Lindsey Graham's Bloody Legacy

- My name is Erin Haines. - My name is Mitch Landrieu. - My name is Jennifer Palmieri, and we're hosting a new series from left, right, and crooked media called Long Play. - For both major parties, the path to winning America runs through the South, but to win it, you have to understand it. - And that's where Long Play comes in. Across six Southern states, Long Play examines the issues driving voters and the assumptions that no longer hold in a region that could shape the future of our politics and our country. - You can binge the whole series right now by subscribing to Long Play series on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. - I'm Ben Rhodes. - Ben, you've been riding a little high on the sports hog lately, so I wanted to read you a quote. This is from former NFL receiver Plaxico Burris comparing playing for the New York Jets to his time in prison. They're both kind of similar, because when I walked into prison on my first day, I was like, "Damn, man, you're a fucking loser." And I had the same feeling every day I walked through the door with the Jets. - I mean, loser would definitely apply, and-- - This is a man who shot himself in the leg. - If I can sympathize with Plaxico Burris for a moment here, being a Jets fan-- - Yeah. - Being a Jets fan is a bit like being in a lifelong prison sentence. - Yeah, of your own making. - You're sentenced to every time the NFL season rolls around, people like you probably have something to look forward to and people like me don't. Nothing to look forward to other than the Knicks pieces. - That was a mean quote. I just thought it was really funny. - It's good, it's good. - It's a really good quote. We have a great show for you guys today. The executive producer of today's episode is a special one. It's Senator Lindsey Graham from "The Grave." Just kidding, Ben. Graham's funeral happened today in Washington. We record on Tuesday, and for some reason, Lindsey Graham is being treated like a head of state. - It's very, yeah, peculiar. I have thoughts, I have views on it. - Yeah, but, so, we'll get to it. Both Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is here for the funeral, and also Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They're both in town to attend the funeral, and then they're meeting with Trump, so that kind of combines our top stories, which I get why both of them would show their respects to Graham, 'cause he's been a supporter of US military support to both. I still don't get why it's a bigger set of festivities than Jimmy Carter seemingly got. - Well, both wars came to town, and there's nothing that Lindsey Graham liked more than war. There's actually a real comment, I mean, I mentioned this to you, that I guess if you just support all the wars, you get booked on every single television show imaginable, and you get a state funeral. - That is seemingly what's happening. - It does suggest that the one remaining sheen of kind of bipartisan whatever in Washington is like we celebrate the people that support the wars. It's kind of not a great commentary. - Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. All right, we're gonna cover the latest from Iran, which, you know, one of the wars that Graham helped us get into. We'll talk about the latest from Ukraine, including this head-spinning pivot by a right-wing commentator, named Laura Loomer, who went from being one of President Zelensky's biggest haters to now a huge fan and advocate on behalf of Ukraine, something just been confusing to watch. We'll try to unpack it, figure out what's going on there. Then we're gonna update you guys on a major protest movement in India called the Cockroach Protests. We'll talk about some updates from Venezuela, including questions about where all of Venezuela's oil revenue went, its relationship with the International Criminal Court, the ongoing US policy of murdering people, and boats off the coast of Venezuela, or in the Caribbean, or in the Pacific. We're gonna talk about China and AI, 'cause there have been some major developments in AI generally, but also with respect to China's development of frontier AI models. Then we're gonna do some quicker updates on reports of possible US counterterrorism efforts in Mali, and then the horrendous wildfires in France and Spain. And then Ben, you did our interview today. Who'd you talk to? - I talked to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. He has a piece in the latest issue of The New Yorker profiling Gadi Eisenkot, who's the chief opponent running against Netanyahu in the October elections. Really great piece. I learned a lot about Eisenkot, his backstory, what he's running on. So we talked a lot about the election, Netanyahu and Eisenkot, but we also then had a bit of a debate about just how far gone Israel is politically, how likely or not likely it is that Israel will actually reckon with what's happened, and Gaza in particular. Really, I mean, it's a long interview. I encourage people to check it out because, you know, we really kind of debated and went back and forth on a whole range of issues that, you know, you and I talk on this podcast a lot, and David's obviously been to Israel probably hundreds of times, so had a lot of thoughts on this. - Everything I read about this upcoming election, it's in October, it's like, is it October 27th? - 27th, yeah. - That's the official date, this next Israeli election. Everything I hear is like, Likud, which is Netanyahu's policy, is doing poorly in the polls. They maybe will pick up like 20 seats, but-- - Right. - The Netanyahu coalition is still just like, or the anti-Netanyahu coalition is still just like hovering around 60 votes in the Knesset, and you need 61 to form a government, and it just feels like we're always on the cusp of getting rid of this guy, but they never do it. - Yeah, I mean, one of the takeaways from David's piece in our conversation is, you know, Eisenkot has this like very slight lead in the polls right now, but he's also not like the political animal that Netanyahu is. And so, you know, you can detect from David, you know, prefer Eisenkot to win, but both being able to win decisively enough to form a coalition and whether whatever insane homestretch campaigning Netanyahu does is no foregone conclusion. - Yup, and you gotta assume that's part of his visit to Washington today, this ongoing effort to say that Trump will take care of us as long as I'm the leader. Also, if you can't get enough Pods Day of the World content, last week, Ben, our producer Michael and I, we sat down and recorded an all-world-o episode of "Terminally Online," which is a subscription show here from Crooked Media. If you wanna hear "Terminally Online," you just have to become a friend of the Pod subscriber. You get ad-free episodes, tons of bonus content, newsletters, all sorts of great stuff. Go to crooked.com/friends and listen to us blab about stuff that isn't foreign policy. Also, at the very end of the episode, our subscribers are gonna hear a couple questions and answers from me and Ben for our Discord friends of the Pod subscribers, so check that out. All right, Ben, let's start with Iran. So Trump went from bombing Iran, every night for about two weeks, to threatening war crimes again, and escalation, to hitting pause on everything, while baselessly claiming that Iran now wants a deal. Sort of more things change than where they stay the same. A bunch of news outlets reported that Trump was on the cusp of this major escalation, but then held off because of concern from military leaders about dwindling U.S. supplies of air defense interceptors. We've covered this issue ad nauseum now. The thing you need to know is that the U.S. has burned through a significant number of its most important munitions, and it will take billions of dollars in many years to replenish those stockpiles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to try to hide the cost of the war. Most recently, that has manifested in the creation of a new category to list casualties from the Iran war. They're calling it overseas operations. This category was added to the Pentagon's online casualty tracking system. I assume creating this new category is mostly their way of getting around the War Powers Act requirements to end the war within 60 days, because Congress has not authorized it. Just like they renamed the operation, they'll do anything to suggest that these are all separate wars. We've just fought a series of wars with Iran. No, no, no, no. It's not a long war. It's several mini wars all taped together by failure. But also, like, this kind of sneaky bullshit fits into the Pentagon's pattern of trying to cover up the cost of the war. The total U.S. casualty count is now 18 dead, 624 wounded, and the New York Times estimates that 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed, and then there's just untold amounts of damage to bases and infrastructure and weapon systems, et cetera. We should also mention that the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence now believes that Iran's new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mujtaba Khamenei, is, quote, "far more interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon than his father was." Perhaps if your father and members of your family were killed, you might reach that conclusion. I'm not suggesting it's a good conclusion to reach, but it's not that surprising. No, it's a good conclusion. You probably don't need 18 component intelligence agencies to drive that that way. Yeah, just one psychiatrist. A little, yeah, one shrink. That brings us to the meeting with Netanyahu, Trump and Netanyahu's meeting. So here's a clip of Trump previewing his meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday morning on "Fox & Friends." Let's watch. There are reports now that Netanyahu's going to talk to you about ongoing excavation at Pickaxe Mountain. Well, I don't need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi's telling me that 'cause he wants me to stay involved. I heard Bibi announce that. I said, "Why didn't you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?" We hear that you're talking right now with leaders on Iran, but Iran has come out publicly and said, "We're not talking to the U.S. We're gonna pause as long as they're paused." Well, they just came out and