How Will the Blue Wave Change US Foreign Policy? (Live from Crooked Con)

What's up World News! Wow. Alright, I love you back. I love you Ben Rutz. I love you too, man. I love everybody right now, right? Well, not everybody, but most people. Most people. Not you, Stephen Miller. Welcome to Pod Save the World, live from CrookedCon. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rutz. How of an election we had Tuesday, huh? Yeah, did that happen? That's a thing that happened in the world. That was wild. Ben was in Istanbul, Turkey where. On brand. When things go badly, tanks are in the streets in elections. In elections, so it was exciting. It does seem like Trump is ready to take a lesson from the result. Extend a hand. Yeah. Name Steve Miller, chief of staff. Really an olive branch that he extended there with Harry Miller. Yeah, it's good stuff. So, as you all know, Ben and I are card-carrying globalists here at Crooked Media. So today we want to talk about the impact of the election in particular on U.S. foreign policy. So we want to focus on the Iran war. And how we might end it. We want to talk about how our election folds into this broader fight against right-wing populism and authoritarianism. And then Ben and I are going to do a little wish-casting for the 2028 Democratic Party field. Things we hope they will talk about. Absolutely. There are going to be like 400 of them. We'll be quick. We should be able to snag like one candidate to talk about our stuff. So that's the first part of the show. That'll be our A Block. Then we are going to welcome Congressman Jason Crow. And Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari to the stage. To talk about opportunity for Democrats on Capitol Hill to conduct oversight and hold the Trump administration accountable for its terrible corrupt foreign policy. But first, the midterms were clearly a referendum on the Iran war. Voters hated it. It drove up gas prices. It led to more inflation. It was a broken promise. And they rendered a clear verdict. To the point where. Donald Trump, I think in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, conceded that the Iran war was, quote, a piece of why they lost. Vice President J.D. Vance went a little further. He tweeted the following. The reason we lost is the war. But, Ben, despite that clarity, Pete Hegseth has not been fired. There's no meaningful progress that we've seen on peace talks. The U.S. still has 50,000 service members and two aircraft carriers in the region that could strike Iran at any time. And so the war is no closer to being over. And the question is, how can Democrats force Donald Trump's hand? One point of leverage is a government funding deadline on December 11th. The government has been funded up to that date. If it's not extended, there will be a government shutdown. A lot of progressives are saying Democrats should insert language into that funding bill that says none of this money can be used to wage war with Iran. And that is how the Vietnam War ended. It feels like a no-brainer politically, Ben. I guess the question is, like, what does that then mean in practice? Is Iran just kind of de facto in charge of this trade of Hormuz? How are you thinking about this? First of all, it's been made very clear to Donald Trump that the American people absolutely reject this war. It is an absolute bipartisan feeling. And so elections should have consequences. People want this war to end. And I think we can make a mistake that, you know, assuming that we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't cut off funding because it could leave a mess, it could leave the trade of Hormuz open. That presupposes that if we funded it, these people would competently with a plan end the war. Right. And they're not going to do that. In fact, we've seen them bomb Iran. We've seen them bomb Iran twice during negotiations. We've seen Donald Trump threaten to commit war crimes and bomb civilian infrastructure as part of his plan to escalate. We know if that happens, the Iranians will hit targets across the Middle East. Gas prices will keep to go up. People will continue to get killed. And so, first of all, the Democratic Party should be responsive to its voters and not provide another dollar for this war. And then in terms of what happens, there are countries in the region who are trying to negotiate the end of the war. They're not waiting for the United States to do it because nobody fucking believes that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff can or will end this war. And so, look, a lot of people want the trade of Hormuz open. The people in the Gulf want the trade of Hormuz open. The Qataris who are negotiating with the Iranians right now want the trade of Hormuz open. So I think if you pull the plug on the war, you pull the plug on the fight. If you pull the plug on the war, you pull the plug on the funding. People that actually know how to negotiate things will be in a better position to get a deal to reopen that strait than if we just continue a war. So we have to be willing to step. You know, oftentimes we accept the uncertainty of the war over the uncertainty of ending it. We have to reverse that paradigm. The paradigm should be that we want peace. We want the war to end. And that we will, frankly, leave it to people in the Middle East who have a shared stake in the war. We have to have a shared stake in this to get that done. You don't think Pete Hegseth is the guy? He's at the top of my list, by the way. There's a long, excellent TikTok story about the midterms and the results from The New York Times. My favorite anecdote then was they were holding White House Situation Room meetings where their pollsters were telling them how bad the war was polling. And so they talked about ways to hide it from the American people. That's what we should expect from these people if we don't end it. So let's take a second to dig into this op-ed-length Twitter screed from J.D. Vance. For those who didn't read it, congratulations. Here's part of it. Quote, "The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night, kind of. If you'd like to argue it was worth it that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any conversation about where we go from here must start there." Vance in that tweet also names the U.S. relationship with Israel as a top four issue Republican voters that left the party are mad about. So I just found this to be just the perfect Vance-ian text. You know, he's like Tim Robinson in the hot dog costume saying we're all trying to figure out who did this. And also, like, again, what Trump said to The Wall Street Journal was, yeah, the Iran war was part of why we lost, but also that I'd do it again and that it was the right thing to do. What did you make of J.D. Vance's spin here? What crowd is he appealing to? I mean, there's so many remarkable things about these times. One is that the vice president of the United States does, in his typically pedantic form, an op-ed-length tweet as if he's not a member of the administration that launched the war. It's just an observer. As if he didn't go out and, like, defend the war. And, look, I think it's pretty pathetic that he had to write several hundred words on X to try to get himself booked on Tucker Carlson. But, like, he's clearly preparing to run for president. And he's clearly preparing to run for president with the idea that he can somehow both inherit the mantle of MAGA and say, I was against all the shitty things, though, that have happened when, frankly, everything that has happened is shitty. And he is