Is Trump Planning to Invade Cuba?

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Protect your teeth with Remy by using the code PSTW to get 50% off your new night guard with Remy Club Subscribe and Save. That's 50% off at shopremi.com slash PSTW with code PSTW. Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. It's coming, which means cough and cold season is almost here. Get ahead by stocking up on all your favorite cough and cold essentials now through September 29th. Shop in-store and online to save on products like Allegra tablets, Halls Drops, Mucinex Kickstart, Zyrtec Allergy Relief Tablets, Tylenol Liquid Gels, One A Day Men's Health, and Vicks Dayquil and NyQuil Combo Packs. Offer ends September 29th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit Albertsons or TomThumb.com for details. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, please enjoy this great moment in national security history from our president, Mr. Donald J. Trump. Let's watch. The entire roof is developed for military. They have a 360-degree vision of Washington, D.C. They have a massive drone capacity. Not only is it drone-proof, if a drone hits it, it bounces off. It won't have any impact. But it's also meant as a drone fort, so it protects all of Washington, the roof of the building. Ben, do you think that that's how he thinks that counter-drone systems work, that it's just like a strong roof? Does he think Iron Dome is a literal thing? So, first of all, it feels like a wonderful space for a coup, if you need to launch a military coup. Oh, yeah, a little putch. What better place to launch the putch from within your own ballroom where you can have a bunker under the ballroom and you can send drones out? So, good dual use, to use a national security term. I also just love how, did you see him at some Trump RX event talk about how great it is for medical? Yeah, you can't talk. Same thing, like, this is great for military. Yeah. Like, what? It just, like, skips parts of sentences. It's just, you know, it's all. I also love their innovative ways they try to hold press conferences at the locations with the worst audio possible. They're like, how do we beat this Marine One jet engine? Oh, I know. Dude with a hammer. Yeah, it reminds me whenever I have to do, like, a podcast from home or something, and, like, the planes are flying overseas, and there's some dude with a leaf blower outside. But Trump likes that. Yeah, he loves it. Apparently. He's like, how can we make this as annoying as humanly possible for everybody? Also, did you see the Wall Street Journal story the other day with the headline, Dad Books Are a Dying Breed? The Wall Street Journal says that nonfiction books about politics, current affairs, and biographies are falling off, and what's killing them, Ben, are podcasts. Well, then I'm fucked. So this feels like a direct shot at this show because I feel like, well, first of all, we need a creed occur for dad books. We do. Dad books are great. We do. And we're dads, and we read books. You've got one coming out. I do. I do. I feel like this is important. We have a responsibility as podcasters to promote nonfiction books. The podcast should work in synergy with the book, not in competition with it. So a week from today as we record is the release date for my book, All We Say. All We Say. This book is very personal to me because basically, you remember our last book was about authoritarianism. Mm-hmm. And one of the things I noticed in writing about Putin, Xi, Trump, is how central history and storytelling is to authoritarians. They're essentially trying to rewrite history as a prequel to their ascent. And it got me thinking about- It feels familiar to us here in America. Very familiar. And so I wanted to understand Trump and all the dysfunction and toxicity in our politics today by going all the way back to the beginning and using my speechwriter experience, choosing 15 speeches through which to understand the argument we've been having about America, and our identity. Who is an American? What is an American? Who gets to decide those questions? And so you take a journey all the way from Benjamin Franklin through some extraordinary abolitionists and suffragettes and people like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass up through Martin Luther King, all the way to ending with Obama and Donald Trump. And I promise you, this was incredibly fun to write. So I think it'll be fun to read because when you look at a speech, you're really just looking at history in the present tense, like how were movements operating at that time? Who are these people that emerged out of nowhere to change the course of history? How do you tell a story that actually galvanizes and mobilizes people? Something that we seem to have lost the capacity to do today. So the book is out one week from today. Please, if you want to pick it up, pre-order it. Pre-order it. Gets it out. It gets banned on the New York Times bestseller list. Gets on the bestsellers, but it also- Which displaces Don Jr.'s Triggered Four or whatever. Take a look at that list and just think how much better you'd feel to see a book about who we are as Americans- We're not losing to those people. All we say is going to beat the bulk order, little cross next to their name, Don Jr., Eric Trump, fucking bullshit, chop shop, Fox News, killing Lincoln, garbage books. Yeah. We're not killing anybody in this book. We're trying to tell the story of America on our 250th birthday in a way that we can feel both honest about. Actually, one of the other things I was really struck by, Tommy, is people knew exactly what was going on at the time. You know? Seneca chief in 1805. It's not like they didn't know what was being done to Native Americans in this country. It's not like abolitionists didn't know what was going on in the 1830s. And just reliving that through the story as it was told at the time was extraordinary for me to experience for four years. You can hear a clip of the audio book if you want to go all the way to the end of the podcast today. And I'll be out on the road and I'll be sharing all those dates and hope to see the world that was in the audience because it's always cool to see everybody. Save the dad book by picking up a copy of All We Say for Father's Day. Dare I say, yes. The perfect Father's Day gift. Perfect Father's Day gift, which is coming. Fathers love history. They love America. Yep. It is the better version of America. My wife's going to be out of town for Father's Day, so I'll be with the kids solo. Just kick back with the All We Say. That's what she thinks about me. Okay. We got a great show for you guys today. We're going to find out if Hannah listens to this podcast. She does not. There's all these signals, Ben. You and I were texting over the weekend. It just feels like every light is blinking red. Would it be red or green? I guess green. That the Trump administration is planning some sort of imminent regime change operation. Yeah. In Cuba, which is great. We need another one of those. That's what we need. We're going to talk about- Because they're going so well. We're going to talk about what those indications are. We'll talk about the humanitarian situation on the ground there. We'll also touch on this growing political crisis in Bolivia, which has exploded on social media over the weekend. Then we're going to up you guys on all things Iran. The bad, the worse, the dumb. We'll explain what was and what was not accomplished during Trump's China trip, why folks in Taiwan are feeling a little more nervous these days than they were before the trip. Then Ben and I are going to get to see some highlights from the annual Eurovision contest for the first time. Oh, I look forward to this every year. Every year. Michael's curation of Eurovision for us. Every year, once a year, Michael tries to force us to care about Eurovision and we say, all right. Yeah, I got on a better pitch. Then you're going to hear my conversation with Nish Kumar from Pod Save the UK. We talk about what the hell is happening with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the Labour Party, Nigel Farage, the rise of Reform UK, the right-wing party over there. And then we just laugh a lot because Nish is so funny. Does Nish have a favorite horse in this fight? Is he an Andy Burnham guy? Is he an Angela Rayner guy? My guess is, he didn't say, but my guess is, you know, he would sort of tack a little further to the left. Nish is probably green curious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're all a little green curious. I'm green curious. Pod Save the UK is a hilarious, fantastic show. You should subscribe. Also, check out Nish's comedy special. It's on YouTube right now. It's called Nish. Nish, don't kill my vibe, which is a great title. He's a funny guy. Also, speaking of YouTube, please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. How many times do we have to ask? We're trying to build a counterweight to the right-wing pro-war propaganda from Fox News and others. It's free. And when you subscribe, when you like, and when you share our stuff, you help us grow. So please consider doing it. And if you want to see everybody here in person, Ben, get a ticket to CrookedCon. It's November 5th through 7th in D.C. There will be live shows, panels, meetups, torrid love affairs, underwhelming love affairs, and mostly just fun people coming together to talk about the future of politics, trying to make this country a better place. The midterms will just have happened. Hopefully they're good. Trump endorsing Ken Paxton in Texas today. Yes. Makes me a little hopeful. What the fuck? Yeah. That guy is a creep. A walking creep. It's hard to design a MAGA creep more effectively than Ken Paxton. Have you seen the story about Ken Paxton? He's going through a security gate to get into a courtroom or something, and he stole some guy's $1,000 pen. Yeah. It's just like a crook. If you ever wanted to test the proposition that maybe right-wing politics in this country are not about. Earnest religiosity, a James Tallarico versus Ken Paxton race is definitely going to put that to the test. Yeah. That's not a hard one. More info at crookedcon.com. And also, friends of the pod subscribers get a discounted price, so another reason to subscribe. All right, Ben. Should we start with Cuba? Yes. I know you care deeply about this one. Let's go. Again, seems like all these warning lights are flashing. The most recent data point was this Axios report from over the weekend that said Cuba has obtained 300 military drones and is considering using them to attack targets. At the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, if they are attacked. I feel like the if they are attacked retaliation part of this was kind of underemphasized in the reporting. But there were a lot of background quotes kind of hyping the threat from Cuba to the U.S. It's like all these people quoted, just figured out it's 90 miles away. I always love that. So there's your pretext for why the U.S. has to take a preemptive action in Cuba, right? Because if they're invaded, they might fight back. So we have to preempt their retaliation. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. We're trying to follow logic. Listen, I appreciate that. There's also been reports that the U.S. is planning to indict 94-year-old Raul Castro for a crime that occurred in 1996. As is normal. You might be thinking, that seems strange. He seems like he's about to die. But it's not strange when you consider how central the indictment of Nicolas Maduro was to the rationale for the Venezuela operation that deposed him earlier this year. Then there was CIA Director John Ratcliffe's visit to Cuba last week. Sometimes those trips happen. They're usually secret. That's why he sent the CIA director. But instead, the CIA put out a statement about it. They said Ratcliffe was there to personally deliver a message from Trump that sounded like an ultimatum to me, Ben. Yeah. And then finally, the Times has been reporting that there's been an increase in U.S. surveillance flights over Cuba in recent weeks. And the broader context, as listeners probably know, is that the U.S. has had this full blockade on Cuba since January. The entire island is just rocked by this humanitarian crisis. There is no fuel, so there's no power. Hospitals can't function. People can't cook food. Families are starving. It is an absolute nightmare. Children are starving to death. And here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about Cuba last week. I think this is like on the way to China or while they're in China. Let's watch. There is no economy in Cuba. To the extent there's any wealth in Cuba, it doesn't go to the people. It doesn't even go to the government. The wealth is controlled by a private, by a company owned by military generals. They take all the money. They're sitting on billions of dollars. This is a country where people are literally. They're now eating garbage from the streets, but they have a company that controls all of the money making there that's sitting on 15, 16 billion dollars. So it's a broken, nonfunctional economy and it's impossible to change it. I wish it were different, but I believe it's my personal opinion. You cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it. That's what's going to have to change because these people are proven incapable. I hope I'm wrong. We'll give them a chance, but I don't think it's going to happen. OK, so, Ben, I'm curious how you're reading on these tea leaves. And like, I don't know if there isn't a regime change operation. Are they just going to starve this entire island full of people in perpetuity? It's like a medieval siege happening here. Yes. And first of all, Rubio, if you kind of look hard enough into his eyes, it's hard to identify like the soul underneath. Especially on this issue. Because what he's talking about is it's so farcical. Because is there corruption and repression in the Cuban government? Yes. But the reason people are eating garbage is because on top of the embargo that has been in place for 60 plus years, there's a full blockade of the island. If they wanted tomorrow to have a market-based economy, they couldn't because they are completely cut off from the U.S. financial system. When we were in office and did the engagement of policy with the Cubans, wanted to open up their economy to foreign investment, and they created a private sector. And literally, we couldn't get any bank to do any business in Cuba because of U.S. sanctions, even though we were trying to lift those sanctions. And we actually had to kind of give direct permission to one bank just to facilitate some transactions. So these guys like Rubio like to get up there and make it seem like the entire just travesty of human suffering that is happening there is somehow, Rubio, like to get up there and make it seem like the entire just travesty of human suffering that is happening there is somehow, significant because he Until recently in Cuba, the notion of a U.S. military attack was seen as a bit of a cliché, right? The government's been warning of it for two-thirds of a century. Now the feeling's changed. I spoke to a guy whose dream, he said, was to leave Cuba and to go to the United States. But when I asked him what he'd do in the case of military intervention, he said, well, I'm a trained sniper, and what I'll have to do is I'll have to go and be on duty. Another family I spoke to got told that they have a contingency plan, state-organized contingency plan, to go and live in a tunnel. What I'd point to here is Cuban nationalism. Many people that I speak to say, if Donald Trump's America invades, I fight. So, you know, like President Diaz-Canel said that any military action by the U.S. would result in a, quote, bloodbath and upend regional stability. I mean, I think it's fair to doubt their capacity as a fighting force, but, you know, a guerrilla army could do some damage and kill some U.S. service members. And again, it's like, to what end? And then, you know, I saw Bob Gates, former CIA director, former secretary of defense. under multiple administrations on, I think, CBS over the weekend, who was saying that he thinks the biggest risk is we just starve this island to death and lead to a mass migration of tens of thousands of Cubans to the U.S. again, which puts them at risk, but also is, you know, I was told by MAGA, that was the thing they hated the most was mass migration. It's like, what are we doing here? Yeah, if they go forward with this, there's several ways it could go. And, like, the bad, messy scenarios are that there's actually some kind of insurgency that drags on, that there's state collapse and mass migration. But let's even, and also, by the way, the Cubans have networks across Latin America. This is kind of a scenario where they could kind of wreak havoc in different places, you know, almost like terrorist-type tactics. I'm not sure that they do that, but it's possible. However, like, let's say this goes Venezuela-style, right? Right. We, some Delta Force guys and some cinematic operation grab Raul, and maybe they grab Diaz-Canal, and Marco Rubio gives a press conference and says he's in charge and. Puts on a sweatsuit again. Yeah, and puts on a sweatsuit, and then we're, I guess, responsible for the governance of the poorest nation in the hemisphere because of our sanctions. Because I honestly think that one of the reasons why some Democrats aren't more vocal about this, is they're like, well, what if it goes well? And we, you know, first of all, that's wrong. Imperialism should have gone out a long time ago, and the idea that we just, like, randomly, you know, starve and then invade and regime change a country just because we can is the most dangerous form of politics that there is. And also, like, really importantly, you mentioned MAGA. Like, who wants this? Like, why is this happening? Rich Cubans in Miami. This does, exactly. This is nothing. For anybody in America. Like, there's not even some weird bank shot, like, with Venezuela, where they could talk about oil, although the gas prices are up. It doesn't seem like getting the Venezuelan oil. No, no. Hasn't solved the problem. To put a dent in that one. Nope. So, like, a very small number of people will get rich, right? Some, like, you know, Miami Cubans might get some beachfront property, like some corrupt, you know, Eric Prince will probably get hired to. Jared Kushner will run some new Board of Peace offshoot for Cuba. Builds Trump properties and golf courses. And, like, our tax dollars will probably spend billions of dollars on the operation. I mean, we have to start, like, it can't just be the wars that are catastrophically consequential, like Iran, that people are against. Like, all of this is connected. It's all about imperialism and corruption and power and grift. And you should care as much about Cuba as you care about Iran in the same way that you care about Cuba. And I think that's a big part of the problem. In a way that, frankly, the decent feedback that Trump got on Venezuela probably contributed to the war in Iran. 100%. And so this Cuba operation is probably a gateway to Greenland or Panama Canal. Yep, whatever comes next. Like, this is what history tells us happens with autocrats. You know, they keep going. They never stop when they get the territorial expansion regime change bug. Yeah, it's not great. That's the balance. That's the dream. That relaxed and comfortable. Relaxed and comfortable, but polished. Everything is priced 50% to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen so you're getting premium materials without the markup. I think all of us have bought a ton of great stuff from Quince. 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I know what you guys are thinking. Why do I need a therapist? That's what friends are for. That's what family's for. You know what? When you complain to them about your problems, they're not listening. They're thinking about what they got to do. You get a couple times a month. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. What you need, you need someone to talk to that is paid to be there. That will listen to you and is trained on how to help you. Yeah. You don't have to traverse life's challenges alone. Don't traverse. Find the personal support you're looking for in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash crookedworld. That's betterhelp.com slash crookedworld. Crooked World. We're going to talk about Iran in a second. But before we do, we wanted to flag this growing crisis in Bolivia where supporters of former President Evo Morales have blocked roads for a couple of weeks. They've created all these shortages of fuel and medical supplies and food. It's really a growing crisis. And on Monday, some of these protesters clashed with police in La Paz, the Bolivia's capital. And so the protests are over economic conditions, which are very bad. And prices going up and inflation and long gas lines. But also the treatment of Morales, who has been holed up in the jungle, surrounded literally by like an army of supporters who say they will fight to the death to protect him. The protesters are now calling on the current president, President Paz, to resign. There have been reports that the government has ordered the arrest of leaders of like indigenous rights groups and unions. And there was also a report that I've not seen corroborated anywhere else, Ben, that the U.S. military was preparing some operation with oblivion police to capture Evo Morales. Yeah. Again, that was not confirmed. But like post post Venezuela, it feels a lot more believable. And I can understand why, like any leftist leader in Latin America would think that the Trump administration is angling to take them out and is ready and willing to intervene militarily in their affairs at any time. So I don't just sort of like exploded my feeds over the weekend. We want to talk about it. What do you make of this? You remember the down road? So there's a lot of smoke around some of these reports. Right. So we have this idea that there might be some special operation to grab Evo Morales in Bolivia. We also have you see this like weird Honduras thing that the Trump administration was working together with like Javier Mille and the right wing leaders to, you know, basically target, you know, Shane Baum in Mexico and Petro in Colombia, like metal in their politics. And undermine the Latin American left. We've had these reports of kind of CIA presence in Mexico that we've talked about. I think when you take this all together, there really does seem to be a pretty comprehensive and coordinated playbook to essentially treat all of Latin America like literally imperial possessions of the United States, where we either pick the leaders. We remember Trump intervened in Argentina with a massive bailout for Mille or if some. Some leftists get in charge, we undermine them, go after them maybe even you know seize them and and ava morales just points to how kind of weirdly personal this is because ava morales isn't even powerful anymore you know he's literally like he's not a good guy he's no he's not but he's out to pasture like he's not like like it's not even like some election coming up that he's running in like he's just like some guy like on a compound somewhere and it it feels like there's this you know a lot of people are using the trump administration i heard you describe it as like smash and grab and that's exactly right and it's also like oh i can use this moment to settle my scores you know a lot of people are mad at ava morales about things he did 10 20 years ago and it's like i can talk the trump administration into like running a special op to grab like some corporate interest it really feels like 1950s 60s like a dullest brothers in charge of the cia just like rampaging through latin america on behalf of you know a fruit company or whatever and by the way these things can feel cost-effective when you do them but they tend to have a tail you know like meddling in central america in the 80s led to death squads and left-wing revolutionaries and mass migration in the united states you know so it might feel clean when you decapitate the cuban government or grab ava morales but like other people don't forget and then they kill people and then they get massacred and so this all this stuff it can set in motion uh dominoes that lead to to pretty dark places yeah agreed and something we're watching closely um okay so let's turn to iran uh the straight or her moves is still closed just doesn't seem like the u.s and iran are anywhere close to a deal to actually end the conflict uh last week trump said the ceasefire was on life support then on sunday he posted quote for iran the clock is ticking and they better get moving fast or there won't be anything left of them time is of the essence another another adorable like you know mass casualty truth social post of you know extermination uh but a day later uh trump announced that he was going to be in iran and he's going to be in iran and he's going to be in iran and he's going to be in iran and he's going to be in iran and he's going to be in iran and he would not attack iran this week because of a request from leaders in qatar saudi arabia and the uae he always has to like name check the field marshal the field marshal has a munir did you know that uh the cops in london have an arrest warrant out for him for torture and like crimes against the total creep yeah the horrible guy so the new york times reported that the delay and the resumption of hostilities could also be related to fears within the pentagon that iran has been studying you know u.s tactics u.s flight patterns baby conjunction with russian intelligence and can now better target u.s planes and maybe that's why that f-15 went down regardless shit in the gulf keeps blowing up ben drones keep flying from places so last week a drone hit the uae's sole nuclear power plant not good uh luckily the damage was limited to a generator on the edge of the facility but still nuclear power plant uh the uae says the drone was fired by shia militia groups in iraq saudi arabia also said they intercepted a bunch of drones coming from iraq just another example of how the war has metastasized the entire region um again like we said at the top u.s and iran seem quite far apart when it comes to a possible nuclear deal uh we can tick through all of that if you want in a second but um here's what president trump had to say about iran in the last few days this is sort of a hodgepodge of all the very coherent thoughts he had they've been holding up the world for many many years with the straight you know they've used this many many times they said we'll close the straight they've closed it in the past they use it as a weapon then not using it as a weapon with me we really did the ceasefire at the request of other nations i wouldn't have really been in favor of it but we did it as a favor to pakistan or terrific people the field marshal the uh prime minister well i mean i'm saying two or three days maybe friday saturday sunday something maybe early next week a limited period of time because we can't let them have a nuclear weapon 20 years it's not enough for you it's got to be a product 20 years is enough but the level of guarantee from them is not enough in other words it's got to be a real 20 years how to they need to get all the fuel out and no more product you have to get everything but uh we're not even talking about i call it the nuclear dust came up with a term which seems to have gone on there's been people that have been generals that i've spoken to that think you have to get the dust which is the enriched uranium which is the most important thing in the world i don't think it's necessary except from a public relations standpoint i think it's important for the fake news that we get in don't tell netanyahu that uh did you see trump started ranting at david sanger from the new york times and accusing him of treason on the plane what the fuck uh uh what do you make of all that i mean like i don't know man it just feels like they are just absolutely treading water i mean i have no plan here's the i mean i have no plan here's the there's a baseline that we need to name again but i i found a different way to do it this week which is remember the talks that were happening right before the war when whitcoff and jared were tabling these proposals at the time their demands were dismantle the entire nuclear program dismantle the entire ballistic missile program or accept limits on ballistic missiles to a certain serious limits number of miles i.e you can't hit it and stockpile size yeah and then also cut all support for proxies and no enrichment so and no enrichment so the fact that even on their best case scenario they've gone from those demands before the war to nothing about support for proxies nothing about the ballistic missile program and just trying to get the dust it's like give me your dust or just let me watch your dust and open you know so first of all by their own negotiating positions they are in a much weaker position than they were before the war and iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war and iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war and iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war and iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war because they controlled the state of hormuz which they didn't before the war trump is nuts when he's talking that they did not close the street like literally the opposite of what he was saying that's just the opposite of the truth like he usually lies but that's just a you know upside down lie and by the way iran's just their offer according to iranian state news was like asserting their right to enrich uranium and peaceful nuclear development lift u.s and u.n security council sanctions withdraw u.s troops from areas surrounding iran and to the war in lebanon and to the u.s blockade of the straight or hummus uh release iranian assets and compensation for damage caused during the war so an expansive list because that tells you everything you need to know about who actually has the leverage here the iranians are sitting there they can absorb economic pain they're controlling the straight they have a revenue source from that if there's no deal and if there's a deal they get all the sanctions really so either way they're going to come out with a lot of revenue coming in and and trump is completely cornered and he doesn't want to restart the war but he feels like he has to threaten to restart the war but the iranians don't blink when he threatens it the gulf countries are pissed uh they too would like to see iran weakened but they're afraid that if the full-scale war ramps up again that they're going to get hit harder again and and so here we are and everybody can see like it's only people in this country that you know feel the need to believe that we accomplished something or they watch fox news everybody else around the world is like shit the iranians are going to get hit they're going to get hit and i think the iranians have him pretty checkmated yeah and and i love that he's like the dust caught on we say dust to make fun of you yes right like the reason it is it is highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel yeah it is not stupid when you say that and we know that you say dust because you have to cling to the lie that only 65 and over white people who watch fox news believe that you obliterated the nuclear program in the so-called 12-day war that still