Has the World Finally Decided To Stand up to Trump?

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One last time, that's buy one, get one, 50% off when you head to the number three, d-a-yblinds.com/world. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Pots A of the World. I'm Tommy Vittor. - I'm Ben Rhodes. - Patriots, go into the Super Bowl, Ben. My New England Patriots. - You know, congratulations. - And I have a lot of addresses. - But, Ben, let's just skip for, hit the 30-second skip button for like six times right now if you don't want football fans. - No, I get to do this. My Patriots are going to Super Bowl. - I admire you going to Denver and sitting outside in the cold. - Yeah, I was cold. - But you guys got some string of luck, too. - Oh, are you kidding me? - I mean, we bowed your-- - I was in the bathroom line for that moment. - I was in the bathroom. - Me and Andy John's brother. Yeah, I went to Denver over the weekend to go to the game. So as we're walking in, we went to the tailgate first. And like, we were dressed up in every piece of warm thing I owned. But I was with a group of Boston folks. So, I was in the bathroom line for that moment. I was in the bathroom. I mean, Andy John's brother, yeah, I went to Denver over the weekend to go to the game. So, some funny, like, everyone was so nice in Denver. Denver fans are like the nicest people. - Yeah, they weren't ever approved by the way. - But some guy comes up to our group with a sign that said, "Dunk and Donut sucks." And he started chirping us. - That's good. - So yeah, it led to this hilarious kind of back and forth. So I, of course, slapped on my fake Boston accent. I'm like, "You Starbucks, drinkin' latte, liberal, "what I'm a Denver elitist." I got a laugh. So I was like, "You probably voted for Kamala." And then some kid earnestly looks next to me and goes, "Wait, you voted for Kamala." I think you guys are pretty much aligned politically. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - So funny. - Well, yeah. - Actually, yes, I really, I support her entire-- - Building bridges in the parking lot. - It was. - I did a lot of that, but this is, I watched a lot of that. And I've never watched a football game. I know some of this is a weather where I just had no confidence in one team's capacity to ever score. - Ever. - Like the entire second half. - Every time they got the ball. They could have gotten the ball in like the five yard line. And I've been like, "There's no way these guys can punch it in." - No one could run, like, look, we sucked in the first half to, like, the opposition was not moving the first half of the second half. It was like, white out Blizzard. Honestly, the football game was terrible. The experience of being in mile high, was like, white out Blizzard with everyone, just like that amped was like one of the cooler things that's ever been a part of. And the people were like next to us. By the kid next to us was from Colorado. We started talking. We ended up talking about how I'm in politics. I'm gonna tell you the two or three questions he asked me. The first was, "What do you really think about what happened with Israel and Gaza?" And I'm like, "Oh, I don't like where this is coming." Then he throw us some conspiracy theories at me. Then he asked me if I know who Nick Fuentes was. - Oh! - And I was like, "Oh, you had a gripper." - I was here. - I don't think he was a gripper, but he's like, "I see a lot of his clips." I was like, "This is not good." This is not good to this kid. - So did they look at you doing some research? - Yeah, I was doing some field work. - It's a field work. - Also Ben. So our listeners probably know that our producer Michael, he has this sort of, his first goal is to make a great show with his second goal is to try to get us canceled and kicked off. - Yeah, he did last week. - Yeah. - Maybe he did actually. - He bought us these blue aviators, and he asked me earlier today if I was willing to do some prop work and wear them after we got a case of the silly's last week talking about a manual Macron's speech, which was controversial in the comments of the most. - I know. Look, we will do some me a couple of today. There are a couple of things that we want. - Yup, we're talking about Kani today. - But I don't know, man. If you put on blue aviators at Davos, I can't really apologize for that. - I don't apologize for having a sincere laugh that was that hard, and if you're offended by it, and if you want people that only do high-dutch, and this might not be official. - Especially when I'm on the side, I'm agreeing with the Cron. Like I had nothing substantive against him. I hope his eye healed. - Give me two. - Yeah, but come on. But actually, 'cause people can laugh at us. Like laugh at me right now. - It was very funny. - It was so good. - I think you look good. Maybe this will be my new look. - I think it's really good. What are we gonna talk about today? We're gonna try to explain how and why Trump climbed down from his threat to invade Greenland. Remember the one that felt imminent last week? - For now. - For now. - For now. It's a very good important caveat. We'll explain how Trump also managed to insult every veteran and service member in NATO after the whole Greenland thing. We're also gonna talk about how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, his great speech at Davos that we didn't talk about last week, which was an oversight. We're gonna talk about this week. His pushback on Trump and how he's trying to create kind of a new international order for lack of a better term. We'll touch on a new trade agreement between the EU and India as an example of that. Then we're gonna talk about the military purge in China and all these rumors over the weekend that there was a coup attempt. - This is pretty interesting. - Very exciting, Twitter moment. The latest from Gaza and Jared Kushner's absurd Gaza Reconstruction PowerPoint at Davos, like an evil McKinsey lay down. We'll talk about Iran and why there's still a risk that Trump might order, airstrikes on Iran, even though the protests have been crushed. Talk about some new details about life at the FBI under Kashmetel and then we are going to rage about a real estate conference in Saudi Arabia. And then Benyur and here my interview with Kenneth R. Rosen, the author of the book, Polar War, Submarine Spies and the Struggle for Power in a melting Arctic. We talk about Greenland, why the US would even want more access to the Arctic, what the deal is up there, what the Russians are doing to stick around for that. - That's gonna be fun. I have one plug. - I know I did one last week, but I have a second one. I dangled this last week, but I did start a sub-sack, Tommy. - How's it going? - I just started yesterday, so I don't know how it's going. - Is it fun? - I think it's fun. I like the ability that I can communicate directly to people. I really do, actually, it's a writer. It's like, wow, I can just write something and a bunch of people will read it, so. - You also, like, you're the fastest writer I've ever met. - Well, this is the thing, it's what I've resisted doing this for, I don't know why, but like, you know, I write for these New York Times pieces and occasionally for some other places and it's like a painstaking process. It's good, like I like the rigor of it, but I kind of want to place where I can just be like, hey, I've got 500 words to share on this or that. It's notes on the stories we tell because we're living through a fucking crazy story. But I'm just going to, I'm going to, you know, I've got thoughts about what we talk about in this show, if we've got things I'm reading, if I go on these trips, things I pick up on my travels, I want to just be able to share that directly, so I hope some of you will smash that free subscribe button. - Then, right. - I'm not charging. - Subscribe to ban on something. - It's free content, guys. - Yeah, no, that's a great offer. I mean, by the way, you just, we do this show once a week as a podcast. - That's a thing. - Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Potsay of the World as a podcast for listening as a podcast. We also do a lot of additional YouTube content that doesn't go on the podcast feed. So subscribe to Potsay of the World on YouTube. If you want more, or if you want to watch us put on reflective blue aviers, like my face turned a shade of red, that you usually don't see in human beings as we are laughing about the micron devil's thing. - I'm just gonna say one more time to defend us. 'Cause again, we're willing to admit fault in other areas. But when you have to engage this kind of heavy material constantly, you need to laugh sometimes, like it lightens the load. Actually, I encourage people, you know, so. - Laugh. - I take the comments, we read the comments, we take them seriously, but, you know. - But not that seriously. - Subscribe to Potsay of the World on YouTube. And also, if you want to really help crooked media out, become a friend of the pod, go to crooked.com/friends. You can be a subscriber, you can help us build a progressive independent media company because we need more of them. So, all right, then, let's start with this massive climb down by Donald Trump on Greenland, at least for now. So last week, as we recorded, Trump was en route to the World Economic Forum in Davos, which by the way, if I have to read another fucking article about how Davos is back and Davos was the big winner, I'm going to lose my mind. - Yeah, it's real. - Who is that for? - Real mark of the tense. For the people who go to Davos. - We sponsored you. - The people who go to Davos love to be reassured that they're not engaged in a ridiculous narcissistic exercise. And that's one way. - So they know. - So relevant. - They know deep down that they are. At the same time, so, at that time, it felt like Trump was willing to risk a war with NATO to get Greenland. This is our interpretation, not based on something There's like his comments, social media posts, you did post a photo of himself, generated by AI of himself planting a US flag in the Greenland Territory that said, established to 2026. He threatened tariffs on our closest allies, but then in his speech, Trump took the threat of US military force off the table and then later announced that he had negotiated the quote framework of a future deal for Greenland that was of, quote, infinite, and quote, duration then. So he also said he wouldn't be imposing tariffs on our allies over the history. So the question is, what did we get, like, what was in this deal and what convinced him to change course, at least for now? Let's start with what he got. So the walk back was announced right after Trump's meeting with the the Sikafantic NATO military chief, Mark Ruta doesn't really make sense that they've thrashed us out there because Ruta can't negotiate away Denmark's territory at any event, but whatever. The deal that was announced, and that is very much an air quotes deal, it allows the US to put more US military bases in Greenland, including infrastructure for the Golden Dome Missile Defense project, which again, we could have done anyway under a diplomatic agreement from 1951. There's one little sweetener, which might be that Denmark could give the US sovereignty over the plots of land that the bases are physically on, which, like, okay, and I don't know that I'm thrilled about that. The deal might also include a greater NATO presence in the Arctic and then limits on Russia and China's access to Greenland. And all we had to give up was, you know, our standing in the world in relationships with our closest allies. That was the only downside, it was all upside except for the part where everyone thinks we're crazy. So Ben, the question is what happened? Like, my theory is that it was a combination of stock market dipping, bad polling, Republicans that Trump normally respects, like telling him this is nuts. And then, I think, also quite importantly, there was a real sense that we were starting to build last week that Europe might enact a real cost finally and, like, stand together and do something. I've also been told by, like, one close Trump watcher that is frustrating as he seems. Ruta is actually pretty good at managing Trump, so maybe deserve some more credit than we give him. But, like, what do you think? What do you think happened here? Yeah, I think, first of all, you know, Trump won Greenland. He