France Descends Into Chaos

Pause the world as brought to you by trees.com. You've heard me talk about them as fast-growing trees, but now they're trees.com. The same trusted online nursery with a simpler name. Trees.com is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over three million happy customers. They have all the plants you yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and house plants all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. Whatever you're looking for, trees.com helps you find options that actually work for your climate and your space and your lifestyle. Trees.com makes it easier to get your dream yard. Just click, order, grow, and get healthy thriving plants delivered right to your door. They're alive and thrive guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy. No green thumb required. Just quality plants you can count on. Plus, get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape. Choose the right plants and learn how to care for them every step along the way. We have a ton of plants and trees here at Crooked HQ. They arrive looking great. They've been easy to care for. Thanks to the expert advice we got from the folks at the trees.com care team. If you're thinking about adding some trees or plants to your house, they can help you figure out what will live and thrive in your wherever you live. They can help you lay out your backyard and look at the landscape. Then most importantly, for me, they will help you keep it alive. We highly recommend Trees.com for all of it. Right now, they have great deals on planting essentials up to half off on select plants and listener to our show get 20% off their purchase when using the code world at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at trees.com using the code world at checkout. Trees.com code world now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use world to save today, offer his valid for a limited time, terms and conditions may apply. U.S. Voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabraud.org and click "Request My ballot" as to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromabraud.org Welcome back to PotsAve the World. I'm Tommy Beachmer. I'm Ben Rhodes. Then we are two weeks out from our midterm elections here in the U.S. and about a week out from the Israeli elections. Their first election since the October 7th attacks feels like some pretty monumental political events in a tight time frame there. Yeah, and great closing argument for Trump to endorse the man who talked him into the war that is driven up the price of gas, sure that that's really going to help those Republicans are trying to run away from the war in Iran. And so for those who didn't see over the weekend, Trump officially endorsed Israeli Prime Minister, BB Netanyahu, which should surprise no one, you know, in practice. But in the past, U.S. presidents have not officially endorsed in his real elections because they didn't want to be perceived as meddling. Yeah. Trump doesn't give a shit about that. In a true social post, Trump called Netanyahu, quote, "A great warrior Prime Minister and an even greater partner for peace in combating the Islamic Republic of Iran," some real or well-earned language there, Ben. He also called him "strong, brave, and brilliant," did you see BB release like a response? Yeah, just where he's sitting in front of a fighter jet. Very subtle. And he's done multiple ones now. And my favorite is this is a man that is kind of incapable of showing human emotion. And he's trying really hard. He's like, my dear Donald, I was so moved by your end of it and it's just so slimy and authentic. And he's sitting like an airplane hangar or something. Yeah. And the bombs were about to drop right after the election. Did you notice that JD Vance specifically declined to endorse Netanyahu? Oh, my favorite is he says he doesn't endorse in foreign elections, says the man who campaigned for Victor or Biden. Went over to Germany and met with only the AFD. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't endorse him. Oh, I don't get involved in foreign elections. Yeah. I mean, also Axios reported today, I believe, that on Monday, Pete Hexath, the Secretary of Defense had a secret meeting with Netanyahu in Israel. So I hope everybody's excited for the war to ramp back up right after the midterms. Or maybe they'll be a little bombing before the Israeli election just to get men out. Another little chef's kiss to the endorsement. Well, so the question, Ben, is like, does the Trump endorsement mean as much since I think his approval rating in Israel has dipped because a lot of Israelis were mad at Trump because they feel like Trump may have stopped the war in Lebanon and Iran. I don't know. I think it probably helps. I mean, if Netanyahu's main argument is I can get the Americans to do what I want to, you know, it probably helps on the margins, but also no surprise. I don't think it should be surprised. Yeah. Also, right on cue, we saw today that the U.S. is sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the 13th mu to the Middle East, which is a lot of military. It's like 10,000 troops and, you know, a carrier strike group. They'll probably swap out one of the other carriers and the boxer amphibious assault ship that's out there. But it also feels like, you know, they're just reloading for whatever comes. They're reloading for something coming next. And by the way, keep in mind, when you see the Biden-esque stories in Axios that Trump's really mad at Netanyahu about something, he just endorsed man. He's not someone you can get any distance from. No. No, yeah. He endorsed a guy and then told him in this filmed phone call that BB released that he had written the endorsement statement himself that it wasn't his people. To your point about how you get all these Republicans in the midterms, like trying to run away from the war and run away from Netanyahu, the Institute for Middle East understanding provided us with some exclusive swing state polling of some of these issues. Big deal. They sampled over 3,200 voters in Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas in late September, early October. The first question was, do you approve or disapprove of the vote to cut 3.3 billion in taxpayer funding for the Israeli military out of this year's State Department budget? Georgia, 52% approve, 34% disapprove, Iowa, 59% approve, Maine, 57% approve, North Carolina, 48% approve, Ohio, 54% approve, Texas, 52% approve, so pretty unequivocal in swing states where people are in this. Real, far left politics there, cutting off Israel, maybe in 10 years, the DC media will understand that these are not far left positions. Big Iowa libs. They also asked, do you think the war against Iran generally benefits the US or Israel more? Georgia voters said 50% Israel, 28% US, Iowa said 54% Israel, 21% US, Maine was 59% Israel, 19% US, North Carolina was 52% Israel, 23% US, Ohio, 49% Israel, Texas, 51% Israel. So again, voters have been watching this war for the last, what is it, eight months now? They don't like it. They don't think it's benefiting us and they're pissed that it's benefiting Israel and then Trump goes out in advance of the midterms and does this stupid endorsement. Yeah, it's the worst possible thing he could do politically to deal with that problem that's of his own creation. I mean, I just, I do want to dwell on the fact that the, it's not just the 50 plus numbers. It's the 20%. I mean, that is, because again, we've talked about this in the past, but some of those people sit around meanlining Fox News all day that tells them that this war saved us from nuclear Armageddon or something and they're still not buying it beyond the tune of 20%. That is shockingly low number, shockingly low, especially when you've got a lot of evangelical Christians who have a variety of reasons for supporting Israel. And it's been fed a steady diet of Iran being the bogeyman for decades now, too. It's just, it just shows you how much the war and the reality of it is kind of punctured all of the information loops that people are in. Yeah, absolutely. Also, listeners might have seen some social media traffic over the weekend alleging that everyone's favorite, um, corpulant dictator has to weigh. However, North Korean state media released some photos today of Kim Jong-un, which they say show that he is alive. We're going to put him up on screen here. Apparently photos that are undated as far as we know of Kim Jong-un looking at it, looking at things with a certain account, there was like Kim Jong-un looking at things, yeah, just staring into the middle distance areas, that does confirm nothing though. I mean, he, he needs to be holding like the newspaper with the data, you know, uh, so we'll see. I mean, you know, who knows what is going on. They did seem to be like even for internet rumors like remarkably thinly sourced. Yeah, it was like some random journalist or an analyst in China. Yeah. It just happens like every few years someone reports that Kim Jong-un is dead and it's usually wrong. And here we are. Maybe trouble, give them an endorsement video. Yeah. True social post. Maybe you'll get one from Kim Jong-un. Yeah. That'd be nice. We are going to talk about a lot of stuff today. We got to talk about the escalating war of words between Trump and President of the Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine. And it kind of walk you guys through the very real ways that Trump has sided with Russia officially in the actual war and how his actions are getting civilians killed in Ukraine. Uh, we're going to talk about the French protests and how they turn violent over the weekend. The possible political fallout and how these movements seem to be spreading across the European continent. Uh, instead of Arab Spring, Ben, what do you think about austerity autumn? Ooh, I like that. Yeah. Did you come up with that yourself? I workshopped it beforehand. I, I, I thought about Anglo-Spring, but then I realized none of these people are speaking English. No, no, no. I realized it was inaccurate in every possible way. It's also not spring. Um, then we're going to tell you about a bumbling Saudi spy who was trying to steal information from open AI, the artificial intelligence company. Then we're going to just walk you guys through some incredible internationally. flavored tabloid drama from the Trump administration. These stories have everything you want. There are foreign billionaires. There are the most corrupt business interests imaginable in Venezuela and the Congo. We got grown adults tattling to Donald Trump like he's their father. There's allegations of theft. There's like another story with insane state department email chains with all these people copied and insubordination. So you're gonna wanna stick around for all of that, I promise. And then Ben, you did our interview today. - Yeah, I talked to a friend of the pod, Jasper Nathaniel, who has the Infinite Jazz Substack. And he's in the West Bank now. He regularly reports from the West Bank. And listeners may have seen a few days ago, there was a really brutal settler attack in the West Bank at the Olive Harvest there in which a 63 year old journalist for the Washington Post, Heidi Levine was like brutally assaulted by a group of Israeli settlers. But we kind of talked about the systematic nature of settler violence in the West Bank, where the trend lines are with that settler violence. How Jasper himself thinks about the risks that he faces going to these places. And what the perception is in the West Bank from Palestinians and to some extent, Israelis about whether and how much the Israeli election result will matter. Like will things be markedly different if Danielle loses and if he wins? So it's a really great interview as usual with Jasper. - Shout out to Jasper for literally putting his life and singing a lot to a recording, yeah. And literally running over to rescue this woman when she beat and stabbed. Makes she broke four vertebrae. - Yeah, almost had a finger severed. - Like savage savage beating. And then the fucking is really government-spoken people, essentially like-- - Oh, we talked about that to her claim. They're like the alleged assaults on-- - The alleged assaults. - She's in the hospital right now. - It was disgusting and disgraceful and shocking. And I think like 10 arrests have been made, but that is just not even the tip of the iceberg. - Yeah, I do just want to say, 'cause I've been thinking about this ever since the interview and you probably have this feeling Tommy, sometimes when you talk to people like Jasper. But you know, there are