the end of it. And I always used to think to myself, like, that's not sanitary in any way. That's like, no. And yet it hasn't changed the way I eat out at all. Like I still trust the ketchup implicitly. I don't know why that is. Why shouldn't you? What's a little food poisoning amongst condiment friends? Uh, by the way, I've worked retail and restaurants and if I may add, been fired from all disciplines. I've probably been fired from more jobs than you two have had. That's how bad I was in the, in the early days where like, there was just a kind of like three months in, they would just be like, Hey, thanks so much for coming in at 5am to clean all the pans at the bakery. But you put soap in there and that got into bread and you got to go. Well, it worked out in the end. Did it though? Wait, did you fold shirts? Oh yeah. I was a, uh, stock boy in Woolworths in, there was a place called, called Jekyll's hide is leather, I worked in there. for a while. Ormons. Do you ever remember a store named Ormons? No. We've had a lot of jobs. Yeah. A lot of jobs. And look at you now, kid. And until I found, until I found Liquor Store, none of them worked out. Something just popped into my mind. Yes. Both Jillian and I were fired specifically by you previously. Wait, what? No, you weren't. A show being removed is not the same as being fired. I had that thought. I wasn't going to say it. Wait a second. Outrageous stretching of the definition of fired. You were not fired. You abandoned ship with me when Apple made it untenable for us to continue doing our show, The Problem. For those who don't know, Jillian and Brittany and I worked on The Problem together. And Jillian and Brittany were superstars at The Problem. And then Apple. Fired me. Well, they didn't really fire me. They just told me that to work there, I would have to disown everything that I ever held dear. And so I left. But we weren't. You know, that's not considered being fired. It was consciously uncoupling. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. You know what it was? It was self-care. Yes. It was walking out of what was becoming an abusive relationship. And if you've ever been in an abusive relationship with a multinational conglomerate. Who hasn't? I mean. You know, the hard part about breaking up with Apple is all the breakup songs are on their technology. It's almost impossible to avoid. Very difficult. All right. What else they want? What else? All right. Last one. All right. John, what makes New Jersey so special that it's the only state that won't allow people to be fired? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't to pump their own gas? First of all, this is an excellent question because people are always stunned by that. And I'll tell you why that is. The customer service in New Jersey is second to none. What do you need? Gas? You need anything? We are a state that just wants, we are, New Jersey is just a state filled with butlers waiting that whatever your desire is, when you're born in New Jersey, everybody gets a little bell. So it's a very refined society in New Jersey. Julie, you get it. And if you ever need anything, whether it's gas or you need your windows washed or you need to scrape the carcinogens off your car if you happen to live in that area of the, you ring the little bell. The garden state. And someone will show up and say, what can I do for you? Can I help you? You don't have to tip. You don't have to do anything. We just take care of everything. We want to be, that state where all, there's no self-serve bullshit in, we are a full service state. Full service state. I love that. Come down. What do you need? Here's your gas. It's going to be sunny out. You want to put a little SPF on you? You want me to get that? That's what we do too. Although people generally don't take us up on that one as much because it's creepy. But the gas thing people love. It's so funny. Do they do that? They don't do in Long Island. They certainly don't do that. No. You're getting out. Are we really the only state that does that? I think so. Yeah, I believe so. It's like deeply uncomfortable too. Oh, really? Can I tell you something? It's not uncomfortable for me at all. And not only that, when it's happening, I always maintain eye contact with whoever it is that's pumping the gas so that we just sit there looking at each other like this. Yeah. That's why you do it. Yeah. For that quality eye contact. Yeah. And then, weirdly enough, whenever you get your gas pumped in New Jersey and you make eye contact, afternoon delight plays over the speakers. It's this weird. What an experience. Oh, it's. Listen, man. There's no state like New Jersey. All right, kids. Very, very nice. How do they keep in touch with us, Brittany? Twitter. We are Weekly Show Pod. Instagram threads TikTok Blue Sky. We are Weekly Show Podcast. And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. Oh, for God's sake. It's fantastic. As always, couldn't do it without lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, producer Jillian Speer, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, and our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. We'll see you guys. Do we have one next week? We do. I think we do, right? Yeah. All right. We'll see you guys next week. Buh-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work. Access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Paramount Podcasts