Keir Starmer’s Last Stand?

Pod Save the World is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery? With thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and houseplants. All grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. Whatever you're looking for, Fast Growing Trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate, space, and lifestyle. Fast Growing Trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. Just click, order, and grow and get healthy, thriving plants delivered to your door. Their Alive and Thrive Guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy. No green thumb required, just quality plants you can count on. Plus, get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants, and learn how to care for them every step along the way. Fast Growing Trees is great. I think everybody wants to have something green in their backyard or maybe their house, but you don't know what will do well in your environment. You don't know the best way to lay it out. You don't know how to keep it alive necessarily, and they will help you with all of that. They'll help you pick great stuff. So, I don't know. Just make sure it works for you and keep it alive for a very long time. So, highly recommend it. Right now, they have great deals on spring planting essentials up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% off their first purchase when using the code WORLD at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at FastGrowingTrees.com using the code WORLD at checkout. FastGrowingTrees.com, code WORLD. Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use WORLD to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, congrats on your New York Knickerbockers. It's unreal, Tommy. This is the best that they've played in my entire life. Usually, when they're good, it is still agonizing. I don't know what it feels like to have your team just like paste the shit out of. Just crush the sixers. Just crush and be fun and cool and have our fans take over Philadelphia. Yell and bing-bong at people? Yeah. It was, you know. It was. Let's put it this way. Like a four-game destruction of Philadelphia was more fun than what would have been probably an agonizing Knicks-Celtics series for six or seven games. Would have been tough. Ben Stiller out there tweeting away. So, bang. Twin Towers. A lot of tweets that we take in a couple different ways. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Stiller's. Like I said, he's just living my text thread online. Does he sit on the wood? Does he sit like a courtside? He's a courtside, yeah. Oh, that's so awesome. What do you think those cost? I got to go. You got on the wood? Yes. That's. For the first time this year. And it's weird because you kind of look down this row and there's like Spike Lee. Chalamet. Ben Stiller. You know, Chalamet wasn't there that day. Tracy Morgan. And it's, you know. I actually like our celebrities. Like sometimes that's kind of nauseating, but like. Spike Lee, come on. I mean, Spike's been going forever through Thick and Thin. He's a fan. They suck mostly. And yeah, he absolutely deserves to enjoy this. Chalamet has proven himself to be a real sports fan. Seemingly a pretty cool guy. I will say that they have the ex-players there, which is cool to see too. I won't name names, but one of them walked by me and the whiff of marijuana was like one of the most powerful smells. I got like a contact high on the courtside, but it's good. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. And then Jim Dolan. Jim Dolan is like using AI facial recognition to kick out any critics. All right. Just to give a rec here. Pablo Torre did a find out about Dolan's. Dolan's the owner of the Knicks. And he literally like has his frigging security goons run around the stadium and chase people that chant things critical of him. He's that petty of a sad little man. Monitors people in the bathroom. It's really creepy. That is. Really? Kind of Palantir-esque. Gross. That's very Palantir-esque. Okay. Enough about the Knicks. Congrats. I'm happy for you. Thank you. We have a great, great show today. We're going to lead with something new. We're going to talk about the recent elections in the UK, which were a disaster for the Labor Party and have led to widespread calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to step aside and allow a leadership election. We'll debate whether that's a good idea or not. Then we're going to walk you through the last disastrous week in the disastrous war with Iran. We got abandoned missions, Ben. Cease fires on life support. We had ballooning economic consequences. All of it. Then we watched Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Danyahu's interview on 60 Minutes so that you don't have to. We're going to let you know about all the hard-hitting questions from the new and improved Barry Weiss CBS. We'll preview Trump's trip to China. He's going to use, actually, I think he's in the air right now. He's going to go meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. We'll tell you what both sides want out of the visit, what it means for Iran, what it means for Taiwan. We'll talk a little bit about some jockeying for the future of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. We'll bitch about coverage of Marco Rubio because that's all we have left. We're just whining little babies, cry about stuff. And then we're going to tell you about Cash Patel's recent. Testimony in the U.S. Senate that then you did our interview. I talked to Susie Hanson, who's a really great journalist who's written for like the New York Times magazine, among other places. She lived in Turkey for 10 years and she wrote a book essentially about one neighborhood, but it's really about the transformation of Turkey under Tayyip Erdogan, both inside of Turkey, but also this role it's played in welcoming millions of Syrian refugees in the Arab Spring and, you know, the rise of authoritarianism that Erdogan's been a part of. So it's both a conversation about Erdogan in Turkey, but also about understanding what's happened in the world through this place that all the trends convergent. I mean, like there's not one thing that hasn't happened in the world in the last 15 years that hasn't run through Turkey. So it's a great conversation. Great book. Be sure to check it out. I was thinking about the day that there was that attempted coup. We talked about that too. Fighter jets. Yeah. That's what, yeah, we were just, you came in and we were still talking about it after the interview. Cause I have so many questions. Yeah. Tanks rolling down the street and then just disappeared. And yet everyone seemed to know about it, but did he, but he was like FaceTiming from his phone on the plane. The whole thing was very strange. Fucking crazy. Finally, after that, our friends at the pod subscribers will hear Ben and I take some questions from the friend of the pod subscriber community from our discord. If you want to join, go to crooked.com slash friends. You get ad free episodes of this show, ad free episodes, pod save America. You get bonus episodes of pod save America. You get polling deep dives from Dan Pfeiffer and you can get discounted tickets to crooked con, uh, our second annual jamboree of politics, fun, hot takes, cold takes, uh, light drinking, heavy petting. There's all of it. So, uh, crooked.com slash friends. If you want to go. And by the way, subscribing is the number one thing you could do to help us grow as a progressive independent media company. And if that's a bridge too far for you, at least just subscribe to pod, save the world on YouTube or, or wherever you get your podcasts right through the show, review the show. It really helps us grow and we will appreciate it. So, all right, Ben, let's talk, uh, let's leave with the UK. Cause we've been doing Iran stuff for like two months straight. Now, um, there've been some major political machinations in the UK, uh, prime minister Keir Starmer's tenure as prime minister could be over soon or not. We just don't know yet. The backstory here is that last week there were local elections in England and elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. Um, these were not elections to parliament itself. It was not like directly impacting a Starmer standing, but these council elections are seen as bellwethers to assess the political mood in the UK and the mood is pissed. Voters are pissed. Uh, the results were really, really bad for the labor party. Remember labor won an historic landslide in 2024, but in this election, just two years later, labor lost 1400 council seats. So it's just a drubbing, um, and labor lost votes from both directions. They lost to the greens on their left. They lost to reform UK on the right now reform is the right wing xenophobic party run by Nigel Farage, um, the cameo star Nigel Farage. So reform, uh, they made big gains in England to perform also did really well in Wales and Scotland in Wales. The Welsh nationalist party won the most seats, but reform came in second in labor and the Tories lost ground. Uh, this came after labor was literally the leading party in Wales for 100 years, over a hundred years. And then in Scotland, the SNP, the Scottish national party, they're going to stay in control of parliament and labor had its worst ever result in Scotland. It is now tied with reform. Uh, the greens also did quite well in Scotland. So what does it all mean? Um, I think first we're seeing the total collapse of the traditional two party system and it's really becoming a five party system. And you've got labor and the Tories cratering, uh, the lib Dems are doing better. The greens reform UK, they're gaining ground. And then, um, in, in, uh, in Scotland and, um, well, you also have like nationalist local parties. Um, second, you have voters just furious about the cost of living and a bunch of, uh, economic issues and labor has not made their lives better. They're getting punished for it. And there's lots of reports that labor. The campaigners were on the doors and they were talking to voters and the voters were like, we hate Keir Starmer, hate like visceral hate for that man. Um, which is interesting. So that gets us to the question of whether Starmer will step aside or be deposed. On Monday, he gave a defiant speech, taking responsibility for the loss, but rejecting calls to resign. Let's listen to a bit of that. The election results last week were tough, very tough. We lost some brilliant labor representatives. That hurts and it should hurt. I get it. I feel it. And I take responsibility. We are not just facing dangerous times, but dangerous opponents, very dangerous opponents. This hurts not just because labor has done badly, but because if we don't get this right, Our country will go down a very dark Oh, it seems like he's not feeling emotions, but I was gonna say, yeah, yeah. So on Tuesday, he also had the cabinet meeting. He was again to find he told his team he's not going anywhere, but it's not entirely up to him. There are reports that more than 90 labor MPs want Starmer to step aside. That includes four ministers in his government. But crucially, Ben, no alternative candidate has gotten the support of 81 sitting labor MPs, which is what you need to formally challenge Starmer and trigger a leadership election. So, Ben, I'll pause there. Your thoughts on these results. And then after that, do you want to make the case that it's time for Keir Starmer to step aside and I'll make the Starmer should stay case? Yeah. Straw man, just for fun. Yeah, yeah. And I could probably argue it both ways, but I would definitely tilt in the direction I'm going to argue for. Look, the problem here is that labor won this massive majority in large part because the Tories had self-immolated as we covered meticulously. On this podcast over a decade, over the course of a decade with Brexit and Liz Truss and all the chaos, Boris Johnson having covid parties, all the rest of it. And so they get this huge mandate and have done fuck all with it. I mean, like what was their program? Like what? What is Keir Starmer's? They got jobs for Jeffrey Epstein, friends. Yeah. Well, what is Keir Starmer's? Well, this is part of the problem, is that their their theory, Starmer's theory of the case was I got to purge Jeremy Corbyn. The left wing previous leader of labor and all of his supporters and move this party to the center to make it an acceptable alternative to the Tories and win. And that worked. But the problem is they had no program for when they won. And this is a country that has an identity crisis after Brexit. This is a country that is desperately in need of growth. This is a country that has xenophobic, rising far right politics, but desperately needs immigrants to sustain their care economy and their NHS. So there's a lot of work to be done. And he. He's not offering any vision or any big ideas about what the U.K. is or what their economic future is. And and that's showing up in the polls, you know, and I know some of these, you know, one of my someone I know, Payman Assad, actually won by 30 votes. But, you know, that 30 votes, it's tough, you know. And here I'll pivot to the case against Starmer. I know what he said, which is that we can't be as chaotic as the Tories and change leaders, you know, in the merry ground. But let me have five years to have my full mandate. The problem with that is. He has not shown any other gear, you know, you know, when you see a politician, I mean, first of all, does he get it? No, he looks like he's reading talking points. He was told to say, I feel it. He did a tense speech, perhaps where they said show passion. And he just can't really show emotion or passion. He's like a well-meaning, perhaps guy. But like he does. But then beyond that. He hasn't shown that he has any new vision or any new program. It's all political positioning and tactic. Should I tack a little bit more to the right as they've done on immigration, which doesn't make sense because if you're anti-immigrant, you'll just vote for reform. Should I tack to the left? And look, the Green Party's done a lot to differentiate itself and actually stand on principle. That's why they're winning voters. I just don't think he knows what he wants to do as prime minister other than state prime minister. Yeah. And there's a kind of, you know, there's a kind of younger Joe Biden vibe here, too. I just want to stick around. And look. He's the guy that did August. Yeah, well, it's true, to be fair. But he's not wrong about Reform UK being scary. I mean, this is a xenophobic far right party led by Nigel Farage, who should be a punchline, not a prime minister. But precisely because of that threat, I just don't see him rehabilitating labor to be able to compete. And so and look, there's the biggest problem is there's not an alternative part of the problem is an alternative. The biggest alternative is Andy Burnham, right, who's a very popular mayor, but who would have to come into the parliament to become prime minister. He was blocked from coming into parliament by Keir Starmer and his allies. And so they prevented there from being alternatives. Again, echoes of the Democratic Party. We've done primaries. And so I just don't. I just don't know that Keir Starmer has showed us that he can govern any differently than he already has. And we see what the results are of how he governs. And I just therefore think that. And look, take some time if you're not ready today to find an alternative, you know, figure out a timeline to find one. But if they're running two, three years from now into the next election with Keir Starmer, I just think that's a recipe for disaster. So let me let me strawman. The case for why Starmer should stay, because I actually think it's then we'll talk about our own personal views. I have a fairly strong view, but it is it's complicated. So the case for why Starmer should stay is, you know, like I said at the top, like this was not a landslide for reform or a total wipeout for labor. It was the political system really fracturing into this new reality of multi-party, not just a two party system. And I think we do adjust our expectations accordingly. Yes, Keir Starmer is unpopular. His polling is terrible. There's all these reports about, you know, visceral hatred of him on the doorsteps. But every single leader in Europe is unpopular right now. Right. In April, YouGov did a big tracking poll. Keir Starmer is 44 points underwater. French President Emmanuel Macron is 49 points underwater. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is 52 points underwater. Even leaders, I think that you and I think of as more deft politically or at least more interesting or struggling like Georgia Maloney is negative 22. Her approval, Pedro Sanchez is 21 points underwater. So everyone's getting fucked. People are pissed everywhere. And then again, like getting rid of Starmer is the easy part. Figuring out who comes next is much harder. Have you heard of West Streeting, Angela Rainer or Andy Burnham? Me neither. And those are the leading candidates to replace this guy. Right. And like if West Streeting wants to run, he needs to man up and do it. No one's no one's manned up yet. And so to your point, Ben, like about Starmer and his what do you want to do with the job? I don't get the sense from anybody really what they want to do within labor. Like it's not about who comes next. It's about what comes next. And what are you going to do with the mandate? And like no one's laying out an alternative vision. I know that's complicated when you're still in government, but no one's done it yet. And then in that speech, we didn't play all of it. But like Starmer did try to lay out a bit of a path forward. He has like more direct intervention in the economy. He talks about like nationalizing steel plants, more partnership with the EU. He takes a more head on fight with Nigel Farage. He blames the Iran war for a lot of his troubles. Speaking of which, you know, the one thing this will do is it will mean that Starmer helps Nigel Farage deliver on his big election promise. Let's watch a clip of Farage ranting away after the election already happened about the results. We fought this election campaign on a big national slogan. You might remember it. It said vote reform and. And I tell you what, he'll be gone by the middle of the summer. The most unpatriotic, worst, least prepared prime minister we've ever seen in this country. And we will have seen the back of him. We are directly taking votes from patriotic old Labour in areas that, frankly, they've been pretty much able to take for granted since the end of World War One. It all goes to show that over the course of the last two years, since we made that breakthrough in the general election, we have specialised the party. We've done it at a very, very rapid rate. Is it possible to have a phone call with your friend Donald Trump to maybe end this war in Iran? That would help prices over here. I think the war in Iran is very close to an end. I mean, heroin is just not my thing. There's a way better backdrop for them. Also, I love the guys who have the big like brooches like this one, like a ribbon and like a horse jumping competition. But anyway, so if Starmer goes, he delivers for Farage. And I think that. There's no way this ends with this just a leadership election. There will be intense pressure to call for an early general election that will come at the worst time possible for Labour. It'll rattle the bond markets. It'll create a permanent economic cost. And so I think, you know, the only path forward deliver on the mandate voters gave Starmer fight it out. Also, very awkward that the King's speech, I think it's the day this episode comes out this Wednesday. And that's where the prime minister lays out his legislative agenda. So it's kind of a crazy time to make a change. But that's the case for Starmer. Yeah, I get the case being that part of what like we made fun of the Tories for, you know, musical chairs, prime ministers, and that's suboptimal. First of all, Nigel Farage, it's like a walking, talking pack of Marlboro Reds. You know, that voice is so funny. But I think that they're not easy answers to these problems. I'd say a couple of things. First of all. Yes, all those people are underwater. But you notice who's less underwater. Pedro Sanchez and Giorgio Maloney. Wildly different politically, right? Maloney's on the right. Sanchez is on the left. But they believe things like squishy centrism that Macron and Starmer embody, literally. And Mertz is a little bit more to the right, but like is not what anyone's looking for. They want to know that we are dealing in this country, but also in the UK. like existential problems. You know, like the economy doesn't work anymore. Capitalism doesn't work anymore. The world doesn't work anymore. And this idea that you're just going to tinker and a little bit of a social program here and a little bit of a tough on immigrant rhetoric here and, you know, a tiny bit of money for the NHS and National Health Service, like that, that approach, that's the Starmerism. It's just not what people want. Yeah, and it's also creating problems that there's not like a clear faction that wants to get rid of them. It's not like the left of the Labour Party is all like, get rid of Starmer. It's just like everyone kind of, it's just not that into them. Yeah, because nobody really knows what, you know, what he is and what he stands for. And, you know, I'd have to go deeper on what the big, what big ideas they could have. What is an actual. Here's one. Brexit was bad. Well, that's what I was about to say. So you read my mind. It's like, why not just say, you know what, like this economy has been totally fucked up. Just like it was predictable it would be by Brexit. We have lost our place in the world stage because we're kind of an orphan now getting beat up by Donald Trump. Like, we should go back into the EU. Like, that's going to be better for our geopolitics and our economy. It'll be good for growth because we'll have more markets. Like, something on that scale. The speech hints at more, more with Europe, more something like it, like hints at getting back, hints at undoing Brexit. But then his team was briefing. No, no, no, no. We didn't really mean that. He just wants more partnership with Europe. Or something like that. It's like, pick a side. Pick a side and show people that you believe in something. And you know what? God forbid, maybe you lose. But at least you tried to do something you cared about, you know? And I think that, that's what's missing. And now, you know, Angela Rayner would have normally been the left-wing candidate. She, remember, had these tax issues and mortgage scandals that here, like, you know, nothing. And also, like, nothing compared to Nigel Farage. I mean, it just came out that he took, like, $5 million from some crypto billionaire for some reason. Yeah. He says it was for something. He says it was for security. But, like, there's no, like, the British media treats him kind of like a fun person to book on shows and be a talking head, not like a serious candidate. The guy who could be prime minister. Yeah. I mean, Zach Polanski, the Green Party, you know, has made real inroads because there's a kind of a Mamdani dust that, you know, they have over there. But it's because, like, people actually know what the Greens believe in, you know? And actually, on the centrism side, well, then you have the Lib Dems. Like, Labor's just kind of homeless now. Like, what is it? You know, and I think Starmer is not the one. He doesn't seem to be. And you could prove me wrong. He doesn't seem to have the answer to that question. Yeah. I think Zach Polanski really screwed up recently and didn't seem to take seriously enough some very serious incidents of anti-Semitism that have happened in the UK. So I don't know what that means for his future. Like, I'm with you. He's Jewish, though. I know. That's the weird part about all this. I mean, Starmer's speech, I watched the whole thing. Then he did a little press conference. It was just, it seemed, it seemed so weak. Like, it was like someone was, like, trying to, you know, turn him up 20%. He kept, he had this refrain where he kept being like, and that's the Labor way, or like, that's the Labor choice. It just, it just, it didn't work. He also, you know, he started to blame Iran for a lot of the UK's problems. I think that's, well, it's probably accurate. Yeah, yeah. They're LNG. It's useful, but I don't know. Like, I think, I think no one thinks that Keir Starmer is going to be leaving. Yeah. I think he's going to be leaving. Yeah. Yeah. And the question is just, like, when do you get rid of him? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, to me, is the question. Maybe take your time. I guess. Make your choice. Don't grab a Labor-Liz trust, but the clock is ticking. They got to start a process. They can't do what Biden did with Harris and just the Democratic Party did and just seem to anoint someone. They need a process. I don't know how long that is going to have to take, but they're going to have to have one. To your Biden point, I know this is unfair and silly and, like, an American thing, but I think Starmer said something about this being a fight for the soul of the country, and I was like, ooh, just screamed Biden. Yeah, look, I think he's a dead man walking politically. I think he was the right guy to get them through that election. He was not the right guy for this moment, just because once you have a negative 50 approval rating, I don't know how you fix that. Whoever comes next is probably fucked as well. Yeah. Or, like, staunch the bleeding. I don't know. Yeah. We beat Medicare. The scary thing is. There's all these trends we're watching of the rise of the far right in the UK, in France, in Germany, and we have the French presidential election coming up in 2027. The Germans have a bunch of elections coming up. You can see, like, AFD governors in parts of Germany. It's just, like, the future for the far right in Europe is bright, which is dark for us. Yeah. It's never a good mix, far right politics and Europe. No, not good. This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With a WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond? Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio? The WISE travel card gives you the mid-market rate on every purchase. No costly margin. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig? Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24-7 live support, your international transactions with WISE are quick, transparent, and safe. Plus, WISE runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people trust WISE to manage their money internationally. Be smart. Get WISE. I've used WISE before when I've traveled. It's super easy. You can use it to get cash. You can use it just to buy stuff. It's just an easy app, and you always get the best exchange rate. If you're going to get screwed at some random teller on the street at the airport, he's just absolutely going to fleece you. Totally. We've all been there. You don't want to do that. Or you come back with a bunch of cash that you can't use anywhere. Yeah, it's like monopoly money. It literally sits in your bag for 10 years. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. Terms and conditions apply. Positive World is brought to you by HIMSS. ED is way more common than most guys think. Millions of guys deal with it at some point, and that's exactly why HIMSS offers a straightforward way to handle it. HIMSS connects you with licensed healthcare providers. It offers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home. No awkward appointments. No pharmacy lines. Just complete a simple online intake, and a provider will review your information and determine if treatment is right for you. It prescribed your treatment ships directly to your door in discreet packaging. That includes sildenafil, also known as a generic for Viagra, available through HIMSS at up to 95% less than the brand name version. And if that option isn't right for you, there are additional treatment options available so you can find what works best for your body. It's straightforward, transparent, and designed to make getting care feel easy. To get simple online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss, and more, visit HIMSS.com/world. That's HIMSS.com/world for your free online visit. HIMSS.com/world. Prescription required. See website for details and important safety information. Sildenafil is a generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Vietris, specialty LLC. HIMSS is not affiliated with or endorsed by Vietris. Okay, so the war in Iran is looming over all of this. It remains a total mess. And depending on who you ask, Ben, the war with Iran could be over or not. Here's a little supercut that tells the story. Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. Was it accurate to say you think the combat operations are over and done? No, I didn't say that. I said they are defeated, but that doesn't mean they're done. Is the war with Iran over? And if it isn't, who will decide when it is? We'll push a great deal, but it's not over because there's still nuclear material. So clear as day. That was Marco Rubio, Trump, and then Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, for those of you lucky enough to not just automatically recognize their voices. So let's try to walk you guys through the last week in the disaster that it was, and then we'll talk about it. So first, Trump announced Project Freedom. That was this like PR bullshit plan to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz. That mission lasted, I think, about 36 hours until Trump pulled the plug on it. NBC News later reported. That the Saudis and the Kuwaitis were surprised by the plan. They were mad about it, and they pressured the US to pull the plug because they thought it could unravel the ceasefire and peace talks. Then we had a bunch of breaking news and sirens from reporters quoting senior White House officials saying the US and Iran were very close to making a deal. That of course was bullshit. There's still no deal. And according to the Financial Times, the two sides were very far apart. Trump's demands were a 20 year moratorium on Iran's nuclear enrichment program, transferring the stockpile of uranium. Trump said the US and Iran were very close to making a deal. Iranian management of the Strait of Hormuz going forward, suspension of sanctions. And then they actually gave a little ground on their enriched uranium stockpile. They said they'd chip half of it out, but like dilute the rest. But they gave Trump a little something. Here's how President Trump took their response. Let's watch. For the time being, the ceasefire remains in place. It's unbelievably weak, I would say. I would call it the weakest right now. After reading that piece of garbage they sent us, I didn't even finish reading it. They said, I'm going to waste my time reading it. I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support. They understand these are all medical people. Dr. Oz, life support is not a good thing. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living. to allow the removal of all their enrichment? - Yeah, yeah. that two days ago they didn't okay they did two days ago they said you're going to have to take it we were going to go with them but they changed their mind because they didn't put it in the paper so when they sent us this document that we waited four days for that should have taken 10 minutes to do that it's looking very simple we get that they guarantee no nuclear weapons for a very long period of time and a couple of other minor things but they just can't get there they think that well i'll get tired of this so i'll get bored or i'll have some pressure but there's no pressure there's no pressure at all i love that like this sir construct for a story that he's totally making up support now and now is how the doctor talks to you in like the er when your mom's there and some sir some random people have to stand there the whole time there's one lady ben who literally she was someone told her to smile and she did this the whole time she was anyway uh things are going good things are going great first of all i'm just going to keep coming back to this because we have to uh because our media doesn't do it enough uh this is why we have to support independent progressive media thank you sir they'll say things like well they're already defeated at what like soccer like the regime is in place they have all the nuclear material they control the state of home rooms like they're not defeated like like let's just like not even let him just keep saying something that isn't true because he wants to repeat it until it becomes true um the fact that the iranians aren't even offering the jcpoa the iran nuclear deal terms shows you that they believe that they have all this leverage like they control the straight of form moves they've got and he when the way he talks about i can wait here all day well i'm not bored i'm not bored at all person outside is paying seven dollars a gallon for gas yeah right tell that to the people in the uk who have shortages or the people in south korea who have shortages or people in bangladesh who you know have to ration energy like everybody is suffering and donald trump's just sitting there on his fat ass being like oh i got all the time in the world and then he acts like he's asked about his red line for the negotiations he's like i don't know we're going to think about it on the flight to china yeah yeah and here's here's the thing like i i've often again the they will they will be willing to ship that stockpile out because they know that's not their nuclear program that's just the product of the nuclear program and so i just don't get why these you know he needs to end the war he needs to show he got something i just don't get why he doesn't make a deal where it's like they're going to open the straighterhorn moves and they're going to ship out their stockpile and they're going to get some sanctions relief and a bunch of money because that's how this thing ends and and otherwise it's like a frozen conflict but it's a frozen conflict where the straightforward moose is closed you know and the global economy will collapse within a matter of months if that's the case the cost is unbelievable unbelievable the pentagon says the direct cost is 29 billion dollars now double that right like it's it's they asked for 200 billion so i don't know what planet the real number is way more oil prices are still are way up so jp morgan said its analysts think that oil prices will remain over a hundred dollars a barrel through this year that's bad um a brown university study found that as of last week american consumers had paid an extra 35 billion dollars in gas and diesel costs since the war began that's about 268 dollars per household jet fuel prices are up 70 fertilizer prices are up 30 by the way us in california man we get especially screwed yes because we're more dependent on middle eastern oil than other states um and then the the state of america says that it's going to take a little bit of time to get rid of it and it's going to take a little bit of time to get rid of it and we're looking at the total cost of the war and they found that a reasonable estimate based on the fed's own models is that the war is going to cost the economy 200 billion dollars and a loss of a million jobs in the u.s for like a bunch of factors including uh interest rates and uh the fed's like monthly gauge of global supply chain pressures is now at the highest level since the pandemic so like everything the the the economy is like feeling like a balloon and something is going to pop very soon and he's like i'm not bored i don't care that's the thing and and that's the thing and and the economy is like filling like a balloon and something is going to pop very soon and he's like i'm not bored i don't care that's the thing and and care that's the thing and and because everybody can feel it right so there's already this discordance between you know the quote-unquote markets and the lived reality of everybody that has to pay for anything on earth um and the shortages that are coming and i guess he thinks that when the bubble bursts he'll just blame brock obama or joe biden or something but like this is one where everybody knows that things were one way and then this war happened and they're another way and i think it's gonna take the rest of the world you know xi jinping in the next couple days all these europeans they're gonna have to go to trump and be like look man and the iranians for that matter and just be like just take the minimalist deal you can agree to trump his his willingness to spin anything uh should allow him to just get the hell out of this thing i mean just he's gonna say he defeated them anyway his right his morons who watch fox all day and listen to like mark levin will swallow that 70 in the country will think this is a mistake they already think it's a mistake look yeah and the right wingers the the fdd think tanks and stuff like they'll hate it but eventually they'll shut up like the hugh hewitts you know because they're professional fluffers and propagandists like they will hate this deal they're saying as much but yes i think that's where he's going to end up and also then there's been all these reports about um the way the war is kind of metastasizing and spreading across the middle east so the wall street journal reported that the united arab emirates uae had been carrying out military strikes on iran directly they were a direct combatant in the war they hit a refinery back in april for example they had been targeted by you know 2 800 missiles and drones from iran so it was response to that but still we didn't know that um there was also a reuters report today that saudi arabia carried out a bunch of secret airstrikes during the war too so again this wasn't just the us and israel it was a bunch of secret airstrikes bombing iran and then the journal had this wild story about how israel built a base in the middle of the iraqi desert to support the military operation in iran and then i think it was like search and rescue and some sort of air force logistics then the story says at one point the iraqi military tried to investigate what was going on there because i'm like you know sheepherder tipped them off to it and the idea fired on them a couple times and killed two iraqi soldiers and like just nobody said what is their basis for being there it's not their territory crazy like i think that's even beyond mike huckabee's definition of israel which ends somewhere around the euphrates ends in kansas yeah yeah yeah but i mean look first of all on the regional side we just again we have no idea the damage that's been done to our bases to our facilities to these gulf countries we you know people still can't like post pictures of dubai um the emiratis are the biggest losers or i don't know there are a lot of losers but they're one of the biggest losers in this war i don't know they're one of the biggest losers in this war first they threw all their chips in with the abraham accords with israel with this idea that we're gonna you know form a united front and stand up to the iranians and here they are they just got you know showered with drones and their dubai model got wrecked and you know they're they're carrying out airstrikes and and look if you're feeling sorry for them they fund the rsf in sudan that is like committing war crimes on a regular basis um but all this is going to i'm very interested to see how the backstory of all these things comes out in addition to the damage assessments one thing in particular that base in iraq clearly seemed tied and it was reported to the kurds right to the idea that the israelis wanted to use the iranian and iraqi kurds to be a ground force to do things inside of iran i think what probably happened there is you know the kurds have partnered with israel in the past some kurds not all kurds and they were probably waiting to see like okay uh can iran take this punch we kill the supreme leader and drop all these bombs and the regime lo and behold is not only still standing they're capable of closing straightforward moves and it seems like the kurds are like thanks but no thanks we're not like going to war against the regime i think the kurdish play was if the regime collapses you know maybe we'll or the regime is like literally on its last legs maybe we'll get involved here but it should be pointed out that failed like the israeli pitch as reported in the new york times in the situation room was the kurds are going to rise up there's going to be all these ground forces on our side if reza palavi the son of the shahs didn't come in none of those things happened and we never hold bibi nanyal accountable not just for the fact that he convinced trump to do this stupid thing but that his analysis he was either lying or he was completely wrong that the regime would fall that the kurds would rise up that the iranians would rise up that reza palavi was somehow a credible leader of iran do you see trump like directly about the kurds he was like we gave them weapons and they just stole them and they didn't do it he was complaining about it well that's a covert action program and it's such bull first of all like it's such bull the kurds have done so much you know they they were the ground force against isis for the united states in the obama years and under trump you know they were on our side in the iraq war like this idea that they're obligated to be our fight our wars to fight all of our wars and they never get what they want which is a state right um and for reasons that i can understand given the complexity of that but why would they fight our war it's crazy and also him just like crying about a clear like covert action program in a oval office press race it's funny yeah also the new york times just posted a piece uh it's a new like leaked assessment of uh the impact of the war in iran uh most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the straight of war moose but pete hex is a little bit more concerned about that than he is and he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit more concerned about the war in iraq but he's a little bit stockpile. That is bad news. So they got a lot, a lot of kit left to fire at us and a lot of ways to do it. Also, Ben, do you see that DOD wants to apparently rename their Iran war Operation Sledgehammer if it restarts? And they're thinking that that means they get to restart the 60 day war powers clock so they can just do another end run around Congress by giving it a new name. Well, that's what little Marco's doing when he's like, Epic Fury's over. I mean, they think that a war is like the name that you give to something and not the state of hostilities that you have in the country. I mean, I would argue that we've been at war with Iran since at least the so-called 12 day war. 1947. Well, what was the Tom Cotton timeline? Oh, that was crazy. Oh, 1979. But I mean, remember the 12 day war? This has all been one war. I mean, that's the point. These guys count on our attention spans being so destroyed by social media and technology that we- Yeah. forget that we're still in a war or something. Because as a new name, what are we, children? I mean- Just rebranding. It's like restaurants that close down and reopen in the same spot in LA every six months. It's just a new name. My favorite taco place in Venice, Teddy's Red Tacos, it suddenly was different, different name. And I was terrified, but the menu's exactly the same. There you go. Kind of like the Iran war, except the tacos are good. Same spot. All right, you mentioned Netanyahu. Trump, the IRGC, they're not the only arsonists in this conference. We also have Bibi Netanyahu. He was on CBS's 60 