people in our lives who, some of whom we love, right? Who just, they continue to believe that this isn't happening. Or that this is somehow very complicated. - Or there's both sides of the picture. - Yeah, there's two sides. And then you talk to someone who's literally describing like a state-sponsored policy of terrorizing, killing, and displacing people. And we're not even talking about Gaza. And every now and then I have those conversations and I'm like, I don't really know what to say anymore to people who are like, you know, I'm uncomfortable with people who want to not give military aid to Israel. Like it's, it's, anyway. I just like listen to this account and think about whether that's, think about whether this is complicated 'cause this is not complicated. - Right, it's hard not to read Jasper's coverage or watch those videos or see the way these people are being treated and not feel radicalized by it. - Yeah. - And like it's just so angry that, you know, these settlers are acting with impunity. Like they know that they can beat, name, kill, Palestinians and face absolutely no consequences. - Yeah, yeah. - Because they are a part that Jasper described and like the tip of the sphere, the tip of the sphere of an Israeli effort to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. - Yeah, that's how it acts. - It's clear as dead. So, and thank God for journalists like that. I mean, that's hard work. And there's less people doing it. So, thanks. - Just scary shit. All right, we're gonna start in Ukraine again, Ben, because that is another policy that's going very south with this administration at the moment. And things like, we talked about this in depth last week, but things have gotten so much worse in just like seven days that we wanted to talk about again. So, just a quick reminder of what happened. So, in early October, Trump announces this deal with Putin to buy a Russian diesel long story short. That deal sent billions of dollars to the Russians that they're gonna use to fund the war effort. And then Trump also announced this quote-unquote energy ceasefire between the two sides. The Ukrainians had not agreed to it. They were surprised by it. The Russians immediately broke it. And you know, so once he was not thrilled with any of this, so he kind of popped off a Trump. It led to a war of words between the two leaders that has basically gotten relations between the US and Ukraine in the worst place since that oval office meeting. We all remember in what February of 2025. This clip will give you a sense of the kind of tenor of the back and forth, let's watch. Do you feel betrayed by what has been happening? - Really yes, really between us. - Zelensky is a not a good guy for us to deal with. I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with in Putin. - President Trump is facing pretty difficult midterm elections. Do you think you are being treated as a scapegoat for his own problems? - This is my answer. - Do you want to lend Steve Owl? Have you forgotten that President Putin he started a war? - Well, you know, I know the details, okay? At some point, I'll release the details. - If the United States will support Putin, I mean, it's unbelievable, it's tragedy. It's historic mistake and big tragedy. - Zelensky doesn't know what he's talking about. Zelensky is a man that should have this war settled a long time ago. If he would have listened to me, he would have made a much better deal a long time ago. I think at the time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine. - Okay, so the Trump administration, in addition to those comments, has retaliated in a number of ways. This week, we learned that the Secretary of Defense Pete Heggs at this holding up a transfer of Patriot missile interceptors to Ukraine. My understanding is that these missiles have been paid for. They're coming from European stockpiles, not from US stockpiles, but Pete just won't sign off on it, presumably just to be a dick. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that Ukraine is just a handful of interceptor missiles left. And I think we talked last week about how the Russians have this plan to just hammer Ukrainian cities and cut off people from energy, heat, power, just make life unlivable. The administration has also throttled Ukraine's access to Starsheald. That's the military version of Starlink satellite internet. It is paid for by Germany. And what this means in practice is that Ukraine cannot defend itself against Russian drones. That is because Ukraine uses Starsheald to control the drones that they used to intercept and destroy the Russian drones that got launched at Ukraine. But starting in the middle of last week, Ukrainian drone operators noticed that they were losing connectivity at speeds over about 100 miles an hour. And at times, at speeds as low as 45 miles an hour, which means they can't control the drones if they want to catch up with and destroy even like the oldest, slowest Russian drones, let alone the new rocket-powered versions. The telegraph reported that this was Elon Musk idea. Reuters reported that the order to throttle the drones, to throttle Starsheald came from the White House. And then the Wall Street Journal just now reported that Musk ultimately ordered the slowdown, but the Trump and Musk discussed the issue directly before and after it happened. So we don't totally know, but clearly like, Musk and Trump's hands were-- - Yeah, exactly, they both have their hands on the knife here. - Ukrainian officials have also raised concern about the weather US was cutting off intelligence about incoming Russian ballistic missile attacks. I've talked to a couple experts who think like, this could just be like a really hard problem like when there's bad weather and stuff. It's like, it's hard to figure out the trajectory or telemetry of incoming ballistic missile. So it could be technical problems, not the levelings. But we also know that Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine in a meeting recently. So who knows? So Ben, that's kind of like the general state of things. Steve Wyckoff is in Oslo today meeting with Zelensky. I guess he's gonna go to Russia and offer a trilateral meeting with Putin, Zelensky and Trump. I don't know why like that's some sort of a gift to Putin. Trump seems primarily focused on securing the release of an American hostage named Steve and Hubbard. Think of you as such good buddies with Putin. You just let him go. Your thoughts on why this is all happening now, kind of like the administration's response and then how Zelensky's handling it? - First of all, we have to say like, this is a remarkable confluence of events where the United States is taking Russia's side. 'Cause these are actions that are being taken, right? A diesel deal to replenish the Russian war machine waving the sanctions passed by Congress so that Russia can have more revenue throttling the starlink, like denying the Patriot batteries that protect Ukrainian civilians. I mean, just one action after another that is like in concert with Putin's war strategy. Like it's in concert with what he's trying to do in making these cities unlivable this winter. So in terms of the why now, I mean, we've talked a lot about the underlying motivation of having more affinity for Putin, of wanting to make money in these deals with Putin. I do think that Trump does seem to be really determined to affix the blame for the high energy prices to not just Ukraine in the war generally, but Zelensky specifically. - Yeah, and like, who do you think is hearing that message? It's like, don't think anyone's gives a shit. - This is my point is nobody will believe that. Like there's, like as just a matter of politics, it just shows that as Trump is more and more the man in the high castle, it's political instincts, which, you know, sometimes they're very good and sometimes they're not, are now just weird because I cannot imagine that there's like a swing voter who's like, you know what? I was like, going to pull the lever for the Democrat. But, you know, Trump's right. It's Zelensky's fault that the gas is too expensive. And now that he's punishing Zelensky and signing with Putin, I'm going to vote for Republicans. So as a matter of politics, it's completely insane. But it does, I think, what worries me about it, beyond the fact that it is going to be devised in Ukrainians. It could tip the balance in the war. It is going to fuel the far right in Europe as, you know, as Europeans have to backfill all this money and refugees might come into Europe. What it, it speaks to like a psychology as we drift towards the later Trump era, where all he's doing is like getting retribution on people he doesn't like or budding up to the people he does, right? And so it's like, part of what I'm seeing in Trump's comments that you saw there, he's wanted to do this for a long time, like he's wanted to just side with Putin and he hates Zelensky because he thinks he's like a resistance liberal or something. And, and there were enough restraining factors on him, you know, whether that's people around him, whether that's Republicans in Congress, whether it's public opinion. And now we're beginning to see what it's like when he's just like, I don't care. Like I want to be on Putin's side. I want to be in that trilateral meeting with Putin, Xi Jinping, where I'm the strong man and Zelensky's is weakling. And that's frightening. As to Zelensky's response, like, I, sure, it's, it's, it's kind of like Abdul Al Sayyad punching back at Tommy. But you're like, not sure that's the best politics, but I like what he said. In the sense that like, sure, probably not, doesn't really do anything to help Zelensky to go on Piers Morgan and say he was betrayed. But like the man is going through it. And that's how he feels. All I'll say is that maybe he has to do that because he's going to need the Europeans to backfill a lot of the support that he was getting from the United States. The only tactical reason for him to be doing these things is to kind of be making the case to the Europeans. Like, these guys in Washington have really cut us off now, left us high and dry. And we really need you to step up, which is also going to be a difficult political message for the Europeans to hear. So, I don't know. I feel like Zelensky is a bit of an impossible position. Yeah. I mean, at some point, like civilians are getting bombed. Children are dying. Children have died this week. And he has to explain to his people why it's happening. And maybe like the, the downside risks. Some people are probably listening and thinking, well, what more could Trump possibly do? Until recently, the kind of intelligence sharing relationship between the US and Ukraine seemed like it was walled off in kind of untouched. Yeah. That could very much change. But also, you mentioned like people that once restrained Trump, Lindsey Graham was one of them. Yeah. Yeah. As folks know, Lindsey Graham died. You mentioned the sanctions bill that was passed in his honor. Congress passed the Lindsey O Graham sanctioning Russia in Iran Act of 2026 job. Yeah. I'm sorry. No, dude, I'm with you. That's a weird moral. Trump signed it into law on the 18th of September. So the bill had like lots of sanctions in tariffs on like Russian entities in the defense sector and banks and shit like that that were mandatory. It also allowed really high tariffs on like Russian imports or on countries that bought oil and gas from Russia like up to 100%. Last week in a touching tribute to his late best friend, Trump called the bill foolish and then he issued a waiver on all the mandatory parts. And then went to campaign for the guy's sister. I'm sure you know. So like, yeah. Yeah. It Trump's also reportedly the the financial times reported that Trump is considering waiving sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet. Yeah. It's like a list of activity. And you also mentioned this trilateral meeting like there's going to be possibly a trilateral meeting between Trump and she and Putin at APEC. Trump was asked about it. He bizarrely said like Russia had been fined on Ukraine, which is crazy given the context of the civilian strikes. Besides Trump wanting this to be like Yalta 2.0. Yeah. It doesn't actually make sense to me why you need the Chinese in a Ukraine meeting. They don't give a shit about Ukraine. Other than the fact that they've been supporting the Russian war machine. Yeah. Like, this isn't their problem. It's like really the Europeans and the Russians that you would like actually want in the room. It has nothing to do with any of the war. I mean, this is his wet dream is to be in a