said, "We are talking," a little while ago, because. So could you tell me who you're talking to, Mr. President? For some reason, for some reason, we can be in the midst of a beautiful discussion, and they'll come out and say, "We're not talking," or, "We didn't discuss nuclear." Well, that's all we discussed, because they'll never have a nuclear weapon. If they don't make a deal, the bridges are gonna be gone. Literally in less than a. I would say in two hours, most of the bridges, the major bridges will all be gone. and the power plants in one day. And, you know, if I can avoid doing that, I'd like to do that. So those are the two big things. And then there's always the desalinization plants. And who am I hurting there? I'm hurting the people. So I'm not looking to do that. I just want very simply, they cannot have a nuclear weapon. So he sounds like equally annoyed at Netanyahu and the Iranian leadership and then threatens a series of war crimes. And the host of Fox and Friends. And Brian Kilmeade. He prefers the weekend hosts like Pete Exel. Yes, yes. Look, this is really – we should just name the fact that this is sad and pathetic, weak version of Donald Trump. You know, he's lost this war. He has a couple of plays now that we've seen literally running on repeat. One, he always claims that the Iranians are trying to talk to them when they're not. You know, there's no indication that the Iranians are in any way eager to make a deal. So he simultaneously talks. He talks about how the Iranians are talking when they're not. And then he threatens war crimes. And the same war crimes. We keep hearing the same – and I'd rather he not do the war crimes. He added desalination plants. Yeah, yeah. So we add a new war crime. And that's it. This is – it's an absurd – if it wasn't like so tragic and didn't have so many real world consequences, it would just be this kind of absurd play that we're living through where because he can't do anything to change the actual circumstances, he just keeps repeating things that aren't true. You know, I mean we could have like a nine-siren Barak Ravid tweet about a new MOU and then, you know, more war crime threats and then – I mean it's just like literally playing on a loop here. What that tells me is that they have no plan. They don't know how to get out of the dead end that they're in. The Iranians won't make the deal that they want. The Iranians have a lot of leverage. Bombing Iran doesn't really work anymore. It never really did in the first place and here we are. Yeah, and just like on – we're losing on every front, right? We talked about how they now – U.S. intelligence now believes Iran is more likely to try to acquire a nuclear weapon. Oops. We also learned that almost all the vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz in the past few days are now using the Iranian designated route. So all of our efforts to get – to create this new channel closer to Oman, it's a control shipping through the Strait seems to have failed. The other thing that I just think is like kind of under-discussed, Ben, is just the inherent risk to this thing bumping along and dragging on because the markets can kind of like ebb and flow and the price of oil can go up and down. But every day this keeps going, we're going to see more U.S. casualties like we saw a couple weeks ago, right? And when there's U.S. casualties, that leads the U.S. to respond and that can be an escalatory cycle. We are seeing more countries get pulled into the fighting. We talked about the Houthi rebels now attacking Saudi ships and now I think oil pipelines and oil infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bahrain and Kuwait – have conducted airstrikes directly on Iran. The UAE has too, we knew that from past reporting. There's this question of whether the Russians are involved, whether the Russians are providing help with targeting to Iran. Like specifically, some of the reports say that Iran or that Russia might have helped Iran figure out where CIA facilities are in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and hit those. And then the Ukrainians hit an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea that it said had been shipping drones and missile parts. So this starts to really just – This is a full-on regional war that is ominously connecting to the other full-on regional war in Ukraine. And look, when you consider those different pieces, again, like these countries are living in the physical world. And so they're engaged in these hostilities or they're transiting the strait through where the Iranians want them to because they're adapting to a physical world that is not the world that Donald Trump is describing on Fox & Friends. I mean just to take the intelligence. I mean I don't know without a shadow of a doubt because I don't have the intelligence. But I'm pretty certain that the Russians are providing targeting information. I mean I've heard from people these rumors that some of the Iranian strikes – obviously the strikes on our barracks have been very specific. But I've heard this thing about intelligence. And also radar systems. And I've heard things about how like potentially – remember when the Iranians were hitting some hotels? Yeah. That they were literally hitting the hotels where U.S. intelligence was. And so I mean that's – the Iranians have pretty good intelligence. The Russians have really good intelligence. You know, it's funny. I heard that from one person. Another person who you actually know is kind of like, well, part of this also is that we have really bad OPSEC in these regions and that the U.S. delegations always stay at like the same couple of hotels. A bunch of white dudes show up and stay at the same hotels. I'm sure that's true too. But I mean look because why wouldn't they? I mean it's horrible. But if you're Russia and China. Who by the way, I mean just to make this point, a few years ago were in on the JCPOA. So I mean just you want to see the absolute failure of Donald Trump's foreign policy writ large. We went from having Russia and China supporting a deal in which Iran shipped out its nuclear fuel and had inspections in all those facilities to Russia and China probably – at least Russia providing its intel and China probably backfilling certain Iranian capabilities because they know that they are literally bleeding the United States in a war. So I mean I think that's a big part of the problem. There was this issue where the Chinese for some reason were not importing a lot of oil. That apparently has changed. And also all the global reserves are significantly depleted. We've drawn down the reserves. The Chinese are no longer doing the thing where they reduce their demand to try to like mitigate the risk of this. So this is just going to get worse and there's really not like – I mean at some point, Trump is just going to have to either just call it a day and the war restarted or take a really shitty deal along the lines of that MOU. Which was shitty. There's not some rabbit he's going to pull out of a hat here. No. And also there's an interview with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman who was asked about kind of who is actually handling Iran policy in the White House. And Swan's contention was that actually Marco Rubio is kind of not paying any attention to Ukraine or Iran. He's the Cuba desk officer. Only focused on Cuba and that it really is like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and like J.D. Vance kind of dipping in every once in a while. So it's like we don't have the A-team working on this thing. Speaking of which, let's talk about one of the godfathers of the Iran war, Lindsey Graham. So again, as I mentioned, his funeral was on Tuesday. It was – it's just so weird that this was like a presidential level funeral. It's fucking bizarre. Graham, he was not head of state. He sort of fancied himself a sidekick his whole career, right? He was like John McCain's sidekick. Then he was Trump's guy. The blob came out to celebrate. I guess though for a year or two before his death, Graham had been participating in this documentary project, I guess just about himself. And he let the filmmaker, this guy, Alex Holder, film a bunch of his calls and meetings, including meetings and calls with like Netanyahu and other leaders. Some of that footage got shown to the Wall Street Journal after Graham passed away. And then some of it was released online. Here are a couple excerpts from that documentary. And then we spliced into it some clips from Trump talking about Graham on Fox News this morning. And then Laura Loomer talking about Graham during her visit to Ukraine. Let's watch. Look what we've done here. I almost cried. Yeah. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this? I mean, you've been pushing this for years, right? Right. It's here. I talked to Trump this morning. Oh, he's jacked. It's the best thing I've ever done. He loves blowing stuff up. Trump and Bibi are like Roosevelt and Churchill. I mean, they're the right two guys to confront this evil. Hey, Bibi, Lindsey. Hey, Lindsey. How are you? I couldn't. I'm just so impressed. Glad to be your friend. I'm glad you are my friend. I'm going to meet with the president this weekend. I'm going down to Doral. I'm going to try to get him to join with y'all in Lebanon to maybe fly some with you. Would you like that? Yeah, I get that. I think you have a point, but I've been thinking about the other side of it for a second. I'm concentrating right now on the Obama. If we tell. If we tell Hezbollah that we're going all the way, we threaten them. But if we actually do it, then they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now, that's not our interest. We can do it later. Well, I'll. Okay, well, that's actually good counsel. I'll put it out there as an idea. We can always go back to it. Lindsey liked war, to be honest with you, okay? I said, you're a nice guy. How come you like war so much? He was a guy that liked war. I jokingly say, and there's nothing funny about it, but he's never seen a war that he didn't like. Hi, Laura Leamer here. I am currently in Ukraine at the world-famous Skyfall drone manufacturing facility. I am holding the P-1 sun drone interceptor. It's the same exact drone interceptor that was held by Senator Lindsey Graham just two days before he tragically passed away. In honor of Lindsey's