wanted it before and he still won't sit. So I think the first point I'd make is that sometimes you go through these mini dramas with Trump and everybody likes to feel like they're resolved. I don't think this is resolved. The idea that at some point in the next three years, he's not going to say, you know what? I actually do on Greenland. I think this is coming back. I think what he does is he pushes and pushes and pushes until he feels resistance, right? And he felt a lot of resistance in the ramp up to Davos and kind of worked against himself by building the drama around this event where everybody was coming together. Because what happened is, number one, the markets tanked, right? I mean, I think this really matters. Like, you lose 2% of the stock market because people are afraid of a war of a green land. We've seen this kind of discipline Trump before. It happened after Liberation Day with the tariffs. By the way, which is good analogy for us saying because then he backed off, but he came back to tariffs, you know, in the same way I think I'll come back to Greenland. I also think that the Europeans, more than usual, put up a united front and saying no and saying that they're not bowing to the tariff threat, not rushing to cut a deal, but just saying, like, no, we reject these tariffs. We reject what you're saying. We reject you taking Greenland. And so he couldn't divide and conquer, which is what he usually likes to do. There was nobody in Europe was maybe Viktor Orbán, but nobody credible in Europe was like creating the perception that there was a division about this. Even like far right party leaders were denouncing him, like louder than most of the centrist. Louder than most, right? Because they're a nationalist. So I think he pushed and felt resistance and pulled back, which again is a lesson, right? If you show, if he feels limits, like he can pull back. And look, I do think the poll did like under 10% of the US. Some of the Republicans are like, do we want to go into this midterm cycle with like a Greenland war, you know, which is actually again, why this feels like a second half of the Trump term move anyway, you know, when there's no midterms, no nothing, right? It's just JD's future. It's your legacy building. It's just JD's future that's getting torched. So, you know, I think we learned some lessons, right? He listens to markets, he listens to resistance. There is some political gravity. This deal is complete and utter bullshit. So one of the reasons I had the same reaction that you did to the media coverage, there was so credulous of like Davos matters and Trump got a win out of the deal is that he got bases that we already have. I mean, literally you can't overstate what bullshit this is. You know, we as a NATO ally and we've been a privileged NATO ally in Greenland could build the base wherever or, you know, the Danes aren't going to like take our base away in the next 50 years or have a long they want to put on it. So the idea that, you know, he got the win of like the base we have is now permanent or we will be part of any potential explosion of middle rights, which we could have been anyway with an ally, you know. It's just absurd and again, I think an important thing for people to take away from this is no, this wasn't art of the deal where he threatened something and then get something. He threatened something. We paid an enormous cost like NATO is not the same as it was. US standing is not the same as it was. The dollar is plummeting, you know, a gold disserging more than the end of it. Gold disserging. So we're going to take an economic kit here. So we took on all this water to get a face saving agreement that is no different than the status quo as a NATO ally. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Yeah, it is ridiculous. Well, in the interview, I dig more until like so the actual value of Greenland or the Arctic. So if you want more detail, check that out. It probably didn't help that in the middle of this fight, Trump profoundly offended basically every single military in NATO. So this happened during an interview with Maria Bartoromo in Fox Business. Let's watch the segment in question here. I think, but I've always said, well, they'd be there if we haven't needed them. And that's really the ultimate test. And I'm not sure of that. I know that we would have been there or we would be there. But will they be there? And let's hope that that never happens. We've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines. But we, we've been very good to Europe and to many other countries. And you know, now under my administration that began because we had a very successful first term that began then, but it has to be a two-way street. So for the record, the only time NATO was invoked Article 5 of its charter was come to the defense of the US after 9/11. And to give you some numbers, just to quantify the human cost for NATO countries of the war in Afghanistan, we'll put some together for you here. So 3,500 troops died total, 2,456 of them were Americans, 457 British soldiers died, 2,000 were wounded, Canada deployed over 40,000 people for 12 years and lost 165 troops, 44 Danish soldiers died, which is the most per capita other than America. Poland lost 44 soldiers, France lost 90. So I mean, he's just so wrong there and offensively wrong. The comments in rage veterans, they and rage lawmakers and citizens in like every NATO country. And so we're just going to play you some examples from the UK to give you a sense of the tenor and tone of the pushback. So this supercut is Prime Minister Kierstarmher, Tory leader, Kemi Badenak, and then finally, right-wing reform UK leader, Nigel Farage. Let's listen. I consider President Trump to be insulting and frankly appalling. I think those comments are absolutely appalling. They are untrue and he should absolutely not have said that. This is not something that we should even be questioning. But there was one thing that he did say that I have to take a few with. He said, NATO have never given us anything back. And I would object to that, politely. We proportionately spent the same money as America. We lost the same number of lives as America, pro-Rata. And the same applies actually to Denmark and other countries too. So it's not quite fair. Of course, the anti-globalist, Nigel Farage is the Davos. Surprise, that wasn't a fucking cameo. So the royals threw some punches to, Prince Harry released a statement and the most importantly, according to the Sun newspaper, King Charles, let Trump know. He was pissed of yes, some sort of back channel. And then Ben, I think the coup de gross was this message from a multi-platinum recording artist, Rod Stewart. Let's watch. I'm calling on you, Prime Minister Starmher, and Farage, please make the draft Georgia Trump apologize, please. I love Rod Stewart. I love Rod Stewart. I love Rod Stewart. I love Rod Maggie May. It's classics. You wear it well. You wear it well. That's very funny. So he didn't serve in the military. So I'm not sure what inspired him to do that, but good for him. Good on him. So Trump walked those comments back over the weekend of truth, social. He posted, "The great and very brave soldiers of the UK will always be with the United States of America." So Ben, two thoughts on this. King Charles and Queen Camilla are expected to come to the U.S. as part of the 250th anniversary celebrations. I wonder if they threatened to cancel that trip, and that's what Trump got. Got Trump to move. Second, on some level, I think it's nice to see that insulting fallen veterans is bad politics for Trump, but it's also kind of even more depressing when you think back to our primaries and Trump insulting John McCain for being a POW. That seemingly helping him in the Republican Party, not hurting him. But what do you make of this controversy and the fact that he kind of, this is one of many walkbacks in recent days? Well, - I think first of all, you do wonder where he gets his information, because he said like they stayed back. Someone must have told him that. It's not Trump was like, in the afghan war, you know? And it's not true, they weren't like, yeah, that some of the NATO allies were like in some of the harriest places, you know. And so he's living in this kind of fictionalized universe. And look, on Afghanistan, for instance, I remember it's not just the troops lost, that's obviously the most acute thing. It's the money spent, it's the bandwidth of their foreign policy spent on something that they had very little interest in. I mean, I remember when I was in the White House, I had this job, and you know, you were there for some of them, Caitlin Hayden, our friend who came after you. I remember where we would talk to the communications people in NATO allies' capitals about how to message to their publics about the afghan war. And we had been attacked in 9/11. So as fatigue is the American public was with Afghanistan, which was a lot by the time of even the surge in 2009, 2010, if you're a European country, you're like, what the fuck are we doing in this place? We weren't attacked, we're not really threatened. They weren't necessarily plotting attacks on Denmark. It was entirely out of commitment to NATO and the alliance that these countries stayed in Afghanistan for 10, 15 years, lost people, spent billions of dollars. So it's just complete nonsense. And every other military operation that has been like that, is the United States most powerful force? Yes, but everyone is always contributing, whether it's Kosovo or Libya or even something in the G&C or whatever the thing it is. But more than that, I just think we need to take on this mentality. There has always been this kind of, you know, Trump has this kind of old, Trump's the kind of guy that would go to like, you know, the French event and be like, we build you out of the two big ones. And we, you know-- - Dude, at Davos, he said, without us right now, you'd all be speaking German in a little Japanese perhaps. - And look, my friend, Alistair Campbell, was in the room and said the whole place, just after that he's like, fuck you. - Fuck you, dude. 'Cause here's the thing that we have to acknowledge as like the empire since World War II, right? It's not like we don't get something out of having all these bases in these countries, you know? Like we, you know, we protect Germany. - Right. - Well, the United States likes to have military bases in all these places. It's what allows our military to operate globally. It kind of underpins our global capitalist economy. Ramstein is where our troops in Germany are brought from medical treatment. Like, you know, how many Americans would have died if we had to fly them all the way home? - Yeah. - We didn't have a state-of-the-art military. - Right. - So like, let's just put aside this notion that we're just all given no take from the reality of these alliances. It's not true, you know? And I think you're right on the climb downs. They're pushing back. Like, Starmer never would have done that six months ago. And I do think that they're finally learning the same lesson that, again, people are starting to learn in this country, which is, if you want Trump to stop doing something you don't like, don't kiss his ass stand up to him. And, you know what, he tends to back down. - Absolutely. He will absolutely back down. We've seen it repeatedly in last few weeks. Speaking of which, one of the most fascinating subplots of this whole dust up in the Trump attacks on NATO has been the response from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. So again, last week, I think we screwed up by not giving Carney's Davos speech more time and kind of whiffed a bit on the substance of it. So we're gonna fix that today. And by the way, that was not intentional. That's what happens sometimes when there's big speeches on the day that we actually record the show. But we pulled together some notable lines from Carney's speech into this supercut. Let's watch. - It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. The rules based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. Well, it won't. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs is leverage. Financial infrastructure is coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is. We are taking a sign out of the window. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. nostalgia is not a strategy. So those stark comments were why, I think, aside from the Trump Greenland bullshit. Carney's speech was the biggest news out of Davos. Not surprisingly, Trump didn't love it. I think last week we played some of his rejoinder's reaction in real time to Carney last week when he said, "Canada lives because of the United States." And he seemed to threaten Mark Carney and the Canadians. But then after those remarks, Trump rescinded Carney's invitation to be on the board of peace. Oh, gosh. That is important. For Mark Carney. Carney didn't want to be on the board of peace. Then a few days later-- He's not going to get hang out with Lukashenko. I know. What real country is on the board of peace? It's a joke. A few days later, Trump started raging about a trade deal that Canada had previously announced with China. So that deal was announced during Carney's visit to Beijing, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In practice, the deal means Canada will cut its 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. They're going to allow 49,000 of these low-cost Chinese EVs into Canada per year. China drops tariffs on Canadian products, like canola oil and lobsters and peas and crabs. The details get a little wonky, but Canada's goal is to increase exports to China by 50% by 2030. So right now, about 75% of Canadian exports go to the US. China is their second biggest market, but it still only represents 5% of their exports. So this is clearly an attempt to not only grow that number, but also just hedge against reliance on the US. Trump later posted that if that deal goes through, he's going to slap a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods and products coming to the US. So I wonder why Carney is looking elsewhere, right, and talking about the order being over. So Ben, stepping back a bit, this is not Carney's first fight with Trump. We've covered this a bunch. He basically got elected running against Trump, so elbows up, slogan. But it is fascinating to watch him continue to have political courage to push back on this guy when Canada has more skin in the game than anyone else. I think my kind of fear for him is that number one, like in a short term, Trump can still inflict a lot of economic pain on Canada through tariffs. And then two, his diagnosis of the problem in that speech is spot on and commendably honest. But the solution is basically more coordination between so-called middle powers, which is easier said than done. So I don't know, what did you make of the speech in his general approach? Yeah, no, first of all, mind me a couple of about this, is I actually liked Carney's speech. I kind of went off. I was triggered by it, not because of Mark Carney, as much as because of he was doing something that I didn't see any of the other Europeans doing. And so I apologized to our Canadian listeners because the thing that set me off was, yeah, the liberal order is over. Look, of course it is. I actually think Mark Carney's been at the leading edge of calling that out. The speech builds, as you say, on what he's done. And I did not give him enough credit for that. And I'd like to see the Europeans catch up to them and they are, and I'll get to that in a second. I think, look, there's a number of reasons why this speech is rippled out and resonated and every nerd has been talking about it for a week. One is, even though, like we've been talking about this for a year or two now in this podcast, the liberal international order is over. But it matters when a Prime Minister of an important country says it. It matters when he's taking huge risk in saying it. It matters that he said it kind of in the belly of the Beast and Davos, and that leads to the second point. Mark Carney is in another world like Mr. Liberal Order, right? This guy was the head of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. He was like a climate finance guy, right? He's the kind of guy that you would have seen on a panel discussion at Davos about sustainable energy transitions and the rules-based order every year. And so this is a guy, this is not some bomb thrower, or even someone like me who's been a critic of the liberal order coming in and saying it. It matters that a guy who's like, from that world is telling his colleagues, this is over, you know? And that's why it's important, not 'cause he's the first guy who said it, but because of who he is, where he said it, and kind of where he came from. Now, in terms of what comes next, 'cause that's the big question, like this is ending, something is ending, we're entering a new era that's going to take some time to sort out. He did diagnose it, there are big powers. The US is using all the leverage of the dollar and tariffs and sanctions to extract whatever it wants or to remove leaders. The Chinese are the ones using the supply chains. I think that's who he's referencing. The Russians just invade Ukraine, so that's a bit different. But look, I think what comes next is what we've also been warning about in this podcast, which is other countries moving very fast to begin to make arrangements to de-risk themselves from the United States and to build coalitions, to build trade agreements, to build supply chains that exclude us so that they are not as susceptible to the leverage of our tariffs or sanctions, whatever it is. The trade agreement that Karni did with the Chinese is like a first step in that direction. The trade agreement that the EU signed with Indians today is a huge, this is exactly what the new world is. border is. It's basically middle powers, you know, and big powers like India, the EU, the Canadians, the Brazilians, the Turks, like these are countries with a lot, you know, the Gulf, Arabs are kind of free agents, they like to play all over the place. Basically everybody who is not the United States, China and Russia is going to be designing trade relationships and geopolitical relationships and security relationships that are not overly relying on any one power, including the United States, which is an entirely new thing that is happening in the world. And so that, again, I think, you know, and if I'm Canadian, this is actually, this is exactly the right guy at this time, you know, and like you might take some hits, you might take some tariff hits, but you're going to be much healthier in the long term and even the medium term by not being perpetually at the risk of some nutcase in the United States, you know, saying we're going to put 100% tariffs on it. And when you look tough, you get more political space to do it, which I think is sort of been curious to Starmer's problem. I mean, yeah, I mean, so this trade deal, it covers a lot of people, this EU, India trade deal, it covers a lot of people like Ursula von der Leyen called it the mother of all trade deals instead of created a free trade zone of 2 billion people. The actual economic impact is a lot smaller than that. I mean, the EU, India is the EU's ninth biggest trading partner, but it will also help India manage the 50% tariff that Trump slapped on them. So we're kind of driving these forces together. I also know it has been that the Cure Starmer is going to China this week, which is interesting because it's the first visit by British PM since 2018. He's trying to ink some trade or business deals that will spur economic growth back home. But, you know, like I think Emmanuel Macron, French President Emmanuel Macron was just in China, Friedrich Meritz from Germany is going in February. It would be myopic to suggest that was because of the United States, but I just, I continue to have Whiplash, because Trump ran on getting tough on China, but in practice has appeased the Chinese government and then driven our allies closer to China in the form of these trade deals. You know, similarly, like it's, it's funny, like there was sort of this national list, anti-globalist sentiment that is ironically being cured by Donald Trump, like driving all these unlikely partners together. Yeah, and I think that there are other pieces of this that are beginning to come into place. So one of the interesting things I noticed in that EU-India trade deal, and look, Europe is India's biggest exporter. So they are de-risking from the US sanctions, like you said, from Russia and obviously, they don't want to, like, they have rival with China. EVs are a part of a big part of it, right? Like, just says in the, you know, China-Canada deal, and there's another area where these countries, just because Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change and withdrew from the Paris Agreement and is canceling all of the inflation reduction act, you know, green energy credits, doesn't mean the other countries are going to stop making EVs, right? Or stop developing green energy. And the Chinese ones are apparently great. So they're, yeah, so they're all making these deals and they're, they're doing clean energy transition and they're building clean energy supply chains. And, and I think part of what is so frustrating about the United States right now is, and like, the kind of people that take away from Davos as the biggest winner was Donald Trump because he got like a Greenland framework of a potential deal. The stuff he's doing is going to really fucking hurt us in the, in the medium of long term. Like, we're going to, we're going to lose out on all these trade deals that are being made without us. We're going to be totally absent from the EV market because he hates EVs. We're not transitioning to clean energy, which is what everybody's going to be using in 20 years. Like, the, the, the cost of the Trump presidency is just going to build over time. Yeah. And that's a hard political case to make in a country that has an attention spend the last about an hour of these days. But, but it's part of what you're seeing in these tectonic plates and moving around. Yeah. Also, I mean, I saw that Britain, Germany, Denmark and a bunch of other European countries signed a major clean energy pact earlier this week. Now, this was first announced in 2023 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it basically calls for a massive increase in wind energy. Which Trump hates, which Trump hates. And, you know, for dumb reasons, he thinks it creates cancer for some. And then, but like, it'll link their power grids, their production capacity for all these countries. And as you said, this is happening as Trump is killing off wind energy. The other kind of interesting, zig as the world's az example that I just wanted to quickly mention was I saw that Spain announced that they are granting legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants in Spain. So you have to have no criminal record. And you have to have been in the country last year. And then I think stick around for about five months. But this is sort of the left left or left wing government there has realized that they have a severe labor shortage. It's only being filled by migrant workers. And it's better to make them legal, get them paying taxes, get them into the system, they just have like undocumented people everywhere. It's a very rational approach. We will see if it leads to, you know, some right wing backlash. Like it has another place. It might, but this speaks to again, like Trump is dismantling the sources of our own competitiveness, which include immigration. I will take this opportunity to tell me to just say one thing about what's on a lot of our American, well, a lot of people's minds, which is ICE. Because this is the other thing. I realized when I was in government that we thought a lot about our foreign policy in terms of how it made people around the world think of us and clearly what Trump did on Greenland made a lot of Europeans and people everywhere I think these guys are fucking scary. But the number one thing people watch is what's happening in the United States. And I can tell you, I can guarantee you that what is happening in Minneapolis and the fucking lies about it leading the news everywhere. It's leading the news around the world. And it's fundamentally and permanently changing and building on what has already happened, changing the view of the United States around the world and make people not want to come here. Your high skill, foreign worker. Why would you ever want to come here? It's going to hurt tourism. It's going to hurt foreign students. It's going to hurt high skilled workers coming here. It's going to hurt everything, you know. And so the totality of the Trump presidency, the cost or beginning to become apparent in this country and around the world. Positive world is brought to you by Factor. We all want to eat a little better, but it's really hard to do when you have no time and you have no energy when you get home from work. And you look at the take out options and some of them taste good, but none of them are healthy. What Factor does is they don't have you meal prep. You don't have to follow recipes. It just removes the entire problem. 