meeting with with Xi Jinping and Putin. You know, he's fully ascended as an autocrat. He's at like the big kids autocrat table. Carbon up the world. Yeah. We're carbon up the world and more and more powerful than these weak Europeans over here. I do think, I mean, just to to to advance this in a different direction, if the Democrats win control of Congress, it is an interesting question of what they might try to do on Ukraine for a couple of reasons. Because first of all, there are people that oppose that sanctions bill because it gave such extensive waiver authority to the president because they anticipated this, right? Now listeners will know I'm not a huge sanctions guy to begin with. But the question is whether Congress takes some actions to try to protect the Ukrainians. Like, can you legislate some degree of intelligence? I mean, this is, you know, these are renewed terrain, right? Criminal Congress passed a bill saying they got final sign off on any, diplomatic deal with Iran, for example, during the Obama year. Yeah. So they could they did that. So they could pass a bill saying that Congress must approve any Ukraine agreement or they could, you know, mandate certain types of assistance to the Ukrainians. They could mandate access to Starlink, right? That they obviously could fortify that the United States can't leave NATO. And actually, the reason I think that this is interesting and not just the thought exercises, I bet you they'd get a ton of Republican rights. I do too. So I think that unlike some other things that Democrats might do where they are never going to get a veto-proof majority given Republican attitudes about Russia, you could probably pass pretty overwhelming bills in support of Ukraine that then force this kind of almost like probably a constitutional standoff with Trump that frankly are both doing the right thing as a matter of policy and morality, but also politically humiliating a Trump because you know, you can and you can begin to normalize Republicans breaking from him. So this hasn't got a lot of attention, but I do think someone should be thinking through like, what is the legislative agenda on Ukraine if the Democrats, particularly they wouldn't both have as a Congress because they could really, they could have a say in this policy. Yes, I agree with that. I think Joe Biden probably spent too much time focused on Ukraine and kind of got the politics right to much time. Well, it was sending money over there, but I think there's also-- Oh, he was shouting like, "Keef's still strong." You know, there's also an oversight opportunity here because the U.S. policy towards Russia has become just offering them every incentive in the book, right? I'd love to see a series of hearings on this, this luke oil deal we talked about last week where like Kushner and Wickoff are trying to steer a billion dollar energy assets like oil fields in Cameroon to their benefactors and the golf, like literally like Emirati royals and other billionaire benefactors. And then a big Trump donor named Todd Bowley, like that would be a great thing to do oversight over. There's also reports spend that the Trump administration was basically trying to encourage the Europeans to resume oil and gas purchases from the Russians, which I don't know if Marine Le Pen wins in France. We're going to talk about that in a minute. I'm sure that will be on the table. But you know, just to folks know, like the UN reported that 328 Ukrainian civilians were killed in September alone. That is up 85 percent from the September the year before. Like what is happening on the ground in Ukraine is horrific right now. It's going to get exponentially worse as we go into winter. Putin's plan, which was intercepted by I assume Ukrainian intelligence and then given to Europeans and then given it in New York Times and other outlets, is to cut off cities from heat and electricity and create a humanitarian crisis to freeze people, children to death and maybe send them out of the country. Like that's fucking evil shit. But you make a really important, like corrective to what I said, which is that you got to be careful about this. You want to be seen to be lowering prices, not just, being about Ukraine. And again, like I was making a light, but Biden, I'm very glad Biden stood by Ukraine. They did a lot of good things to do that. But what I was joking about is like politically, they seem to think it would benefit them more than it did. Yes, for sure. Now here's the important adendum I would make though. My plea to any Democrat, independent and Republican Ukraine supporters, one of the arguments you have to make, because I think what the trap Biden fell into is it looked like he wanted to continue the war. Exactly. And it looked like Trump wanted to stop the war and war is a bad thing. And we would like to stop the war. This policy is going to extend the war. Like I think it is very important that this be framed as Putin has no incentive whatsoever to end this war. Putin as the aggressor is the one that you need to pressure to end the war. If you're you're pressing the lesser party fighting for its existential survival and making easier for Russia to bombard them, you are going to extend this war. You are going to escalate this war. And so it's very important that this not just be framed as like we're here to like help Ukraine's fight. It's that we're trying to end the war and one way you end the war is you have to have pressure on Russia or else they have no incentive to make a deal. I saw Steve Whitkoff meeting with Zelensky today. And I'm like, what the fuck are they meeting about? Because Zelensky, let's say hypothetically, could agree to every concession that Steve Whitkoff is demanding make. I still don't think Putin would sign off on that because Putin wants to go through with this plan of like pummeling Ukraine and taking more territory. So that that that's how you solve that problem is we're for ending the war. This is the way to do that not just in a more just manner, but in a manner it's going to be more effective. Well, it is also if the diplomacy She was just balanced and there was some pressure put on the Russians. There is a way to not end the war, but have some deal where you actually do have something like an energy ceasefire that can make life more tolerable for civilians over the next year or so, right? But these guys are utterly incapable of doing that because they just want to get paid by the Russian oligarchs or whatever going forward. And by the way, thanks again, Andrew Weiss for geeking out on this stuff with me earlier this week. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've ever thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner BetterHelp, there's never been a better time to follow through. Insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay of just $23 per session for eligible members. Taking care of your emotional health is important at any stage of life. Therapy doesn't have to be the last resort for major life changes or crises. You can simply be a dedicated space to process daily life from work stress and relationship struggles to that subtle feeling that something is off. There's a lot going on in the world. We've got a terrible present in the United States. We've got a cycle over the Defense Department and live stream in executions. That's the thing America plans to do now. Then there's work-related stress. There's family stuff. Everyone would benefit from talking to a therapist. It's just maybe a half hour or an hour a week. Just someone who will listen to you and let you talk about what you're going through and just feel a little bit better every time. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance and don't live in the U.S. you can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/corkidworld to explore your payment options so that's betterhelp.com/corkidworld. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace gives you the tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand and facilitate payments all in one place. With Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI-enhanced website builder to get a fully custom website in just a few steps using basic information about your industry, your goals, and personality to generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations. Every dream needs a domain, Squarespace's domain makes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price, no hidden fees or add-ons required. Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life. Whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service, don't wait to claim your name, invest in your dream domain today. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/world to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at squarespace.com/world. Let's turn to France Ben because over the weekend, there was a protest movement that started peacefully and with students and just exploded this frenzy of destruction and violence. The quick backstory is that the student-led protest started in mid-September. It was high school kids in Paris, they came back to school, they find terrible conditions in a classroom or in the schools generally, some schools didn't have air conditioning or heat, there were enough teachers and so they started protesting. The macro and government basically ignored their actual concerns while ordering a pretty heavy-handed police response that got violent. The student-protest grew, they got more radical, the politicians got involved, especially the far left, Jean-Luc Belichand, then the public sector unions joined the protests. And over the weekend there was this convergence of students, the unions, the remnants of the yellow vest protestors from back in the day. Good call back. Yeah, those guys were fun. And then now there's just people in France who regularly show up to protest to smash shit up and steal stuff. I don't know if they are black block, antifa guys, I don't know if they're gang members, I don't know if they're just soccer hooligans, because talking to someone today was like, well, every time PSG wins, they burn the city down so it's not exclusive to protest movements. But, so there's like 500,000, maybe 800,000 protestors out on the street. A lot of reports say they started peacefully and then by the evening they got really ugly, those daytime activity that was ugly too. An estimated 3,000 businesses were looted, 2,500 people were arrested, 1,000 French police officers were injured. And the police response writ large was totally inadequate, especially outside of Central Paris. And then, so since then we've seen this massive blame game, like the government is blaming the far left for their rhetoric, they're saying the far left party's inside of the writing. The far left and the protestors blame the government for not listening to the protestors for the police response and just being heavy handed. And then Marine Le Pen and the far right, they are blaming the government and they're blaming immigrants. And they're basically saying, we are the serious ones, we are the ones who care about law and order, give us a shot at governing. And I think that message is breaking through in a big way. At the moment, there's curfews in place, the government is promised to crack down hard on the people that broke the law. But there's another protest plan for next weekend, French unions have called for a general strike on November 5th, so there's no guarantee any of this is over. And then Ben, the French presidential election is in April of next year. Most political analysts, everyone I talk to you today about this said, what just happened this weekend is helping Marine Le Pen and the short term, who knows if it will help or long term, it's helping her right now. And these protests are converging with the possibility of a debt crisis in France and a huge fight over the budget, which has to be passed by the end of the year. And everyone's kind of like has positioned that are hardened because of the election. So it's just like, it is a very, very scary bad setup right now for the French. Yes. This is such a multi-dimensional story because a few observations, be how much you said. Number one, the shortages and cost of living issues that have been exacerbated by the war in Iran are much worse in places like France because they get more of their energy from the Middle East, and they already are suffering the cutoff of Russian oil and gas into Europe. So it's a snapshot into like, you think it's bad here, it's worse there. The fiscal thing is just a bomb because there are all these cuts that they're making to social services, including