responsible for it. I do think that the important point here, though, is there actually is an opportunity in this moment, which is that we've lived through 25 years of war. And the one thing that has total bipartisan support in this country -- because J.D. Vance -- J.D. Vance doesn't believe a thing. Right? J.D. Vance just got his finger to the wind here. But the one thing that is clear is that people don't want this. People don't want the war in Iran. They don't want the forever wars in the Middle East. They don't want to spend a trillion and a half dollars on defense. And we cannot let J.D. Vance claim the anti-war mantle. Right. Like, this has to be -- the Democratic Party -- We let Trump do that. Yeah. The Democratic Party is the anti -- we let Trump do it. We let Trump do it three times. The Democratic Party has to be the anti-war party. The Democratic Party has to be the party that is not going to get us into trouble. That is not going to get us into other wars. The Democratic Party has to be the party that's going to dismantle the apparatus of the war on terror. The Democratic Party has to be the party that's going to stop spending a trillion dollars on defense and stop bombing other people's children and start investing in our children. And J.D. Vance can't -- you know, he can tweet all he wants. Yeah. He's not the guy. He is not the guy. All right. So we've talked a lot on Pod Save the World about the growing strength of right-wing populists and authoritarian governments. This was happening in Latin America, where there were seven consecutive right-wing presidential victories starting in 2025. Earlier this year, we saw the far-right AFD party make huge gains in Germany, including winning some major regional elections outright. The far-right Nationalist Party -- The National Rally Party is leading in the polls ahead of France's 2027 presidential election. But then last month, Alexander Vucic, the longtime autocratic leader of Serbia, was toppled by a protest movement led by students. In Brazil, President Lula da Silva pulled off a shocking upset to defeat the right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro in a presidential runoff. For those who don't know Flavio, he is the Don Jr. of Brazil. So the pendulum feels like it's swinging back. Ben, how do you think our midterm election result fits into that story? Because, you know, we've talked about all the ways that these elections kind of. are interconnected and kind of take solidarity from each other. Yeah, I think that one of the things we've learned over the last decade is that there's a lot of interconnectivity between what's happening in the world. And so the authoritarians have had the momentum. So there's been a symbiosis between Vucic in Serbia, a Viktor Orban in Hungary, a Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, a Donald Trump in the United States, a Bolsonaro family in Brazil. Unfortunately, I could go on. And they've tried to create and have actually succeeded in some cases in creating a sense of inevitability, right? That this is just happening, that this is the direction of global politics. And you should be made to be so cynical by what's happening that you think that nothing really matters or so apathetic about what's happening that you think that you can have no power, that you don't even have agency. That there are these forces in the world that are bigger than you. These technological forces, these oligarchs, this rampant inequality in the world, this nationalism that is on the rise everywhere. There's a version of a culture war everywhere. And they just want us to give up. And unfortunately, for the better part of the last decade, America has been on the wrong side of this equation, right? It helped aid these groups and help bring them together through organizations like CPAC and a lot of right-wing billionaire money. We've really been, you know, kind of lighting the fire here. We've been both in a very practical sense, like you just said. Trump and the MAGA movement has been the actual international, right? And also in the sense of momentum, as I travel a lot, when people see what's happening in the United States, when they see the tableau at our inauguration, they think this is the most powerful country in the world. Right? There's. There's this kind of unstoppable momentum. But they don't get to decide. We get to decide what the momentum of things is. And I can tell you, I was in Istanbul and I was with activists from all across the world the day our election went down. And these people from all over the world were in tears. And they were saying things to me like, that's the America that I thought was gone. This is the America that I thought, you know, I had people from Africa, from Asia talking to me about the statewide races in Texas, about, you know, Annie Andrews in South Carolina, about congressional districts coming in from Colorado. What we have to realize here is that we are all in this together. I mean, I, I knew that some of the organizers from Serbia, from Brazil, we, we can share and learn from one another. What strategy? We can learn what strategies work. We can learn what communication strategies work. We can learn what kind of populism works. But most of all, we can stand together in a sense of solidarity and see that you can overthrow a dictator in Serbia at the ballot box. They said Bolsonaro was inevitable after the first round of the election. He was not inevitable. Trump looked inevitable here after 2024 election. We just found out that we had the biggest political realignment of my lifetime at the ballot box. Here and everybody saw that around the world. So there's nothing inevitable about the AFD or about Marine Le Pen or about all of these people like week. This wave that happened here, this blue wave that happened here is a wave that can spread around the entire world. Not because it's just us, because it's us and all these other people around the world who don't want the far right, who don't want nationalism and want to actually reclaim power from the people that have taken it away from us. Yeah. And there's common threads and commonalities. Common themes. I mean, one incredibly potent issue in in Serbia, in Israel was corruption. And it's been a potent issue here. But we have to connect the role of corruption in the cost of living and how it's making your life worse. Another common thread is just modernizing our communications tools. Lula da Silva reportedly did not own a smartphone until after the first round of the Brazilian elections. He got one before the runoff. And then he handed over his campaign to this younger, more digitally savvy set of advisers who literally built something called Lula's Army, like a 10 million person strong WhatsApp group to put out instructions and messaging every day that brought literally millions of more people to the polls. And I also think like one of the things that was so remarkable about Serbia was that it was entirely anti-establishment. I mean, it was these students who led the protests and then they built a list of candidates. That was completely outside of politics. It was professors, an actor, a basketball player, like people who were just not tied to the corrupt system. And then they won. And so it's just it's a lesson of where the electorate is everywhere and how to harness those like powerful emotions and actually win elections. Yeah. And to give people power like Lula's Army wasn't just messaging to it. It gave people something to do. You have agency like you can do something here. And your corruption point is so