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I think tonight I'm going to have some roasted garlic chicken with like a gravy mashed green bean sink. They're really good. You know exactly what's in them. They are healthy. You know, if it's high calorie, low calorie, keto, whatever you care about, they're great for big families. There are people with no time and highly recommended head to factor meals dot com slash PSTW 50 off and use the code PSTW 50 off to get 50 percent off your first Factor box plus free breakfast for one year. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with a code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. Pots of the world is brought to you by the International Rescue Committee. The headlines, as you guys know, can be overwhelming. There's just so much going on. It can feel hopeless. You could feel like what in the world can I actually do to make a difference? How can I help? 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Don't need today by visiting rescue.org/rebuild. That's rescue.org/rebuild. (upbeat music) All right, let's turn to China because there was some big news and some rampant speculation about China over the past couple of weeks, so let's do the speculation first. So the speculative part was there was like a tweet, I think, that went viral over the weekend that said there was a coup attempt in Beijing. The gist of the story was that a bunch of top military leaders had planned to take out Chinese President Xi Jinping when he was staying at some hotel, but she got tipped off and foiled the coup hours in advance and like fun story, fun tweet, probably totally baseless, probably bullshit and made up, or at least there is no like actual reported evidence yet. And China experts will tell you that there are often rumors like this in the run up to major party meetings, like the National People's Congress meeting that's happening in March. Is that the probably what happened there? But the military purge piece of this was very real and very significant. So the latest victims are Zhang Yushia, Chinese top military leader, and then Lu Zhenli, who's another general, a very senior general on China's Central Military Commission or CMC, CMC oversees the entire Chinese military. Both these guys are now under investigation, and so the charges as best we can understand them from like official announcements and then articles in state-run media are corruption, hurting combat readiness, and then undermining Xi Jinping in some way. And then the Wall Street Journal reported that Zhang is accused of leaking nuclear secrets to the United States, which I don't think anyone else has matched that reporting. It feels unlikely, I'd be very impressed if the US military or CIA, it sources like that, but I don't think we do. But what makes this all so stunning, either way he's getting prosecuted, and Zhang in particular, was seen as a made guy. He is 75 years old. He's a princeling meaning that like Xi Jinping, his father fought in the Chinese Civil War. Zhang and Xi have been friends since they were kids. Xi has promoted Zhang several times, like first to the CMC in 2012, and then to the Politburo in 2017, which means he was one of like two dozen of the most powerful people in the entire country. He has actual combat experience from China's 1979 war with Vietnam. So the question everyone's asking is like, what is happening here? How do we interpret this? And so the theories I've seen in the press bend and from like analysts are one, maybe these guys really were corrupt and they just decided to finally crack down on them. These two generals are apparently close, so the cases seem linked. The second theory I've seen is that Xi is angry about a lack of progress in either rooting out corruption at the PLA or in a lack of progress in preparing the Chinese military to take Taiwan. It seems possible. The third is just like a show of force by Xi ahead of a major party meeting, and that this is just the latest iteration of this broader military purge that has been described as the largest since Chairman Mao. And again, like what's crazy about this bend is that the CMC, this committee that's made up of like six top military leaders that's supposed to oversee the 2 million strong PLA, now only as two members in one of the machines, like Xi and some other random guy. Imagine disagreeing with him at the meetings. Not a good idea. And then the fourth possibility, which is probably the most likely, is that no one knows the reasons it's not been disclosed and we'll never find out because nothing leaks at this level because everyone that senior in China knows that if you leaked to the media, you'll die. So Ben, I know the nerd group chats were up and off over the weekend about all this. What do you think's going on? What do you think it tells us though about Xi Jinping's power and leadership? Yeah, I mean, I'm on some nerd group chats and they were blowing up and I thought is this about the game or is this about, no, there was like just just people really excited about this. They're super cool. Yeah. Yeah, they're super cool. Look, I'd say a few things. And first of all, Xi Jinping, an unsentimental guy, you mentioned he's known this guy for a while. I think we've learned that Xi Jinping cares about one person above all. First of all, people should know that he has kind of used the veneer of anti-corruption investigations and purges to also purge his enemies into Gonzaloid power. This has been a pattern with him since he became the party leader in 2012, 2013. Periodically, he kind of cleans house in different places. And so it's always under the veneer of corruption. But you know, and I should add, often the people are corrupt, but that's because like most of China, most of the Chinese leadership is made up of people that let's just say they live a little better than government-servant salary in a Communist Party would suggest. So it's not hard to find corruption if you go looking for it. There's usually a poll--so I believe that even if there's some corruption involved here, there must be a political agenda behind it. I highly doubt that there was a coup plan that seems fanciful. I don't think that the PLA would be in a position to do that. So then, I think what this is about at court, like whatever the internal dynamic was with the personalities, is you have the Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army is like fundamental to their strength. But you know, I don't want to say independence, but it's an institution that the party leadership occasionally eyes wearily because, you know, a military by definition has kind of their own power-based. And this is Xi Jinping, which he's been doing for some time now, but really laying down the marker, that there is absolutely no differentiation between me and the PLA. Like I am the commander-in-chief and the people in those jobs are going to do whatever the fuck I want and whatever I say. And I just--that's the message to the Party Congress. That's the message to the world. This really is now like a one-man ruling system more than it is the kind of collective decision-making of the Communist Party and the different various factions within it that was the case kind of when we were in government. So what does that mean? And actually, let me just add, before we--and like they are more obviously repressive and more dictatorial, you know, we had purges here. We would do a lot of purges in here in the US. And we lie about our purges too, like, you know, Peter XS said he had to fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and all these people because he wanted to wear a class--well, no, it's because they were black and women and because they weren't mad, you know, so beware of like the high horse that you're on about this stuff. But I think the biggest question to me coming out of this is Taiwan. And we don't know. I mean, part of what we keep seeing in China, I was saying you before, like, we've seen them disappear from the Foreign Minister. We've seen them disappear, Hu Juntao, who used to be present in the country. Is this about Taiwan? Is this because Xi Jinping wants to move faster on Taiwan? Is this because he didn't like the plans he was getting on it? Like, that's the thing that matters to the rest of the world. Is Xi setting up to kind of have a more compliant, aggressive military in place that we'll do that? Yeah. And that, just the fact that that could be the case is worse, isn't there, isn't there, isn't there, right? Yeah, I mean, you can kind of like look at it one way and see like, okay, another example of this being Xi just having absolute authority over the country. But you squint at it in another way, you're like, this guy getting paranoid and kind of tyrannical and just going to-- He's getting older. Yeah. And badly for him. And then I do kind of look, I don't know. I don't know, shit about the PLA and how it actually works because no one really does outside of it. You know, you have to wonder what it means for Chinese military readiness to just fire all of the most senior, most experienced people. And also, I mean, I've always heard from analysts that this kind of younger crop of Chinese military leaders is even more anti-united states than their bosses. Yeah. They're liberals. So it doesn't seem to bode well for us, anyone. No. And part of what's so worrisome about it too is that like, again, the world wasn't perfect when we were in government. I'm not-- I'm not even saying this to give us credit, I'm saying this-- the world we inherited, you had military to military ties between the United States and China. You had like some checks and balances in the system because it was a collective decision-making system. Similarly, you had those contacts with the Russians. And now you've got these three big superpowers who are becoming more aggressive, more top-down, more hierarchical in all their decision-making, and less in communication with each other. And it's just that dynamic of Russia, China, and the US that worries me. Like we don't really know what's going on there unless it's absolutely crazy. Sinner is true and we recruited the head of the Chinese military. I don't buy that for a second, but that's what worries me is-- there's a lot of geopolitical tension, not a lot of understanding of what's going on inside each other's systems, and not a lot of contact among them. Yeah. And China's making a lot of nukes. So that's-- Yeah. They're hurrying that one up, yeah. They're moving on that one. All the mobile updates from Gaza, Ben. So the first is that the remains of the last Israeli hostage, a guy named Ron Gavili, has been returned. That is obviously good news, and it should lead to the reopening of Gaza's Rafa Crossing into Egypt. On Sunday, and in Gaza's office, I said that crossing would only be for pedestrians, but a path into Egypt would allow Gaza to get medical care outside of Gaza. And for displaced Palestinians to return home. So that is incremental progress, but as we've discussed previously, like the situation on the ground in Gaza for anyone living there is incredibly dire, just again to quickly summarize. There is no ceasefire. For example, just last week, there was an Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists in Gaza, including one guy who worked for CBS News as a cameraman. The Gaza Health Ministry says that Israeli forces have killed 486 Palestinians since the ceasefire went into effect. The International Stabilization Force said it's supposed to keep the peace in Gaza still doesn't exist. No country is formally announced. It will commit troops. Moss has not even started disarming in Israel, occupies over half of the Gaza Strip. And there was a report, see this story that they just keep moving this so-called yellow line, that kind of demarcates Israel's line of occupation further and further into Gaza, so they just are taking more and more territory. So that