commitment to stand for the Ukrainian people and to stand against authoritarianism, we're going to deploy the drone. to the front lights so that it can be used to kill Russians. I hope everyone caught that at the end. She was holding the drone that had been held by Lindsey Graham when he was in Ukraine. And instead of sending it to Graham's house, they're now going to deploy it to the front line to kill Russians because there's no better way to honor Lindsey Graham than to blow up some Russian kid who is probably conscripted into the army against his will. You watch that montage and you are reminded once again that fascism of the American variety is just truly the stupidest fascism. And a couple of things, you know, now this will probably be the last time we talk about Lindsey Graham. One would hope. I don't feel at all bad about, you know, crapping on someone who's recently passed because like how many people are dead because of this man? I mean, if you kind of take him at his own self-conception that he got Trump to do this along with Netanyahu, let's just start with like the hundred and something girls that are dead in that girls school. Like that's what he's celebrating. Like he's happy because we're bombing girls schools in Iran. He's chortling. He's chortling. This is wonderful. This is great. You know, and and so that's the first thing is that that's absolutely reprehensible and disgusting and fascist. The second thing is. He's an idiot. He's an idiot. I mean, like, it's amazing to me. You don't think Trump's Roosevelt and Churchill? Yeah, well, that's it's amazing to me that this man for like decades was taken so seriously by all of official Washington could get booked on any Sunday television show could be, you know, 64 machine for every print journalist, you know, when what is the depth of his thought? There's not a solution to any problem that doesn't involve bombing a country or killing some people to the point where Trump jokes about it. Yeah. Yeah. Trump's joking about it. He joked about it at the funeral. He joked about it at the funeral today. Beating Netanyahu is like, whoa, we're getting it in, Lindsay. I hope everyone caught that. Graham's recommendation was too hawkish for Netanyahu. Netanyahu is like, I don't think we want to go. I was like, chill out. Chill the fuck out, dude. Like, this man is a lunatic. He's an absolute, utter fucking lunatic who was like, given this treatment like he was some deep thinker. And not just there. Europe, I'd go to like, you know, the Munich Security Conference, like, Lindsey Graham is going to hold court, you know, all these different things. It is just such a sad commentary in our times. And that such a mediocre man full of bloodlust, for whatever reason, was taken and treated so seriously, you know? Bibi, I'm glad to be your friend. Who talks like that? By the way, also, like, does Bibi, I mean. I don't think Netanyahu knows he's on our call. But that's my point. I have no sympathy for Netanyahu. But like, does he have any idea there's a couple of fucking Randar dudes in there, like, filming him talking about, like, war plans with Lindsey Graham? I'm almost positive he does not. That's insane to me. Like, the whole thing is insane. It is. What an arrogance to think that you're such this, like, historic figure that you need a documentary crew in your office recording you while you're talking to Bibi Netanyahu. I just, and there's another thing in Washington, just because I just need to vent about Lindsey Graham for a minute here. Because, you know, there's all these payouts, you know, civility and he was a funny guy behind the scenes, like, but he's a funny guy who is a fucking crazy warmonger, you know? Like, I mean, I don't know, like, Mussolini might have, like, told some good jokes. It doesn't mean I wanted to, like, honor him when, you know, he, like, this is, this is crazy. This is like a window into the insanity of American politics in the 21st century, particularly in our post 9-11 era, that this man literally got, like, a state funeral today, as you point out. It was. I'm sure there are a ton of Democrats there, too, you know? Oh, yeah. We all love Lindsey, you know? There's another clip from this documentary where, like, Lindsey Graham is meeting with Netanyahu at the Blair House and they bring out a cake and, you know, Netanyahu sings happy birthday to him. There's a bunch of Democrats there. Like, it's just, it's too chummy. Like, there's such a thing as too chummy in politics, guys. And, and, and, okay. Like, I remember when Susan Rice came on this podcast and it probably harmed her vice president chances when she called him a piece of shit. I mean, that was because it also, like, he was fundamentally dishonest about, like, Benghazi. Like, he knew what happened in Benghazi, but, you know, he could get on a television. Well, he says, he says to these filmmakers, like, well, if, you know, the documentary is good, I'll take credit for it. If it's bad, I'll call you a bunch of communists. Right? So, like, he, he talks out loud about how he just kind of plays the game. He plays, I mean, I remember when, in the first year of the Obama administration, Rahm had this idea that Lindsey Graham was going to help us close Gitmo. And I remember I was in all these meetings, you know, we had all these meetings with Lindsey Graham and he acted like he was interested in sincerely trying to help Obama solve this problem and then pivoted 180 degrees to demagoguing the shit out of Gitmo and, like, don't release the, I mean, that, that's who Lindsey Graham, well, it's like, he wanted attention, he wanted war. And he got both. And he got very much the send-off he would like, complete with Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump. And a drone to the front line. And Sean, how perfect is it that Sean Hannity eulogized him, too? Like, it's just the merger of everything that's dumb. It's just weird, weird, weird shit. Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry.me. Do you ever look at someone really succeeding in their chosen field and think, how did they get there? And what am I missing? One thing is certain, they didn't get there alone. Those who reached the highest levels of career success had mentors, they had coaches, they had people in their corner who helped them think through big decisions and see what they can't see themselves. That's exactly what today's sponsor, Strawberry.me, is all about. A lot of us know we're capable of more, we just don't know what the next step is. It starts with getting clear on what you want, not what everyone else expects. Then you uncover the blind spots and obstacles that are keeping you stuck. And finally, you build an actionable plan and you're ready to go. 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All right, Zelensky was in Washington today, President Zelensky of Ukraine, for the funeral and also to meet with Trump. There's a bunch of issues on his plate. The first is this unlawful, ongoing political crisis that erupted after Zelensky fired his defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov. We dug into this a couple of weeks ago. That maybe was last week. Who knows? Times of the flat circle. So the gist is Fedorov, the former defense minister, he's young, he's like 35. He's very popular because he prioritizes new technology like drones. And he was fighting against these more established old school military leaders and dogmas that led to tactics that led to higher casualty counts, basically. But there were people like Fedorov, because he was all about preserving Ukrainian lives on the front with drones. There was a power struggle. Zelensky fired Fedorov that led to huge protests. Zelensky tried to mollify the protesters by firing the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces. And then he tried to rehire Fedorov in a different job. But Fedorov said, no, only three jobs actually matter. The president, the defense minister and the commander in chief. So that's kind of an unresolved mess that he has to figure out. During the meeting, we oddly did not or uncharacteristically did not get Trump press availabilities after any of these meetings today, probably because he had to get to the funeral on time. But Zelensky tweeted out like a readout of the meeting. He said that Trump and he talked about licenses for Ukraine to create their own Patriot missile interceptors and then also some possible diplomacy with Russia, although we'll see what that means. Trump has reportedly warmed to Zelensky recently because he's been impressed by their kind of drone prowess and their battlefield success generally. But there's another voice that is a surprising one who might be impacting on Ukraine. Trump's view of Ukraine, which is this right wing influencer named Laura Loomer. Now, Ben, before we get to the Loomer piece of this, do you want to weigh in on any of the policy stuff? I will say one of the reasons I think because I've noticed Trump warming to Zelensky and it's part of it is that Zelensky didn't like, again, someone didn't fold like a tent, you know, like he actually had some pretty tough words for Trump over the last, you know, year and a half. And, you know, Trump ends up responding to strength more than he responds to just like sycophancy and flattery, right? So it's another, The only thing I would say about Zelensky who does have a major political problem, like he's now – the defense minister is out. The commander-in-chief is out. It does feel like Zelensky is holding things a little too tight. Yeah, which is very weird when things are going well. You would fire your defense minister and the commander-in-chief of your armed forces. Yeah, it feels like there's a little bit too much focus on internal politics. I mean that – don't upset the progress you're making. The only thing I'm going to say, Tommy, is that I saw on the way to the Lindsey Graham funeral, Zelensky met with Andy Burnham. And I was – it was funny to me because I realized that's the fifth British prime minister he's dealt with since the war began. Wow. He's had Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, and Andy Burnham. And they've all had the exact same – I'm accredited to the British. They're very consistent in this. We support Ukraine. But I was looking at Zelensky thinking like this poor guy probably can't keep track of. The British prime minister. Do you think Truss had time for a meeting? Was it with the lettuce? I think she did. I think she – I mean it may have been in the lettuce window. I don't know. Did you see Bojo or Boris Johnson was just over in Ukraine and actually spent like 90 minutes at the front line filming a documentary? No, I didn't see that. I've not watched the documentary obviously. But it was sort of – look, it's impressive. To go to the Ukrainian front line or like the so-called kill zone is not a place I would want to be. It takes some courage to go there. I don't – I think he was there advocating on behalf of support for Ukraine. I'm not going to give the guy – I'm not – I know the you don't have to hand it to him meme. Like I'm not a big Boris Johnson fan but I just was sort of surprised to see him there. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean he's grasping for a legacy. Brexit didn't turn out too well. Yeah, that's a good point. All right. So back to Laura Loomer. Laura Loomer, right-wing crank, once chained herself to the Twitter office door in New York because she had been kicked off the platform. Didn't she wear like a Star of David or something? She wore a Star of David. She resigned a protest, compared herself to Jews during the Holocaust. She's a nut but she has had a major change of heart when it comes to Ukraine policy. So she's kind of nutty and pretty vicious. She's also like the world's biggest Trump sycophant and he loves her for that. So she has serious influence in the White House. We have covered the fact that she has personally managed to get a ton of national security staffers fired by accusing them. Almost the entire first NSC. Yeah, like there was this one anecdote where like she's sitting in the office meeting with Trump and Mike Waltz, then the national security advisor, like walks into the meeting. Not for long. Late and just gets, you know, machine gunned down and she, you know, like she took a bunch of scalps, including the head of the NSA, like senior people. So Loomer used to hate Zelensky. She used to openly oppose support for Ukraine. She literally called Zelensky a jihadi apologist. Didn't even know what that, where that came from. She used to say Ukraine was full of Nazis. Like she fully internalized the, you know, the Russian disinformation. Feverish MAGA view of the Ukraine. Yes. But now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She is in Ukraine visiting. She's suddenly become Ukraine's biggest defender. And she even got an interview with Zelensky himself at the presidential palace. So we're to play two clips for you. This first clip is Laura Loomer talking about her previous hatred of Ukraine and Zelensky during an interview she did with some Ukrainian media. Let's watch. I said really terrible things. I said, I don't care if Ukraine gets conquered by Putin. I said, I don't care if Ukraine gets taken over by Russia. I said, I don't. I don't have any problem with Putin. I used to mock Zelensky for not wearing a suit. I used to, you know, spread. I used. I didn't realize I was consuming Russian propaganda after the election in 2020. You know, so many conservatives were banned. They were banned on social media in America. And we were shut out from, you know, being able to make appearances on certain news stations. Right. We had cancel culture. They were blacklisting people. And I kind of refer to it in a book I wrote as being a conservative. I was being sent to a digital gulag. And when I was shut down and I lost access to my accounts, I was approached by Russia today. I realized they're very, very good at deception. They're very, very good at emotionally manipulating people. Most of what I had been seeing online before I got access to my accounts again was RT and Telegram channels. It's not the most self-aware moment to refer to a digital gulag while sitting in a region where there were millions of people sent to actual gulags. Yeah. But now this is. Let's watch a bit of Loomer interviewing Zelensky while she was in Ukraine. You went to McDonald's? I went to McDonald's, yes. Yeah, yeah. President Trump's favorite fast food restaurant. If you could please explain to the American audience, how is supporting Ukraine with U.S. tax dollars America first? Are you saying that the Ukrainian government under your direction is going to send teams of drone manufacturers to America free of charge to help Americans boost their drone manufacturing? No. We want to do drone manufacturing. Join manufacturing. And I don't know free of charge. Do you regret campaigning with Democrats in the United States? There were some internal polling from Ukraine that showed that only 17 percent of Ukrainian people have a favorable view of the United States, which I'm confused. It's not higher because we send them so much aid. Do you believe he is the best president? The best president of the United States? Yeah. Now history will answer. True or false? Were you doing cocaine with him? Were you doing cocaine with Macron or were you not? You have a message of gratitude for the American people. How does it feel to be called a Nazi? Would you be willing to sign the peace deal with Russia in the Oval Office? Yes, I'm ready. I've always said to President Trump that I'm ready to come to the United States, to Oval Office or to Mar-a-Lago, it depends on President Trump. Which do you prefer, Mar-a-Lago? If you could sign it anywhere, Mar-a-Lago or the White House? I don't know. It depends on President Trump. It's very beautiful in Mar-a-Lago. Mar-a-Lago. Have you ever been to Palm Beach? So we mostly just played her questions and not his answers because you want to show just how sycophantic it is. She's really like kind of mama birding and like vomiting up the like NAGA-approved answer, like how great is Palm Beach and how great is President Trump? But Ben, what do you make of her turn here and maybe the impact? All right. First of all, the stupidity of America in 2026 is once again on full display here. Off the charts. Number two. You know. One of the things she does where she calls out different people on Twitter, where she wants Trump's attention to go after these people, it's called getting loomered. It's actually a verb. It's happened to a lot of our former colleagues and some friends. Usually for having feverish anti-Russian – anybody who signed a letter like criticizing Russian disinformation or something, like she'd mine that and like demand their security clearances get yanked. I wonder if she's going to retract all that. Now that she's awoken, the scales have fallen from her eyes about the fact that there is such a thing as Russian misinformation, disinformation. I'm not holding my breath. I wonder about this. There are a couple of things in terms of like what this portends. One is just that like you sense, Tommy, I know like me, you occasionally dabble in the MAGAverse to just see what's going on because it's interesting. You do get the sense that there was a center of gravity. There was a center of gravity to the MAGAverse through the 2024 election and now that like Trump is this kind of diminishing figure, everybody is kind of going in their own directions. You know, like Tucker is going deeper into the like Russian well, Laura Loomer is moving to the Ukrainian side, like there is a sense of kind of everybody is running in different directions and MAGA is fracturing. It doesn't have like a – because it never really had a coherence other than Trump. He was the center of gravity holding it all together. Yeah, and so now people can see he's just out for himself so everybody else is out for themselves. I have some sympathy for – like having been a little critical of Zelensky's recent political moves. This poor guy has to like leave like the situation room and all these horrible casualties and then he has to like as part of his job because he has to do it, sit there with Laura Loomer and put up with that. And be like, how was McDonald's? I don't – I'm not suggesting anything here, Tommy. I'm just – I'll pose the question to you like I think Laura Loomer probably like a lot of people in the MAGAverse responds to money. Like do we think the Ukrainians maybe gave – gave her stake in a drone company or something? Like the thought had occurred to me that there might be some incentive here. That's – look, that's a big question. So look, first of all, I will say I'm glad she's moved to a better place. I'm going to watch closely to see if there will be an impact. She reaches people that are hearing only the kind of RT, Telegram, Russian disinformation version of events of the war, of the conflict of Ukraine. So maybe she can change some minds. Who knows? I do think it's kind of hard to do like a 180 that hard. The most compelling explanation I've heard is that Loomer is very pro-Israel. She's like virulently anti-Muslim. She actually tweeted something about how great it was being in Ukraine and not seeing any Muslims. So, you know, she's still like a bigot. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have become extremely vocally anti-Israel. I think she tends to zig when they zag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so Tucker and Candace both went to Russia. So she's like, I, Laura Loomer, am going to go to Ukraine. That's one way to sort of think about it. She asked Zelensky about Tucker specifically a couple of times. She keeps calling out what she calls the woke Reich podcasters, which I think is like Tucker, Loomer. I think Nick Fuentes is probably in that bucket. She told Politico that she asked Zelensky for, quote, information on American influencers who are getting paid by Russia. She said, make sure you give that information to me. So she's trying to mine for intelligence that Tucker is getting paid. You're right that that is ironic, since in the past she has been, I think, quite credibly accused of taking money to support issues. for example yes one day she was suddenly tweet things she was very in support of this arcane law regarding venezuelan oil exports all of a sudden it was a real focus of hers and everyone's like hmm okay there's a lot of rumors that she gets paid to tweet things yes because trump sees them now she was asked this directly she said nobody paid me to go on this trip i haven't received a dime certainly not from the ukrainian government or anyone else uh we'll see now she's also she's trustworthy we'll take her to work now she's um much like a lot of the naga world she has a grandiose vision of herself politico reported that there's a debate in dc about who will take on lindsey grant's mantle as like the influential warhawk in dc they asked laura lumer about this here's a quote she said maybe that person has to be me i would like to serve as an envoy for president trump so that's how she thinks of herself now trump did see that she did this video apparently he like retweeted it you saying very good laura lumer also tweeted after the zelensky meeting that jared kushner is going to visit ukraine in the next couple of weeks in part because she pitched the idea to trump uh it is crazy you remember that whitcoff steve whitcoff and jared kushner ostensibly the people working on a russia ukraine peace deal have never visited ukraine but they've been to russia a bunch of times and have met with the head of the russian sovereign wealth fund yeah which raised some concerns some real concerns now her like kind of her stated kind of explanation is media ecosystems that she fell down the rt kind of conspiracy well she got into the russian disinformation space there's probably some truth to that you know like propaganda is very powerful but also to your point at the very top of this you're a moron if you think jewish president zelensky is also a nazi yeah that was always a bit of a stretch to me you know yeah uh so but you know again she refers to herself as a pentagon correspondent in the course of these conversations and uh the wall street journal reported that lumer had talked to trump twice since she got to ukraine so maybe she will influence uh the very highest levels of the u.s government which explains why the ukrainians like rolled out the red carpet for her i think there's something else that's happening which is there's a sense that maybe the ukrainians are are winning you know they're hitting deep inside russia says maybe there's like some front running here and i just kind of caution people you know there are these swings in like who people you know for a while it was like the rush for well actually for a while it was like the ukrainians are going to win the counter-offensive and then for a while it was like the russians are winning they're grounding them down now it's like the ukrainians are winning because they're striking deep inside of russia with these drones when in fact the front line doesn't really change you know the war is a tragedy and so i don't know i i i i beware of like over-interpreting battlefield events because i i feel like that's part of what's happening it's like well maybe the ukrainians are the ones we should get back behind because i don't know i don't know i don't you know i think we should be back in ukraine for other reasons obviously yeah um but but there's a bit of a kind of front-running feeling for sure like you're right that there's sort of these narrative momentum swings constantly i do think there is some truth to the ukrainian narrative swing storyline lately because they've been able to almost fully cut off crimea the crimea thing is interesting from supply lines they're also hitting like oil and gas infrastructure deep in russia to the point where there's real supply disruptions um which may have a very long-term impact but the russians will adapt well actually there's another thing that she mentioned that i think is another factor here which is the ukrainians really have become the leaders in the world in drone technology and they're cranking out these drones and they're innovating and that's both militarily very useful and important and frankly the defense tech industry in this country which you know has the don juniors of the world in it want a piece of this i i if the ukrainians i'm sure part of what they're doing is dangling oh yeah hey joint production of these like both you know because there's a real need for the u.s military but also because there's a lot of money made in defense tech so that may be not just laura luna but a backdrop of people wanting in on this you know drone industry they've oh i would not be surprised and look this is my opinion i don't have any evidence of this but if zolinski were to dangle some sort of suggestion that maybe you know he could partner with the trump family don jr's drone business right like they know how trump's bread is butter they know what he wants which is money and to sell crypto and to get paid so we'll see potty the world is brought to you by select quote with endless information at our fingertips 24 hours a day it's easy to go down to research rabbit hole on literally anything restaurants hotels home appliances even something as boring as your bath towels you can spend days pouring over reviews if you are not careful luckily there's no need to add another item to your research list select quote is a life insurance broker that does the homework for you their licensed agents shop over a hundred policies and find you a better rate for free with select quote getting life insurance is fast it's free it's easy the whole process takes about 15 minutes simply answer a few questions then their agents shop with carriers to find you the best quote tailored to your specific situation even if you have a pre-existing condition like high blood pressure or diabetes select 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semiconductor market value were erased within days um it was very similar to the wall street panic after the release of deep seek which is this chinese ai model that came out i think january of 2025 uh that was cheaper and much more efficient than the u.s models but still quite good so in this case independent analysts compared k3 to models by open ai and anthropic and found it underperformed only the newest releases and you can use k3 for about one-third of the price so it's a very well done model um but soon after that freak out by wall street came the accusation so the trump science advisor and tech advisor accused moonshot of essentially stealing u.s models and also violating u.s export controls by acquiring the top of the line nvidia chips to train its models remember the u.s is supposed to prevent the best ai chips from getting sold to china but it seems like the chinese again and again and again have found ways to kind of end run about those export controls the trump administration is now trying to figure out how to respond to k3 and these seeming breaches of rules uh treasury secretary scott besant threatened to put sanctions on chinese ai firms and potentially ban the models from u.s markets meanwhile you see some staffers at these top american ai companies are circulating an open letter calling on the u.s government to slow down ai development there was also an extremely alarming incident recently where this open ai training model managed to escape its test environment log on to the internet hack into another company to verify ai scenario and it just happened and we're all going on i guess existing with nothing changing so china's not slowing down they've been putting together the ai equivalent of a belt and road initiative they've been promising to give developing nations access to chinese ai models and also training ultimately it sounds like china wants to bundle together like a telecom technology it's cloud computing it's data center tech and then the ai models it's a package to kind of like offer the chinese internet to the world um in the u.s yeah and in the u.s we're all like oh no that's a big espionage risk and whatever but you know for good reason for that but the u.s offering is basically just limiting competitor access to our chips. We're not at risk at all either. We're the good guys in the world, right? The Chinese are offering something that sounds like a better deal. So Ben, a lot of things happened in here over the last couple of weeks. What did you make of this kind of latest shot across the bow from China and kind of all these developments, the response from OpenAI and others? Here are the couple of headlines I see because part of what's happening in the Chinese, we've talked about this a little bit, but it's really, really important because in part because we did these export controls, they kind of were trained to figure out how to build models with less compute, less inputs from chips and other things on the cheap and also because once there's kind of an open source model that you can create, right? It's kind of out in the world and people have open sourced their models and so the Chinese can – they're not stealing intellectual property when it's open source. They're just kind of – They're building a model off of what is openly available and here's the danger for American AI companies. It's that the Chinese are building models that are almost as good as the American models that cost a lot less money. Well, what models do you think people are going to buy? If you're a developing country or if you're just a customer in the United States that doesn't want to pay top dollar to use the tokens that you have to spend to use clod or check. So the reality is whatever the Trump people say like open source Chinese AI is here to stay and we live in, for better or worse, a capitalist global economy. It tends to be the case that in capitalism, if there's a similar product for a lower price, people tend to buy it. In fact, that's how the Chinese have beaten us in a lot of these tech issues over the years. So I don't think you can whack-a-mole this thing. I think you have to – I mean I would prefer that the US and China were actually negotiating about it. I think we're going to have guardrails around AI instead of this kind of absurd notion that there's like a foot race to get it. Everybody is going to get it. Now, on this – I had a couple of thoughts in the chat GPT thing about like escaping and doing all this stuff. I have two kind of conflicting views and it's kind of like a lot of things that we're speculating here. But on the one hand, it just proves the point of it's insane that we're not regulating this technology. That there's no legislative or executive branch effort. The Trump people have talked about needing to test new models before the release but they haven't made that mandatory. On the other hand, like I keep noticing Anthropic and OpenAI kind of putting out, oh my god, we've created this model that is so powerful