hasn't ended um so yeah it's this is just a guy who has no idea what he's doing no way out of the the mess he's created and the only way out is to basically accept defeat and hopefully the iranians like to get the dust out in exchange for a bunch of revenue yeah and it's just a question of if and when he'll move on some of his positions because again like the the the conflict is metastasizing it's spreading to other countries like we're learning about the uae and saudi arabia taking direct strikes on uh not only iran but also targets within iraq shia militia groups within iraq and i saw it today the the wall street journal said that over half of the 1 000 drone attacks on saudi arabia came from within iraq so like clearly like they've been feeding drones to these shia militia groups so again it's just like a regional war now and then last week then israel and lebanon announced a 45-day extension to the ceasefire there but israeli strike killed seven people in lebanon on monday alone so it's like hardly a ceasefire like people are still getting killed um a couple months ago remember when the the trump administration announced they would like a plan to provide insurance to ships that wanted to go through this trade or hummus you know how many people took them up on this offer zero zero worked about as well as operation freedom or whatever freedom uh the ft is now reported that 76 countries have had to take emergency measures to deal with the economic fallout from fuel shortages so that ranges from australia france and india to like poor and developing countries uh and then energy traders are warning that like prices are are high now but we are going to have to deal with the economic fallout we are going to eventually reach a tipping point where there's like a freezing up of the markets that you could see oil prices jump to like 180 a barrel uh and a bunch of countries have already released their emergency supplies and those are going to run out by july so it's like this is fucking bad man wait doesn't a five siren emoji axios report change those shortages that the war is ending because that that's worked seemingly with the markets before that does work with the markets i think what you're yeah like the point is that there's the What is so interesting thing about watching this war play out is Trump is still operating in spin world, but there's a physical reality here. Like there's just not oil and LNG getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. There just are shortages. There just are higher prices. And you can't like talk your way through that. And Trump seems to think he can just kind of talk his way through that. And the irony of it all is that, you know, the Strait is closed because he launched the war and he really needs the Strait open. Like he can't just accept the permanent reality in which the Strait of Hormuz is closed. So at some point he really does have to make concessions to Iran here or else the whole global economy is going to collapse this year because we just can't endure this level shortage for several more months. No, it's crazy. It's crazy. I just feel like the stock market and the oil markets are all just kind of like whistling past the graveyard and that'll work until it doesn't. You know, like interest rates are shooting up over 5% and like something is going to break and it's going to be sudden and it's going to be devastating. People are going to lose a lot of money except for the Trump people who will front run the trade. Before we move on from Iran, Ben, I just did want to give a shout out to some really great reporting. There's a piece by Sky News's Dominic Waghorn. Hope I'm saying his name right. He got into Iran, traveled to Manab, took like a four day drive to Manab to speak with people there who were impacted by the U.S. airstrike on the school that killed 150 people. I think 120 of them were children, mostly schoolgirls. He interviewed some men who are first responders on the scene who had to like try to dig through that fucking grisly setting. He talked, you know, to a mom by her son's graveside who was grieving him. And, you know, it was it's like gut wrenching stuff. And it just it's worth watching. It's really important in a reminder that Trump and all the lackeys at the Pentagon, including like combat commanders, like the head of CENTCOM, on the Hill yesterday, they still will not take responsibility for this mistake. And it is it is shameful. It's truly shameful. I have a problem with, first of all, that this is not like a bigger story. We killed like 120 girls. I mean, I have two daughters like this. This should be like the biggest story in many ways about this war. But I also like I'm just going to grab on to the third rail, Tommy, and hold on to it because the uniformed military has basically gone along with a whole bunch of bullshit from Donald Trump. Not not down to the pilots and the service members. I'm talking about Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the CENTCOM commander. Admiral Brad Cooper was up on the Hill today. And Adam Smith, Congressman Adam Smith was trying to push him on like, hey, what's up with the investigation? This should not be hard. Yeah. Right. Like, remember, there's a map that they like. Whatever. Dan Cain had a map up in one of his Hegseth briefings that showed all the places the U.S. was bombing and Manab was on that list and the Israelis were bombing in the north. Like, it only could have been us. They know it was us. And they were lying. Everybody's done exhaustive investigations. And so what you've seen is a complete failure to take responsibility for this horrific incident, a complete obfuscation of the damage caused. I mean, we saw Dan Cain kind of standing next to Pete Hegseth when he was saying that we like decimated their ballistic missile capability. And then we had to learn in The New York Times that 75% of their ballistic missile launches are still there. It was like 70, 75%. Yeah. Then we don't know the damage done to the bases across the region that we taxpayers pay for. The Congressional Research Service, CRS, had to issue a report about all the aircraft that we lost because they won't be transparent about that. Just because you're wearing a uniform doesn't mean you're infallible. And I don't think those guys are lying like Trump is, but they're standing right there and not telling us the full truth either, including on this incident. They know they're lying about this. They are lying about this. They know what. The idea that the CENTCOM commander has no idea what happened in Manab is insane. They knew the next fucking day if that was a US Tomahawk missile or not. And they're, I guess, afraid that Trump will be mad at them if they acknowledge it in that. Is it worth it? I mean, it's kind of like the Republicans, like, is this really. Like, is your job that cool that you go along with this? Someday he's just going to endorse Ken Paxton. So might as well keep your honor. Positive World is brought to you by Built. 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So Trump got nothing from China with respect to Iran or reopening the Strait of Hormuz, like literally nothing. Trump claims that Xi Jinping promised not to sell weapons to the Iranians. But there's all these reports. Yeah, right. U.S. officials told the New York Times that Chinese firms have been plotting secret arms sales to Iran through other countries. So I don't know. Seems like there's probably some loopholes in there, guys. Trump did not secure a trade deal. Nothing close. No trade deal. He instead announced some like pretty small potatoes, economic deliverables, economic deliverables, like purchases of ag, like $17 billion of ag purchases, I think, which will never come to be. And then a commitment from the Chinese to buy a bunch of Boeing planes, which was so underwhelming that Boeing stock price went down. It's a great work there. He also apparently agreed to a vehicle for Chinese investment in the U.S., including Chinese investment in U.S. farmland, which is just weird because that's a big MAGA thing that they're really mad about. They don't want the Chinese to own farmland. Yeah, foreign ownership of land. That goes back to like the organic plug. I learned a lot about how the American populist movement started in the 19th century around one or two issues, one of which was foreign ownership of land. The other was tariffs. There we go. So it's like Trump, like Trump is, you know, fucking over, you know, his throwback OG populist. Well, and also he explicitly in his campaign, he explicitly promised to ban Chinese ownership of farms, whatever. It's like, just like crazy. He wouldn't go to war. Yeah. Yeah. So then there's Taiwan. Here are some examples of how Trump has described the U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan since his visit. Let's listen. The United States would not consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan. Well, I think 1982 is a long way. It was. That's a big far decision. So what am I going to do is I don't want to talk to you about it because I have an agreement that was signed in 1982. Now, would the U.S. defend Taiwan if it came to it? I don't want to say. I'm not going to say that. There's only one person that knows that. You know who it is? Me. I'm the only person. That question was asked to me today by President Xi. should the people of taiwan feel more or less secure after your meetings with president xi uh neutral neutral has the policy changed at all no nothing's u.s policy no nothing's changed i will say this i'm not looking to have somebody go independent and you know we're supposed to travel 9 500 miles to fight a war i'm not looking for that uh i want them to cool down i want china to cool down but you're waiting on approving billions of dollars of weapons for taiwan well i haven't approved it yet we're going to see what happens what are you looking i may do it i may not do it yeah what's your your hinge well i'm not going to say that but i may do it i may not do it i'm holding that in abeyance and it depends on china it depends it's a it's a very good negotiating chip for us frankly back to the point earlier about how he doesn't know english you don't feel neutral it's it's like it doesn't make sense well and then in the next breath change the policy yeah yeah so like also he's really hunchbacked it's not looking good there and also can i just say like because we know brett bearer watching a guy like that that's been on the like the taiwan hawk uh cocktail circuit in dc um have to