kind of grim reality is why there were reports that Jared Kushner's PowerPoint presentation about the future of Gaza was being mocked everywhere you went by attendees at Davos, like at the bars afterwards, people were talking about how ridiculous it was. So we decided to pull together for you guys a super cut of some of Jared's speech. Let's watch. It was just over 100 days ago that we got the final deal done and everyone was celebrating and joyous about the host just coming home and the end to this long war that nobody thought was possible and Steve and I were panicking saying what do we do next you know how do you implement peace and as you guys know peace is a different deal than a business deal because you're changing a mindset so let's see if these things work they never usually work good so quickly I'll go through this two-year war 90,000 confidence in spiders there's over 60 million tons of rubble there and tens of thousands of fatalities. Game of resolution passed a huge huge effort with the help of the of the UN we've worked very very well with them this is why you need a new organization like the board of peace to work with the UN a lot of what President Trump spoke about that he's doing in America we want to bring these same mindset the same approach to a place like Gaza in the beginning we were toying with the idea of saying let's build a free zone and then we have a Hamas zone and then we said you know what let's just plan for catastrophic success we Hamas signed a deal to militarize that is what we are going to enforce people ask us what our plan B is we do not have a plan B new Gaza it could be a hope it could be a destination have a lot of industry and really be a place that the people there can thrive have great employment once this starts going we think there should be a hundred percent full employment and opportunity for everybody there what the board of peace will have the ability to do if we're sexful with with Gaza is really show how do you do peace implementation which is something that when we got this deal done we didn't really find too much expertise or know how and how to do it there'll be amazing investment opportunities I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this but we need you to come take faith invest in the people try to be a part of it let's focus on the positive stories and let's just calm down turn new chapter okay so Ben when I struggle with here is like I know yeah look Jared does not have an easy job right and I get that like hard stuff sometimes requires kind of naive sounding optimism right but like my takeaway from watching the full power point was feeling like they're really skipping over basic basic stuff like there are thousands of tons of unexploded bombs in that rubble it don't really think that plan has a realistic plan or time frame to get rid of all of it I saw one official a Gaza an official quoted as saying that in Gaza City alone 150,000 meters of pipes and 85% of the water wells were destroyed in the fighting and which is leading to a public health nightmare because there's no sewage what's the plan for addressing that problem in the short term right as all these people are getting sick but also in the long term for rebuilding it if Israel says that every pipe is a dual use product which I understand why they do that right because Hamas made rockets out of pipes but you got to get pipes in there to have a sewer system and then you've got hundreds of thousands of people living in tents and freezing to death right like their stories all the time about infants toddlers children like freezing to death in these tents what is the plan to help them now like why are we looking at the fucking George Jets in AI created like power point of this idiot like ridiculous futuristic metropolis when the reality is like people are dying in tents now and they can't get tent poles into Gaza because he is really say they could have a military use the fact that that wasn't surprising that that happened at Davos doesn't eliminate how utterly disgusting and encapsulation of our times that presentation was first of all why is that guy there he has no capacity to do any of this this is he's only there because he's the son-in-law of the president right there's no other qualification has to do any of this and the I mean this guy was owned like when I was coming up like a pink newspaper in the in that is dad bought for him in New York called the New York Observer that had a circulation the tens of thousands because you could get invited to good parties if you wanted to like they like and now he's at Davos talking about building like Abu Dhabi in the Gaza Strip right second thing none of the oil and gas revenue to pay for yeah and all these like you know wealthy people and powerful people have to sit around and act like this is something that might happen in the physical universe even though it's it's literally like fantasy camp for this guy you know the second thing is it's just so discussed I'm just bears there is probably no more absolutely devastated place on earth in Gaza right to this day you mentioned the ceasefire not being a real ceasefire we still don't know what happened there there are no international journals there's still not a lot in like this ceasefire quote-unquote was months ago and you still like a CNN reporter a New York Times reporter or whoever it is can't just go there and interview people and see what's going on right there's still covering up the crime scene like the work crime scene is still behind yellow tape a yellow literally a yellow line that they're creating and pushing further in the Gaza for Israeli control and so look and yet we're pretending like they're going to start construction on like skyscrapers and 100 percent employment there's no stabilization force there's no way to clean the rubble there's no way to count the dead we don't even know what the death toll was in Gaza and we're we're skipping ahead to this so he can get like a nice moment at Davos for himself and talk about the board of peace and and that leads to like the last thing if you were to take that seriously like the only way that happens anything remotely like that that will never happen that the slide people didn't have the YouTube you know it's a slide of like literally looks like Dubai or Abu Dhabi which took by the way decades to build but you would essentially have to clear all the Palestinians out right there's an ethnically cleanse all of Gaza and in the past Christians talked about whether they go to the negative desert you know or maybe they'll go to Somali land that Israel is recognized and you know probably as part of Israel also pushing them out of the West Bank and and as Netanyahu said to Dana speech that he reiterated his determination to control everything from the river to the sea and he used that terminology right and he said including Gaza so you'd basically be making all of that land Israel's and but but maybe you'd carve out Gaza and some handshake deal between you know Jared Kushner and Donald Trump and and then what you're gonna build some skyscrapers I mean it's just an insane it's a certain inhumane plan but just the fact that world leaders I mean that the fact that that is possible as a presentation and that people you know have to sit and watch a slide that has bored a piece on the top of it there's something so disturbing well you know him being like we don't have a plan B well actually I think that's part of the problem because you're when your plan A is ludicrous not having a plan B is real rum so look we're we're pretty well known Kushner dislikers yeah I want you to know that it's not just us that that shares the skepticism of this proposal I want to play a clip for you then this is from comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon who's like conservative leaning and he supported Trump during collection but is a a touch less bullish on the Trump administration these days this clip comment Jared Kushner friend of the show is as is working on the redevelopment of Gaza and we wish him well and we wish him lock because by the way this isn't easy to do it is very hard to go kill a bunch of people in their families and then get them really excited to work in your hotels this is not easy I'm telling you it's not an easy thing to do it's hard to motivate your employees in a normal situation imagine if you'd killed all of their mothers it's bad it is tough I've worked these low level tourism jobs it's tough it's tough you got to be like we have a brand here when the guest comes in we focus on the guest experience you know they come in from the moment they step out of their car to the moment their head hits the pillow we focus on the guest experience you know now I know some of you are still mad about that thing we did with to your family or whatever you know we get it hey you know a lot of us feel sorry about that too we all feel sorry about it but we got to move on from that let's not let's let's leave that in 2025 leave that energy in 2025 miss me with that energy I just like it's so nice to hear someone just call out what bullshit this is so crazy I'm sorry like because we hate we don't we're no fans of Jared Kushner but actually what is interesting about Jared Kushner Steven Miller is a malevolent fascist mother-fucker okay Jared is just lives in another fucking planet right so where he's so arrogant but here's the the point because he you know he makes the right point which is we not even I'm not going to demean this plan by saying pointing at the skirty risk which is like yeah like these people on the right don't forget you know there's still mad about like hundred Biden's laptop not getting coverage imagine if all of your family was killed yeah right and and then you're suddenly the supposed to accept Jared Kushner running your life right that or he's really that's fucking bonkers right but the thing that this connects to the thing we were saying before about pushback Jared gets his ass kissed everywhere he goes you know he believes that nobody believed peace is possible until you Jared Kushner delivered it because that's what he's told by sycophants like the people that go to the premiere of the moani documentary but also by people like the 60 minutes interview that he got there was one gigantic blowjob after that thing and that's a mistake because it makes him believe he can do things like this the reason you have to start telling these Trump people the truth to their face in the media is because if you don't, they're gonna believe the smoke you blow up their ass. - The dumb fucking PowerPoint. It's a joke, it should be treated as a joke, and I don't wanna be told that I'm not hopeful or I'm like, I'm very hopeful for that. - Let's not, you know, everyone tone down the criticism. No, fuck off, you're playing the stupid, you're not qualified, like we're gonna say as much, and it doesn't mean we don't want it to be successful. We do. Before we take a break then, I wanna tell you two fun updates. So first of all, crooked media is newest book, hated by all the right people, Tucker Carlson, and the unraveling of the conservative mind is out now, it's by one of our favorite journalists, Jason Sangerly, New York Times magazine writer, great person. He gives this fascinating, informative look at Tucker's political evolution and how that rises, traces the rise of the mega movement and the fact that one political party in this country has lost its mind. He's getting amazing reviews from the Washington Post and New York Times. He was on the New Yorkers podcasts this week, if you wanna hear more. I interviewed him for Pots of America. You will love this book. Check it out, go to crooked.com/books to buy your copy of hated by all the right people. I promise you, you'll read this thing in like two or three days. It is that good. Also, I mentioned earlier that the best thing you could do to help out crooked media as a company is to become a subscriber. Also, if you want more Pots of America, we got a new show for you. So a few weeks back, we launched a new Pots of America newsletter. This Thursday, we're launching something we're called Pots of America, only friends, which is a new biweekly show featuring a rotating cast of our hosts. We're gonna dig deeper into the news of the day. We're gonna test out some new takes. We're gonna talk about things that didn't make it onto the Tuesday or the Friday Pots of America. It's basically another shot at-- - I hope you guys need me wearing our clothes. - Will you mean nude? - I mean, oh. - Basically nude. Oh, only friends. - Well, get the pun. - You know what, I don't know why it took me that long to get it. Yeah, the name makes no sense, except that it was a fun pun. It tells you nothing about what the show is. It tells you nothing about what you're gonna hear. It doesn't tell you anything. - It's a fun pun, doesn't it? - There's a lot of things you can do. - Only friends. Subscribe or to get it to go to crookin.com/friends. Subscribe, become a friend of the pod. Help us out here. And you get a new subscription show that may or may not involve full frontal. (laughs) (upbeat music) Pots of the world is brought to you by Quince, a new year colder days. This is the moment your winter wardrobe really has to deliver. If you're craving winter reset, start with pieces truly made to last season after season. 