important because it's not just about democracy in the abstract. You know, it's not just like we want to defend institutions. It's about no. We want power. We want governments to solve our problems instead of just enriching these people over here. And so we can unify all the different messages around the economy, cost of living, corruption, war. It's all one message that we have to communicate about who has power in the world today. And then we got to do something with it. OK. So pretty much. Every Democrat in Washington is about to run for president and the world is their oyster in terms of sketching out a new policy, a foreign policy agenda in vision. So Ben and I, we have our little kind of internal wish list and we want to do a speed round of things. We just want to hear people talk about or propose. So I'll fire off a couple. Then I'll fire off a couple will riff until we welcome our guests onto the stage. So, Ben, we talked a lot of how Donald Trump is trying to increase the power. The Pentagon budget to one point five trillion dollars. That is batshit crazy. I would like to see a Democrat talk about cutting the Pentagon budget and one by a lot, by a lot. And one unfortunate consequence of the Iran war that is also an opportunity is the Iranians blew half our bases in the Middle East to shit and they are rendered unusable. So now might be a good time to close some of them down less than our footprint in the Middle East. Because in a world. Where, you know, you can build a drone, you know, with a grenade and a lawnmower engine for thirty thousand dollars, like those bases are not powerful. They're a liability because we can be attacked. Another thing that is not on the front page is that concerns me a lot is the Trump administration has let all of these arms control agreements lapse and it is a more dangerous world now than it was before. Because of that, we need to reengage Russia in these conversations. We need to engage the Chinese because they are drastic. They're ramping up their production of nuclear weapons and then we also need to make a safeguards a part of that. So it's a big, meaty one. Last thing I'll turn to you, Ben. I want to see a Democrat make a major speech about how they would end the war in Sudan, which started as a civil war, now as a proxy war and has become the world's largest humanitarian crisis. It is completely disheartening to see what's happening in Sudan on a million different levels. But in part because we grew up at a time in politics in the Bush administration when everything sucked. But there was this massive bipartisan movement to try to save people's lives in Sudan. And we need to build back that connective tissue in that infrastructure and just get people to care again. So, yeah, I'll give a few quick things. I talked about ending the war on terror. I want to be specific. I want to be specific about this. It's not just about bringing some troops home. It's about dismantling the war on terror. We are still fighting a war on the authorization to use military force that was passed after 9-11. That should be repealed. The next Democrat who wants to be president should say, I will not go to war or commit an act of war, a drone strike, a bombing, without a new authorization from Congress. Without a vote, we won't do it. You start to dismantle this. This network of bases, like you said, that we have around the world. By the way, dismantling the war on terror comes home. You abolish ICE that was set up after 9-11 in the Department of Homeland Security. And you return immigration enforcement to where it should be, which is in a Justice Department. department that actually follows the rule of law, right? You look at all of these authorities over the last 25 years for mass surveillance in this country, right? From FISA to the Patriot Act, and you dismantle the wartime mass surveillance apparatus of the U.S. government, right? That's dismantling the war on terror. How about we follow our laws that say that we don't provide or sell arms to countries that commit war crimes or human rights abuses, or that prevent aid from getting to a civilian population? If Democrats want a policy on Israel that makes sense, all they have to do is follow our laws, and that you would not sell a single weapon to a government that is committing war crimes with those weapons right now. Full stop. How about we recognize a Palestinian state at the beginning of a democratic administration? How about we say that we're going to sanction illegal settlements in the West Bank, right? And then I just want to come back to something you said. The biggest foreign policy issue, probably for the next administration, should actually be negotiating with the Chinese and other countries around the world meaningful safeguards on artificial intelligence. Instead of a race with China, we should be working to put in place safeguards on artificial intelligence. And then, like I said, we should be working to put in place safeguards on artificial intelligence. And lastly, because I just came from an event in Istanbul that was focused on climate change. Remember climate change? Oh, yeah. It's hot out there. That's still a thing? The United States needs to rejoin a global effort that is taking seriously the need to have a clean energy transition and phase out fossil fuels in the world and actually deal with the existential challenges we have, which are AI, climate change, and nuclear weapons. Great lists. Super speed rounds. Super speed round. USAID 2.0. What does it look like? Can't be exactly the same. We've got to build it back, especially PEPFAR. Bernie Sanders in 2020 talked a lot about the global oligarchy and the threat to democracy. Someone needs to pick up that mantle and run with it. We should hire Democrats. Too often, Democratic presidents, including Barack Obama, you end up hiring old Republicans or retired generals for certain national security positions. Stop doing that. Get people who match your values. We should be nice to Canada. They're pissed at us. We've got to fix that. How about we stop starving the island of Cuba to death, Ben? Yeah, I love this. And I'll end here. Jason and Yasmeen, I'll just say that on the rebuilding the U.S. government, it's not a renovation project. This is a rebuild project. You mentioned developing an agency. How about we, if we rebuild the State Department, how about we also try to bring in young people and different people? And diverse people and say, we're going to hire thousands of people to work at the State Department and USAID, and we're going to hire different types of people than we have before so that there's a different face that we're showing to the world in the making of our foreign policy. And by the way, as we do that, we're going to have to take a look and see what MAGA ideologues have been implanted in the government, what corrupt contracts have gone out to the Elon Musks and Palantirs of the world so that we actually reclaim a government that can actually represent who we are and what our values are. Well said. That felt good. Yeah. Plot off my chest there. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Remember being a kid around the holidays and anytime you would ask for something, mom would always say, wait until the holidays sure do. Well, with Mint Mobile's holiday deal, there is no waiting. Right now, this second, all of their plans are $15 a month. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it. Right with premium wireless for $15 a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. It's so easy. Sign up online and get premium wireless service for $15 a month. So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash crooked world. That's mintmobile.com slash crooked. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash crooked world. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Let's welcome Mint Mobile. Let's welcome our excellent guests to the stage. Representatives Jason Crow and Yasmeen Ansari. Well, you all just covered it, pretty much everything. So I'm not sure what we're going to talk about now. Yeah. We can talk about whatever. Well, we can just throw in from the cheap seats. You guys actually have to do the work. Yeah, really. Really. Really. Really. Really. So politically. I think I want to piece out this week that I think kind of summarizes the opportunity and the challenge you all are facing in Congress, which was Democrats face oversight pile up. There's just so many things we've got to look at. It's so much worth scrutiny. So let's start at the very top. The Trump family. There's the crypto business. There's Jared Kushner's billion dollar kickbacks from the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris. There is Don Jr. and Eric. They own drone companies and mining deals. mining deals like the where do you begin because there's so much to look at um guess me can you explain like what investigative powers you have how you all are thinking about prioritizing this list? Yeah. So first of all, thank you for having us. I am really looking forward to as a member of the House Oversight Committee, Trump family corruption is actually one of the one of four main lanes we are going to be focused on. So and this has been a lot of preparation has gone into this. And obviously, every single committee in Congress will focus on oversight. There's there's no lack of work to do. But we, you know, I want to highlight a couple of things. I think there's a lot of investigations that we need to do as it pertains to the Trump family and the war in Iran. And what I am particularly interested in investigating and what we have already started while we were in the minority is how the Trump sons, Eric Trump and Don Jr. in particular, have made billions of dollars off of the war in Iran. We know that they are partners in something called 1789 Capital. They have literally gotten, or the company, the 15 companies they are invested in have made $3.2 billion since the start of this Trump presidency. So the investigations, you know, we're doubling the capacity, tripling the capacity of investigators within our committee, the staff, and this is what we're going to be laser focused on. Trump family corruption, corporate corruption, ICE and DHS, as well as the Epstein investigation. That's a good list. I just want to say before we begin, because we get to podcast, this is the man that was the head candidate recruiter for the DCCC. So, give Jason an applause. Yasmeen's been putting herself on the line at ICE facilities for the last few years. She's been like taking the fight around the country. So I want to thank you guys. Yasmeen, one question for you. Building off of that, you mentioned the war in Iran. The role, the murky role that Jared Kushner plays, where he's simultaneously not a U.S. government employee and the chief negotiator with the Iranians and the Russians. He's gotten billions of dollars from the Saudis. He's negotiating deals with the sovereign wealth fund in Russia. How do you both like get to the bottom of that? And is there also a capacity to begin to think about how to prevent something like that from happening again, where like family members of people who are in those positions are just profiting wildly off of it? Yeah, well, first of all, I think it's absolutely bullshit that we talk about them like they are somehow separate from the administration, like, oh, you know, leave the kids out of it or leave the family out of it. No, these are people who are quite literally, to your point, negotiating on behalf of the United States without any formal role whatsoever. And they need to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, as you all said, that we already have on the books. And Jared Kushner is top of the list for somebody who needs to be investigated. His own company, firm Affinity Partners, has taken billions of dollars from royalty, from foreign governments, and now he is somehow handling the most consequential foreign policy decisions that this country has. If our current laws are not sufficient, then it's up to Congress to make sure things like this never happen again. But I really, really think it would be a colossal mistake to not fully prosecute these individuals to the fullest extent that we can, because then I mean, it's it's hard to imagine another Trump like regime in the future, but it's certainly possible. And if we don't make sure these people are held accountable, then it will make room for a future worse version. So, Jason, I want to ask you about Pete Hexeth and the Pentagon. Here we go. You have been a leader in trying to conduct oversight for the minority. You were among a group of people that, you know, almost you were targeted for prosecution by this administration just because you pointed out that people should actually follow the law. There's obviously so much. When you look at the scale of the Pentagon, of what Pete Hexeth has done, where do you even begin? You know, you're on the Armed Services Committee. What are you thinking about as priorities as you begin to kind of peel back the rotten onion that is the Hexeth Department of War? Well, it is good to be here, but you're right. They have now twice tried to throw me in prison, so it's good not to be in federal prison right now. But, you know, it's the most telling thing that when you just say follow the law, follow the Constitution. Obey lawful orders, and you don't have to obey. You should not obey unlawful orders, that that's a treasonable offense by the president. And Pete Hexeth, of course, has said the same thing. You had talked earlier, Tommy had mentioned about people, you know, getting people in positions, and that I've been the battleground co-chair for House Democrats. We can have all the policy slogans, all the ideas. We can have the best policy positions and papers in the world. But all of this has to. In my book, all of this comes down to people, getting the right people involved, which is why if you want to change the Democratic Party, get the right candidates, get different candidates involved, right? Which is why if you want to change the State Department, develop a different pipeline. Pete Hexeth knows that, which is why he has tried to change the entire face of the military by shutting down recruiting stations in certain areas and opening them up in others. By purging the top ranks of the military, 10% of our top generals and admirals. Are gone. Over 80. Right? Including one just the other day. And then, the people who are vying for those promotions are hiring his private lawyer, Tim Parlatori, and paying him to get on the promotions list. So I'm going to start with people. Right? We have to make sure that we're going after those who have monetized our federal government. We're going after those who have turned their back on the oath and the Constitution. We're getting them out. And we're restoring a merit-based system. And then. And then, for me, this begins and ends with making sure we protect our service members. Right? We have young men and women from around this country that have served, signed up to serve. As you did. And these young men and women are at great risk because of the incompetence and