at the precise time that they're talking about having an IPO, right? It does feel to me like sometimes they're hyping. This is existential. This is – technology is going to take every job. This technology can do all these wonderful things like to juice their IPOs too, you know, not to – I don't know what you think. I mean you follow – Yeah, it's possible. I mean, yeah. I don't know when those IPOs are going to be. It's probably pretty soon. Yeah. So I don't know. The point is the headlines are the Chinese are going to have AI too and we're not going to have to adjust to it and it's insane that we're not regulating this more than we are. Like that's kind of my, you know, steady state on this. Yeah. No, I firmly am in the – I cannot believe we're not regulating these things. These companies – I mean it does seem like Anthropic used to be very, very honest about the potential disruption to jobs from their models and the power of them and now they're all reining it in because they feel like, oh, they scared everybody and, you know, they didn't like the feedback. So now they're all kind of like lying about it. I don't know if you saw this. Dina Powell from Meta released some corny-ass video. It was like a one-minute ad basically about how great AI was going to be and like don't believe all the fear and doomerisms. They're all trying to like walk back the fear that they created by disrupting the world and describing to us their own technology. And mostly I'm just mad at our government for being asleep at the switch and I don't trust any of the people. I mean I don't know about Dario Amadei. He seems like materially different but I don't trust Sam Altman. I don't trust Elon Musk. I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg. I have no idea what Google is doing. So who knows? Yeah, and I think that the – I mean to weigh domestically here, the only outlet for the anxiety people feel right now is in this data center back home. There's a lot of backlash that we feel happening across countries, which is real. But I think that anyone running for president in 2028 is probably going to be running as a tech AI populist. My worry is the window to be putting some guardrails around this technology is not 2029. It's like now. Yeah, and if we don't build the data centers, I mean they're going to get built somewhere. Yeah, no. They are. I mean and the data centers are about training the AI models. They're also just about like where do you think – what do you think Uber Eats runs on? So like better to put the guardrails – I mean I would rather that the focus be directed at, hey, what guardrails do we need to build around these technologies and how can we negotiate with the Chinese around guardrails on things like nuclear weapons and biological weapons and military uses of AI? That's where to direct this energy as much as it is saying – and nuclear weapons and NIMBY issues about data centers. Yeah, I think the data center stuff, like I think it's real and it's out there, but it's – I've been told by some people in swing states who have done polling and focus groups and research that it is more people who live in like close proximity to the data centers. Yeah. That's where it's felt very strongly. Yeah. And then there's sort of like 31 flavors of different reasons people oppose them that range from like real to conspiracy to environmental to whatever. But I don't know if it's going to be like quite the panacea that some on the left think it's going to be in elections, but I guess we'll see. I do think you're right that as a place we're channeling this. No, I think you're – yeah, so I think you're right. Yeah. That it's not – it's hyped. The reason it's hyped is because people have nowhere to direct this concern about AI. So it's like this is the physical manifestation of AI. So I don't like that. It's a thing you can stop. When in fact, actually, I don't think stopping data centers is the solution. The solution is actually trying to regulate how these technologies move out in the world. And unfortunately, that's not happening. Yeah. We got a couple more things for you guys. So we're going to turn to India where the cockroach janta party or CJP protest movement has been upending Indian politics for two months. Now, it just scored a historic win over the weekend. So we did a bonus episode last week on the Pod Save the World YouTube page where we dug into the CJP protest deeper. Please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube if you want to hear that so you never miss a bonus. Ben also discussed the CJP protest with a great journalist named Rana Ayyub in a previous episode. So check out that if you want even more depth. But here's sort of the abbreviated version. Students in India who want to go to medical school, they have to take this grueling admissions exam. It is enormously important to your future. It is insanely competitive. There's like 2 million kids competing for 137 or so slots. They spent months, if not years, studying. Some even go into debt to pay for tutors. And then this year, about two weeks after taking the test, students were told they had to retake it because the questions had leaked online invalidating the results. And this was just crushing for many students. And at least 20 kids killed themselves as a result of the anxiety, the frustration, whatever it was in learning. They'd have to take this test. Again, the protest movement started to protest the handling of these exams. And the protesters called for restitution for the families of these kids who committed suicide and called for India's education minister to be fired. Over time, as always happens with these protest movements, they grew broader. They're about inequality and corruption and youth unemployment and much, much more. So last week, protesters marched on India's parliament. They were brutally beaten by security forces. They were tear gassed, dragged away by the cops. It was horrible. The CJP, by the way, got its name back in May when India's chief justice called unemployed young people cockroaches. So the protesters named their movement after that comment. Initially, the government tried to denigrate or ignore these protesters. Eventually, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided it had been too big, gotten too big to ignore. He released an Instagram video promising some limited reforms. Mostly, it didn't really cut it. Mostly, he was mocked for like kind of looking weird. And because he reposted the video, like just as authorities were cutting off the Internet. So people really came. Modi, you're putting out videos now as you're cutting off our internet. On Saturday, the government finally blinked. India's education minister resigned. This was a rare and pretty major win. The only other time Modi has bowed to pressure like this was the 2021 farmer protests. Here's journalist Priyanshi Sharma with Peak TV on the street with the protesters as the news of the resignation came out. A lot of people never thought this will happen. A lot of us also thought that the minister will not resign. That's not what happens in this government. That's not. What usually happens. But still, this youth and the power of this youth, the power of the number of people, lakhs of people that came out on the streets made this happen. And they have made something that looked impossible happen. This government is known to not even listen to protesters. They ignored even this protest for almost a month. So for that kind of a government to accept these people's demands shows that they did not expect the youth to show up in these numbers. So what do you think got Modi to blink here? I think he was totally losing control of the situation. And I think it is a big deal. We have not seen Modi bowed to public pressure like this much, if at all, as prime minister. The education minister was a senior BJP guy, like someone who was kind of in the Modi circle. So that's notable. The question then becomes, is that enough to kind of staunch the bleeding here for Modi? Right. But now, as you say. Yeah. This is about youth employment as well as the education system, will the movement continue and be focused on these other issues? And can they kind of concretize their demands? Can they channel it into opposition politics? Or does it kind of lose steam as people move on to other things? It does feel to me just in general, though, like there's a permission structure that's been created by these young people to start to criticize the government. And it's a government that is kind of clamped down on dissent, intimidated opponents. And that's a hard thing to put back in the Pandora's box. Yeah. A couple updates from Venezuela. So first, Ben, there's this great Financial Times piece that's worth highlighting that says the U.S. has collected more than $13 billion in revenue from Venezuelan oil sales this year, but no one seems to know where the money has gone. Seems like an important detail. The funds are supposed to be spent on the Venezuelan people, especially like earthquake reconstruction. But Trump also brags about how much money the U.S. is now making off of Venezuela. So sort of conflicting messages there. The second thing, Venezuela is officially withdrawn from the International Criminal Court. In the past, the ICC has investigated parts of the Venezuelan armed forces, so that could be part of it. But also this comes as the U.S. is targeting and trying to dismantle and delegitimize the ICC in the wake of its criticism of Israel and the war in Gaza. The ICC is also facing its own internal turmoil as one of its prosecutors, Kareem Khan, faces calls to resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. So far, 82 of the 121-year-old Venezuelans have been convicted of sexual misconduct. 