Minutes over the weekend. As Netanyahu watchers know, Netanyahu avoids speaking with Israeli journalists because they are actually knowledgeable about all of his failings and failures and ask him about them. And so he instead launders his message through the US media, who tend to be softer than a baby skin and easily manipulated by him. And unfortunately, the new and improved 60 Minutes under Barry Weiss's leadership was no exception. I want to play one example that just annoyed the shit out of me, Ben, and then we'll talk about some more substantive stuff. So this is CBS's Major Garrett, who, by the way, is a nice guy. He's a good reporter, not knocking him as a human, but this was not his finest hour or finest interview, I don't think. And it sounds like Weiss steered the interview to him as opposed to Leslie Saul, who probably would have been a little rougher. But by the way, Major, as you know, is capable of asking tough questions. So that tells you a lot about Barry Weiss's leadership. To give Major even further pass, although I would prefer people didn't go along with Barry Weiss, like, I've seen Major Garrett do tough interviews. The hard ass. So this is probably a direction from on high. Yeah, it's very weird. So here's a question. Here's part of a question he asked about Israeli intelligence that I thought was instructive. Mr. Prime Minister, the capabilities of Israeli intelligence within Iran allowed you to pinpoint the location of Supreme Leader and others. That is a kind of granular intelligence that is borderline miraculous. In the modern world, why wasn't it sufficient to also foment a revolution? So, Ben. He was in his office! The airstrike that killed the Supreme Leader. He was in his fucking office! It was on his house. He was working above ground. The home office, sorry. On his own house. So that would like be a miraculous intelligence to bomb the White House to kill Trump or drone, you know, the Gold's Gym in Venice to take out RFK Jr. The heavy breathing was great. Mr. Prime Minister, the granularity of that intelligence. This is so remarkable. It's like bombing the poodle room to get Kash Patel. We're not watching like fucking Munich here. It's crazy. We're talking about a guy, an 86-year-old man who was killed in his house. It's crazy. And look, like, this is a bigger deal. I mean, I know that it gets online attention, but I mean, you know, that doesn't count for anything these days. I mean, this is 60 Minutes. This is CBS News. This is like literally like the Cadillac of American journalism, right? And it gets purchased. By David Ellison, whose kind of qualification for running anything is that his father is Larry Ellison. And he went to like USC film school and wants to play with the movies. And they're super pro-Israel and super pro-Trump. And so he hands the keys of 60 Minutes and CBS News to Barry Weiss, whose only qualification is running a blog where she tells rich billionaires that they're wonderful, Israel's wonderful, and DEI is bad. And it's like, oh, my God, I'm going to die. Essentially, the feels you get when you watch Bill Maher are all right. And we're going to bring those feelings over to CBS News. And then you have the prime minister of a country that literally convinced the president of the United States to do the dumbest thing since the Iraq war in launching an attack on a country. None of the things that Netanyahu said were going to happen happened. We're in an economic catastrophe. Major Garrett and CBS News' own viewers are like not being able to afford their gas. And he's sitting on there like blowing smoke up BB's butt about how wonderful and granular the intelligence is. What is going on here? This is Putin level propaganda. And also CBS didn't ask about Netanyahu's responsibility for October 7th until an hour and seven minutes into the conversation. It feels like that'd be something that'd be front and center. And then he just brushed it off. There was lots of talk about Hamas violating the ceasefire in Gaza. There was none, no conversation about or questions about Israel violating the ceasefire. As far as I know, vomiting out the same talking points about all the ways the IDF avoids civilian casualties and text people. And it's like all the same shit we heard two years ago. Nobody believes. And then we watch like 70,000 people get slaughtered. And it's just demonstrably false. And just you didn't get you didn't get pushed on any of it. And also, you know, like Trump sued CBS, right, for editing out a 60 minutes interview, like a Kamala Harris answer. CBS cut from the broadcast version. Netanyahu was saying, we'll play this clip in a minute. He was asked about social media. And you know, NDB blames social media for all of Israel's woes. And he said, basically says, like, we're not going to fight the battle on social media, but that got cut out. And I wonder why they also cut Netanyahu saying that Americans turning against Israel also hate America again, like, why it seems like those are things that are relevant for American viewers. And so like the whole thing, you're right. It's frustrating, because the debate, like, the Barry Weiss is bad Twitter debate is like, kind of boring and reductive. And like, I'm not interested in it. But like, I do think like, when there's a product like this, that shows the fruits of that labor, it's worth kind of like highlighting the harm it did to us as viewers. We're trying to get information. It's much bigger than just the kind of Barry Weiss discourse, because it's about the fact that the premium brand in American journalism 60 minutes, like when it comes to media, it's like, it makes RT look like a hard hitting news source, you know, they, it is in the problem with it is that it's not like there's a significant market for this. Like the problem, I mean, to be specific in complaint here, is they constantly come back to this idea that that social media is bad. And that's why people are turning against Israel. No, it's what people are seeing on social media, right? There's another story, Nick Kristof had a powerful story in the Times about the sexual assault of Palestinian prisoners. And all these people are on, you know, this is outrageous. How could the Times print this? As if the problem is the story and not the underlying conduct that the story is about. Well, there's some question about the veracity of some of the sourcing, but still, like, there's a lot of well documented evidence of rape and sexual assault of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. This is not the first, this is not the first coverage of this. I, look, this is, I've been to this rodeo. What you have is, let's say there's 100 instances, and this is not that story, but it's just a hypothetical. Let's say there are 100 instances of sexual assault, and 97 of them are true, but they find the three that have some holes in the story. And they're like, this whole thing is liable. Or, you know, or that, you know, they go after, you know, sort of one of the victims who's, you know, doesn't have. His cousin is in Hamas or something. Yeah. I mean, but this, this major Garrett thing, if Americans want to know, I had this long conversation with Jon Stewart today, I did his podcast, and we had a pretty interesting conversation about why do we keep doing these dumb things? And we talked about all the reasons. But one of the reasons why is that we don't have a media that tells us the truth, you know? Like, it makes it so much easier to give weapons to Israel or to go to war in Iran if we don't have media that will, like, 60 Minutes viewers, those should be some of the more informed people in the country that can't be told the truth about what's happening. Yep. For the record, I think that Hamas raped, sexually assaulted victims on October 7th, and that Palestinians are being raped and sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons. And both are true. And I wish there was, like, less attacking of reporters for talking about these things and more concern, like you said, about the underlying issue. Two more clips we want to play from this. So the first is Netanyahu saying, basically, it's time for Israel to wean itself off of US military support. Let's watch that. I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have. We've come of age. We have a booming economy. After three years of war, you know, our currency is the strongest it's ever been in the last 50 years, maybe more. We have a lot of talent here, which we share with our American friends, and we're going to share it with our Arab friends, too. And I think that it's time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support and go from aid to partnership. And then let's listen to the clip of him blaming Israel's image problems on social media and then talk about both of them. the proportion of civilian casualties non-combatants to combatants is one of the lowest in the history of modern urban warfare so israel is given a bum rap i'll tell you what happened we have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms with fake addresses to break the american sympathy to israel to break the american israeli alliance because they think it's in their interests and they do it in a clever way so that on the military support part like i mean for first of all just i'll believe it when i see it you know and also he cites like 3.8 billion dollar a year stat that's just the beginning of the support that us provides israel like there's always supplemental funding requests emergency iron dome transfers etc then there's the direct support when the us is like literally shooting down you know missiles how much did we just spend on that right so again like i just don't believe like ben shapiro has been saying this kind of thing too like i i just don't believe it like i'd like to see it happen i just don't believe it's gonna happen and then the social media stuff though this is like it's delusional and worrisome on a couple different levels like the suggestion is always that those of us who are worried about civilian casualties or the palestinian people especially in gaza were just stupid rubes getting manipulated by algorithms who are not couldn't possibly just be like sincerely horrified by day after day of these like horrifying images of like children suffering in gaza right these sounds like there's an eighth front in the war on social media now like first of all israel is famously active on social media oh yeah i've been on the receiving end of it yeah there's reports that they're paying influencers like seven thousand dollars to post positive stuff about israel like what does this mean it's kind of ominous i don't think social media is a war well first of all on the military stuff i mean what that tells you is he knows he's losing the political argument in the united states um but importantly that ship has sailed they're not going to get further financing now what they do is a couple there are a couple of questions remaining one that you highlighted which is whenever they're in a war which is seemingly all the time there are these supplemental requests that aipac pushes hard and so it's not in the 10-year memorandum of understanding where it's like they get a set amount every year they've gotten way more than that and you know quote unquote emergency situations but beyond that the debate has shifted so much that last week or maybe two weeks ago 40 democratic senators voted against arms sales to israel this is the next front the financing thing is is over i think and that he's just acknowledging that um you've got 40 democrats including everyone who might run for president voting against even selling them weapons which i think is the right position and just to highlight one of those systems that was being sold to the israelis was bulldozers arm armored what do you need armored bulldozers for you need armored bulldozers to ethnically cleanse southern lebanon or to demolish whatever remaining structure exists in gaza like that's that that's where this is moving and people should be aware that they're going to want to say okay fine we don't need the financing they're still going to want to be able to buy all the weapons the partnership is some real weasel language like what does that mean exactly it means we sell them whatever they want and the thing is if they're committing war crimes as they have we shouldn't be selling them anything you shouldn't be providing weapons either financed by the american taxpayer or sold full stop the social media thing is is rich and ominous it's rich because the israelis have done exactly what he says for a long time they've got troll farms they've got paid influencers they're not new to this game they're they're not just these you know people that uh we just use social media to like post government statements and there's some other governments i'm sure he's talking about like qatar or something they always you know hype this i mean this if if you have an instagram account you know that like like most of the content you're watching is going to be on social media you're going to be watching a lot more of the content you get related to gaza it's not like state sponsored you can see that a mile away it's like somebody you know like reposting a video and by the way you don't even need to to to aggregate whether this or that video is accurate you can look at just a picture of gaza and it's destroyed it's just flat right it's completely flattened um now going forward i think what is kind of worrisome it ties into the conversation we just had about barry weiss because lo and behold larry ellison has also bought yeah right and so that's where the fight's going i'm i'm less worried about sure they can pay all the influencers they want it doesn't really make a difference um just look at ben shapiro's audience the problem is if they start to leverage their friends who bought tick tock or you know eon seems pretty committed to his version of free speech which is you know kind of a cesspool but and start manipulating the algorithm start shadow banning accounts start censoring content that's i think where this is going yeah and that's pretty scary yeah that's just that is the scary stuff positive the world is brought to you by sundays is your dog's food created to maximize your dog's quality of life or to extend the food's shelf life think about it and while you do let me tell you about sundays sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom dr tori waxman got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics so she designed sundays air-dried real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family every bite of sundays is clean and made from