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So as those of us know, like there were these massive protests in Iran, started with these merchants who were mad about inflation in the economy that spread to the entire country and they were calls for regime change. And then Trump was encouraging the protesters. He told protesters he'd rescue them if the regime cracked down. Then even after that cracked down, he encouraged them to take over Iran's institutions. And then the regime cracked down and massacred thousands, thousands of people and Trump did nothing. And so we're learning more and more about how that crack down occurred. The New York Times is really worth reading. Big report on it that was out earlier this week. - Chilling. - Yeah, really chilling. Lots of videos, lots of first-person testimonial. Really worth your time. But some key dates are basically they have reported that on January 9th, the Supreme Leader told his National Security Council to crush the protests by any means necessary. And that security forces were told to shoot and kill with no mercy. And that by January 12th, the whole thing was crushed. But again, the videos that are awful, they're horrifying beyond words. The official death toll from the government is 3,117 human rights groups, say it's thousands to thousands more. And then you countless people are hurt or blinded. So highly recommend reading the Times piece. But one of the reasons Trump didn't order a military strike on Iran was despite promising to intervene, he didn't have the military assets in place to do so. Now he does. On Monday, Trump told Axios that he now has a quote, "Big Armada next to Iran, bigger than Venezuela." End quote. This was a reference to the arrival of the Middle East of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is an aircraft carrier that is being escorted by three warships that fire Tomahawk missiles. The U.S. also sent a bunch of F-15s to the Middle East and they sent more Patriot and Thad missile systems to the region that could be used to defend our bases there or defend Israel. So at the same time though, you've got Trump saying Iran wants to talk. Iran wants to make a deal. I want to make a deal kind of like same old taken both sides. So the question that is like what is he going to do? Is he going to order air strikes now that the protests are crushed? Blissers might be wondering why on earth would you do that? And like, I don't know. I think the answer is, Trump only cares about its legacy and being seen as a historic figure. And I'm sure Lindy Graham is saying to him, like you topple Maduro and then you topple the Supreme Leader in the Iranian regime, you are like the most historic president to ever war the earth. - You're Reagan plus. But like, I don't know. What do you think is going to happen? What are you watching for? - So we should just say clearly what happened is horrific. Clearly the regime crushed peaceful protest and continues to kill protestors and harm protestors and it's fucking terrible. And people should feel a sense of deep solidarity with Iranians who are risking everything. I mean, when you see that kind of crack then, it also speaks of the courage of the people that are protesting. I would look for three potential things. One is he puts them there to show force and he kind of claims that they back down they canceled executions like he said last time. Maybe there's some diplomatic process around the nuclear deal or whatever, like a new nuclear deal. The second scenario is the one I think I'm starting to take pretty seriously, which is actually a Venezuelan scenario, which is this armada starts to blockade, right? 'Cause I think Trump, if he thinks something worked for him, he likes to do it again. And what would that look like? Well, you kind of blockade Iran. You try to like cut off its ability to sell oil. Maybe you start to seize tankers, like we saw in Venezuela. And then maybe what he's talking about with a deal is he's gonna try to decapitate the regime. He's gonna try to kill the supreme leader in some kind of strike or maybe kill a whole bunch of Iranian leaders in targeted airstrikes is probably a lot of Israeli intelligence on where those people are. And try to find the Delci Rodriguez inside, maybe you don't think you're gonna fly in the Shah or his son to take over. Maybe Trump's gonna try to find somebody from within that system that will be like his strong man that he can say I got rid of the regime, but really he's still dealing with the regime. I'm not, that sounds like easier than it is. The Iranian regime is a lot easier. - Good luck finding this source to work with. - This is an even bigger and more intense regime than the Venezuelan one. But I think that this might be something that he has in mind because he thinks it worked from Venezuela, by the way we still don't know that it worked from Venezuela, we'll see how that goes. And then the third thing is he goes there, he bombs some stuff, he kind of does it in a very calibrated way though. So it's kind of messaging to the Iranians, like hey I gotta do this to save face. Don't hit us back too hard 'cause we're just gonna get out of here and then everybody moves on with their lives. The Iranian regime's still there. Trump's still like a big tough guy and that's it. Which is by the way, what happened in the 12th century? of they were. So the new scenario is the decapitation one. It's kind of a Maduro-like operation. And I would take that seriously as a possibility. And again, I think that's a terrible idea. Not because I don't have solidary at the Iranian protesters I do, but I'm just asking you to look at our track record. I don't trust Donald Trump, you know, to govern this country. I certainly wouldn't try to put Marco Rubio in charge of another country. Yeah, look, and the risk here is like you put all these military assets into the region. People start the pressure builds to do something with them kind of like what happened in Venezuela. Yeah, I guess we'll find out. Two more things. So folks here know that we're not big fans of FBI director Cash Patel. He's not qualified to do the job. He's a liar. He's more interested in social media and kind of like fucking around the doing his job. And so Ben and I equally read this big New York Times magazine piece on Cash's first year in charge at the FBI. It was mostly kind of like a sobering frightening look at the various absurdities and ways that abuse is happening under his watch or weakening the FBI and the politicization of the entire organization. But there are also some hilarious details about what a loser he is. So here's one Ben. Back in May, Cash was scheduled to attend a secret conference of the Five Eyes. It's happening in London. The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance between the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Apparently the trouble started when Cash seemed to misunderstand that this was a work event and not a vacation. And so instead of boring meetings, he wanted activities like he wanted to go to a premier league soccer game. He wanted to go jet skiing and he wanted a helicopter tour. And according to this source, quote, his staff only cared about three things. What his meals were when his workouts would be and what his entertainment would be. End quote, there's also a little power struggle over a private photo taken of some of these intel officials with the King of England to be as some of them are undercover, they're undisclosed. And Cash wanted to post the photo on social media because he's a fucking teenager. And then we learned more detail about the ways that Cash helped bungle the manhunt for Charlie Kirk's killer for those first few days. So apparently there was like an agency coordination call as the manhunt was ongoing. Usually it's like experts laying down facts and they're trying to figure out how best to pursue the case. But here is how it was described in the piece. Patel and Budgiano started talking about their Twitter strategy. And Cash is like, I'm gonna tweet this, Salt Lake, you tweet that, Dan, you come in with this, then I'll come back with this. They're literally scripting out their social media, not talking about how we're gonna respond or resources or the situation. He's screaming that he wants to put stuff out, but it's not even vetted yet. It's not even accurate. And remember, he was putting a disinformation about the case claiming they caught somebody when they hadn't. And then last thing then, there was a vanity fair piece on Cash's girlfriend, who is this like wannabe country music star. And it was mostly boring, but the funny part about it was I didn't realize that she's got this kind of like salt to the earth, camera wearing, country singer persona, but her dad was an executive at Gillette. And she lived in the UK for a while and even went to a Swiss boarding school that was described as posh. So yeah, yeah, yeah, really, you know, drinking beer and eating chicken wings. Yeah, exactly right. Any takeaways about our guy, Cash? Yeah, I think, first of all, on the stuff at Premier League was great and like morning all these events, because there are these different permutations of Trump officials. There are the complete died in the world, Joseph Goebel's fascist, like Stephen Miller, who want to impose like a white supremacist, you know, fantasy. There are the grifters, like, like, you know, Jared and Steve Woodcoff and, you know, the people getting rich on world liberty, financial and crypto schemes. What's the nickname for Benino, one-third right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. And then there are just people that are like living fantasy camp. Yeah, you know, like Cash is fantasy. He goes to Quantico to like do stuff with the agents. He wants to wear like gear, like everything goes up the windbreaker. But the substantive thing that jumped out to me from this piece that should be alarming to Americans. And again, speaks to the fact that a lot of the damage of the Trump administration is going to show up in the medium term and the long term, and they'll try to pass the buck for it. Is there just man telling the FBI's capabilities in all these other spaces? And there are a lot of these agents who are getting fired, who are quoted in this story, who are like, nobody's working on, you know, cyber anymore. Nobody's working on cartels anymore. 