25 member states have voted in favor of Khan's resignation. And then finally, Ben, the Washington Post had a great piece on the ongoing boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific that are supposed to be about targeting drug traffickers. According to the Post, at least 67 boats have been attacked and 221 people have been killed. But the strikes have not stopped or reduced the amount of cocaine coming into the U.S. despite Trump's claims. Prices remain the same. Purity is high, which is an indicator of supply consistency. Criminal organizations have developed new tactics, which include using larger boats that stay closer to the coastline to lessen the probability of U.S. firing at them, using aircraft that take off from secret airstrips to get away from the U.S. military, and then bribing officials to say where U.S. ships are so the smugglers can just avoid them. Long story short, we got lots of war crimes and murder and seemingly no benefit. So again, great work, everybody. You just gave a great snapshot into the Trump era return to colonialism in the hemisphere. Because I asked, I think last week or the week before, Times of the Flat Circle, what are the American people getting out of this colonial enterprise in Venezuela? Well, apparently $13 billion that nobody can account for. The Venezuelans withdrawing from the International Criminal Court. So coming in line with American foreign policy, I guess, and being opposed to international justice. Coincidentally, when Bibi Netanyahu is facing an arrest warrant from the ICC. And we are committing murder in the high seas. Not even war crimes because there's not even a war. We're just murdering people. That's kind of a good snapshot of what Trump era imperialism looks like. Murder, money that disappears, and the destruction of international justice. Excellent. Not to be dark about it. No, it's a great combo. It's kind of what's happening. Well, I know everyone is hoping that with that record that Trump finally gets a Nobel Peace Prize. And this might help. Yes. The Washington Post reported that Trump is now considering launching a new war in Mali against an al-Qaeda affiliate named JNIM. This would probably just be airstrikes, although not ruling anything out. But it would be the eighth country that Trump has bombed in his second term. The Post has the leading voice pushing to bomb Mali is Seb Gorka. Yes. He's a counterterrorism advisor. I haven't heard that name in a while. When Seb Gorka, the kind of creepy, you know. The Hungarian fascist. Yeah, Hungarian fascist. He's running counterterrorism apparently at the White House. He wants to do something. It's probably a good idea not to do it. I'm not sure why this counterterrorism episode in Mali will go any better than the. All the others. All the others. Just seems like a terrible idea. More of the same. Also, we wanted to talk about the just the horrifying wildfires that are burning large swaths of France and Spain. The fires have burned over 100,000 acres in France, nearly 200,000 acres in Spain. More than 360,000 people in those two countries have had to flee their homes. French President Emmanuel Macron called it the worst. It's the worst crisis in France since World War Two. It's being described as France's largest ever peacetime evacuation. Unfortunately, things might get worse this week. So this summer, Europe has been hit by several climate change driven heat waves. Temperatures could exceed 100 degrees again this week. The fires also come after a wet winter. So there is a lot of vegetation to burn longer term. Europe is warming faster than any other continent thanks to climate change. So terrifying story for these people. Pray for rain, I guess. It's also a reminder. That, you know, while climate change is off the political radar in America because our president is an idiot and a climate denier, it does not mean that the impact is not coming for all of us in some form or fashion soon. Yeah, I don't know if you've noticed, Tommy, but it's pretty fucking hot everywhere. And I do think to connect a couple of these threads, the two biggest things happening in the world, arguably, to me, are the rapid acceleration of climate change and the diffusion of artificial intelligence. And we're just not dealing with those two things at all right now under Donald Trump. And so the cost of the Trump era can be measured in dumb wars and terrible decisions and the destruction of USAID and the big, beautiful bill. They're also measured in what we're not doing. And I think people should kind of bear in mind any kind of normal government would be very focused on these twin existential challenges of AI and climate change. And they're not. They're not. They're not. And if Trump comes next, hopefully a Democrat, I think those things are going to be like at the top of the agenda. Yes, a lot of makeup work to do. I noticed our friend Mark Landler, who's the New York Times, who has covered the White House and the State Department during the Obama years and then went and covered British politics in the UK and then recently went to France. He got the assignment of going down to Bordeaux to talk to wine owners. Yeah, I saw it's in Bordeaux. I mean, and that's not just that I like Bordeaux. I mean, that would be a massive economic hit. Huge. So I think it's taking a huge tourism hit. Yeah. So interestingly, when there are horrible fires in like Napa Valley, it can impact the taste of the grapes in part because the smoke hangs around in the valley between the two mountains. It gets trapped. In Landler's piece, he said that the winds kind of move through faster. So hopefully it will push the smoke out. But there's sort of crucial periods where either the grapes are like kind of ripening and turning red. That's when smoke can kind of get into them or during harvest time. It can impact the taste of the wine. So you could have like smoky wine for a season. Obviously, that's not the end of the world. It would be much worse if like all these historic vineyards and locations that have been around since like the 1600s are burned to the ground. And it's already an industry that's got hit hard because Gen Z is not drinking wine. There's all these tariffs. I don't know, man. Come on. Drink some fucking wine for God's sake. Help our French friends out. Yeah, I don't know if our Gen Z folks drink wine. I hope so. But yeah, no, obviously it was not a fun time to go to Bordeaux when they're just dealing with this horrific tragedy. But I imagine. I'm hoping that Landler picked up a couple of cases or two for himself. Helped out the industry. He's a hardworking guy. Probably did. Hardworking guy. Finally, Ben, sometimes someone so deeply random enters the chat that you have no choice but to hand it to the gods of chaos. Michael wrote this last one. I have not seen this video yet. But the following song is the latest release from an artist who peaked in 1984. Is this the Boy George song? He's also not Jewish, but regardless felt compelled to weigh in on the Israel of it all. So, Ben, I have not watched this yet. I've seen it. I've seen this. Okay, so I'm cold watching it. This is Boy George's latest single, We Will Dance Again. Michael wants us to pay particular attention to the genre that Mr. George has chosen. It's reggae, right? I don't know. I'm about to find out. I'm ahead of Michael on this one. Mouthing like sheep. Propaganda fueled by the internet. It feels so weak. But trust me, we will dance again. But if you're ever confused, I stand with the Jews. I don't feel brave. I just need to behave like a human. Not the worst song I've ever heard. Not the best either, though. No. It did make me feel like I was, you know, on a boat in the Caribbean. Probably wouldn't be singing about genocide in that context, personally. Yeah, it's an interesting lyrics choice. Is that where we're going here with, like, the kind of influencer campaign to improve the standing of Israel? Because I don't think that's going to do it. Yeah. Boy George, what has he been up to for the last 40 years? No idea. Yeah. I can't even really remember why he was big in the 80s. I just remember his name. Culture Club. Okay. Karma Chameleon, obviously. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I don't really know a lot of other songs. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? That was the other banger. That's it for us today. You were going to take a quick break, but then you're hearing Ben's conversation with David Remnick. Set up by the Boy George. Set up by Boy George about, hopefully, a post-Netanyahu future and what the hell is going on in Israel. So stick around for that. We'll see you next week. The world is brought to you by SimpliSafe. When you think of a home security system, you're probably imagining an alarm that blares after someone breaks in. Traditional. that is how it has often been. But a reactive system that only triggers after a break-in is already underway is too little, too late. You got to trigger them. You can't just be triggered yourself. You know what I'm saying? That's where SimpliSafe comes in. SimpliSafe's AI-powered cameras identify threats on your property and alert US-based live agents who take action to deter them before the break-in even begins. SimpliSafe's home security systems are fast and they're easy to set up on your own. No drilling is required. No waiting around for a technician to show up. The app-guided installation walks you through the process so you can get your system armed in less than an hour. And best of all, SimpliSafe is actually affordable. Monitoring plans start affordably at around a dollar a day. 