education, and they're just deep into debt. And unlike us, the dollar is not the reserve currency, so they can't just print money indefinitely. And so they don't have good answers to these questions that people are raising and protesting about. I will say that this could also be a taste of what's to come in democracies around the world. As AI comes online, I was kind of watching this, and there was kind of a bit of a snarky thing on Twitter of like, why don't we protest like the French or something, do you want the far right to win elections in America, and we should protest like the French one? But the reality though is I actually think that like, there's going to be more of this, because if AI is disruptive, it seems like it might be. And suddenly you have mass job losses on top of cost of living, on top of oligarchs getting all this money, like we could be living in kind of a new normal where you start to see a lot more this kind of direct action by people. And we should be very clear, the vast majority of people protesting are peaceful. This is like a very effective student movement that then joined with the labor movement. And yeah, then you get these hooligans. And then I want to say another thing about that, which is, you know, the JD Vance of the world and the Fox News is, or, you know, somehow this is tied to immigration. First of all, not only is that just like, not based in any facts, like this has started with the cost of living protests, but do you know anything about French history? Like this happens periodically in France. They did this in 1968. They've had like, I don't know how many revolutions they've had over the years, like students at the barricades. I said, I just took my kids to see Les Mis, you know, like, this is not abnormal there. So that's a bunch of bullshit. There's like a saying in France, like the real opposition takes place in the streets. Like this is the, they have a revolutionary streak. JD Vance, stop making everything about your thing. Every generation has some revolution in France of some sort. Now like the main event, though, is the politics into next year. And right now the narrative battles being kind of won by the, because the government is siding with kind of the Le Pen narrative that these are far left agitators, which by the way, like, I don't know that they're far left agitators. Like, like, like, talk about something like, we just don't know that that may be true, but it might not be true. Like, just because the left wing has supported the protesters doesn't mean that these people that we see gloting have anything to do with, like Malone Shaw, the left wing politician in France. I just don't know that. And it's pretty irresponsible, the government to just go all in, but this one narrative that is empowering of the far right. Yeah. So earlier today, I spoke with a woman named Catherine Fieske, who is a visiting scholar of the Carnegie Institute. She's based in Paris. She also specializes in like populist political movements and authoritarian politics. And she made a bunch of really important observations that I just wanted to share. So the first is like, the initial student demands work totally reasonable. It's like, hey, it's literally a hundred degrees outside. We're in a classroom with no air conditioning for the next month. That is not a situation where I can like stay awake and study and do what I need to do. And they were just totally ignored. And it's another example of Macron's government ignoring domestic politics generally. Like, I don't know if you saw this been, but like, the violence happened Saturday. Macron gives a speech on Sunday. On Monday, he jets off to Kuwait to cut an energy deal, which like, okay, in fairness in the French system, the president does foreign policy. The prime minister and the education minister are like, they're going to take it. care of the school stuff, but like he's, you know, kind of labeled himself this all-powerful guy for the last 10 years, you can't just fuck off when things get bad. And also in the French education system, when you're a senior or whatever they call a senior over there, you take these exams your senior year and they're like wildly determinative for the future of your life. Like if you don't do well on these exams, you won't get into university, you're just kind of like locked out of a bunch of stuff. So when these kids are like, "Hey, like I don't have a professor at my school because a budget cuts, it's a really big deal for them in their lives." And then, you know, to your point about like the French history of protests, like she was telling me that Catherine was telling me that yes, like there's this history of these French protests even getting violent, but what was remarkable about this one was the speed. The delta from like, like high school kids, peaceful protests to this over the weekend was like three weeks and with yellow vassos like 18 months to get that wild. And everyone is blaming the far left and there's also though like clearly some amplification from far right parties connected to the Kremlin that were repeating kind of Kremlin talking points about how like look, this is the French Republic crumbling under the weight of all these migrants democracy is going to fail, right? Like it's just very much worth watching all of that amplification and the role it may or may not have played. And the weather like, not, I don't think Marine Le Pen was like sending far right people out on the streets to crack heads and necessarily, but people like associated with her might have been. And then finally, it's just like, I think the arguments that we're hearing here from fans and others that are like fundamentally racist about migrants will gain some currency in France. These when you see photos of a lot of the protesters, they are clearly like non-white people. But some of them, yeah, a lot of some of them are that are being highlighted in ways that are being demagogue. But she was just saying like, the problem is not immigration in France, it's integration of recent immigrants because you've got like second and third generation, you know, African, you know, the kids of kids of African immigrants who have no opportunity and like are just living in very poor neighborhoods, if you like, they have no future. And some of the looting we saw like, yeah, like a Rolex story got hit up, but also people are stealing like bath soap and like, like basic essentials, you know what I mean? This was not like, you know, like just high-end stores. Yeah. It is, it's, it's, this is why it's important in this world where you get kind of fed these median areas. Like, I talked to my friend, Sarah DeRoe, who's an activist in France and, you know, was really involved back in, when they had to push back against the fire at winning the National Assembly. What she was saying is that what you had is this convergence of grievance, right? Because when the high school, the budget cuts that were hitting the schools are also hitting other parts of the social safety net. And everybody is saying, after years of austerity, like you keep taking from us to like pay for other things, right? And, and I think part of what happened here is that there's so much pent up grievance in French society that the protest just scaled exponentially, you know, beyond what anybody who is organizing those protests could do. And when you have like this exponential millions of people turning out on the street, that's when you get, you know, either agitators who just want to loot or people that might have a political agenda, you also have like, when you watch the images, and this is, you know, we have this in our country now too, but like the French police, like, yeah, I'm, they're in a difficult position, but they, they look like, you know, they're in these a black, you know, militarized, like it is a dark confrontation that is happening when you have this kind of militarized force that is like basically trying to tell kids to shut up, you know. And that's why I just think that there's such a combustible mix in our politics, not just in France, but like it's kind of, you know, it could tip here. It really could. Like I was watching this and thinking, we're not like the French, like we don't do our politics in the streets the same way, but we've got a bumpy ride coming for the next couple of years. And what if you introduce like a financial crisis here to that? Yeah. Right. We actually have a voice note from Sarah. Yeah, yeah. Now the battle is over the narrative. The government and the far right are really focused entirely on, on the violence. Marine Le Pen has blamed the radical left. Erixemo has framed this in terms of like hatred of France and colonial resentment. And the left is really struggling to shift the narrative, especially because the media environment has really shifted to the right. So the risk is that it's massive and really joyful movement because it is bringing people together around education and public service and economic justice really gets reduced to a security crisis. And so I think it's important to understand that this is a really big moment in France and it's probably going to be a very big moment in Europe. And hopefully the progressive force are going to be able to center this event for equality. On that point of the narrative though, a lot of people pointed out to me that I talked to today, that Marine Le Pen speech seemed more presidential than anything. Yeah. Like she's sitting in her office, speech serious. Yeah. And then again, he pissed off the Kuwait or whatever. There was, again, the French, when they protest, they often, you know, there's the scary is going to burn it down, images. But there's always just like a few videos or images that come out of these things that are just incredible. Like there was this, I don't know if you saw the images or the video of the couple just kind of like drinking and smoking in a cafe. Yeah. I was getting destroyed around. I do love them. My French brother-in-law sent me a video of these two dudes working in a food truck and they're just making sandwiches as people ripping it up all around them, whatever, ripping heaters. And then there was this one clip that we just wanted to play for you guys of a protester that was just a cinematic to say the least. So for those listening and not watching, that was a protester in the middle of terrifying sea of protest, getting blasted in the face by some sort of fire-hearsing thing. Like the world is like burning around him and then all of a sudden a piano just blooms forward. So obviously someone added like super cue or music to that. I do the one story. I was in France shortly after the, some of the worst yellow vest riding and I had to do a meeting. I was trying to raise money for the Obama Foundation, OPC doesn't pay for itself. And I won't name the destination. But in the place where it's meeting, the entire window of the building had been shattered. So like picture a giant plate glass window on the Champs-Yves-Eye that is just like in a million pieces. And I walk in for the meeting and we have the meeting and nobody mentions this. Nobody says it's just like going about their business. But yeah, this narrative point is so important though because I do just worry, there is this reflexive thing here too, right? Like when we can blame the far left for things, it's like that's like the media goes to that like, you know, gravity. And Mima the far left or the left or whatever we want to call it is usually the people trying to raise questions about like cost of living and it's a way to never deal with those issues. It's like, it's much simpler to reduce this to a law enforcement question, then be like, why is this society so fucking pent up with rage that this is happening? It's easier to be like, no, no, like the far left is bad and we must, you know, have law enforcement. And that's what I think it was like a few French people kind of half making jokes. But then the kind of like, why don't we protest like the French do narrative when the results were the sort of violence that was stupid? Because then the entire conversation becomes about the theft and the looting and the violence and not about the underlying issues. And that is how we lose political debates, not win them. Also, France is not the only country like dealing with nature protests moving right now. There's, there are protests that turn violent and Milan, Italy over the weekend. We talked about the protests around housing in Spain. Now there's like tent encampments, workers have called for a general strike in in Spain. There's ongoing protests in Albania. Some of them started because of Jared Kushner and his stupid wife trying to buy the island. So this is one we're watching, some big elections coming up. Thank you again to Catherine Fiesti for talking with me about this stuff and to Giovanna Demaya from Carnegie. And then Georgina Wright from the German Marshall Fund. I'll just geek that with me on the phone today. In very fun ways, speaking of events, they're going to burn it all down, Ben. Crooked con is just over two weeks away. Join us in Washington, D.C. November 5th through the 7th. We're going to reflect on the midterm results. We're going to look ahead to what's next in 2028 through hours and hours of great programming. And hopefully celebration. I'm not going on all the what I can find here about the results. We just added some big names to the lineup. JB Pritzker is going to be there, Senator Chris Murphy is going to be there, representative Robert Garcia, representative Ilhan Omar, representative Sarah Jacobs, Heather McGee, Jessica Tarlov. Many, many more. We announced some other names previously. Ben and I are going to do a pod save the world session. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. [BLANK_AUDIO] to the discussion that will shape the future of our pro-democracy movement, CrookedCon.com. (upbeat music) Pods Day of the World is brought to you by Hymns. If you're not fully satisfied with your sex life, there's something you can do about it. Hymns makes it simple to access personalized treatment plans for better intimate experiences. Hymns combines personalized treatment plans and 100% online process. There's no office visit, no pharmacy line, no aqua conversations. You just connect with a licensed provider who can determine if treatment is right for you. Not every guy needs the same thing. Some want daily support so they're ready whenever. Some just want it when the moment strikes. Hymns works with you to find the best option for you. And if a provider decides it's the right fit, your treatment plan is prescribed online and ships discreetly to your door. Ready to build a better sex life? Visit hymns.com/world for a personalized plan for sex, hair, weight, loss, and more. That's h-i-m-s.com/world. Prescription products require an online consultation with the licensed healthcare provider who will determine if prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply, individual results may vary based on the survey of Hymns customers. C-hymns.com for full details. Pots of the world is brought to you by built. Here's a question, are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or your mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out built. Becoming a built member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. Built points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, lifterrides, Amazon.com purchases, future housing payments, and much more. They have fitness classes. You can go to a soul cycle or a berries if you want. You can get lifterrides, you can get gift cards at over 120 brands. You can make a down payment on your home. With your built points, there's a million different things you can do with it. And built new AI neighborhood concierge doesn't just answer questions, it executes tasks. For paying your rent and hailing a lift to book and dinner reservations across 50,000 or more partners, it handles your to-do list while automatically applying your member benefits. Here's how it works. First, download the built app. Second, link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spots become even more rewarding. And third, ask the neighborhood concierge in the app pretty much anything and it'll alert you to exclusive member benefits near your home. Download the built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbilt.com/world. That's j-o-i-n-b-i-l-t.com/world. Use our links so they know we sent you. [MUSIC PLAYING] Ben, let's talk about artificial intelligence and the spies who love it. So there was a 35-year-old man named Abdul Rahman Al-Fuzan who was caught placing bugs in a conference room at the OpenAI office. And prosecutors say he did so on behalf of Saudi Arabia. So this guy lived in the US for 15 years. He had been a permanent legal residence since 2020. He was a month away from his interview to get US citizenship. He had worked at a handful of big tech companies in the US before getting hired at OpenAI in 2025. And it seems like he probably should have stuck with the tech-only track because he was a terrible spy. This bozo stuck like a small circuit board looking thing with a microphone in it into a USB port in the back of a TV. And then his plan to hide it was to wrap it in toilet paper. Have you seen the photos of it? It's crazy. It's so obviously there. The toilet paper makes it worse because the TV's all black. And then there's a white toilet paper. And then he also had another listening device in a bag that he left unattended in a conference room. And the bag also had his wallet and ID in it. I think you have to go get it at the loss and found. So OpenAI, the obviously of some sort of counterintelligence scene, they found the device. They called the FBI. They set up cameras. They busted this guy checking on it. This dude also did a bunch of pre-spying research with chatbots. Those conversations are now being used against him. A chat GPT, how can I bug Sam Altman's office? Dude, he asked a chatbot under his wife's name, stuff like, how do you build a recording device and maintain it? So his links to the Saudis include-- he once said on a podcast that he visited Saudi Arabia at a three to four times a year. And I think he said at MBS, the conference Mohammed bin Salman told him to work at top tech companies. The prosecutors had messages between him and a member of the Saudi royal family who was texting him things like, Saudi needs you more than the US. I think he wrote back 100. About 36 hours after he was arrested, his wife and son left on a one-way flight to Doha paid for by a Saudi military official. Not at all suspicious. And then I guess the judge presiding over the case said that the Saudi consulate offered to pay his bail. And basically said it was a blank check offer in the sense of set whatever bill you want with pay for it. And so they obviously didn't. But that's even more suspicious. So I guess it's unclear whether this guy was spying for Saudi intelligence, or maybe this could have been some kind of commercial espionage thing. Maybe they're the same in Saudi Arabia. I don't know. I haven't explained why he was so bad at it. It feels like a commercial thing. But Ben, you've got to think that open AI and Thropic, they're filled to the gills with real spies. This is the point. And this is why I really want to talk about this. Because I've been talking to goons, security tech people for two, three years about this very question. Which is that the culture of these tech companies, like open AI, and like-- But the goons is our loving term for like-- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an interesting term. Yeah, mouth-readers and goons, sort of like the people really likes, anyway. But the reality is they have been hiring people like crazy for a couple of years, because they're growing exponentially. They often hire foreigners, which again, I'm not averse that at all. But they don't really do screening, right? These are the stories about the North Korean IT workers who are getting hired left and right. Yeah, yeah, it's like-- And so the reality is this guy may be Keystone Cops, but I guarantee you that the Chinese spies are good. And I just, I deeply believe that as open AI and in Thropic have been hiring hundreds or thousands of people like at Breakneck Pace, many of whom are not American, this is much more common than these companies want to admit to themselves. And some of it is just commercial espionage, Chinese or other people just trying to steal secrets to build their own AI. Some of it may be different-- there are obviously sensitive systems that we've seen, obviously, these companies evolve at the US military. This is one of those tip of the iceberg moments, where the Saudis are not known for having the best-- remember how effectively they cover their tracks in the journal, the showy killing? Like, these are not the best spies in the world. But there are other countries, including China and Russia, that have incredible intelligence services. And also, frankly, I want to bend over backwards to say I'm not impugning. There should be Chinese and Chinese American and Russian American engineers at these places. Like, that's good. You do just want screening. You just want all your employees, whatever ethnicity they are. And I just don't think that they have really been doing that. And again, it speaks to, in normal times, frankly, AI would be developed in a national lab. Like, because why do you have an existential risky technology in private hands? One of the many reasons for that is this, right? I mean, it's not even the most important reason. The most important reason is that I don't think a profit motive should drive the development of a technology that could end human existence, right? But one other reason that these places would normally be national labs is that you would screen employees. Yeah. And it's also part of why we need to be China stuff, just makes people roll my eyes a little bit. Because we can be them, but then they're distilling our models. They'll distill the models we release and they'll steal the technology. You can do it with everything else. If everyone's going to catch up with everyone else, it's an amazing story, though. It was a fun one to read. OK, speak at a front. Not as fun as this one, man. Not as fun as this one. So we've come to the part of the show that is just pure tabloid fun. So Michael and our team wants to call these segments as the world burns, which I think is pretty good pitch. Pretty good. If you like soap operas. Yeah. Last week we talked about Kinkelflow. She was the former now former US ambassador to Greece who is like, hey, pay my MX bill. 100 grand. This week we're going to tell you about the battle royale between longtime friend of the show and sentient Twitter troll Rick Grinnell versus Trump lawyer Alina Habba. So Habba, you might remember, was briefly installed as the interim US attorney for New Jersey. I believe it was really constitutional what they did. But anyway, so a couple years back, Rick Grinnell, in the first term, he was like, what, deputy? He's like acting director of national intelligence. And ambassador Germany. Ambassador Germany. Yes. In the second term, he made a play to be Secretary of State. Lost badly. He ended up being an envoy to Venezuela for a bit. Then Rubio sent his ass packing to run the Kennedy Center. And then seemingly he got fired from that job, too. Alina Habba recently married to Trump lawyer. She was the US attorney for a bit. Now the latest headlines about her were her big wedding. She married some dude named Turhan Milden. He is either 25 or 29. We don't know. He claims to be a billionaire. He's from Turkey, but he's somehow managed to get close to top officials in Venezuela, where he's in the cement business, Ben. That's the best. It sounds so mobbed up. Yeah. Also the shrimp production and export business, OK? Fucking force gum over there. He's also an advisor to the president of Congo. [BLANK_AUDIO] he has mining interests in the DRC. So you can already tell this guy's on the up and up. He also has a track record. We just have to say of dating or marrying women with access to power. His first wife had connections to Erdogan in Turkey. Then he got involved with a daughter of a prominent in Venezuela in Admiral. Now he's with Odinahaba, who's in the Trump orbit and that relationship helped him because Delsey Rodriguez, the interim president of Venezuela, had canceled his cement contract 'cause he was close to the old Maduro kind of inner circle. But then she realized that he was engaged to Haaba and kind of walked it back. She didn't want to piss off Trump. So Grinnell, Rick Grinnell and Milton knew each other because they both did work down in Venezuela. And remember, I think Rick Grinnell was sort of on the side of let's have a reproach month with the Venezuelans. Let's try to restore relations where his rearbie was like nah, I'm gonna send in the Delta Force and take him out, right? And Grinnell lost that argument. So the story goes, earlier this month, Haaba storms in the Oval Office. She tells Trump that Grinnell swindled her husband out of millions of dollars. She said that he'd solicited a donation from Milton for the Kennedy Center. The donation never made its institution. And but Grinnell