20% of the workforce is doing immigration and force. They're doing immigration enforcement. You got FBI agents, and they're counting arrests that are like actually made by other agencies. There's happened to be their own thing. Yeah. And so this, this, this, this domestic police and intelligence force that is supposed to stop terrorist attacks, fight cartels, disrupt cyber attacks, all these things is basically becoming this like extension of Trump and cash portals, personal interest. Like ice and CBP basically. You are not, you are less safe because of that. And, and I think it's very useful that this is being cataloged because when, you know, when, whether it's cartel violence, terrorist violence, cyber crime, like you'll know that one of the reasons why that, that stuff is going to start getting worse is because it's like literally he's taking the cops off the beat. Yeah, because cash had to take the PJ to to Nashville to see his girlfriends sing it. There's a SWAT team in Nashville that all they do is follow her route. It's crazy. Yeah. It's absolutely insane. Finally, Ben, you know, a couple times a day, I think, you know, I both like you're scrolling through Twitter. You see something and you basically just want to like throw your phone at the ocean and then maybe run after it and stay down there. Here's one example. I saw an image promoting. You and I both shared this with each other of the upcoming Riyadh real estate future forum. This is an event where, according to their PR materials, "thought leaders from across the globe gathered to tackle pressing challenges, uncover emerging trends, and redefine business models that will shape the industry's next chapter. Here are some of the speakers in the lineup. Hillary Clinton is doing a talk that will frame quote, real estate and infrastructure as downstream expressions of governance, credibility, and sustained global alignment. I have no idea what any of that gibberish means. Tucker Carlson will talk about how, quote, how media platforms influence public understanding at moments of political, economic, and social transition. I guess he is an expert on how media platforms can spread disinformation in Ripper Country Apart. And then their additional speakers include Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, Pearson Morgan, Richard Branson, John Kerry, and then like everybody. And then David Cameron's making an appearance. Oh good, David Cameron, and then like 100 Deloitte executives for some reason. So the conference is happening as Riyadh is finally allowing foreign developers to apply for projects in Saudi Arabia. Okay, great. But let's be real like that's not what this is. And it's also worth noting that as long as we're talking about real estate, the financial time just reported that the idiotic 110 mile long single building mega city project called the line that we've been pillorying on this show for years now has been quote, radically scaled back. Who could have seen that coming? We did. But Ben, like the takeaway. It's a data center now, I think. Oh really? I think I saw a report that it's going to be a data center. Yeah, the line's going to be a data center. Yeah. Perfect. Here's my takeaway. Maybe it's the data center that wrote the AI that is going to be those speeches. Yeah, that's good. That's that's the oral easy. I wrote the marketing materials. Yeah, certainly the marketing. That sounded like a very first draft of chat. It sure did. Here's the thing. I Boris Johnson, Pearson Morgan, like I have no. God bless. Whatever they do. They do. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Secretary Kerry, Tony Blair, Richard Branson of all people. Do you really need this fucking money? Is this money worth the reputational hit to you because you are rich. You don't need to buddy up to MBS. I realize we lost this fight. 2018 was a long time ago. Nobody's talking about Jamal Kishouji anymore. But like it's gross. And it's embarrassing for you. And it makes the government look bad. It makes the democratic party look bad. And you don't need to do this. You don't need to go to this event. I think you're absolutely right. And look, I'll try to kind of even meet halfway where some other people might be in the sense that like I get it. We live in the world as it is. Tidal my first book. Mark Carney, like Dr. Colton, right? No, well, it's just my realism says, yeah, Saudi Arabia. We're going to be dealing with them. You know, like I get it. The 2018 moment's gone. I also got that ex officials give paid speeches and get paid to do it. Still, you don't need to go Bill and Hillary Clinton or John Kerry. The kind of disbembered. The democratic, well, there's that. But there's also just like the democratic parties. We all, every post-mortem of the election, the last several elections is like we're seeing as like too close to the global elites and we're out of touch with the working class. And you're really going to sit here, you know, just like Clintons and and post on, you know, about the need to stand up for the working class or need for like middle-class economics or against authoritarianism. We're against the authoritarianism. We, you know, we stand up for democracy. You know, Hillary had a post of it. It's a good year to fight for democracy, I remember, like a years. And then you're going to be on a poster for like the Saudi real estate development conference with Boris Johnson. I mean, that doesn't just impact your reputation. It impacts the entire democratic parties reputation. It really does. And you don't need that money. Like, how is your life going to be materially different without that particular speaking piece? And by the way, I'm not saying don't do any of it either. Like I get it. Do whatever. Just don't get fucking Saudi conference. Sorry, we're discussing when there was a comedy festival there. Yeah, this is gross too. Someone vets things and just says, you know, well, we don't need to do that one. You know, like that, that's fine. We can do the, you know, whatever the other one is. You go, I just, you got to be able to do some things. Draw line. That's all I'm asking depressing pen. Okay. And by the way, what is another one last thing? What are they getting at it? Like, do you really think any of the people attending? It's so funny to me, the people. because they pay these fees 'cause they like that they come to re-ad. Does anyone that audience gonna come out smarter about real estate? Because of anything that any of those politicians would say? And I'm not hitting the politicians, and it's just like, they're gonna go mail in these speeches. It's so funny to me that people go to these things and listen to stuff. Tony Blair is like, you got to use vinyl siding. Yeah, yeah, under the semblance. That's how you repel heat. You're really gonna learn something-- You need sheet rock. Yeah, we'll stop again, the Americans. Is Boris Johnson really gonna tell you something that is useful for your real estate-- I'm talking about brass pipes. Why they're the way it's fucking ridiculous. It's a joke, it's a boondoggle, it's stupid. Every news app. Yeah, every news app. Okay, that's it for the news worse in the show. But I'll sit around for my interview with Ken Throeson, the author of the book, Polar War, Submarine Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic. We talked about Greenland, the Arctic. Why the United States might actually want to have more access there. So really good conversation. Listen up. [MUSIC PLAYING] Positive World is brought to you by Rocket Money. What is the most ridiculous subscription or hidden for you discovered you were paying for? Hannah and I signed up to some international streaming service to watch one episode of One Show. And forgot about the show. This is during the pandemic. And then forgot about the subscription. And I forgot about it for like four years. I got like a Nintendo Wii two places I lived ago. And you've just subscribed to something to get more games or whatever. I don't know what the hell it was. But I couldn't figure out until Rocket Money. I couldn't figure out how to even cancel the subscription. I was trying out the emails. But then you needed a code for something. It is outrageous how hard they make it to cancel stuff. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps finding cancel your unwanted subscriptions. Candidators are spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money allows you to track subscriptions and cancel them within the app with just a few taps saving you time and helping you avoid charges. You can even categorize automatic transactions across your accounts and customize categories with tags to help shed light on your spending patterns. Set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports on your spending habits. You can even receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The Rocket Money app can even consolidate your checking savings loans and investment accounts into a single dashboard to give you a clear picture of your finances. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/world. That's rocketmoney.com/world. Rocketmoney.com/world. Pots of the world is brought to you by SimplySafe when it comes to home security. You want to feel like you picked the system that actually keeps trouble away. Not one that just tells you something that has already happened. That's why you need SimplySafe home security. It's not just another alarm. It's designed to help stop crime before it starts. SimplySafe uses AI-powered cameras outside your home to spot real threats and instantly alert live agents. And this is what makes it different from the rest. These agents actually take action while the intruder is still outside. They talk to them through the camera, let them know they're being watched and the police are on the way. And if needed, they can blast a siren and light them up with a spotlight. Other systems might give you a camera and a notification, but they need you to see the alert and handle it. SimplySafe's monitoring agents have your back, even when you're busy, asleep, or on a plane. They're protecting over 5 million Americans and have been named best home security systems by US News and World Report for five years in a row. As you guys know, John Levitt set up a SimplySafe all by himself. He said it was incredibly easy to do, gave him peace of mind when he was away or when he was home, frankly. You can turn it on and off from your phone. The app is really great. The technology is both advanced but also easy to do yourself. And right now you can get 50% off any new system this month only. It's a great time to upgrade to security that actually helps.crime before it starts. Go to SimplySafe.com/CricketWorld. That's SimplySafe.com/CricketWorld. There's no safe like SimplySafe. I'm excited to be joined by Kenneth R. Rose in the author of the book Polar War. Submarines, spies in the struggle for power and emelting Arctic, which came out earlier this month. As a foreign correspondent, he's reported from all over the world places like Iraq, Syria, Ukraine. And for this book, he traveled all over the Arctic via, among other modes of transportation. A 12-seater plane, a Norwegian icebreaker, a US Coast Guard cutter. Sounds like a hell of an adventure reporting out this book. Kenneth, great to meet you. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It's great to be here. Thank you for doing the show, coming in all the way from Massachusetts, which is also a bit snowy at the moment. But enough about that. So, earlier on the show, Ben and I, my co-host, dug into Trump's framework for a future deal with respect to Greenland, whatever that means. I'm wondering if you can kind of help us break through the bullshit and outline for listeners why one like a rational person might see value in the Arctic and in Greenland. And what the strategic importance of those places are for the US or other great powers right now. Greenland is a standard for the importance of the circumpolar North writ large and the lack of American visibility in that region. So, with respect to Greenland specifically, I feel as though the Trump administration hasn't focused enough on central Europe and into China. What we'll probably see out of Greenland's framework, quote-unquote, that he struck up with the Secretary General of NATO will be similar to how he ramped up taxes and tariffs on China only to bring it back down to a negotiated deal to the same rate that it was before he was president and claim a victory. So, we already have a lot of access to Greenland's minerals, which is a primary function of their location in the high North and the melting Arctic, providing for access to rare earth minerals and oil and natural gas and, among other things, a lot that would go to benefiting our national defense industries and also our so-called push for renewable energy sources. But when it comes down to it, the framework seems to me to be something that will eventually end up being akin to what we already have, which is an agreement to lease a military base in the North of the country and carte blanche to be able to mine and explore and get extractive industries into the country, Greenland, wherever we want. So, whether or not it's a real win, I don't believe it will be. I think it'll be more of the same that we see now just packaged and presented differently. Yeah. So, obviously, I mean, I think everyone listening to this show is thinks climate change is bad. It's an ecological disaster. I don't want to live underwater, neither do you. But as the