like choose his trump master over his own personal politics on taiwan not just his trump master brett bear was doing like straight up pro ccp propaganda while he was there he like went into some convenience store and ordered a sausage from a robot it's like tucker with the uh moscow metro brett what are you doing you don't like you don't have to do this anyway ben um i feel pretty confident that the answer to brett bear's question about whether you know the taiwanese people feel less secure after this visit is uh yeah they feel pretty freaked out but what did you make of you know all the taiwan elements here first of all just goes to saying like we got nothing out of this summit i mean no trade deal like i was going to watch the ai stuff and there's giant nothing we agreed to talk about it and then scott besson went out and like dunked on the chinese about how we have better ai but like it just there's nothing of substance i mean the idea that you have like a a carefully planned multi-day summit with the president china and literally like have nothing to announce except some boeing planes got sold and you know they pretend they're gonna jensen wong probably you know did some side deals on some chips it helps the chinese well that was the other thing about the taiwanese like they they they re-upped the offer to provide or sell the chinese the h200 nvidia chip which is not the top of the line but it's like the pretty good and the chinese said no i think because they're probably just getting all the best chips they want through like carve outs in vietnam and other places and then developing their own indigenous chips and they were yeah like the whole thing is so upside down that they were like kind of preparing to frame the chinese buying high end chips as like a chinese concession when in fact it's what is going to help the chinese pass us on time so if you go into this as an american the reason i say that too is if you go into this summit as an american president the last thing that you want dominating the competition is taiwan right you want that under the radar you want to not touch that you want to talk about the things you want to talk about like xi jinping wants to talk about taiwan and how we have to not sell them arms and let them basically do whatever the fuck they want you want to talk about trade and trump like just kept tripping over himself talking about taiwan and and look what and she was like this is our top issue and he was like referencing like the thucydides trap like suggesting there would be war over taiwan he the language that the chinese put out which is always like very carefully calibrated first of all there's some hilarious things where like they we were reading out like xi jinping said he would be helpful on the straight of our moves he's like nothing crickets in the chinese readout right they're just like making shit up in the readouts yeah and then the chinese put this like bloodthirsty statement about taiwan like there will be like conflict like and for them it was bloodthirsty and and look the the the thing you want is you want there to not be a war or a chinese invasion and so you're just trying to kick this can the arms sales are actually part of kicking the can because you're trying to show the chinese hey look this might be a tough operation you know like just full-on amphibious invasion of this island it would not be simple especially if they have arms and so again this is one of those weird situations where you're trying to deter conflict by not cutting the cord on the taiwanese because if you cut the cord on them then they are vulnerable and the chinese do a blockade and they squeeze and squeeze and and he just kind of kept stepping on rakes you know because he would say something that made it seem like he wouldn't care at all about taiwan and then he would say like nothing has changed in the policy and yet now i'm going to say a word salad that is totally different than what the policy but then you'd be like hey but i'm going to call the president of taiwan which is something that would upend 50 years of u.s government policy because we don't have leader leader contacts with them yeah because and in fact the last guy who did that was trump after he won in 2016 like some lobbyists talked him into calling saiyan when the president at the time so look if i'm in taiwan right now i'm just thinking like i gotta get through the next two and a half years without being invaded um and i'm not saying that because i want the next president to go to war over taiwan i want the next president to have a more effective strategy over avoiding a war in taiwan and so i'd be trying to kind of keep my head down a bit here you know keep your relations with congress and both parties and kind of just don't even really try to play the trump game because he has no interest in taiwan and the more he gets dragged into it the more he's going to signal how little he cares and the more that might make xi jinping think you know it'd be a really good time to invade taiwan like the last year of the trump administration right but and if you're listening and thinking like look i just don't want any conflict i don't want the u.s telling the chinese what to do like okay well if you don't like the uh economic disruption that's coming from a two month long street of humerus closure i don't want the u.s telling the chinese what to do like okay wait until there's no chips for any of the computers and phones and everything's everything come out of taiwan right like that would be a big problem and ben just you know so trump there had been a 14 billion dollar arms sale that had been approved and was pending from the administration that they held off to try to like make she happy in advance of this trip it's not at all clear that trump is going to go through with it but on top of that there is 32 billion dollars worth of aid to taiwan that has been promised as part of foreign military sales that is still being held up drones air defenses like anti-ship missiles like big ticket stuff and it just feels like people always point to those uh trump administration arms packages to taiwan and be like see look the hardliners they're in there they're committed like rubio's doing the right thing but they're not delivering this you're not delivering anything look this is yet another issue where trump is the one who kind of led this move towards like getting tougher on china being against right in china remember the campaign by the way all the democratic blob types followed that like heard because it's like now we're gonna be super tough he's now swerving in the other direction he's talking up leader to leader for you know he's friends with she and what a great man he's going to come to the ballroom and and i'm you know canceling the trade war because the chinese have more leverage with rare earth materials um just like the iranians have the straight of four moves he's tacoing left and right and so all these things he he promised to get tough on the chinese he promised no foreign wars he probably all these things he just keeps going back on they were like pretty core to maga like what does steve bannon think about this visit we're basically at trump sucking up to xi jinping like a supplicant like it's the middle kingdom and we're going to like pay tribute to the chinese emperor and and look on on on and i'm not even i'm saying that as someone who wants engagement with the chinese but engagement for some purpose right what's our goal like trump's goal is just protocol it's just that he's like received well and has nice dinners with she like i want to negotiate like ai safeguards you know like i want real things and again it if you're the taiwanese like you also don't want he he started describing arms sales to taiwan as a negotiating shit yeah well that means that you also are entertaining negotiating away exactly taiwan as if by the way it's yours to negotiate and again what you do you i'm not suggesting you want to go to war i am suggesting you don't want to implicitly green light china going to war because to your point even if you don't care about the taiwanese people and i do understand of the world's advanced semiconductors come out of taiwan tsmc that's your car computer that's it's all of it it's everything that's the entire economy you know and that would be bad yeah and these like bloodless ghouls you know over the all-in pod or people in administration are like well just give us a couple years we'll have the technology we need to make that not a problem it's like okay that's they've been saying that for a while i mean it's a nice way to talk i heard that the chips act was going to do that when yeah joe biden was the guy that did the pacific basin and you know r.i.p. any conversation about religious freedom human rights oh my god expression for the chinese people remember you were raising whether like he might get jimmy like so trump brought up two political prisoners uh there's ezra jin mingri a pastor who was detained last october uh and jimmy why this media tycoon from hong kong um trump said she said he will strongly consider the pastor didn't remember his name but basically sounded like there was no shot in hell he would do anything to support jimmy why and that trump didn't really care and wouldn't you know do anything about it and you know i don't know what steve bannon thinks of this uh trip but like full-time trump fluffer hugh hewitt who was one of those like pro-taiwan anti-ccp right-wing guys who always talks about jimmy lie he's been suspiciously silent on trump just absolutely caving on jimmy lie yeah all these guys i mean it does make you wonder what they actually believe yeah like i will say one thing credit to hugh and the other thing is that he's been very very very very very very very very very very very very very very caves of Xi Jinping, he never follows up. He's still just like, thank you for you, Mr. Trump. This is why, and this is actually an important point that I don't understand. We saw John Cornyn get rug pulled today. All these people seemingly convinced themselves that Trump would actually act on the thing they cared about, whether it was the Epstein files, whether it was not getting into forever wars, whether it was being tough on the CCP. You don't need to be a genius to see that Trump only cares about himself. And frankly, if he likes anybody, it's the field marshal and Xi Jinping because they're fellow autocrats. Yeah. He loves those guys. All right, Ben, final topic for us here. So years of doing the show with you has taught me many things. One of them is that there exists, exactly. There's a song competition in Europe called Eurovision. It's one of the longest running TV programs in the world. Hundreds of millions of people watch it and go bonkers for it. Big deal. There are always scandals. There are always controversies. Usually they involve Israel. I never really understand why. People are boycotting. It's a big thing. It's also interesting because Israel is not in Europe, but side note. And then most of all, most importantly for us, there are goofy clips of the performances themselves, which Michael curates for us. To enjoy. Whoa. Jesus Christ. Jesus. What the fuck? Ah. Ah. Oh my God. Oh my God. There was Moldova, Romania with a song called Choke Me. Okay. The Romanian dominatrix. I would have guessed Romania. Yeah, she was choking. Ukraine, Serbia, Lithuania, Finland, and then the UK. Who's that guy who's just screaming at South Island? I don't know. Who was that? Okay, that tracks. The UK song was called Eins, Zwei, Drei. I'm assuming that was German. Finally, this is the Eurovision 2020. 