apparently in the story said, lump your Kennedy Center donation into the same check as this other business payment for a grand total of $17.6 million. We'll divide it up and route everything to the right place. But here's where the story gets weirder. Haaba kept getting the amounts wrong to Trump. Initially she said Grinnell stole like 17 million. That was revised down to 5.6. He's the rest went to some Congo software deal with this Texas defense company. Grinnell denied all of this. So then Milton's team shared texts supposedly from Rick Grinnell telling him, quote, "Once the money comes to the company here, I will arrange the donation to the Kennedy Center and you'll be joining the VIP events and get close to it with the administration, even with POTUS." He also allegedly said, quote, "We need to make you the American face them in Venezuela." Grinnell says the messages can't be from him because the Kennedy Center is spelled the C-E-N-T-R-E, the British way, either way Ben, the money never made it to the Kennedy Center. I don't think we really know where the money is. Every piece of this story gets weirder as we go. Your thoughts, favorite parts here? I was thinking we were reading between that. Now I was thinking what I could say about this. And first of all, the only thing I was looking over here time is I was curious what sent you in Twitter toll Rick Grinnell's up to these days as the stories worlds. Piers that he's been in Michigan for the last couple days, like campaigning against Abdel-Asaid. His last tweet three minutes ago is, "Muslims against Michigan's Abdel-Asaid." I like it, you know what I'm saying Rick Grinnell. He's trying to probably stay in Trump's good graces by going after our buddy Abdul. But here's the thing, like when I was in government, when we were in government, when you become acquainted with the fact, and you don't need to be in government to become acquainted with it, but it happened for me, that there is this whole like underworld of like the most corrupt places on earth, you know? And the most corrupt industries on earth. And it's basically like mining interests in places like the DRC. It's a government's like Venezuela is that it just started a theological but became just, you know, nest of corruption. It's private mercenaries like, you know, Eric Prince, who you talked about. It's the Balkans, it's like Serbia, you know? And like this kind of weird like Mafioso kind of corruption there, it's, you know, corners of the crypto industry, of course, that's a world in which there are like billions of dollars just kind of slosh around. These fixers and marriages and Mafios and stuff like that. And what is so amazing about this Trump griff that we're living through is, it's literally like, the US government is now like a party to that, like to the most corrupt, I mean, Venezuela, a DRC mine, like Turkish sons-in-law, you know? Like there's all the, like this is, it touches, I keep waiting for some connection back to like, you know, one MDB in Malaysia or something, you know? Like this is just like this circular, you know, like arteries of corruption in the global economy, that like the most powerful people in the United States are just now like diving headfirst into them, you know? And every time I see one of these stories, I'm like, this is what we know about, you know? Like these are the ones that are just like coming to our attention. Like, can you imagine like how much of this there is? I mean, because it also suggested the Kennedy Center RE, piece of this is kind of interesting too, 'cause like Rick Grinnell was ostensibly in charge of the Kennedy Center while he was also like a Venezuelan envoy, you know? The Kennedy Center is like almost like a money laundering front, you know, in this story. Right. The Kennedy Center, like how crazy is that? It'll lead to have a run since the Oval Office to tell Daddy that Rick Grinnell stole money from her billionaire husband. And then it turns out that it was like routed to him from like her husband's like blood diamond producing boss. Like you know, like even the best version of this guy, like first of all, it all sounds like a front for some other industry, whether it's drugs or like, I don't know. Like it, but let's say you are like-- The cement industry is usually prone for something. I've seen enough mom movies sitting there. Let's say you were just actually in like the tungsten and cobalt mining business in the DRC. Like you're probably cutting deals with the M23 for security. I can't believe Eric Prince is not in the story. You're like, he must be in the story. You're exploiting some of the poorest people in the world working in the most dangerous conditions imaginable. I like the whole thing is insane. And who is this guy? This like Lothario running around the world like romancing his way into these positions? Yeah, I was wondering like what his game is that he just kind of finds one female mark after another, you know? If you see this boy, he kind of looks like a sod. He's not like-- He's fine. Yeah, he's not like our buddy Jasper, you know? No, he's going to go stash going. The other thing about the Oval Office meeting that's so funny to me is that she's not mad about the corruption. It's more like he broke the rules of the grift, you know? It's like, they're supposed to be-- he's kind of agreed upon. Everybody gets rich things and-- He stole my blood diamond money. He stole my share of the corruption, you know? Like, Trump is like a mob boss who has like one, you know, underling, come to him and be like, you know, this other mob, you know, underling is not playing by the code anymore. Like that's what's going on, that's how far we've sunk here. It is so weird. One more kind of as-of-world burns episode for you guys. So, listeners might remember the name Paolo Zampoli. He's a Trump crony from way back in the day, like kind of 54 clubs in New York. He was a modeling agent. He takes credit for using Donald to Melania. Trump made him the special envoy for global partnerships, which I don't really know what that does, apparently, it's supposed to be about cultural stuff. Zampoli decided that meant-- I think we set that up. Did we? I think it was like a chiro speech initiative. That's the best part about it. What? So you could like develop like public-private partnerships to support, like, good things in the Middle East. You know, like Trump is taking all these things. It's just too irresponsible with this. Yeah, I think I might personally be responsible. That's perfect. OK, so Ben Burst Paolo Zampoli. Zampoli gets the job. He decides it means that he just runs around the world and does whatever the fuck he wants. And like forces like Azerbaijan to buy a bunch of mowing jets or whatever. Exactly what we intend to do. He what you'd hope for. However, his job ended after Politico published a piece about Paolo's long-running email war of words with his boss, the deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau. Landau sent emails like this, quote, "Immediately stop all work on any issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy, including every one of the issues you mentioned in your recent emails." And fairly that email cc'd like 16 people. So Politico said, Zampoli's the remit was cultural stuff. But he went way beyond it, including, quote, "Meeting the energy minister of Romania, working on nuclear issues in Hungary, attending World Bank IMF meetings, meeting with the UAE director of foreign direct investment, even discussing with an Argentine official how to send that country's astronauts to space." So Landau warned-- so according to this report, Landau even warned the Serbian foreign minister not to work with this guy outside of the cultural remit with Landau with Zampoli. Zampoli apparently accused Landau of talking with the New York Times for a story that folks might remember that was about how Zampoli used his administration connections to get ice, to detain and eventually deport his ex-partner, the mother of his child. So that's the character of this man. Landau told Zampoli to stop sending, quote, "unhinged emails until I receive further directions from the White House on how to proceed." The best part of all of this was Politico got a hold of these emails and then called Zampoli, who went on the record of an interview twice, and just fucking unloaded on his boss both times. And at one point, said, "You only person that could give me this job and can terminate me as the president of America, and then a few hours after publication, he was gone." Again, how many people like this guy, though, have kind of warmed their way onto the Titanic here? And it is always funny, Tommy, when there's-- I don't know this Landau guy. I don't either. But occasionally, even the second Trump administration, there's like some normie that is in there. He's probably like a heritage foundation guy. I don't know anything about him. But don't you love-- I'm looking to my right now. But don't you love imagining this step? The guy's the deputy secretary of state. This is the most important job he's ever had in his life. And some fucking-- modeling scout who did Coke with the boss in the 80s. He's calling to fuck off with 13 other people C.C. and he like can't get this together. He can't ride this guy on like a foe a bowl email account. Like the extent to which these people don't care about being caught. They paper everything. They put everything in text. Government email like the most vulnerable like communication imaginable. He's putting it in. It does remind me like I did have like one or two occasions when I was in government where like I caught a whiff of something that was like relatively corrupt in my strategy aided by our former boss Tom Donnellan who was like remarkably and effectively paranoid was to email like 700 people in the government like every lawyer could think of me like this happened and I have nothing to you know like memorializing this one. Memorializing this one. Yeah. Yeah. Now Paulo on the other hand is like performing the corruption on the government email it's like the opposite tack. So this guy uh something he was the Harvard Harvard clerk for Clarence Thomas. Ah man for Scalia partner Kirkland and Ellis. Later at Quinn Emanuel argued nine cases for the Supreme Court. See but this is I think this is a really funny thing about the second Trump term is I totally disagree with this guy probably about every single thing. But I'm sure he like earnestly went into government to just like pursue his radical right wing agenda and he's found himself just in a sea of grift you know like certain by people like this. And he's got to have your Malay calling me like this guy is Impoli's told me he had a lots of space rocket. By the way I'm just kidding about him does Impoli doing cocaine with the boss in the in the 80s. I don't know. I don't know. He's going to studio 54. I mean uh Trump probably be better. I have the series of Trump that we'd be better off if he actually like drank and yeah oh absolutely. He wouldn't have all this repressed. He would probably sleep more. Yeah anyway uh love these stories. I do feel like something happened around the gillfoil story where just like there was a cascade of more of this kind of stuff just started coming out like people went public with these things. Wait till Democrats have oversight powers. I mean I can't wait. Yeah. Use them early. Use them often. All right we're going to take a quick break but when we come back you're in here Ben's interview with Jasper Nathaniel about his reporting from the West Bank. It is harrowing stuff you will not want to miss it so please stick around for that. Podsive the world is brought to you by Helix. How old is your mattress? If you can't remember chances are you're long overdue for a better sleep. Upgrade your nights with Helix. We have a Helix mattress at my house. It is unbelievably comfortable. It is a great place to read to watch movies. Obviously to sleep. It's in the guest bedroom and everyone who stays with us says hey that's a great mattress. Where did you get that? I say Helix. Turns out they just send it right to your house. It shows up in a box. You open it. All of a sudden you have a great mattress. It's shockingly easy. 20 years ago, 30 years ago people were like what are you talking about? You know the drive to a mattress store. You got to lie on a bunch of weird box springs and then drive home with a strap to the roof of your car. You don't have to do that anymore. Helix custom builds your mattress based on your sleep needs. Just take the two-minute Helix sleep quiz to determine your best fit. They deliver your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US and you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges and at 365 night sleep trial. Part of their happy with Helix guarantee. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand for the reason tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Go to helix sleep dot com slash world for 20% off site wide. That's helix sleep dot com slash world for 20% off site wide helix sleep dot com slash world. US voters abroad. Go to vote from abroad dot org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions ask our support team directly. Don't delay vote from abroad dot org. Long play our docu series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. News slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Aaron Haynes journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Paul Mary former White House communications director tune in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, joining us today from the West Bank is Jasper Nathaniel, who is an independent journalist, who's done a lot of reporting on Palestine and the West Bank. He's there to cover the olive harvest. You can find his writing at the absolute must subscribe infinite jazz and I'm just going to say up here Jasper like not only is this essential reading, but you depend upon subscribers to do the kind of journals and you do, which not enough media let's do. So everybody should check out infinite jazz on sub stack. Jasper, thanks for being with us. Yeah, thanks for having me Ben. I just want to start obviously with what happened last Friday in a village in the West Bank. An American journalist for the Washington Post titled being was violently attacked. She was left with four broken vertebrae, two broken ribs, needed surgery on her finger that was nearly detached. All of this a consequence of violence from Israeli settlers, terrorists really that day. So just to situate our listeners and viewers, you were there. You played a critical role in helping to get to her and making sure that she survived. Can you describe exactly what happened? Yeah, so it's olive harvest season here in the West Bank. Traditionally, this is a celebratory time of year. The olive harvest is a family affair. Kids, moms, dads, cousins, friends, they all go out. There's picnics. They spend weeks sometimes picking their trees and then it's also their livelihood. They send the olives straight to the local olive press and they make it into olive oil and then a lot of that olive oil ends up in the States or wherever. For a long time, but intensifying in the last couple of years, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have used the olive harvest as an opportunity to terrorize Palestinians. I think in part because they're all sort of out at once and so it's like shooting fish in a barrel to them in some ways and also because they steal the olives and then they make their own olive oil, so they are quite literally robbing them and also because they for settlers and many in Israel don't even accept that Palestinians exist and so they are robbing them of their culture and their history too. On Friday, it was the olive harvest for a village called Abu Fala, which is east of Ramallah. In the morning, before getting there, there was an attack in the town right next door, Tirmassaya. Tirmassaya is the village where exactly a year ago, I filmed another really bad settler attack where a Palestinian grandmother was clubbed nearly to death by a settler. So this is the town right next door. Now, Abu Fala, like Tirmassaya has a settler outpost that is basically directly adjacent to the village. So in this case, in Abu Fala, the outpost is on top of a hill overlooking the olive fields, overlooking the village and an outpost just as a reminder to your listeners is a settlement that is not even authorized by Israel. So settlers have just gone out and decided we live here now. A lot of the times they're taking over Palestinian structures and moving into them. And this outpost is here not because it's a nice, you know, it's got a nice lawn or something like that. This is a strategic plot of land that Israel is trying to claim in order to separate two Palestinian villages and to build roads to connect to settlements. And so the point is like where these outposts are and where the violence takes place, there's nothing random about it at all. This is all part of a methodical plan that is being put together at the highest levels of the Israeli government and military. A lot of those same people who now come out and condemn settler violence when it gets too hot are orchestrating the sort of strategic plan that requires a sort of violence to sustain itself. And so we get to the olive harvest that morning and we literally, you know, there's no families out. It's all just men and they're racing to pick their olives as fast as they possibly can. So it's, you know, like I said, it is nothing like what it's supposed to be. The reason people are moving so fast is because we are literally watching on top of the hill dozens and dozens of settlers preparing to attack. I mean, and I mean that in the most literal sense. We're watching them put their masks on their faces, pick up their clubs, they're sort of milling around like talking, they're looking with binoculars. I mean, it's so clear that they're going to attack. And by the way, the this olive harvest, the village council of Abu Faba coordinated it with the IDF so that they would provide protection for it, protection on their own land from the settlers who the IDF refused us to get off of their land. So they, the IDF actually agreed you can go out to your olive fields this day and we will protect you. The IDF didn't show up, not until later at least. So about an hour into the olive harvest, the settlers start charging down the hill. There's probably 50 of them and, you know, we can see that many of them were carrying these really big clubs and they have these. swings that you know they're able to fire rocks like hundreds of feet really big rocks and they start doing that they start setting the olive fields on fire so the air is getting smoky and the farmers are now like frantically trying to pack up their equipment and you know tie up their olives into sacks and and get away but what you have to realize is that the olive field is the buffer between the settlers and the settler outpost on one side and the actual village of Abu Fala on the other as in the residential core where all the families live and where you know all the the whole community is there right now and so if the settlers are able to get past the olive fields they're now in the village and they are with you know no doubt going to start burning homes and assaulting people and they're basically trying to expand the boundaries of their outpost and so the reason I mentioned that is because as the settlers are charging down the hill the other thing that's happening is dozens of young Palestinian men and boys even the Shabab in Arabic emerge and put masks on their faces and pick up rocks and prepare to confront these settlers who are coming down to attack the village you know to these young men and boys it's not just about protecting the olive harvest or themselves it's existential I mean this is to protect the community and so the these young men basically charge out and for the next 10 to 15 minutes there is a truly like a pitched battle in the olive fields with the settlers you know firing rocks and and you know like I said they're setting olive fields on fire so it's smoky and the the Palestinians are basically successfully pushing them back and the settlers are starting to retreat and then what changes is that as this is happening a white truck with settlers come speeding down the hill and there's two or three men in the back holding machine holding assault rifles and they start firing the assault rifles and at that point everybody on the Palestinian side just turns around and runs myself included and then as we're running suddenly there's tear gas in the air as well so that means that either the military or the Israeli border police are there they're they are now tear gasing the Palestinians who are trying to protect their own land as they're running away and while this is happening I turn around and I see in the distance somebody who I can see is wearing a journalist vest basically being just savagely beaten by five or six settlers did you know she was there that day had you seen her before no okay and I didn't know who I mean we I didn't know about her I mean lots and lots of people did you know if she's a real veteran but I had never met her before and I had not seen her that morning so I just knew there was a journalist out there I thought it was I mean there were a lot of Palestinian journalists out that day and I mean this was a horrible thing to say but based on how savagely they were beating her I was thinking it's probably a Palestinian because you know they reserved the worst violence for Palestinians and you know they have these huge clubs and they're just like you know smashing her over and over they're robbing her they're picking her up and then throwing her back down kicking her I mean it was just so heinous as this is happening you know we're all shouting and you know people the the Palestinians there myself a couple of their journalists are are are seeing it and saying we have to rescue this person basically because they're gonna die I mean it seemed like this person was going to be murdered right in front of us but there was really no way to get there because at this point there are so many settlers I mean in the video you can see they have fanned out across the olive fields there's tear gas in the air there's smoke in the air there's still throwing rocks and so it was basically going to be impossible to get to her until once again these young Palestinian men charge out in front and start throwing rocks at settlers who now at this point we know are armed with machine guns and we also know there are soldiers there who will happily shoot a Palestinian kid with a rock so these young Palestinians now are risking their lives to go out and rescue some sort of unknown journalists who at that point we didn't even know who it was as the the Palestinians are are making that push the settlers start to retreat again and that's when I was able to run out in front and grab her and I mean I was just like so shocked at seeing a 63 year old you know Jewish woman who reminded me of like somebody who could be in my extended family and you know just like putting together the what I just saw done to her with then seeing her was just I mean it was terrifying um but you know I helped her up and started pulling her back she was an agony she she kept saying let me die and let me die like she she wanted to just I mean she really was in so much pain and as I'm starting to bring her back the settlers make another charge and so this is the point where in the video I'm I'm now shouting to run and you know she's in so much pain I'm basically like dragging her along and it just at the moment when I'm starting to think we're going to get overtaken by the settlers like I'm going to be at the bottom of one of these piles now with this journalist the young Palestinians step out once again they literally form a perimeter around us and beat the settlers back with rocks once again and that is how we were able to get Heidi to the back where the red the Palestinian red crescent was waiting for her to put her name violins and take her away and then the the last thing I'll just mention is that 30 minutes after this has happened the army is there and they're just hanging around the settlers are still there we are yelling at them we're saying these settlers just almost killed somebody um there's video and they're also wearing their masks and holding their clubs and the soldiers just don't seem to mind it's about 30 minutes later they drive into the village get out of the jeeps and just fire into a palace the crowd of Palestinians shoot a 54 year old man in the thigh with an exploding bullet shatter his femur and then block paramedics from reaching him aim their guns at the paramedics and that was a typical Friday in the West Bank yeah I mean I just I want to come back to a couple pieces of the story but like I you know you have had some arguments I've noticed online where you've made this point that Palestinians should have the right to defend themselves and and people act like you know you're you're a terrorist or something but you've just described like state-sponsored violence aimed at the absolute destruction of Palestinian communities and