real meat fruits and veggies no kibble that means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers and the best part you just scoop and serve no freezer no thawing no prep no mess it's just nutrient-rich clean food that fuels their happiest healthiest days so you can get more of them to share together i can confirm that luca inhales sundays for dogs every time it is offered uh the dogs love it it's good for them they i don't know they're happy what else do you want your dog is happy it's healthy food it's affordable it's not messy give it a shot make the switch to sundays go right now to sundays for dogs.com world 50 and get 50 off your first order or you can use the code world 50 at checkout that's 50 off your first order at sundays for dogs.com world 50 sundays for dogs.com world 50 or use code world 50 at checkout potty the world is brought to you by helix helix mattress at our house it is unbelievably comfortable and i think we all know that you need a comfy mattress to get a good night's sleep there's a lot of reasons you'll get a bad night's sleep stress other things going on in life too much light coming in the room but a bad mattress that's going to kill you you got to have a good mattress helix is super comfortable and they will take care of everything for you and make it easy i have a don lux love it's got a don lux super comfortable super comfortable every goddamn night of my life you do a little sleep quiz yeah i took the quiz i got the don lux then i bought it i have over 20 mattress models you can find the perfect model for you and a good night's sleep sets you up for a great day now is the perfect time to invest in the best sleep with a new helix mattress you will not regret it you have never woken up one day and thought oh man too bad i got such a great night's sleep too bad i feel too good today really sucks that's uncommon feel amazing today helix makes buying a mattress easy take the helix sleep quiz and it'll match you with your perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs get free shipping and seamless delivery helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the u.s the happy with helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress so you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges plus helix offers 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty go to helixsleep.com world for 27 off site wide that's helixsleep.com world for 27 off site wide this offer is exclusive to our listeners make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com all right so let's talk about china speaking of censoring um trump's on his way to china for his big summit meeting he was supposed to go to beijing in late march uh the trip got delayed because trump wanted to wrap up the whole war with iran thing so glad we got that all handled um he arrives in beijing wednesday night there's a welcome ceremony thursday morning there's a one-on-one with xi there's a tour of the temple of heaven which is this like amazing temple complex uh dates back to the ming dynasty i think it was built in like 1420. uh then he attends a state banquet thursday evening then he has tea and lunch with she again on friday and then he goes home it's a lot of meetings um so let's just speculate on what they want out of this trip ben so for trump first and foremost he wants to feel like uh the biggest boy on the biggest stage uh and special in the pomp and circumstance um then i think he wants a trade deal or something he can sell back home as having some sort of economic benefit third i'm sure he would enjoy some help reopening the straight home movies or getting iran to chill out we could talk about what that might entail and then fourth i think we should just always assume that there's a big fat corruption bucket sitting there that we'll learn about down the road someday whether it's crypto or you know don jr suddenly invested in chinese yeah chinese drones yeah chinese robotics company ceos don jr um for she uh xi japan i would imagine he wants to get rid of u.s tariffs on stuff he wants to show the world that he can manipulate trump and that he is actually as strong if not the you know stronger party um i bet he'll try to wring some concessions out of trump on taiwan uh maybe try to get rid of some restrictions on ai chips um who knows so trump on this trip is going to be flanked by a bunch of american ceos elon musk will be there tim cook will be there remember when they almost briefed elon musk on the secret china war point yeah yeah it was a good idea a great idea yeah here's trump talking about the china trip from monday uh in the oval office asian he's a great gentleman i find him to be an amazing an amazing man and when i say that the press always says oh that's terrible that he called him he runs 1.4 million people with a pretty iron fist he's uh he loves his country i can tell you that president xi I look forward to being there and if he felt anything we wouldn't we wouldn't be doing it but a lot of good things can happen now we'll be talking about I mean he'll bring up Taiwan I think more than I will I have a great relationship with President Xi we're doing a lot of business but it's smart business we used to be taking advantage of for years with our previous presidents and now we're doing great with China we make a lot of money with China I have a great relationship with President Xi and I think you can see that with the fact that in Hormuz they get a big percentage 40 percent of their oil from Hormuz there's been no ships coming in no nasty ships coming in that we end up in skirmishes with there's been he'd like to see it get done he doesn't want to see I'll tell you what look I respect him a lot and hopefully he respects me he didn't respect our previous government that I can tell you all those clips are from an event rolling out of moms.gov these poor women had to sit there just watch him it's up there with the door dash lady he started yelling out about trans athletes or something he's like do you like trans sports she's like I'm just here for the tip I mean this is completely insane what do you think what do you think what's the oh it's on the agenda for the meeting like what's the best case you think in terms of an accomplishment a deliverable Don Jr gets a robotics yeah there's a deliverable for him for real though here's what I would so here for the first of all there's a problem which is normally these are huge summits they usually happen like every two years you spend two or three days you know we use this for instance in the Obama to come up with a bilateral agreement on reducing carbon emissions it became the Paris agreement you know like we worked on that for a year so first of all the fact that there's a war in Iran and Hormuz is still closed for business means that they're going to spend a big chunk of time just talking about that and we're Trump is probably gonna be asking the Chinese to pressure the Iranians to open the straight and make a deal Chinese gonna be pressuring us to you know just wrap this thing up I was talking to an Iran expert friend of both of ours who suspects that the Taiwan conversation well the China the wrong conversation will be like mr. president how do you expect me to help you with the Iranians and to not sell my good friends and Iran weapons when you're selling weapons to Taiwan yes and giving them all this yeah wink wink Chinese are very good at whataboutism and by the way we get to do what you did to Iran and Taiwan I think in and yet Trump may want you know I think for him a win is like you know they agree to buy a bunch of soybeans or something right you know like you can just say for sure he loves these deals where it's like the Chinese said they're gonna spend X amount of money on American products it by the way they're probably gonna buy anyway or something you know and and the Chinese will extract some concessions or there's a I mean if you add up the money people claim that they're gonna spend in these photo ops Trump it's like trillions of dollars and none of its here I would use what I would be doing on Taiwan what you want to do is you want to create like some diplomatic track that just kind of puts this thing on a back burner and like slow rolls it you know I don't think Trump is deft enough to do that the Chinese will say don't sell them arms we'll say don't conduct military exercises and most likely it's just gonna be what it is well interestingly I don't think Trump is deft enough there's been some big headlines announcements of arms sales to Taiwan but I didn't realize that there those have been very slow in getting delivered there's like a 20 billion dollar backlog on the delivery of US arms to Taiwan so that's kind of the rub there if you're yeah well and what's notable about that is that the Congress votes for these things and then the executive branch has to deliver them and they're probably slow rolling them to create positive atmospherics as she if in terms of what I think they should be doing and I don't think they should be doing I'm not sure they're gonna do is they should be talking about artificial intelligence because we are the two AI superpowers we have all these frontier companies like Anthropic and Open AI and Microsoft Google etc they have their own AI models that like and here we should say this is actually kind of a I don't want to say a failure of the Biden administration but there was this idea that we're going to put all these restrictions in place and export controls and whatever the Chinese figured out how to build the technology anyway it was slow that we didn't stop them yeah and so the the whether who's ahead it you know someone might be ahead by six months it almost doesn't matter because Chinese have AI we have AI in normal times we would be sitting down and saying let's negotiate some norms and some guardrails around this new technology before it's fully deployed out in the world we want to make sure that nuclear weapons and command and control systems have human beings in the loop we want to make sure that job displacement is cushioned by testing models we have huge cyber security you saw this incident with mythos the next generation of Anthropix AI model that when they you shared it with some of their customers was like nobody was ready to deal with this it could literally launch a cyber attack and shut down you know the the power grid of the country you know do you see the time story about how AI bots were telling these scientists how to make biological weapons exactly biological you know here's the recipe for biological weapons here's a you know another pandemic story right and so what should be happening is we should be getting off this idea that there's some like AI race like foot race and whoever wins gets the technology no everybody's going to get this technology um we should be putting strict guardrails starting with nuclear biological and chemical weapons uh dealing with job displacement dealing with cyber security risks um the Chinese aren't going to want to negotiate around disinformation or information operations but that's part of this I just don't think Trump's going to do that if anything he's gone the other direction if Biden was building export controls Trump is for whatever reason probably some corrupt reason is greasing the skid so Jensen Wong and NVIDIA can sell advanced semiconductors to the Chinese so the Chinese would love that I'm sure what the Chinese would do is buy a bunch of chips you know um so I'd love to see how AI is dealt with out of this thing it's just the idea of Trump sitting down for tea in like the forbidden city with Xi Jinping and having like a deep substantive conversation about AI so yeah it's so impossible to imagine yeah to test models and set guardrails it's just not how Trump thinks yeah but it's what they I mean it's what you should be talking about for sure no doubt there's no doubt or human rights remember that climate change yeah a few things um okay we got a couple more things um so we'll get to those now we'll obviously next week we'll talk about how the trip actually went to these that we know but first we're gonna be petty for a second because there was an article in the Atlantic last week with the headline is Marco Rubio the happiest cabinet member uh that we wanted to discuss here so this was almost entirely based off this one press briefing Rubio did at the White House uh it was like his only appearance at the White House briefing room since the war in Iran started um here are some excerpts from that briefing I mean the top people in that government are to say the least um you know um they're insane in the brain I wish I knew your name guys I apologize can you put name tags on can I ask you in Spanish or can I yeah you can answer in Spanish they'll have to translate for them what you asked you don't have black you have blue on I'm colorblind but I know blue and black right there yes ma'am no no you the first one I called on thank you thank you this is chaos guys I wish I had like a dice go ahead yeah no no no no no right there because I'm going to Italy he's Italian I know him he used to cover Capitol Hill secretary uh many people want to know what is your dj name my dj name your dj name you're not ready for my dj name they are facing real catastrophic destruction to their economy generational destruction to their economy generational destruction to the wealth of their country imposed on themselves by the by the actions that they're taking they should check themselves before they wreck themselves in the direction that they're going what a cool cat uh there's also this video of uh Rubio like stepping into the dj booth in Mar-a-Lago Trump's fucking caddy turned deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino posted that and then this whole conversation folds into this broader debate of will it be Rubio or will it be JD Vance who takes like kind of the mantle of maga and becomes a Republican nominee in 2028. so um this is petty media criticism Ben but I did just want to ask reporters like what are we doing here guys because first of all Rubio I don't know if he's happy or not I don't I don't wish him any personal unhappiness but like he should not be happy about how his job is going if he's doing a briefing when the US is stuck in a catastrophic war with Iran and just like regarding that press briefing itself Rubio was rolling out Project Freedom that straight of Hormuz escort mission that we just talked about which Trump unwound like a day later so that is that is humiliating any other any other senior foreign policy official would be judged according like that would be seen as a humiliating moment in