the corruption of Pete Hexeth and his cronies. So, on the Armed Services Committee, we need to start with, what are those things that we need to do? What do we need to do to protect those men and women, including, let's start by bringing those 50,000-plus service members in the Middle East fighting this war home? Jason, you're on the Intel Committee. I worry about what we don't know. I mean, Kash Patel is the FBI director. Bill Pulte is the director, acting director of National Intelligence, or was for a while. These are unqualified. Well, I was afraid it was going to be the MyPillow guy. At one point. Yeah. I guess it always could be worse. These are just. He always comes back, by the way. Like, he always has a second one. How does this guy have so much money? How many pillows has he sold? These are. Never advertised on Crooked Media, though. Yeah. What the fuck? These are totally unqualified partisan hacks. Before that, we had Tulsi Gabbard. All of a sudden, you wake up one day and she's like in Fulton County, Georgia, like raiding a voting site. Like, what are you able? What are you able to do? What are you able to do from the committee to kind of like peel back the curtain on what's going on? Because I think all of us are gravely concerned about potential abuses because, I mean, why else do you have Kash Patel at the FBI other than kind of serving as your private henchman? So this is how I think it plays out. We're going to retake control of the committees. We're going to have subpoena power. We're going to have appropriations power. My view is we need to be extremely aggressive in using that. Gone should be the days where we feel. As though we're we're treating it as business as normal, like we have to be in a wartime footing on oversight. We're going to start issuing subpoenas of the administration. I suspect that we're going to have to litigate those subpoenas because they have a long history of ignoring them. But then we have to look at the private sector. It has been open season in the private sector. People have bellied up to the Donald Trump trough in a pay to play. Way donated to his campaigns, donated to the the gilded ballroom as if this would never end. Well, it's ending and in those bills are now going to come due. Right. So if you're a company, you're a CEO who has operated as if the law doesn't matter, that you can donate money to the Trump family and not have people come and ask questions. We're going to come and ask questions. And those. Those subpoenas are going to come and you have to be accountable for it. Elon Musk saying he was feeding USAID into the wood chipper feels like a lifetime ago. But obviously the damage from that decision is is playing out. Do you all anticipate like inquiries into Musk's role? What happened at Doge? What he did at USAID? There's all these reports that maybe Doge staffers improperly access data or took government data. With them to whatever their new startup is in the private sector. Is that a thing you guys are thinking about? Absolutely. I mean, I don't think there's one Democrat that doesn't want to subpoena Elon Musk and make sure he comes before Congress and answer for so many, so many of his actions. I mean, what is it? Six hundred thousand people, they say, have been killed or, you know, have died because of the dismantling of USAID. So he quite literally has blood on his hands. I also think that Elon Musk. Needs to come forward to talk about A.I. Security and as do the rest of those those A.I. CEOs as well. But yeah, I mean, it's highly concerning. And that's why I think no matter what type of corruption we are looking at, we can't just look at the very top. We need to go all the way down. And Doge is a prime example of that. Every single one of the Doge bros or whatever they were called, need to come before Congress and need to be investigated and need to be held accountable. The damage that they caused is still ongoing. I mean, so many of our federal agencies have been impacted with the firings that took place. I mean, services are not operating as usual from the V.A. to Social Security because of that. And so that needs to be top of our list. And then oversight will certainly be looking at that. I really want to see a subpoena addressed to dearest Mr. Big Balls. He respectfully requests. Whatever happened to him? I don't know. I think he got whatever. I don't know. Plus, you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges in a 365-night sleep trial as part of their Happy with Helix guarantee. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. The thing about a really old mattress is you really just have to pull up the sheets at one time to see how disgusting it is and realize it's time for a change. When you get a Helix mattress, you will notice a difference right away. It is super comfortable. It's a great place to sleep, obviously, but also just to hang out in bed. Read a book, watch Netflix, do all the things. Just have a good time. You will not regret switching to a Helix. We got one in our guest bedroom. Everyone who sleeps on it says, hey, that's a comfortable mattress. Where'd you get it? They say the Helix figured it out for us. They sent it right to the house. Could not be easier. And you will not regret it. Go to helixsleep.com slash world for up to 30% off. That's helixsleep.com slash world. Up to 30% off. helixsleep.com slash world. That's it. We'll see you next time. And then there'd be like a leak, usually to Brock or V to Axios, that there's going to be a deal tomorrow. And then there'd be, like Lucy with the football, it'd come back. And then there were these reports of massive stock trades that were taking place around this kind of information or massive prediction markets bets being made that it felt like some people might have had advance notice before market moving information was put out. Is there? Is there any way to try to get at this pattern of who might have been profiting? from prediction markets or actual markets off of this kind of constant back and forth? Yeah, I mean, we can legislate for that. We can ban members of Congress and the cabinet and anyone surrounding the administration from trading stocks and from taking part in prediction market trading. There's also legislation. I think we're both original. It might even be your bill. I don't recall the Betsoff Act to prevent prediction markets from engaging on issues like war and terrorism because it's crazy. And when you look at the data, you can see that it's like, I think it was 0.3% of the majority of the profits or something like 97% of the profits were going to 0.3% of the people making those bets. And therefore, it's obviously people with close information. Insider information about what is going to happen. So that all needs to be banned immediately. Which we can do, by the way. I mean, no legislation is required. Right out of the gate in January, we can ban members of Congress by rule from trading stocks. We can ban members of Congress and their staff from engaging in prediction markets. And members of Congress shouldn't be taking corporate PAC money anymore. I've never taken any of that money. You need to pressure them to stop it. This is stuff you can just do. Do you think it'll happen? I mean, could this finally happen? Do you think it will happen? Will we ban stock trading? We've been talking about it forever, but it never happened. It would be an enormous mistake if we didn't come out of the gate in January and say, we are going to lead by example. We're going to just start doing things, which, by the way, is enormously one of the