2026 winner, spoiler alert, drumroll, Bulgaria. Learned that today. Their song was called Bangaranga. Is that really true? Bang who? Bangaranga? Bangaranga. Bangaranga. Should we watch the Bangaranga clip? Yes. Let's watch it. I'm a angel. I'm a demon. I'm a psycho. For no reason. I'm a mover. I'm a teaser. I'm a pull-on. I'm the leader. Let me have you, have you up. Let me have you up. I'm a, I'm a, let you get to it. I'm a lady. I'm a lady. That's a winner? I can see why that was popular. I mean, it's catchy. She's, you know, but like I, if this is a window into the state of the culture, what is going on in Europe? I mean, here we know what's going on. It sucks here. Biggest glass house on earth. Acknowledging that. I'm guessing that people not, you know, fluent in. And Bulgarian, just muted. It feels like pop music needs like a, like a reset button here because we've reached kind of the end. My musical critic take on this is like, there's like the end of death metal there, like the end of like a kind of Gaga pop, you know, the end of some weird British acid daft punk kind of thing going on. Teletubby. Like we need to like start over with some genre bending. Like we need to start over with some genre bending. I don't know. Yeah. I just think European shit is weird sometimes. I will say this. They seem like they're having fun. That looked like a good ass time. And we're not having fun. No, we're having a terrible time. So their lives are probably objectively better and more fun than ours. They probably go to clubs and dance to that music and have a really good time. Yeah. They probably get to the club at six in the morning. Yeah. I mean, so you're winning at life, even if I couldn't really see myself listening to any of that. So that was Eurovision. Until next year, Ben. I'm excited for next year. I got to say. Did Israel compete this year? Did they compete? Yeah. Second place? Israel got second place. I feel like they're always in second place. The clips really do deliver in terms of weirdness, though. Every year I'm like, I don't know. Is this going to be funny? Yep. That's some weird shit. So well done on that cut. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear my conversation with Nish Kumar about the weird world of British politics. So stick around for that. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Squarespace.com slash world to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com slash world. Hey, it's John. Last year, 2,500 people joined us at CrookedCon for conversations with some of the smartest organizers, least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics about how to fix this mess. We're doing it again, November 5th through the 7th in Washington, D.C. There's even more podcast panels and workshops. Plus, there will be drinks, which we'll need after the midterms, no matter which way they go. Get your drinks. Get your tickets at CrookedCon.com, where we'll also announce the lineup. If you're a Friends of the Pod subscriber, a limited number of discounted tickets are still available. Get them before they run out. See you at CrookedCon. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Tom Thumb. Now, through September 29th, save on all your favorite personal care essentials and earn four times the points. Shop in-store or online for items from your favorite brands like Native, Pantene, Crest, Always, Gillette, Oral-B, and Tampax and earn four times the points. Points can be redeemed for discounts on future purchases on groceries and gas. Get these deals before they're gone. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. My guest today is a stand-up comedian, television presenter, sex symbol, and the co-host of Pod Save the UK, Nish Kumar. Great to see you. You have a special out. Nish, don't kill my vibe on YouTube right now. I have a stand-up special available right now. And I think now by giving people an opportunity to watch a video of me, they will immediately get to stress test the sex symbol claim. I'm staring at one right now with my own two eyes, so I believe them. Excited to talk with you today. Your co-host on Pod Save the UK, Coco, was going to join us this morning. She had a last-minute scheduling thing, so we don't have her, but we love her. She is effervescent in all things that she does, but we'll miss her today. So I'm excited to talk with you because there's a lot of crazy shit happening over. British politics last week, Ben and I talked about labor's drubbing in these recent local elections in England, Scotland, and Wales. It seemed for a moment like the writing was on the wall for Keir Starmer and that everyone agreed he could not be prime minister anymore and that he was not cut out to lead labor in this moment. However, it was not clear who would depose him. That kind of weird status quo seems to be holding. Like, where do you think Starmer stands at this moment? And can you give us like? Kind of your quick and dirty take on how Starmer went from leading labor to this historic landslide, you know, nearly two years ago, less than two years ago, to this mess today. Okay, well, let's yeah, let's talk about why Starmer has got here second because this because so much shit has happened. This is a little anecdote into my personal life, but I told my mother that I was doing this show today and she said, oh, it's. It's bad when they ask you to do the show, isn't it? It is. It is. She's. It's always. It's never because something is going. It's never to come on and talk about how the UK is functioning too well. So basically. NHS is fixed. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's fixed. We're all fine. So basically, where you guys got to and where we got to in our shows last week was that labor had taken a drubbing and then Keir Starmer had to go through this. Sort of ridiculous process called the King speech where the Monarch announces the government's legislation. legislative agenda for the year. And the King has to give that as a speech. But it's a speech that's written for him. I've spent most of the last week trying to get us to incorporate an element of RuPaul and have the Prime Minister record the speech and then the King lip sync it live because I think that would be sort of more entertaining for everybody. But obviously, this King speech felt particularly strange and pointless because Starmer was announcing his government's legislative package, whilst at the same time, seeming on the precipice of losing his job. So Wes Streeting, the health secretary, went in for a meeting with Starmer that I believe is supposed to have lasted 16 minutes. He then left Downing Street and then announced that he was resigning from the government. So there had been a kind of spate of resignations in the aftermath of the local elections. But Wes Streeting, obviously, the health secretary is one of what we refer to in the UK as the great officers of state. That's a huge high profile position. Streeting also has been sort of touted as a potential replacement for Starmer from Starmer's wing of the party, which has morphed over the course of his life as a leader of the Labour Party. But now his constituency is sort of viewed as the right of the Labour Party. Streeting had been posited as the guy who was going to take over. He needed 81 other MPs to co-sign. So he took his bid to be the next Labour leader. And I think just very quickly realised that he did not have the support within the Labour Party. But he quit anyway, and said that he wanted, you know, to start a conversation about who the next leader of the Labour Party was going to be. Real Machiavelli, that guy. Don't have the votes, quitting anyway. Just shit in the bed, right off the bat. There's a problem that Wes Streeting has, which is that he was sort of widely portrayed as the closest ally of Peter Mandelson, who, obviously, listeners of this podcast will be well familiar with. He was the man who Keir Starmer appointed as the British ambassador to America, despite, I mean, I believe the technical term is a dump truck's worth of shitload of mentions in the Epstein files. And so some of that was revealed when the latest tranche of documents was released. But Mandelson's friendship with Epstein was something that was known in the British media and had been talked about by journalists at the Financial Times and the documentary maker on Channel 4. So the idea that one of the biggest things that Keir Starmer has done wrong in the public's eyes being the appointment of Peter Mandelson, it's absolutely unfathomable that the only person who we equally have identified as being close to Peter Mandelson was even considering a run for prime minister. So I think Streeting's bid at that time was dead in the water. So then the problem, the reason that Starmer hasn't gone already is that there has not been a clear front runner to actually challenge him. So Angela Rayner, who was the deputy prime minister, had to step down from that position because last year there were some revelations about her tax affairs that found that she may have underpaid tax whilst buying a flat. Now, on Thursday morning, the full investigation concluded that she hadn't done anything wrong and her misdemeanor was the lowest of mistake that the UK tax authorities deemed to be even a transgression. So there is a possibility that she has a clear path to running, but she's so far not shown any inclination that she wants to run. So the guy who everybody seems to think is going to run is Andy Burnham, who you've talked about on the show. He's the mayor of Manchester. He's a Labour MP from the north of England. He got a lot of positive headlines in 2020. 