defeat for them possibly a like career ending thing um and on top of that like the last time Rubio did a press conference it was when he was on Capitol Hill that one day and he basically like ran up to the sticks and was like the Jews made us do it and he ran away and he hid in a in a cave for a month and so I was like what is this article my daughter um I remember she did a YSO soccer um and uh I think she was you know six or seven and um at the end of the year it was really nice even though the team didn't win a single game it was kind of a bad news Bears kind of team um they all got trophies nice you know participation trophies literally um the The eagerness with which most of the Washington press corps is intent on giving Marco Rubio a participation trophy is so embarrassing. I mean, let's just to just build on what you said. The man is secretary of state and national security adviser for a country that just lost and mounted one of the dumbest wars in recorded human history. He announced an operation that lasted 24 hours. Let's just dig into his responsibilities. One of the reasons that that operation shut down is because the Saudis hadn't been notified about it. And we wanted to use their who would do that normally. The secretary of state. Right. I mean, he's failing utterly at his job. The national security adviser is supposed to be coordinating policymaking. So it's smart. Did anyone ask Marco Rubio why they didn't know that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz? Because it's his job. The national security adviser to war game how the war is going to go. And they clearly did not know anything about Iran or the Strait of Hormuz, did not consult allies, which is also his responsibility. So, like, he is directly responsible, more even than Pete Hegseth, for the catastrophic failure of this policy and the fact that the whole world is suffering because of it. And they're all sitting there like having a grand old time chuckling about what he says. Second, these. Sure, he doesn't do the like Dr. Seuss rhyme. Weird Pete Hegseth voice. But this. Check yourself. It's just lame. It's not cool. Is he more is he more charming than J.D. Vance? Sure. But like talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. I mean, that's not cool. Check yourself. Like I cannot believe the extent in this foreshadows the Kash Patel segment to which we are run. Our country's run and apparently a significant slice for media by by people that just could not get anyone to sit next to them at lunch in high school. You know, and now like years later, he's like, check yourself before you wreck yourself like that. That's like what is going on here? And like, look, Rubio is like seen as politically ascendant within the Republican Party, like Sarah Longwell from the Bulwark talks about how his name is coming up in her focus groups all the time. Now, there's this meme of like Marco Rubio on the couch in the Oval Office getting every job. Apparently, that's like genuinely helping him because he's seen as competent. But again, it's like, you know, the land of the one eyed man is king in the land of the blind kind of situation where it's like, yeah, he's the most competent. But what is what is his accomplice? Like, here's what here's what drives me nuts. Then as well as this is one accomplishment. But again, that that is not a finished story. Yeah. And even if you just like accept the premise, the premise being that he's capable of standing at a podium and being reasonably articulate for an extended period of time, which, by the way, should be like the bar for like the deputy press secretary, not the future president or the secretary of state. Even if that's some bar he clears, judge him on his results. Like, what what is he like? This is what I hate our politics. I mean, just today's media criticism day. Like, don't the results matter? Like just the optics, just the fact that this guy manages to not like vomit on himself or or appear to be on on Adderall. Purely politically, Trump's approval ratings in the toilet. Yeah. 37, 36 percent. What are we doing here? Why are we building this guy up for? For nothing like for for for being responsible for this policy? It is enraging. Speed of losers in high school, Ben. FBI director Trash Patel. Sorry, Cash Patel. He's up on Capitol Hill this morning on Tuesday. As our listeners know, Cash has gotten a little bit of unwanted attention lately because he's because he drinky drinky. He was guzzling beers on camera at the Olympics. The Atlantic reported that his boozing is a source of concern within the bureau and that Cash was. One so drunk that a security detail couldn't wake him up and considered calling a SWAT team to get the equipment used like bust on the door. Then he sued the Atlantic and this reporter in particular. And apparently the FBI might be investigating her. And then she drops another banger on his head. And we learned that Cash has created and distributes his own signature bourbon bottles. I really beaten the drunk rap there. The logo on it. There's an eagle talons, his name on it's all very cute. And as a dollar sign for cash. Yeah, that's that's his name. Cash just like the dollars. Yeah. So presumably you would think that given all this context, Cash would want to delivery calm, sober performance in front of the Senate to silence his critics. Let's see how it went. There have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you. Is that right? Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff, but it doesn't make it credible because you say so. I'm not saying it, Director Patel, it's been written and documented. You are literally saying it. No, I'm saying that these are reports, Director Patel. Unlike, unlike baseless reports, the only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you, you know, the only person that ran up a $7000 bar tab in Washington, D.C. at the lobby. This suggests to me. Was you. Okay. Yeah. That was with Senator Chris Van Hollen. So that exchange actually goes on a while longer. Chris Van Hollen doesn't strike me as some guys like really. A big boozer. Yeah. It's just not like that. A credible attack. Well, first of all, I, I, yeah, I have no idea about the bar tab thing, but like the, remember the Kilmar Abrego, Van Hollen went down to El Salvador. He called them a rapist gangbanger. There's no evidence of that. Yeah. So Van Hollen went to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They, they had a conversation at the embassy. Diabukele's goons put these drinks in front of them to stage a photo op that made it look like they were drinking together. It was just like, it was completely propaganda bullshit. Of course, Cash Patel is repeating that, um, the second, as you noted, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is. Absolutely not a convicted gangbanger rapist and for the FBI director to say that. He perjured himself. It's crazy. He's perjured himself. And mark it down. And then finally, buddy, like button the top button. He looked like a groomsman who'd been at a wedding since, you know, the bar opened at five. He looks like he tied one on last night. Yeah. He's got like a bottle on the fucking table. Slouching forward. Yeah. Like, I know they all think that this is what Trump wants, which is like fight back, throw a punch. How'd that work for Pam Bondi? Did that look good to you? It looked great to me. I mean, first of all, we just have to remember that the FBI director is supposed to be a nonpartisan official. Yeah. So it's just insane that anybody would be. Career professional. Yeah. And he's supposed to be like a, yeah, a civil servant essentially. Um, and, and so the, and like, I get that the audience have won, but, but this makes him look ridiculous. Like if his problem is he looks ridiculous to the point that the whole country is making fun of him and he's like becoming a thing on Saturday Night Live, like he's just, just keeps dumping ammo. Out for everyone else to use. Cause he looks, um, completely absurd and, and, and actually he's just drawing attention to that Atlantic report. Like, you know, it's not even good communications. Like the, the, the smart thing is to be like, no, that report's not true and just that's it. Right. But by like throwing a little tantrum, it's like going to drive some more people to that article and be like, ha, ha, ha cash, like had to get woken up in the morning. Cause he's so hammered. I mean, uh, like the boy, this guy, I can't decide. There's. The content creator in me wants cash around, but like the American is a little concerned about that. That's the person running the federal Bureau of investigation. And by the way, I'm a little bit obviously concerned about the fact that nobody's minding the store and there's actually criminals and terrorists and all the sorts of people that the FBI is supposed to be dealing with. But that mentality, the way he talked to Van Hollen, the FBI has vast investigative powers. Yeah. It did not suggest someone who might not abuse those powers to like, how does he know about the bar tab? I don't know. I think someone that is seems that paranoid, I mean, there's all these reports, right? Remember the other report in the, it wasn't the Atlantic that he had logged out of his computer and he freaked out and thought he was polygraphing every now and then he seems like a dangerous, paranoid, like kind of wounded animal who knows he's not up for the job who would do exactly what you're saying there. Like kind of use the enormous power of the FBI to go after critics. I like, yes, whoever comes next will be terrible, but I think it would be good for the world. To get that asshole out of there. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would. We'll miss him. I guess we can cover. I'm sure I'll go back to podcasting. Him and Bongino can team up again. Just Batman and Robin. Yeah. It'd be great. Yeah. Okay. That's it for our boy Cash. Drinks on us next time you're in LA. Pre-order my book. It's out two weeks from today. Pre-order. Yeah. And I'm actually going to be doing my virtual book launch event next Monday. So I'll throw that link on my social channels. Awesome. There we go. Yeah. But also stick around for Ben's interview with Susie Hansen about prime minister Erdogan, life in Turkey. Lots of big, important geopolitical issues. So don't miss that. Posse of the world is brought to you by Remy. I'm sure we've all had those times in our lives when you wake up and you're like, why is my jaw hurt? Why do my teeth hurt? It's because you've been clenching and grinding from stress. It screws up your sleep and it makes you feel bad. Happens when I'm not sleeping. Yeah. Happens all the time. It used to happen to me a lot. It was actually a real problem. I'd wake up with like headaches and jaw pain until I got Remy. This was years ago, by the way, long before they were ever a sponsor. And that's why I trust Remy to protect my teeth with their custom night guards, which have been helping out over like 350,000 Americans. Remy night guards, they're clinically tested in FDA clear to prevent teeth damage from grinding to reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain and improve your sleep quality. You have the same professional quality and comfort as a night guard from the dentist for 80% less of the cost by taking your own impression at home. So what they do is you, you, when you make the purchase, they send you the impression. Okay. to your door, you follow the step-by-step guide to get a perfect impression. And they make your night guard, and they ship it back to you. Bada-bing, bada-boom, you're good to go. I need to get one of these. It really is. Honestly, it's great. And, like, first of all, I had to go to the dentist yesterday. There's literally nothing in life I hate more than going to the dentist. It sucks. It's far away. It gives me anxiety. And then they hurt you for a couple hours, and they charge you a ton of money. It really is. That's my experience. It's like I'll torture you for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, and then charge you a couple grand. So that your mouth can be just normal. Yeah, to get you back to, like, normal. No, Remy, they send you this thing. You, like, roll together some of this putty stuff you put in your mouth. It takes five minutes. You send it off, and they send you your mouth guard. And it's way cheaper, and it works just as well. It is really so much better than going to a dentist to try to get a night guard. Protect your teeth with Remy by using the code WORLD to get 50% off your new night guard. That's 50% off. Go to shop, R-E-M-I,.com, slash, world, with the code WORLD. Again, that's shop, R-E-M-I,.com, slash. Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend, Susie Hansen, who is a journalist who lived in Istanbul for over a decade. She's written for the New York Times Magazine. Her first book, which I also recommend, Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Her new book, which everybody needs to buy if you like politics, geopolitics. Literary journalism, great writing, amazing personalities. It's called From Life Itself, Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan. Susie, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Ben. Okay, so this really is, you know, a unique book because you start it and you are reading the story of a neighborhood in Istanbul. Then you realize you're reading about the city of Istanbul. Then you realize you're reading about Turkey. Then you realize you're reading about Erdogan. And then you. And then you realize, and this is all within the first probably, you know, 40 pages, that you're reading a book about everything that's happened to the world, you know. And so I want to begin by asking where you begin the book, which is you describe how the forces that we've all become familiar with now, the kind of cocktail of nationalism, authoritarianism, corruption, chaos, how those things that we feel as Americans arrived in Turkey first. And in particular, in this neighborhood that you profile, you write, the dissolution of nations and borders. The dissolution of nations and peoples and seemingly civilization itself was transforming how many of us felt about our individual lives and our future, that sense that we are in history here and not the good kind. Can you describe how these forces became manifest in Turkey and in this neighborhood first? And it's really around 2015 or Arab Spring to 2015 that you begin. And why did you choose to write about those forces through this neighborhood? So it was 2015. I had been witnessing. I moved to Turkey in 2007. So I'd been there for seven or eight years. And then I was there as all of these Syrian refugees were fleeing the Syrian civil war into Turkey. And, you know, I'm sure you're aware of this. This was a kind of laissez-faire refugee management situation where Erdogan was just allowing people to come in, millions of people. And they sort of had to figure out their lives on their own. I mean, they had to find, they had to rent a place. They had to put their kids in school, all of that. So no one really had any idea how everyone. was making this work. And there were at that point, 2015, 500,000 Syrians in Istanbul. And one evening, I went to a friend's for dinner and they said, you know, after dinner, you have to take a walk down the main street of Kargam Rukh. All of the shops have become Syrian. And that was. I knew enough about Kargam Rukh to know why that was surprising. Kargam Rukh was a nationalist neighborhood. It was famous for them, for mafia, for thieves. It was famous for this right wing party that. Mehepet. Mehepet. And so I knew that they were not going to be welcoming to Arabs. And I saw the opportunity to tell this larger story through how these people were getting along because what I, when I started talking to them, they started talking about how the presence of the Arabs was challenging their Turkish national identity. And then as I was there for the next few years, all of these major events were happening. So you had the Syrian civil war, obviously. You had ISIS. ISIS had appeared in Turkey and they were flying into Istanbul and then switching to airplanes and going down to the southern border. You had a new war with the PKK, the Kurdish militant group, and you had Erdogan steadily becoming more repressive. And I suddenly recognized, OK, maybe I can see all of these events through these characters, but understand how they're seeing it from the street level, not from the headlines and not from, you know, the point of view of the West. So you. You shift back and forth between some of these incredible characters you find in this neighborhood and Erdogan himself, who's a huge character in your book. And I want to focus a bit on him because I'd never read a book that I learned as much about him from. He's a fascinating character. And one place I wanted to start, I did not fully understand this. You write about his kind of dual love of Islam and capitalism. And we in the West think of him as an Islamist. But, you know, you write about how much he embraced capitalism and kind of, you know, development, real estate development, for lack of a better way of putting it, and kind of the corruption, the playbook we've seen, right, where you're building things, but you're skimming money off the top and all the rest of it. It also got me thinking that as much as we don't associate Islamists with capitalism, I mean, in our country, the religious zealots, the Christian evangelicals, are similarly bullish on capitalism and deregulation. And explain where this ideology of Erdogan's came from. And how would you describe this melding of Islamist politics and kind of uber 21st century capitalism? I mean, this goes deep into Turkish Islamist history. It goes way back to the first Islamist parties and movements in the 1960s and 70s. But I think you have to put it in the context of, you know, Turkey's founding party was Ataturk's party. And the only way for. And they had shunned religious people to some degree. They had forced religious brotherhoods to go underground. They had wanted Turkey to be a Western-looking, secularist country. And so the people of the countryside and the religious people were very much shut out from the halls of power, right? And so there were a number of old families that got a lot of the contracts from the government and were rebuilding Turkey after World War I and World War II. But the religious people were shut out of this. And so slowly, slowly, over time. They did see business and starting their own businesses as a way to build their own power in the country because they were shut out of the state and shut out of most of the business activities. Erdogan was the mentee of a man named Nejmetin Erdogan who also saw the union of Islam and capitalism as a way of restoring Turkish pride. Because these were people who were. They were very nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire and for this more grandiose sense of Turkey than what the Turkish Republic became. Erdogan learned from him. But also, I think it was sort of deep in his blood in the sense that he came to power as the mayor of Istanbul. And Istanbul was a wreck at that time. It was very poor. People were suffering. And what he recognized he could do, even though most of the secularist elites did not want him to be in office, was he could actually improve the lives of the people, which seems like an obvious thing for a politician to do. But it's a little bit shades of Mamdani there. But he saw that, oh, I can clean up the garbage of the city. I can improve the water supply. I can improve. But he needed to obviously to ally with business groups and other businessmen in order to make a lot of these things happen. And so I think it happened naturally. But I think a really crucial thing here also is when he finally becomes prime. Prime minister, he feels still threatened by the secular state, by the military and the judiciary, who very much wanted to get rid of him. They put him in jail in the 1990s. And so he quickly had to build up his crony class, his businessman class. And that was the way he saw that he could solidify his power in the country. So one of the things that listeners of the show hopefully know is that, you know, over the years, I've kind of really had to reprogram myself around or away from the country. Some of the assumptions that are kind of baked into American foreign policy or baked into kind of the commentary class about the world. And you go right at some of those assumptions about Erdogan. And I want to go through a couple of them. The first one is, I remember when we came into office in 2009 and we went to, you know, Ankara and Istanbul in 2009, you know, from that period kind of through the Arab Spring, the trendy thing was, Erdogan is a mediator between Islam and the West. He's a potential bridge because he has cred with these Islamist, you know, Muslim Brotherhood guys in places like Egypt. And yet he's modern and capitalist and wants to join the European Union. I kind of now see how like Orientalist that was, you know, just kind of – well, he's Muslim and so therefore, you know, he can be a bridge. Yet at the same time, he's clearly an intermediary in other ways. You know, he's a guy that can navigate between the US and Russia, between Europe and the Arab world. between, you know, the BRICS countries and NATO, why is it, you know, I mean, Turkey historically has always been this kind of bridge country between Islam and the West and the rest of it. So there's some of that history. But what is it about him that has allowed him to play this kind of mediator role or this guy that can kind of live in one block for a few months and then shift to another one? I mean, I think in the beginning, first of all, that was how they were marketing themselves to the world, right? And it was not only Erdogan, but it was also this other Islamic brotherhood, the Gülen movement, which was already very international. This is this global Islamic movement that was in the United States, knew lots of people on the hill, had schools in every country. And so he, these two allied together. And I think, again, you know, their fundamental fear was about the Turkish state, right? So they want to create a sense of them as big on the global stage in order to fortify their own power and counter some of the nationalists. National forces that were against them. I mean, it's amazing because he came to power in the 2000s. It's like really globalization is firing on all cylinders. And he becomes this kind of globally minded leader. And so I think he was very different from other Turkish leaders who were much more inward looking and much more almost defensive. And so I don't think it was all incorrect. But now what he has managed to do is something even more extraordinary, because he's been a leader for a long time. And he's been a leader for a long time. Over these 20 years, what we have seen him do is extend himself in Libya, in Syria, in Azerbaijan, but also to stand up on the world stage with his rhetoric and say, no, you know, we take care of our own country. We are regional leaders. We own our own Syrian refugee crisis. We are not going to let the NGOs in and tell us what to do. He has over time steadily made this into, you know, his position in the world. But with those refugees, if you remember, he was essentially able to say to Europe and the West, you can no longer tell me what to do. You cannot criticize me in terms of human rights and everything else. He's putting leaders like Selahattin Demirtas, the pro-Kurdish leader in jail and all of these. He's repressing thousands of people after the 2016 military coup. But he had four million Syrian refugees. And it gave him a card to play with the Europeans as so as to say, you know, I can just let them into Europe anytime I want. And look at us. We are actually taking care of these people and you can't deal with them. I mean, in all of this, all of these different ways he was able to assert himself, it's unprecedented. And now he's, yes, he advertises himself. I'm the middleman for everybody. Hey, Ukraine. Hey, Russia. Hey, you know, Israel. I mean, he's always projecting this sense that you need him, that all of the, but I think in some ways they do simply because of Turkey's geography. I mean, look, Europe is now speaking to him in these very kind terms because they might need him against Russia. You know, I think he somehow manages to bounce back and reposition himself always. Yeah. And I mean, among many good things, there are all these what ifs of history that I found myself asking, one of which was, you know, there was still this idea that they're going to join the European Union, which seems impossible now. In 2009, 2010, and you rightly point out that Sarkozy is the one who, you know, truly tubed that, although I think probably other Europeans supported that. That's a great what if, you know, there in the EU. One other DC thing that you kind of pushed back against that is, you know, and I've been guilty of this, which is that, you know, he gets put in the creep club, you know, it's, you know, you're rattling off the list of autocrats who got elected through democracy and then dismantled it. You know, it's usually you're like saying Putin, Modi, Erdogan, Orban, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Netanyahu, now Trump. You kind of push back against that. And I was really curious to kind of pursue that with you, because on the one hand, you know, the way you describe it, you know, really meticulously, you know, I see a familiar playbook, you know, you kind of enrich people through corruption and you build these power blocks and you slowly change the judiciary and then you, you know, you're starting to intimidate the media and make it pro-government and then lo and behold, you know, we're changing the constitution and, you know, Erdogan is, you know, going to be president after being prime minister or whatever. And yet you kind of push back against him being the same or kind of in a group with those guys, and they're all guys. I think I get why in the sense that Turkey has such an eccentric political system, but how would you position him relative to the autocrats who've kind of defined our age? Well, it just never, when they, when he was lumped in, in that category, it just never rang true to me. And I thought it was a little bit lazy. I think now from the point of view of 2026, I'm seeing more and more of these similarities with the United States. So when I wrote the book, I finished it in 2025, I never would have compared the U.S. and Turkey. But now since 2025 and 2026, it actually, this current time period echoes the book a lot. Like there's a whole chapter about a university and the oppression of universities. But I think that a few things are different. Number one, you know, he's, he wasn't, we weren't really referring to him as a populist in the beginning. I think it's the first 10 years that is different about, that are different than the first 10 years. And I think that's the first 10 years that are different about Turkey that you want to look at. He was not just preying on people's sense of victimhood or grievances the way that say Donald Trump does. The people who he appealed to actually had legitimate grievances. They were actually left behind. They were not folded into the system properly. They were people who felt that they had been looked down upon and left behind in terms of the economy and education and many other things. And so I think, and the second part is he actually did improve the lives of people. This, there, this wasn't, this isn't a superficial, you know, ruler. This is someone who actually everyone can talk about when he got the natural gas, you know, people's natural gas accounts hooked up to the internet or when he made water supply easier or better, when he improved the electricity, all of these services, when he improved the healthcare, when he, you know, and then of course, just what he did for people. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a really, really important thing. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a really, really important thing. which was all very real. So it was because of this genuine popularity that, that, that that's the basis for why he has sustained a lot of his role today. I think it's more interesting to consider. Again, as you said, yes, the EU, what would have happened, but also all of these other regional and global events that were going on and how they affected some of these regimes. He had, okay, the Syrian civil war played a huge role in radicalizing Erdogan. I think that's worth looking at. But I think at the end, which I'm sure you remember, I do think we have to consider how for a regime in the Middle East, how the war on terror also just the, that environment led to this increasing radicalization. It's not to let him off the hook because we can talk about the second 10 years. Very happy to do that. But I think that it is just worthwhile to, to consider that there are other reasons why the world is going in this direction. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the second 10 years and, and, you know, maybe can I bring in a little bit of my history here? It might be interesting. So, so, and you write in part one, we kind of work up to 2015 and Erdogan's consolidated power, the Syrian refugees are there, like these changes are in motion. Then you have this coup where I still don't, you know, people think when you're in the US government in a role like mine, you know what happened. I have no idea what happened. I know that something, fundamental shifted in Erdogan and you obviously get in this in the book. I will tell you my experience, which is he used to be a fascinating guy to meet with because he would actually debate Obama and they liked each other and they, they'd go back and forth and he was nimble, flexible. Even he might change his mind on something in the meeting after that coup Obama only overlapped for what, like a year, every meeting, he would literally show up with files about Gulen. This is the Islamist that he fell out with who he blamed for the coup and demand his extradition and, and just didn't want to hear about anything else. He want to talk about anything else. He kind of started presenting like Putin, you know, like I, I, I, I believe what I believe some of it may be true. Some may be conspiracy theory. And that was my experience of him. I mean, I mean, you write about this transformation in him. I mean, what was your impression at the time that you have to reflect on about what happened with, you know, there something happened, there was some attempt to, you know, bomb the parliament. Um, and, and, and yet I also know as Turks who think like that was all false flag, you know, uh, or, you know, you hear a million different things. Um, but something clearly did happen. Um, how did he change, um, because of this event, uh, that also, by the way, coincided with the year that Brexit and Trump happened. So the world is taking a pretty dark turn. I think he genuinely felt threatened. And then I think that he made use of a, of a glorious opportunity, which echoed, you know, what happened after many military coups in Turkish history, which is that they sort of remake everything. Um, they put people in jail, they start all over. Um, but it was much worse with what he did. But I think that, you know, if you look at the number of threats that in his mind, he was, he was facing, it was this war with the Gulen movement. Most people do believe the Gulen movement was involved in that military coup. I think that, you know, I think that, you know, It's very they they suspect that, yes, he might have known about it earlier. He let it happen. Then he knew. He could take advantage of it. But that war between Erdogan and the Gulen movement was absolutely real. And it was a lot of people in the country really resent the Gulen movement. So, I mean, there have been tons of things written about it. It's just very difficult to understand. And I think it's a weird, weird, fascinating movement. Trust me, I tried to sell lots of magazine stories about this many, many years ago. And it was hard because people couldn't really get their their head around it. But by now, it's quite well known what what they were about. But I think also, you know, he saw Mohamed Morsi in Egypt deposed in 2013, and he believed that it was possible or Turks believed it was possible that the Americans were involved in that as well. And this is a Muslim Brotherhood guy. You know, you have a belief in Turkey on the left, on the right, basically across the board that the Americans have always been involved in military coups in Turkey or played some sort of role. So I think that just speaks to a broad fear. And and then I think there were also in 2013, the Gezi Park protests, which, you know, might not seem that threatening from the outside, you know, you think, oh, he's a big guy, he's a strong man, whatever, he can just deploy the military and put them all down. It was deeply threatening to him. Yeah, this was like people occupying this green space, it was going to be demolished, it was the last remaining green space, just so people know, and, and it grew to 1000s, 1000s of people upset with what had been happening in Istanbul in the country. I see that. And I guess, just to pull it up to today, and then I want to get to the neighborhood with one more question. How do you know, you look at Erdogan today, and you look, you know, he's still a key player, an almost an indispensable man on the world stage, he, in Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, a guy he backed is now, you know, in charge of that country instead of Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, you know, Israel's making noises about attacking Turkey next after Iran, we'll see if that happens, given what happened in Iran. He barely skates through elections, but he does. The Kurdish issue is up and down, like there's a peace deal with the PKK, but there's still these concerns about the Kurds in Syria having autonomy, although Ahmed Alshara is trying to put an end to that. The question I guess I wanted to ask is, is this a man who's realizing what he wants to do in power? Does he have a strategy that he's implementing in Turkey and in the region? Or is this a man that is just a survivor who's had to react to a million things in an opportunistic way and some of them work and others don't? How much do you think he's building something and has this kind of idea of what Turkey is and should be in the region versus he's just a very canny political survivor? No, I think they had a vision. Turkey in the region. And as a, what if you say middle power, I don't think they like that term, but as a regional power, I think they've had a vision for a long time. I think they've been building up their defense industry. I think they've obviously, as I said, extending themselves throughout the region. I think they also did that for business interests. I think they did that as a way to just shore up their power. And I think it works in the sense that I think some people in Turkey probably can't imagine who would come after them at this point, because he has this vision. successfully taken over basically all of the institutions of the country. He has repressed about 40% of the population. And at this point, he's now taken to meddling in elections. But I think in terms of the bouncing back, and being a sort of canny, flexible, domestic leader, I think he's he's just reacting to events at home. And he's happy to shift. He was a liberal looking leader in the beginning, then he became allied with a ruling party. And he's now a leader in the right wing party around 2015. And so you know, he was looking at a Kurdish opening in his first eight years in power. And then he was, he turned against wherever he saw the mood of the country, or, you know, his own political fortunes shifting, he would shift also, and he'll do it again. I mean, he has now put the country just in a terrible, terrible economic situation. And that is the trap. I don't see the way out of that. I mean, I was just in Turkey in March, the people in my book, who loved him for all of these years, suddenly are shattered people, including one of my characters, Hussein, their their self esteem, their sense of self, and also their belief in Turkey's great future and their children's future is now gone. And I think that that is a very, very new for him. And I think it's I don't think he has a way out of it. So I think it will be interesting to see to see where we go. I think the question that you have, and I have is, what about the opposition? What happened? And at this point, what what exactly can they even do, given how much he's repressing them? Well, the last thing I want to ask you is, the neighborhood itself is fascinating. And one of the things I love about your writing and your journalism is that you don't exclude people. I know, we just spent a long time talking about heroin. But we see what it's like for people to live through all these. Changes. And the question I want to ask you is, I love this role of Muhtar. So people understand this is kind of like you're, it's not just like you're the kind of mayor of the neighborhood, you, you literally people come to you with every problem, like from, you know, I don't want my daughter to marry this person to, you know, where can I get this document? And it's a very old feeling for but it's a form of democracy in a way. It's it's just people constantly trying to solve these problems and survive. I hesitate to say resilient, because I know a lot of people who hate being called resilient, because it makes it seem like it's not hard. But with all this change, like you just see these people working it out, you know, and sometimes they're helping each other, sometimes they resent the, you know, new Syrians or what have you, but, but it is human beings just in a somewhat democratic way, just keeping this neighborhood moving. And the question I want to ask you is, we just talked about the, you know, the decline of democracy in some ways under it or one, which is undeniable. I've changed how I think about democracy. It's there's no such thing as this is a democracy. And this isn't like we're everything's a spectrum, you know, like America right now is very not democratic in tons of ways, and kind of democratic and others, right. But did you learn something about democracy itself by just focusing in on this local neighborhood? And now human beings experience democracy? You know, that human beings that may not have a stake in, you know, how Erdogan's policies going in Syria will be on the refugees. So maybe that's not the right one. But like, that, how did how did that local viewpoint of democracy changed how you think about the concept itself? Well, this was why I found this neighborhood interesting, because they were a bit on the margins. No one in my neighborhood was a member of the media that was being oppressed or of the academics or the Kurds, or maybe the judiciary, the judges who were all being fired or transferred, these people were a little bit on the margins. And many of them supported Erdogan, about 75% of the neighborhood did, and then there was 25% that did not. But they weren't their lives were not directly affected. And what I think was the benefit of failing to finish my book in a normal amount of time was that I got to go there for 10 years. And I got to see how all of these people changed and evolved over those years. And what I found fascinating, and I think would be fascinating to Americans as well, is that you might disparage some of these people who vote for the autocrat. But what you're not really prepared for is how they are actually processing what's happening to them and the moment when it strikes them that their lives have changed. And it does. And I think the chapter in the book that is somewhat hopeful, although it was, you know, a while ago now is 2019. Because what happened in my neighborhood was that it was the Istanbul mayoral election. There was AKP was running their candidate, they had run Istanbul for 25 years. And then there was the opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu. And he won. And it was the first time AKP had been defeated in a very important election in the Istanbul mayoral election. And then the AKP tried to claim that there were election irregularities, and they called a second election. And everyone in my neighborhood, even his supporters, were so insulted. You know, they said, what does he think we're stupid? Does he not realize? Does he not think that we realize what he's doing? And it was a very funny, kind of macho reaction in some respects. And they, they started saying, you know, we're going to teach him a lesson, we're just going to teach him a lesson this time. And then the neighborhood actually voted for the opposition party, which they had not voted for, for maybe in all of their lives, just to show Erdogan that they were not going to lose their voice. And an interesting thing about Turkey is that it has always had free elections. And this is the one thing everybody has had, and they love to vote there. I mean, it's really a great pleasure to witness election day in Turkey. And so they, they fought back in that, in that instance, Imamoglu became mayor, of course, Imamoglu is in jail now. Now he's in jail. But I think that when we think about people's psychologies in the age of authoritarianism, I think, you know, the verdict is that we don't really know what's happening, how people are feeling and what exactly they are going to react to. And you're right. In a neighborhood like that, in an Old Ottoman, in these neighborhoods in Istanbul, they still work together to figure things out. They're out in the street. They're talking to each other face to face. I mean, this was also what was appealing to me because I was online all the time. And they're still talking to, they're still passing on information in this face to face way, which I think is a lesson for all of us as well. So, you know, I do have hope for Turkey. I just, I simply do. I think also one thing to consider about characters like Erdogan, and this is really an open question, you know, he loves elections too. So he has put his main rival in jail. This was also an unprecedented move. But will he return the country to some sort of real elections? I think that's still a possibility. Well, let's, you know, let's hope so. I mean, you convey, like you say, this country has been through everything you can imagine. And yet Istanbul, there are all kinds of people are there, you know, and they regenerate, you know, Roma, Armenian, Greek, Syrian, you know, in addition to Turks, all these other people have kind of passed through and some have been expelled and then some have come. And yet it all kind of keeps, this is what I love about cities, like it just keeps regenerating and becoming something that is similar and different, you know. Yeah. And I think that if you look at what Erdogan was brilliant at at the beginning is that he took that creative chaos. And he created a new political movement out of it. I mean, it was by going into these neighborhoods. That's the whole reason also that I told the story, the book through a neighborhood. But the question is, can the opposition now look at the world as it is and the city as it is and actually say, OK, what is the political movement that needs to be created now? Well, look, the book is from life itself. It's just so rich with character, detail, history, politics. So people should check it out. Susie Hanson, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Ben. It was really great talking to you. Thanks again to Susie Hanson for doing the show. And we'll talk to you next week. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Thank you for listening to Pod Save the World. We'll see you next week.