lessons of the midterms is that these are actually really bipartisan issues. That the working class folks, whether they're red or blue, have been uniquely screwed over in the last 40 years. And they're done. And they're looking for the people who are willing to fight for them and defend them. And they have realized, many of them have realized Donald Trump lied to them. And now they're looking for us to fight for them and defend them. And if we aren't willing to stop the hypocrisy and to lead by example, then they're going to look elsewhere. I'm glad you point out that this is not like a progressive agenda. Banning stock trades is something that would appeal to anybody. Another piece of this on foreign policy is something that often gets cast as something that progressives care more about. And it enters in the accountability space. But I think it's actually something that people everywhere should feel discomfort about. And forgive me for returning to the heavens. But I think it's something that people everywhere should And forgive me for returning to the Hegsethian Department of War here, Jason, but the boat strikes. feel discomfort about. You know, what's interesting about these from my vantage point is you and I have talked a lot about the authorization to use military. I stole Jason's idea, by the way, the repealing and requiring a vote in Congress. What's remarkable about the book, I will take nobody seriously in Congress if they're unwilling to repeal the AUMS and start taking votes for these things, as you rightfully pointed out. Well, I mean, but what's remarkable about the strikes in the Caribbean and in the ocean against these boats is that they didn't even have a pretense that they were legal. Like they're actually not even war crimes because there's not even a war. They're just crimes. Right. And and people have been killed. And we have pretty, pretty good reporting that some of these a lot of these people perhaps were not even not that it would have been OK, even if they were narco traffickers, because we have no authorization. But the fishermen may have been killed. Or like follow-up strikes on people floating on wreckage. Double-tap strikes on people floating in the ocean. Is there a way to establish both what happened, how it happened, and how we can – can we stop these boat strikes from happening? I mean, how are you thinking about that from the Armed Services Committee? Well, we need to stop it by cutting off funding, right? That's the first step. That's – I mean, President Trump is still the president, and they still have control of the military. We have to be serious about what tools we have and what we don't. The biggest one is cutting off funding for Iran, for the boat strikes, for other operations. And I have seen the video. I have seen the double-tap video, which was one of the first strikes in September, last September of 25. There's a reason why they haven't released that video. We know that Pete Hegseth can release videos with remarkable speed if he wants to. They haven't released that one because, you know, as a former military commander who has been sent to war that I shouldn't have been sent to and asked to do things that no American should have been asked to do, you know, I'm haunted by what I saw. And that's why I created four years ago the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus, and we created a center of excellence within DOD to prevent civilian casualties because of this, not just the moral trauma to our service members, but our own violations of our own laws. And I'm going to push to have this video released because America needs to see what happened. There is no justification for that particular strike and others. And there needs to be accountability and for starting at the top, but but also the commanders below as well. If you committed murder, there needs to be accountability. On election night, I think, you know, in addition to hearing cheers from liberals all over the country, I think we also heard the shredders kind of ramping up in Washington and all the agencies at the White House and the Trump residence. And this is an administration that has stonewalled Congress unlike any other in history. They just refuse to provide information. They refuse you guys briefings. they won't do basic, just provide basic information or records. Witnesses refuse to testify. They lie under oath. So I guess the question is, what tools do you have to create consequences for this kind of behavior and make it so that there's a real cost for doing these things? Yasmeen? Well, you nailed it right there because one prime example of that is Todd Blanche. He has been we subpoenaed him on the Oversight Committee many, many, many months ago. And the current chairman, James Comer, despite promising, has refused to bring him forward. Another example is Leon Black in the Epstein investigation. One tool that we have is to hold people in criminal contempt of Congress. And that is no joke. I think that we will see over the next two years an attempt to defy our subpoenas, an attempt to refuse, you know, what the law says. But two years will be up. A Democratic president will come. And I think that the administration would be very, very unwise to defy Congress, especially if they're held in criminal contempt. I mean, there is no reason why people cannot and should not and will not eventually go to jail for the crimes that they are committing. What about impeachment? I think we all watched. Look, I have personal views on this. I think we all saw sort of the political fallout of the impeachment of Donald Trump. But you could impeach Pete Hegseth. Is that something you think is on the table and should be on the table? It is on the table and it should be on the table. I mean, I I know a fair amount of impeachment because I prosecuted the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump. I was one of the House managers that took that trial to the Senate. And I sat on the Senate floor, you know, six plus years ago. And I warned these senators. I looked in the face of Mitch McConnell and I warned them all. Susan Collins, all of them, that Donald Trump was a was a danger to our democracy and how this was going to play out. And they ignored us. So, you know, here we are. But impeachment, I always point out, is a tool, right? Impeachment isn't an end, right? Impeachment is a tool. There's several different tools. What we have to do is start with what do we want the goal to be? What are we trying to achieve? Like if the goal is let's get rid of Pete Hegseth, then we have to figure out what tool or combination of tools you bring to bear to accomplish that, how many votes we have for each of those tools. So maybe impeachment's the right one. And if it is, I won't hesitate to use that, but there are other tools available too. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We all have those nagging things taking up too much space in our heads. Maybe it's an awkward interaction from years ago, an irrational worry, or a minor annoyance that somehow becomes all-consuming. If you feel like it's time to clear up the mental clutter, therapy can be a great place to start, and it's more affordable than you think with BetterHelp. Insurance options may now be available nationwide with BetterHelp. With insurance, many members pay $15 or less. Some pay $0. BetterHelp therapists are licensed, experienced professionals, such as psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, and counselors. They have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience and have the required education, training, exams, and practice. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences. In their 10 or more years of experience, an industry-leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time with no hassle from their tailored recommendations. Here's the thing about our society today. It just keeps getting worse. I guarantee you, if everyone was required to go to a therapist, no one would know what look-smaxing was. Clavicular would not be a thing we were talking about if everyone was required to go to a therapist. So imagine, apply that worst-case scenario of who you could be to your current life and think to yourself, relationship problems, people are annoying you at work, wouldn't it be nice to have someone to talk to? Wouldn't it be nice to let some air out of the balloon, out of the valve, whatever your metaphor might be? Try it. What do you have to lose? BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans with many co-pays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the U.S., you can still get 10% off your first month. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash Crooked World. That's BetterHelp.com slash Crooked World. I want to talk to you guys about a couple things that I've been in conversation with each of you on and I'm going to start with you, Jason. I saw a report, because part of what we can do now that I think is important is I was talking before you guys came out about, how the world has been looking at America and what have they seen? They've seen Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth and all this grift and meanness and cruelty. And sometimes there's stories that seem small, but they actually reflect a much larger problem in terms of how we treat human beings. And so the question I have for you, Jason, I saw this story recently that we are deporting Afghans and we're deporting them. Is there anything that can be done to try to keep our promise to the Afghans that worked with the United States in Afghanistan and you served in Afghanistan? And because there are laws against deporting them to Afghanistan, or restrictions on that, we're deporting them to Pakistan where we know that they will then be deported to Afghanistan where we know that they may have their lives at risk from the Taliban. Is there anything that can be done to try to keep our promise to the Afghans that worked with us, that are here, and that are now finding ICE? Imagine if you worked with the United States, put your life on the line for the things that we said we believed in there, and that you were resettled here because of the promise we made to you, and then ICE is going to come and deport you back. Is there any way to get at that? Have you thought about that? Well, money, number one, but that's not going to happen quick enough. I think this goes to my earlier point about finding the alternative pathways and mechanisms. So accountability and finding ways of putting pressure. So if you have folks who, you know, with Stephen Miller, obviously the cruelty is the point with him, right? You know, he's, you know, a white nationalist and a particularly cruel and vile individual. So he's not going to change his mind, but you pointed out that they have to go through Pakistan. Well, how about this? How about we put Pakistan on notice that if you're going to participate in this, you're going to take our allies and folks that have come here seeking, seeking refuge, and you're going to move them to their sure death and send them to the Taliban, that there's going to be accountability there too. That we are, we are watching, right? We can do it. We can do it through private companies, through executives, through other countries. The general message should be that all of this is coming to an end. It's not coming as quick as I would like it. We'd all like it to be here right now and over right now. But Donald Trump still sits in the White House. It's coming to an end. It's coming to an end fast. And if you're a foreign country, a private company, a private citizen, and you're going to participate in this, we're going to come asking questions and we're going to find ways of seeking accountability. And there are other ways of imposing costs on folks, right? Talk about the fact that they tried to, you know, they tried to indict me twice. Well, that's abuse of process. Well, you can lose a law license over that, right? And that's, that's managed by the states, not by the government. Not by the federal government. No pardon is going to, is going to keep your law license, right? So keeping names is also important. You know, people shouldn't, five, 10 years from now when we're through this and we've built a new country and a new democracy that actually delivers for folks, which I think is going to happen. We're going to look back and there's going to be all sorts of people that are going to pretend this didn't happen. And all sorts of people that pretend they weren't a part of the corruption and the cronyism, and they're going to try to pretend the situation is normal. Well, you know, good thing we know who was on what side. And folks shouldn't be able to just go on with their life as if it never happened. And the Pakistan point you made is like the perfect segue to this. Because Yasmin, you went to El Salvador, right? And, you know, again, it seems like this two years has been a hundred years, but people may recall the deportations to see the people who were there. You know, you went to El Salvador, right? And you know, again, it seems like this two years has been a hundred years, but people may recall the deportations to see the people who were there. this gulag that Nayib Bukele, the self-proclaimed world schoolist dictator has built down there. That's another guy who seemed like he thought everything was permanent, you know. How do you think about, Yasmin, the oversight both of ICE and the deportation process, but also, to Jason's point about putting people on notice, a guy like Bukele, who's reveling in the fact that he's essentially taking, you know, people that had committed no crimes in the United States and throwing them into this kind of facility. I mean, how do you think about, for all you've done on ICE and on El Salvador, how to begin to restore, even though we can't really solve the problem for a couple of years, how do we begin to address the injustices that you've seen in that pipeline? - Well, as it pertains to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit last year, but I see it as, quite frankly, a foreign policy issue, because the way that the United States is quite literally torturing people, physically and psychologically, inside these for-profit prisons, is going to have reverberating consequences for our reputation around the world. I mean, the people that are being held every day, 65,000 people are inside a detention center. I've been about 14 times to ones in Arizona, the Dilley Detention Center in Texas, and one in Florida. And I've met people from all over the world. You talked about Afghans, met Afghans. I've met Iranians, Iranians who fled during the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022, and have now been stuck inside these detention centers, and are literally being deported back to Iran in the middle of our war, and in the midst of severe government repression by the regime in Iran. That's just one example. I have constituents with cancer who have been inside ICE detention centers for two years. I just went a few weeks ago and talked to a 24-year-old woman who is pregnant, five months with a high-risk pregnancy, and