2020 as a lot of politicians did because they were immediately on the news after boris johnson had said something so like there were a lot of politicians in this country that came across as being hyper competent because they had just followed a man who really was giving a press conference but really thinking about how he was who he was going to bang like like that this is during the pandemic when yeah this is during the pandemic parties and dicking around and yeah even before we knew about the parties his press conferences were often garbled because johnson is uh smart in a very specific rich white english man way which is he's sort of able to recite poetry but crucially he doesn't understand any of it and so when he was actually put under pressure in 2020 he he would often give these press conferences that were rambling and borderline incoherent and then it would cut to you know a different uk politician and it's specifically in the case of andy burnham the mayor of manchester who would by comparison seem incredibly studious and like a leader and so burnham really got a lot of attention in the pandemic he was also he was already a very high profile figure because you know being the mayor of manchester is a big high profile job it's a big important city in the uk now the problem here is that andy burnham is not an mp right and so that's the that's it's so there was all this polling done that suggested he's the most popular politician his uh net favorability is sort of somewhere in the mid 30s and sort of seeming everyone else in british politics is in the like low teens or the minus numbers but the problem is andy burnham is not an mp and as such he can't be prime minister so then on thursday a fairly extraordinary thing happened uh josh simons who is a labour mp in makerfield was your constituent just outside of manchester announced that he was going to step aside and therefore force a by-election which is what we call a special election in which andy burnham could stand so that he could become the mp for makerfield and therefore run for prime minister it is i feel like i've the word unprecedented has lost all meaning in the last decade uh both in my country and in yours but this is pretty unprecedented um so now i'm going to go to the next question what what what comes next basically for the labour party is this special election in makerfield to determine if andy burnham is going to become an mp to determine if he can challenge kirsten for prime minister in the interim nobody has shown any appetite to challenge starmer so starmer is still in post but he's sort of schrodinger's prime minister like he sort of is and isn't prime minister at the same time it's quite an unbelievable situation because he everybody knows he is kind of he he is on the way out it's an i honestly it's sort of baffling you know i'm used to the last couple of years of rishi sunak everybody knew he was gonna lose the next election so every time he announced anything everyone would be like yeah cool buddy see in a couple of years yeah i'll see you at mcdonald's in a couple of years like you know that's not it's not particularly important to any of us so but this is pretty pretty extraordinary because technically from an election perspective he doesn't have to call an election until 2029 if he wants to that's how far he can push it but he has seemingly no ability to run the country at the minute yeah or lead his own party yeah the the andy burnham by election is remarkable because as you noted like he's going to run just it's not a sure thing that he'll win this seat first of all given the mood music in the country but also you're in a situation where you have like what thirty thousand forty thousand people vote to maybe make this guy an mp and if they make him an mp he's going to win the seat he's the odds-on favorite to be prime minister so you're kind of voting for this guy to be prime minister but not because that's not the process the other name that's been thrown out there recently is ed milliband uh of the milliband family but the sandwich loving variety he's the energy minister currently it sounds like he's been doing a lot of plotting behind the scenes um is he really a candidate do you think for prime minister so he i mean he did he was leader of the labor party he did run uh for prime minister he lost the 2015 election and then he was sort of slightly cast out into the political wilderness but whilst in the wilderness he sort of through media appearances and through a very successful podcast that he co-hosted for a while sort of rehabilitated his public image also he continued to be an mp in that time he didn't just immediately quit his job as a job in politics completely and go and cash it in in the private sector but he he was sort of cast out into the wilderness and he kind of rebuilt his kind of political capital in this country which is is completely fascinating and he is a sort of nationally popular figure now i think that i don't know what it would be like if he attempted to run for prime minister again i don't know how that would look because a lot of these sort of accusations that were leveled at him in 2015 might come back around again now i will say the 2015 uk election and this is there's no need for us to get too far in the weeds of this was a very strange and peculiar event because it it sort of happens it's the sandwich filling in between two referendums so there was the scottish independence referendum which the pro-independence lobby lost and then there was the brexit referendum the year after and those two things are the factor around that election right because the scottish voters were so incensed by the labor role in helping to deliver a no vote in the independent in the independence referendum and then which then led to the election and then the independence referendum which then led to the to the Conservative government essentially sort of disregarding Scotland immediately after it decided. to remain a part of the united kingdom that they switched en masse to the scottish national party the snp and so a lot of progressive voters in scotland which are a huge part of labor support based switch parties also david cameron went into the 2015 election promising a referendum on the britain's membership of the eu so he essentially headed off the threat of nigel farage so labor support collapsed on its left flank and the conservative sort of electoral split that had dogged the party for most of the 21st century was essentially found a kind of detente because nigel farage was essentially like well i guess we don't need to run that hard because these guys are going to give us a brexit referendum so that you know that it sort of so in milliband losing that election there's some wider circumstances that obviously aren't a play at this point so you can sort of see why but i still think he's not going to run all of the rumors coming out of the uk press at the moment are that he was threatening to run if there was no viable candidate from the soft left of the labor party and he was essentially threatening to run on a platform of jesus fucking christ not always i think from what i could tell that what while streeting was like touting his credentials as a candidate ed milliband was like listen if it has to be it has to be someone other than this fucking guy got it i look i know that feeling um you mentioned brexit a few times there from an outsider's point of view i'm not going to comment on that from an outsider's perspective it just seems so obvious that brexit was a mess it was a disaster it was sold to the public on all of these lies about funding for the nhs stopping the boats etc um and that has harmed the uk therefore it has always been confusing to me that that labor isn't more full-throated about reversing brexit or like i don't know talking it down running against it why is that like what am i missing here because of our kind of screwy electoral system that's like that's it's screwy in a different way to yours so like obviously the electoral college what the hell is going on not the best i don't understand none of us will ever understand why that's allowed to happen but our first past the post system means that the same problem essentially occurs which is there is disproportionate importance to a small group of voters in potentially swing constituencies and a lot of labor support collapsed in what they call the red wall so vote constituencies in the north of england that had historically voted labor but then voted brexit in 2016 then deserted the party and part of the thinking around that is that it's over the brexit vote so that's why the labor party essentially at this point no one including nigel farage the man who absolutely agitated for brexit had been championing and touting it as a political project for really 20 years no one talks about brexit anymore because everybody is afraid to engage with the fact that it has negatively affected our economy it is making us poorer but there is no political will to reverse any of the decisions behind it because i think there is and also to be honest with you there is a real fit it was it was really really ugly yeah and you know a sitting mp in the lead up to the referendum was really ugly and i think it was really ugly because the man who led up to the referendum was murdered by a man who in court gave his name as freedom for britain and there is also a fatigue about rehashing those arguments but i totally understand that from an outsider's perspective it feels completely inexplicable that we don't at least talk about mitigating some of the effects of brexit and the big problem was that nobody agreed what it was until it had been voted for yeah so if you go back and look at the campaign they were making all kinds of crazy claims and they were also very in the short term clever by not fully defining the exact terms of it so it was able to be this kind of diffuse thing that was going to deliver more money for the public sector and actually because of that we spent we had kind of three years of just no political movement whatsoever as people tried to work out what it was that they had just asked the country to vote on yeah so they there is something that i think is really important to me and i think it's really important to me and i little political appetite but i totally understand people looking at