world heats up in the polar ice caps melt, what are the economic and military opportunities for the United States, for the Russians, for the Chinese that has everybody scrambling to get more access to the Arctic? Well, isn't it interesting to see so many nation states virtually agreeing that climate change exists by virtue of going after access to the North, right? So, for all President Trump's bella-coast rhetoric about climate change not being real, there's an admission there underneath at all to say, well, something's happening up North and we're going to go after it. But with the Arctic region warming four to five times faster than the rest of the world, we're seeing more and more maritime activity in the North. That comes in the form of both commercial and cruise passageways, passages that are going through the Northwest passage and also the Northeast passage. And that's the most concerning part for the U.S. is the way that Russia has teamed up with China in order to open up what China's called a polar silk road, right? So, they're having more and more liquid natural gas shipments and more and more access to an area that otherwise would have been ice bound for most of the year. It would also potentially the way Russia is selling it short in the current commercial vessel traffic through the Swiss canal instead 14 to 10 days over the top of Russia. And so it would be a boon to industries in the maritime sphere, but we're also seeing the effects of climate change displacing indigenous communities and those indigenous communities have historically protected and offered access to natural resources in our backyard in Alaska. So while it's displacing people, we're also seeing nations rush up there in the hopes of perhaps claiming a stake to long ice bound resources and opportunities for expansion. Yeah. So, you know, I think Trump is right when he says Russia's been getting been pretty busy in the Arctic. They've been reviving and modernizing old bases. I believe Russia has big nuclear-powered icebreakers. Quick quiz. How many does the U.S. have? Zero. One and it's often under repair and Seattle and China has already turned out about twelve northward or twelve in the last several years. And it's not that Russia is now making its stance in the Arctic. It's always been an Arctic nation. I mean, it's the largest Arctic stakeholder by virtue of geography and the fact that 60% of its country is underling by permafrost. So it's a big deal climate change for the Russians, for the Russian Federation. It's something of an existential threat to both their national security and to their production of liquid natural gas and oil and their bastion defense in the north. The Russian nuclear fleet is based in the Arctic. So the Russia has been there for a long time and then the most the two most recent national security frameworks for the states, national security strategies have said that China is a pacing threat, but fair to mention the notion that Russia has been there a long time and there's no catching up to them. We have to just work with them and understand that they are there and we are nowhere near being there. Well, yeah, so I mean, yes, their way had what is the truth about China's presence because you know they call themselves a new Arctic state Trump worries a lot about Chinese presence in the Arctic. But then I saw I think a former head of NATO. say he hadn't seen a Chinese naval ship in the Arctic for a decade. So it's like, what the hell does it mean to be near Arctic? How much should we be concerned about what China's doing? So I don't know about the Arctic writ large. I mean, there are Chinese vessels off the coast of Alaska frequently conducting naval exercises with the Russian military and the Russian naval fleet, which is more concerning. Because like you know, they're just not in Greenland. They're not around Greenland. They have paired up with Russia to open up this northern sea, northeastern sea route. But you have to also recognize, as I'm sure you do, that Russia doesn't want to welcome in a hostile nation into its backyard as well. So while it's relying on them, China to fund some of the development along the coastline in the hopes of having infrastructure for this proposed sea route, they also don't want to give away too much of what is their sovereign territory. So they're not a threat in the way that Trump and the White House have messaged it as they are a threat in other parts, primarily in the Arctic ocean to the north of Russia, and then also off our maritime borders with Russia off Alaska. - Got it. A big theme in the book is you talk about how far behind the US military is in the Arctic. I mean, there's challenges with infrastructure. There's lack of training for cold weather warfare. The general lack of focus on the region at the Pentagon does seem like, you know, we're now more interested in bombing Venezuela. Maybe Iran, stay tuned, I guess. Like, what do we need to do? What does the US need to do to catch up in the Arctic or to be prepared for sort of like cold weather, whatever, and what did stake do you think if we do not? - I think in order to prepare the US to be more of an Arctic nation as it was during the Cold War, we have to work more regularly with our partners who are Arctic nations who do have military unit station in the high north regularly. We have the 11th Airborne Division, but they are often relegated to I guess now, potentially going to Minnesota and Minneapolis and helping ICE detain illegal aliens. So there's no real American fighting force that is solely focused on Arctic warfare and cold weather warfare. And when we do send troops over to train with our partners in NATO who have Arctic territory, it's often very quick and very short. And then those same soldiers are deployed to the Pacific or the Middle East and they lose all that knowledge of how to operate in the north. I think what's at stake is not only the transatlantic partnership by virtue of these training exercises and shared knowledge exercises with our partners who are better at it, but just a sense of identity in the north, we had prided ourselves on being an Arctic nation because of Alaska, because we built a transatlaska pipeline, because we were able to have that petroleum reserves that would benefit us in the case of a global catastrophe. Now we're just sort of puttering around without the resources and the abilities, the infrastructure to operate up there. We don't even have a deep water port in the Arctic. The one that's being built known is not gonna be done for 10 years. So I don't think we're gonna catch up. I think we have to really rely on these partners who have helped us in the past. And there's some great stories in the book that highlight how much we've leaned on them, our partners to get stuff done in an Arctic, to move forward in a more productive way. Who's good up there? Who's we lean on, like the Finland? Norway, man. I mean, Norway, we also, we have the Americans. Us, we, them, have most of our NATO listening posts that are giving us intelligence on what Russia is currently doing, both on the coal up in insula, where the Russian nuclear fleet is stationed, but also deeper into the country. All that infrastructure is based in northern Norway. We also position Reaper drones and military units in the north of Norway continuously. But we also are threatening the sovereignty of another NATO member and denigrating and degrading that relationship. So the Norwegians are phenomenal. I am better with the Swedish armed forces. They were phenomenal. And they all had a coolness about the way they operated in the north of real comfort level. But then when I embedded with the Americans, both in Alaska and in the Arctic Ocean, it just seemed that they were beaten down and weathered, literally and figuratively. That's not good. You just mentioned this at the top. And curious what your conversations were like with people who actually live in the Arctic, particularly indigenous folks who make up about 10% of the population. I mean, what do they make of this, like kind of, all of a sudden being seen as a pawn of this battle between superpowers and Trump yelling about Greenland and whatever? I mean, it's demeaning. It's demoralizing. Especially when their focus had many of their separate communities. And we're talking about indigenous groups that run the gamut of Inuit, Enupiac, all them in between. I've been looking for independence and a connection to the government to facilitate their needs, to maintain their sustenant lifestyles, subsistence lifestyles, that have been degraded by climate change and also the incursion of industry. So when you have a president who's talking about taking a sovereign nation, and that nation had since 2008 sought to reach self-determination and independence from the Kingdom of Denmark, that sidelines a whole discussion and their whole journey toward the same democracy that the US has purported to one for other countries around the world. And that's the most demeaning part. They've now been cast aside almost a second time, both when they were colonized. And now, again, when they're forced to almost be recolonized. Yeah, it's horrible. I mean, final question for you. I mean, you spent years on this book. You were all over the Arctic, you traveling to incredibly difficult to reach places. I imagine it was grueling, but at times really cool. Was there like a moment or an experience or a thing you witnessed, a beluga whale that stepped up and said, hi, that you kind of remember that you could tell us about? I think the most daunting and impressing thing that I experienced was when I was embedded with the Norwegian Coast Guard. And they asked me if I wanted to do a fisheries inspection. And the Arctic Ocean is in a calm ocean. It was cold, and it was windy. And we boarded a small little 10-foot, 15-foot vessel in order to reach the trawler that we were going to go inspect. And we pulled away from the icebreaker, headed toward the trawler, and both ships disappeared because the waves came so high. And we sunk to the bottom of the wave crest and couldn't see anything. And we pull up to the trawler and all the crew, the three of us, or the four of us, and me included looked at each other and I'm like, all right, we're jumping onto the pilot's ladder. And I was like, OK, I've never done that. And one after another, jump off the front of the boat and hop onto a ladder. And as they do that, the small boat pulls away in reverse so that if you fall, you don't crack your head open on the small boat, but you go into the water, and hopefully they could save you that way. So it came up to my turn. And the whole book was laid out in front of me. I had many other trips ahead of me. I had all these other interviews lined up. And I said, well, I got two kids at home. And if I don't make this, it's not that the book doesn't come out. I'll just look like an idiot in front of the Norwegian Coast Guard and only solidify this notion about Americans being incapable in the Arctic. But I stuck the landing and I crawled up the ladder and made it onto the ship. And I felt like the rest of the book would come together in the same way, just through sheer grit and will. My God. I think we've all seen those viral TikToks of the North Sea or whatever, 60-foot waves and hurricane conditions. Absolutely not. I would have thrown up so many times. Were you puking off the side? I puked on a boat off the coast of Greenland during a really bad storm. But that was the only time. I was in a birth. And the birth was maybe nine feet long. And I'm about six and a half feet tall. And I just remember toe-head, toes-head being jerked back around in this little birth. And it was a real humbling experience, though. I mean, when you travel and you experience these other places and the way people live there, you come back to your comfortable lifestyle and realize that you have it really, really good. Amen to that. That is good perspective. And it also helped birth an incredible book, a polar war, submarine spies and the struggle for power and a melting Arctic. Buy it right now, Kenneth R. Rosen. Thank you for joining the show. Thanks, man. [MUSIC PLAYING] All right. Thanks again to Kenneth Rosen for joining the show and talk to you guys next week. [MUSIC PLAYING] Potsy of the world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alonam and Kofsky. 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