they barely let her see a gynecologist. So we need to go after this system very, very hard. We also need to go after not just ICE, but the two for-profit prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group. That are making billions of dollars and refusing to provide clean water to people. Like they literally put a, like a cooler there, and melt ICE. And I've heard from dozens of detainees about worms and mosquitoes literally in the water. They have to, they make them pay $2 for a bottle of clean drinking water. So it is just disgusting. We need to dismantle ICE. We need to prosecute people. And we need to end for-profit prisons in this country once and for all. On the question of our foreign policy and accountability, I thought Jason's point was excellent. It's going to take a lot of work to restore our credibility around the world. I think we can do a lot in the next two years. I mean, you know, we've worked on, Ben and I have worked on climate policy over the years together. And, you know, we'll be going to the COP this year in a couple weeks. And, you know, it's going to take a lot of work for members of Congress to be able to convince the international community yet again, that, you know, yes, we elected Donald Trump again, but we, you know, things are changing and things will change for the better. And I think with our allies, we're going to have to do that. And with our adversaries, they're going to have to understand that it's going to, you know, it's a new, it's a new day in the United States. - It's a new day. Final question for you both. You have two more years of the Trump administration. I want to ask about Congress's role in storytelling about the Trump era. Ben and I were in the White House on the day of the Benghazi attacks. And we were in endless meetings for weeks and months after. And the story to us, having lived it, was always one about embassy security and the risks of serving in dangerous places. And it was a tragedy. And there were some government failings, but that was basically it. But Republicans used oversight to tell a very dishonest story about Benghazi that took it from this kind of niche security issue to this global thing, this global conspiracy, whatever it was. And so I'm just wondering how you're thinking about storytelling via the oversight powers you have. And if there are items that, kind of wash away in the Trump era that you want to bring back, like you could imagine digging into Signalgate. Feels like a long time ago, but there's a story there about information security. There's the Qatari jet. Remember that thing? That's a story about corruption. There's Don Jr.'s wedding gift from a Russian oligarch. I'm just curious, what's on the list and what are things you're thinking about in that storytelling vein? Well, it has to be centered on Americans, and I think it should be centered on working class folks, right? You can tell all the stories you want, but trust, trust is broken between working class folks, right? Who I grew up with, where I'm from, and the DC bubble, the swamp, so to speak. And they want to see big change. They want to see different people in positions of power, and it should all begin and end with their story and their struggle. We talk about national security and foreign policy, and Ben, we've had a lot of these discussions. And one of the biggest problems right now is that, Americans don't see themselves reflected in their foreign policy and national security, right? Our national security is run primarily by people that have gone to the same two universities who grew up within a hundred miles of an ocean, right? There are 200 million Americans that live in so-called flyover country where I'm from, right? And we were failing to tap into that talent. So what I think is we have this new crop of amazing leaders who are coming in, people who just won really tough street fight races. They're tough. They're disciplined. They largely come from outside of politics. Most of them have never run for anything before this. They were, you know, raising families, running small businesses, working at public health clinics, working for government until they got dozed. These are some of our best messengers right now in our party, in our country right now. They are grounded in their communities. They know what this fight is actually about. It's not some abstract political gamesmanship. It's about the real lives of the people they represent. Let's put these folks front and center and telling the story of how the corruption and graft of this administration has devastated Americans and farmers and ranches and small businesses that they have been and will continue to tell that story. And I want to end on kind of like the positive spin on this too, because part of what's like really, really inspiring, just like even sitting on stage with the two of you, right? I know you both well. I mean, as you all heard today, Jason's a guy who did multiple tours and then went into government service and is trying to make right some of the things that you saw were wrong, right? Yasmeen, you come from an Iranian American background. You worked on climate change and you're standing up for the kind of people in your district who have immigrant stories or you're standing up to try to have a different, I mean, you represent, I think, what people want America to be. And we are accustomed to only having presidents tell stories about the United States. What can this new majority do in a hopeful way? It's going to take a generation to kind of rebuild what America is in the world. And maybe we should never try to go back to being the country that puts ourselves above other countries and says, you know, we're the top one. But maybe there's a different way, we can rejoin the world. How do you think about this? Because I can tell you, you heard me backstage in Istanbul, people were, they knew the stories of some of these candidates getting elected. I mean, how can this new majority and people like you begin to show the world that there's a different America from the one that they've been seeing for the last 10 years? I think by immediately getting to work and doing good things for this country, I think that to me, it would be a huge, huge mistake, though, to quickly move on from the horrors of the Trump administration. And I think that to the point of oversight and storytelling, we do need to, in our roles in Congress, through every committee, tell each and every one of these stories of the damage that was done. I mean, I think a lot about the people that ICE has shot and killed on our streets. Let's not forget about them and their families who are still reeling from that horror. And we all, you know, move on because there's a million other horrific things that happen every single day. And so I think, you know, I'm only sitting here because I was inspired by that 2018 wave of young, progressive, you know, people of color who ran for office. If I hadn't seen those people be successful and be in these positions, I don't think I ever would have thought it was possible to run for office at 26 years old as a daughter of Iranian immigrants. And now we are going to see this wave of this class inspire so many more people to run for office and have a government that is reflective of the people. And I think that's how we can change our perception around the world. Amen. Listen, thank you guys. I mean, thank you, Jason, for being here. Thank you all for coming out to a conversation about foreign policy at 930 in the morning. We love you. Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.