identity and and I just asked people to consider if somebody was charging you in masks and trying to burn your livelihood and destroy your villages and shoot your family members you would probably want a right to defend yourself right I mean once the alternative right the alternative is you use you lay down and die I mean literally if they didn't do that Heidi Heidi would be dead right that's what I was gonna say and by the way Heidi who is who I have talked to recently says the same thing she says if those Palestinians hadn't come and start throwing rocks I probably would not have survived um and so so again like this is not controversial I mean if the if those Palestinians did not pick up rocks and charge after the settlers Heidi Levine would probably be dead if they were not doing that during settler attacks all across the West Bank the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank that is happening right now would be happening yet you know five times the clip because it is the only line of defense and yet still despite these just plain facts soldiers are routinely shooting kids because they pick up a rock you can do three to 20 years in prison and Israel you know this is one of Ben Gibir's torture dungeons basically and you know what the the point I'm trying to make is that you know this question of like Palestinians right to defend themselves it's just so intuitive I mean this this story what happened with Heidi like there's just there's no other answer to it like of course they had to pick up rocks they literally had no choice and I am frustrated frankly that that is not just like you know conventional wisdom among any politician or anybody who claims to care about humanity I mean the question should be do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves and you know through armed struggle if that's what it takes and if not do you suggest they lay down and die and let their village get overrun and let Heidi Levine get killed and you know accept accept the fate that the settlers have in mind for them which they will openly tell you is to wipe them off the map. Netanyahu's statement the Prime Minister's Office statement after this incident you know as usual something that does happen to Palestinians on a regular basis happens to a Weston or happens to an American happens to a Jewish American so there's obviously more international law cry Netanyahu's response was to kind of suggest that the facts remained in question and to say that they'll do an investigation you know the Washington Post's demanded investigation but I mean we've we've seen how Israeli investigations tend to go they almost never result in anything yeah what is your sense of where the accountability is going to come from if at all on this. Last year when there was a similar incident in Turmasaya the one I documented it was not an American who was beaten but it was an old woman and it caused enough outrage that Israel had to kick into gear. or an app like they were doing something about it. And in fairness to the police there, they arrested the guy who clubbed her. And I am told, I was just told that he's still in custody awaiting trial, that he's in jail right now. I can't prove that's true, but that's what I was told. However, that is like you knocked off upon from the chess board. There are still, you know, you still got the whole board right there to arrest one or two or three or four of these guys with masks, clubbing people, is ignoring the fact that these people are part of a well-connected, well-resourced network of violent settler outposts that are the tip of the spear and backed by the idea of the tip of the spear for the state-backed project of ethnic cleansing. And so in this case, I mean Israel announced that it made a handful of arrests the other day. They're sort of weirdly like combining what happened with Heidi Levine with the diplomats being attacked in Tyba and just saying like we arrested 10 people in those two cases and like, you know, on settler Twitter, they're saying they just like nabbed a bunch of random settlers and are doing, you're gonna do like show trials and then let them go. I don't know if that's true. But my point is like the outcome here is going to range from absolutely nothing happening to arresting a few people. And maybe they'll do a little jail time. But in either one of those scenarios, anywhere on that spectrum, the outpost network that is backed by the state and the military remains and nothing has been done to slow the violence against Palestinians except take out a couple out of thousands of, you know, the foot soldiers that are part of this. - You mentioned also that this group of European diplomats from France and Belgium and Poland were assaulted in an incident the following day. And again, pretty horrifying video of that too. You've been reporting on these incidents in the West Bank for the last two, three years. I'm curious, are these attacks becoming more frequent? Are they becoming more brazen in the sense that, you know, obviously, this happens to Palestinians all the time, but now it doesn't matter if it's, I mean, attacking diplomats is, I mean, and journalists is the ultimate kind of impunity. Is that representative of the status quo? Is that an uptick? I was kind of wondering is the fact of the Israeli election, which is in a few days, is that maybe even giving them more cover because, you know, is Israeli society kind of moves, you know, harder line direction before an election, what's your sense of that dynamic? - Yeah, I mean, I think all these things are at play, right? So like, for starters, settler violence has been on an uptick for three years, for more than three years actually since early 2023. And, you know, the election, certainly, like the feeling is that the settlers are sort of racing against the clock because they think that if Nenya who loses, then there might be a little more pressure on them to stop, you know, to stop what they're doing, and so they're racing against the clock. Most people don't even think that's true. Like if Eisenkault wins, they will probably get a little bit less support, but unlikely that anything's gonna be done to actually slow them down. But, I mean, look, like, the violence is completely out of control, obviously. The thing about the tie-biss story that's a little funny to me, it's like, I wanna know who planned this trip because if you go to the part of tie-bitt that they went, you're getting attacked by settlers 10 times out of 10. Like, this place, first of all, there are Palestinians living there. Of course, it's a Palestinian community, but like, you are walking into the lion's den. Like, you're going to get attacked by settlers. To be clear, that's obscene. The IDF in an hour could get these settlers out. You know, they could take down their outposts and arrest the people. They know who are running these places. They know the entire network. I mean, we're talking about Israeli intelligence here, but they allow these people to stay there because ultimately what they want is that land. They want to chase the Bedwins and tie-bitt off the land. So like, the people who are calling it a false flag or saying this or that, it's like, I challenge any one of these people to go to this place. And if you are not, you know, clearly a settler or, you know, openly showing your support to them, you're going to get attacked. And that's the case all over the West Bank. In Abu Fala, if you step into the Allfields, you're getting attacked. In Termasaya, if you cross this house on the edge of the town, you're getting attacked literally yesterday. An American home was burned in Termasaya. An American got its skull crushed yesterday. His head is split wide open. Four Americans in six days have been severely injured by settler attacks. I mean, it's just everywhere you go. I mean, I've been in the Allfields literally every single day for the last two weeks or so. And there has not been one day where there has not been an incident with settlers. - How do you take precautions about your own safety? Like, how do you factor that into your reporting process? - Well, I'm not wearing a helmet, which I should have been doing for a long time. But I mean, listen, you have to sort of use your instincts. I mean, when you see guns, you just like you have to leave. There's no competing with a gun, especially a rifle. If the settlers are making a real charge, you turn around and run the other way. But I do consider it to be my job to be right at the front, capturing what's happening. And just, I'm pretty fast. I've run from settlers many, many, many times before. I've had physical conversations before. And so I'm like, on some level, having to just trust that I will be able to get away. But I am largely using my instincts and when things seem to be getting bad, like they were the other day in Abufala, you just turn around and run basically. And I want to say that like, I actually, I don't want to speculate on like what Heidi, what was going on in her mind. But the fact that she was where she was, as in like in the middle of this battle at her age, when the people attacking are teenagers in 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds, I have to think that she didn't think they would attack a journalist. She thought the old rule still applied, where if you have a press vest and a press helmet, you're not gonna get attacked. And of course those rules do not apply in the West Bank. And how are Palestinians in these villages and these places that you're covering? Are they just completely cynical about the possibility that Israeli policy could change after the Israeli election, if someone else loses? What do they want from the rest of the world? Like what is the mindset these days for a Palestinian? - You know, I think it's like twofolds. There's definitely, I mean, first of all, Palestinians are all over the map on their politics. Of course, like I know people who are supporting every party under the sun in Palestine. I know anarchists, I know communists, I know conservatives. I think I'll talk about the sort of vulnerable communities, the ones that are really on the frontlines of the settler violence and the state violence. I mean, the feeling is that nothing is going to save them. But they're the terror against them could accelerate at a slower pace if that makes sense. So right now, things are getting worse and worse and worse and worse, because the settlers are getting more guns, they're getting more power, they're building more outposts, there's more of them, they're recruiting people. By the way, they're recruiting kids off the street in Israel orphans basically, training them into, into being little child soldiers. If the government changes, if Eisenkot comes in, this guy supports the settlers. He's made very clear, he supports the outpost movement, the farm movement. But if Ben Gabir and Smotrocher are out, there will probably be less money going to the settlers, weapons going to the settlers. And so the intensity of the speed at which the situation for Palestinians is getting worse, we'll slow down a little bit. And that, especially parents with children like are desperate for any sort of relief at all. And so I don't want to like downplay. People are like, this election is very top of mind for everybody and people are hoping for a certain outcome just so that their lives get marginally less bad. But I have not met one Palestinian who thinks that like this new government is going to actually like be a step towards granting them dignity. - Yeah, well, unfortunately, a truly harrowing and accurate picture. Jasper, Ken, thank you enough for the reporting you're doing and for coming on to share that with us. Again, it's Infinite Jazz, J-A-Z.com. People should definitely follow and subscribe. Thanks so much for joining us. - Yeah, thanks a lot, Ben, appreciate it. - Thank you to Jasper and Nathaniel for joining the show and we will talk to you guys next week. - Potsay, the world is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alonaminkovsky, Michael Goldsmith, and Minesha Bonerjee. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffko, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffett, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the right or scale of America East. (upbeat music) - Longplay, our docu-series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look. at what's actually happening on the ground. - I'm Erin Haynes, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Paul Mary, former White House Communications Director. - Tune in on Mondays to Long Play Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.