the uk must be totally confused by it no i i would love to have three more years of debating hard or soft brexit or irish tax stops or all the bullshit we all had to learn so i on some level i get it um you mentioned nigel farage there like he he's the leader of reform uk this new far-right party they gained a lot of ground in these elections it is objectively bad to have a like right-wing xenophobic political party do that especially one run by a clown and a charlatan i guess i could squint at it another way and say i don't know maybe they maybe this signals there's a cap on their support sort of in the 20s low 30 percent that we've seen across europe how worried are you about the rise of reform and the potential for nigel farage to be the prime minister there's a lot of people making the case that based on polling projections from 12 months ago reform actually underperformed um in these local elections and that you know there are various statisticians that are trying to make the case that reform support may have peaked nigel farage is also sort of embroiled in another scandal at the moment over here where just before he became an mp he got five million pounds from a cryptocurrency billionaire called christopher harbin yeah he's based in thailand yeah it is is five million pounds and he said initially it was because he needed that money for security for the rest of his life he then when he was pressed on it said that he it was a present for doing brexit right a reward like campaigning for brexit okay it was a reward for campaigning for brexit regardless of the reasoning for why the money came in he did not long after it landed in his account buy a house in cash for about for about 1.4 million pounds didn't kirstenberg get killed for taking like clothes from supporters like eyeglasses like again yeah thousand cents a thousand dollars like i understand why it was an issue clean that shit up but like it just it feels like the press doesn't cover farage like a real candidate they cover him like a pundit or some like i don't know the performance artist yeah on podside the uk we had to talk a little bit about the fact that the leader of the green party zach blansky who was sort of polling very well and taking votes from labor from the political left uh may or may not have paid council tax which is the tax that you pay on wherever you live in this like you house tax essentially on a narrow boat that he lived on for a period about 10 years ago and so we were talking about you know we're talking about whenever we talk about politicians like starmer and polanski we're talking about scandals that are sometimes in the hundreds and the thousands but nigel farage we are talking about five million pounds from from from a crypto from a crypto billionaire reform's platform has pushed the idea that deregulating cryptocurrency would be something that they were pushed for in government there are a lot of signs for that so this is you know if it looks like corruption it smells like corruption but it is we we both suffer from this kind of scrutiny deficit in with right-wing politicians and people like us get ourselves sort of twisted and contorted because we're all trying to do the right thing like progressive people want to hold progressive politicians to a moral standard that we have all agreed upon that trans sends our political biases and leanings right and that's fine unfortunately in the last 10 years the other side of the political spectrum has abandoned that you know shared moral code so it means that it creates the scrutiny deficit where if a left-wing politician does something that we consider to be a transgression everyone piles in on them if a right-wing politician does it the right-wing press and other right-wing politicians do it and they're not going to be able to do anything about it they're going to be in jail for the rest of their lives if a right-wing politician does something about it and they're not going to be in jail for the rest of their lives and they're not going to be in jail for the rest of their lives and the right-wing politicians kind of shrug their shoulders and i do think with faraj is is is baffling like he he he is treated like no other politician in my lifetime apart from boris johnson and the really interesting thing about boris johnson is that when things really went south for him when all of those revelations came out about lockdown parties it was the conservative press in this country that went after him and i think that's a slightly under-discussed part of the collapse of johnson it is a slightly under-discussed part of the collapse of johnson it is a slightly under-discussed part of the collapse of johnson it was just the first time in a long long time that a kind of right-wing populist was fully exposed to total scrutiny of their actions and behavior by the entirety of the uk press and johnson's political career collapsed on contact with that scrutiny and it would be really interesting if you know conservative papers did pick up on this for our story but i suspect it won't you know if you if you sort of speak in defense of deregulated capital people tend to find a way to excuse whatever behaviors you're engaged oh god listen brothers you're preaching to the choir over here i mean trump just created a 1.776 billion dollar slush fund for his political allies and i was watching fox news before i walked in here and they were doing a segment about an aoc interview from may 13th so like whatever it takes to keep from talking about dear leader is what they'll what they'll do final question for you so this summer july 16th through 18th i think i know where you're going to be uh cpac britain is taking london by storm yes yes i'm uh i'm opening for them i'm gonna do 20 minutes of comedy to open for c Let's watch a quick hype video by one of the leading lights of British politics to kind of get us fired up to talk about this. Here we go. We are launching a British CPAC, which is going to take place this summer, bringing together conservatives of all parties, not just from Britain, but from the United States, from Europe and from around the world. Two questions. Will you be purchasing the 100 pound ticket or the 10,000 pound ticket? And why does she talk at 0.5x speed? It drives me absolutely insane. I will be purchasing. I will immediately go straight in for the 10 grand package. I've got to have front row to CPAC UK. The issue that CPAC UK has is that right now Liz Truss is so politically radioactive that even Nigel Farage isn't going to turn up to it. Oh, really? So far, he's a no. Yeah, so far, he's a no. Because she is so politically toxic that no one wants to be photographed stood next to her. And I. I mean, listen, I am fascinated to see who turns up. I imagine it's going to be a who's who of British conservative batshitry. Like it is really going to be Woodstock for red faced men called Christopher. Like it is going to be really like it's really. And I listen and I imagine we'll get some like leading lights from the European far right as well. Oh, yeah. I believe Victor Orban has some time on his hands. That's right. Oh, yeah. He'll be there. He'll be he'll be punching tickets at the front. Selling drinks. I believe Orban's got some time. But like the problem with these kind of fringe whack jobs is that they are obviously funny to look at. But the ideas that they're propagating do have a way into the British political mainstream, because, you know, as much as Farage wants to distance himself from them for sort of electoral reasons, he's essentially offering the same policy platform. You know, he's he's he's more competently presenting it, but it's the same shit. Yeah, I mean, like it is it's a pernicious thing and managed to seep into the politics. There's a lot of money behind it. I think there's a question about I'd love to know who's funding, you know, CPAC. UK is that, you know, there's some question now whether the CPAC Hungary was getting funded by the Russians. Right. There's a lot more learning now that Orban is out in the records are open, but we will watch it. We will make fun of it. But also you're right to say it's a it's a problem. I think it's really important to tread a line between saying this is a real problem. It presents some dangerous ideas for us. But it is also important to say, fuck me, these these lads are weird. Like, it's really important that we don't lose sight of the basic stranger. It's important that we don't lose sight of the common sense of a lot of these people, because they are so strange, so strange. So this is why we need comedy and stand up comedians, because, you know, you guys are like fun bullies, you know, we can take down these losers. What astonishing dismissal of my whole profession. I wish I could do stand up movies every time I every time we walk out on stage to do like a live podcast or something, I always think to myself, man, imagine if I was doing something actually cool, like comedy or music. I'm looking at your guitar back behind you see a nice amp in the corner. Yeah, I've got a lot of listen, I got I got started with my midlife crisis about 10 years early. Oh, good. In fact, actually, to be honest, my whole career as a stand up comedian is a midlife crisis. It just began when I was 22. So like, I'm just I've always been ahead of the curve. I'm proud of you. Well, I got into podcasting as a grown adult. Nish, thank you so much for joining the show. Everyone should listen to Pod Save the UK and check out your special Nish Don't Kill My Vibe on YouTube now. Perfect. Beautiful. That's right. Right away. Now watch right now. Thanks again to Nish Kumar for joining the show. And now you are going to hear more exclusive information about Ben's book, All We Say, which you should have already bought by now. And if you haven't, this audio book is going to put you at the top. Yeah, I'm disappointed in you if you don't. We live in a cynical time. We are surrounded by forces designed to make us feel like we lack. Whether it's an algorithm that shapes what we see, an oligarchy that controls wealth and power, a world untethered from old notions of order, a climate that is changing, or artificial intelligence which mimics human functions and thought. Corruption abounds. The existence of truth itself is distorted and contested. Yet history shows us that the world is not. The words we speak can matter. They have started wars and forged peace, sparked movements and elected presidents, changed minds, and foretold the future. 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