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My name is Jennifer Palmieri, and we're hosting a new series from Left, Right, and Crooked Media called Long Play. For both major parties, the path to winning America runs through the South. But to win it, you have to understand it. And that's where Long Play comes in. You can binge the whole show. You can binge the whole series right now by subscribing to Long Play series on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I'm very pleased to welcome to Pod Save the World, Dave Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, someone whose books, articles, edited articles I've read for so many years. David, in addition to editing, still finds time to report. And he's made five trips to Israel since October 7th. His latest piece in this week's New Yorker profiles the leading challenger to Bibi Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli election, Gadi Eisenkot, ahead of the elections on October 27th. I should say also the New Yorker Radio Hour, which David usually hosts, is excellent listening. David, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, Ben. And I have to stipulate it's a little weird since for years I've been asking you questions. You have. And actually, I've got to be one of the most oft-turned-to sources for The New Yorker of the Obama years, let's just say. I think all the checkers know you by now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is fun. This is great fun and about a very important topic. I mean, it's a great piece. People should read it, particularly people who don't know much about Gadi Eisenkot. I wanted to start by asking you. He had been the chief of – The IDF for a number of years under Prime Minister Netanyahu. He was briefly called back into the Israeli war cabinet after October 7th. He lost his son in Gaza. Why do you think he is running to be prime minister? What was your sense of what the motivating factor is for him to enter politics like this? Well, as you know, Netanyahu has been prime minister longer than anyone in the history of the state, longer than Ben-Gurion. I think 19 years, all told. I first encountered him writing a profile in the 90s. You know, he had that first term, and then it was interrupted, and then this long stretch of time. And it is proven very elusive in trying to defeat him. All kinds of center-left and centrist candidates have run over the years. And, you know, I think my sense of Netanyahu is not far distant from yours. But I think – But the one thing that you have to acknowledge about him is that he is a ruthless, deeply effective political campaigner when it comes election time. And they have a very different system than we do. And that matters for him. His job politically – and there's nothing that's more important on this earth to Bibi Netanyahu – is the sustaining and construction of a – is the sustaining and construction of a political coalition. Because you have to rule by coalition. There's no party big enough to gain 61 seats, which would get a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. And as a result, that probably, I think if I had to guess, takes – you know, it makes a bad thing even worse. Certainly, right now, you have an innately right-wing – and obviously, I'm showing my politics here – but you have an innately right-wing Bibi Netanyahu made – an extremist in the Israeli context in the assemblage of his coalition by having Ben-Gavir and Smotrich. But if he wanted to get rid of those two, he can get rid of them by assembling a different kind of coalition. So there's a ruthlessness to him that has to be stipulated. And even though Gadi Eisenkot, who, as you say, was a military leader and is ahead in the election by any poll – is not necessarily going to win. He wants to be prime minister. I think people have lots to say about him. But one thing I think that they do credit him with is a certain sincerity. Again, I'm not asking you to agree with all his politics. And as we'll discuss going forward, he's not the answer to the Palestinian question for certain. But I think there's a sincere desire to at least heal more of the rifts in Israeli society. And to preserve to a far greater degree the democratic nature of Israel. And again, I'll stipulate again, it's a democracy that does not extend certainly to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also arguably to the Palestinian citizens of Israel itself. There is a sincerity there. And also, the one thing that everybody knows about Gadi Eisenkot in Israel – Gadi Eisenkot in Israel is that he's a grieving father, that he lost his son in the war and two nephews. And this has real appeal put alongside the incredible cynicism of Netanyahu, who never went out of his way to console, say, for example, the families of hostages or parents of the lost. It's a strange coldness in him that people – even a lot of his supporters dislike. Yeah, I mean there are a lot of places to go. I mean I want to stick with the piece for a bit before kind of pulling back the camera. It's not just that lack of empathy. I mean one thing you write about that I think has not got a lot of attention here is in addition to stonewalling any proper inquiry into what happened on October 7th, the security failures, the failure of the IDF to respond, the fact that the IDF was up in the West Bank defending settlers instead of – that border, that there's actually kind of these conspiracy theories that Netanyahu has spun that he was – the deep state didn't wake him up. It's all everybody else's fault. Somehow, Bibi Netanyahu becomes the victim of what happened on October 7th on his watch astonishingly. I mean how prevalent is that mindset among his supporters? The conspiracy theories? Yeah. The conspiracy theories are – are very prevalent and they range in character but they're roughly all the same as you've described them. You know, in 1973, Israel was taken by surprise by the Egyptian and Syrian armies famously on the morning of Yom Kippur when, you know, the state of readiness was very low. Even though there were hints and intelligence that the Egyptians were planning an attack. And for the first few days in 1973 – for the first few days in 1973, the Sinai Peninsula on the Egyptian part of the front and the Golan Heights on the Syrian part of the front were overtaken by Syrian and Egyptian forces. And it looked like it was quite conceivable, despite the strength of the Israeli military, that those tank forces could have reached central Israel, could have reached Tel Aviv, could have reached, you know, all those coastal towns and cities, could have been an even greater disaster. The war turned around. When the war ended, soon thereafter, and Golda Meir was the prime minister, there was something called the Agranat Commission, chaired by the chief of the Supreme Court. And it was a very thoroughgoing investigation about intelligence failures, military readiness, the kind of thing that to some degree we saw after 9-11 in this country. And the result of that is many of the top leaders of the security establishment. resigned or just quietly left or were fired. Golda Meir herself, after some time, ended her political career. By contrast, after October 7th, Bibi Netanyahu has done everything he could to either ignore the issue or tamp down the issue of a similar commission of inquiry, an official commission of inquiry. And he doesn't want it because he would have to answer these questions. Now, lots of the people in intelligence and military who had positions of great responsibility have since stepped down because you're absolutely right. That was a colossal, colossal failure of strategy over the years having to do with how Gaza was dealt with, even on Israeli terms. Forget how you and I would look at it. And misplacement of troops and emphasis and what's called the conceptia. How? The conception of how Gaza was being dealt with. And quite frankly, Netanyahu's emphasis was solely on or primarily on Iran itself and Hezbollah in Lebanon and kind of regarded Gaza and particularly Hamas as a bunch of thugs running around with AK-47s who were no more capable of overrunning the fence, much less at 100 different points, as the man on the moon. And I would say useful in some ways. To be a face of Palestinian governance relative to the PA. Precisely. That's part of the conceptia, which was to elevate and to fund via Qatar Hamas while degrading the Palestinian authority. Because the Palestinian authority, if it had been stronger and had more political credibility, they have their own internal problems and corruption and all the rest, would have heightened the possibility of having to deal with the Palestinian question at all. And that's exactly what Netanyahu never wanted to do. He wanted to so-called minimize the Palestinian question and keep kicking the can down the road year after year after year. And the only time he ever spoke up about two states, which is when, and maybe you disagree, is when Obama forced it down his throat and basically made Netanyahu give a speech at Barlan University in favor of two states. And after that speech was over. And Netanyahu faced one of our American diplomats and said, OK, I said it. Now can we move on? There was no sincerity in that speech. No. Speech whatsoever. So a couple of things about Eisenstein before I wanted to kind of take a step back here, too. But the first is I thought one of the more extraordinary anecdotes in the piece was him describing a meeting in the early days after October 7th when Netanyahu wanted to focus on Hezbollah and wanted to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah. Who they ended up doing that later. But not exactly right. The military establishment wanted to open a second front immediately. This is on October 11th after they've called on Eisenkant and Benny Gantz to become part of this war cabinet. I think in an attempt to broaden support for Netanyahu himself, who was in terrible political trouble because of the disaster of October 7th. And Netanyahu was kind of on the fence. Biden calls Netanyahu and says, don't do it. Don't make this into a regional war. Concentrate on Hamas. We can discuss that, too. And the defense secretary in Israel, the chief of the general staff, many members of the intelligence establishment want to go after Nasrallah because they partially they knew we did not know, which is they had this capability against Hezbollah, which turned out to be rather remarkable. It was a very dramatic moment. Yeah, no, it was. And my question, does that suggest a man? That might be less likely to want to prosecute this regional war against Iran in Iran and Lebanon. And does that suggest to you somebody that might show more restraint if he got into that office and maybe not in the West Bank, which we'll get to, but but in the wider region? It suggests that. But I want us to be very cautious and realistic, Ben. In other words, I think. You and I share this is what we want is a just resolution of a historic problem. Eisencott may be a man of the center or even a closet man of the center left, as many older people in the defense establishment are, which is a weird thing. And they can talk us through that. But if you campaign on that slogan about two states or resolution in the wake of October 7th, you are going to get elected nothing, not dog catcher, not anything. So he's rather quiet about that. What he does present is is is you're right. Somebody who did not want to jump into a regional war, even though he has no illusions about Iran or it's or it's, you know, it's proxies elsewhere in the region. And he suggests a much more moderate, sane, open and honest, insofar as that can be accomplished, public image. When he even when he was in the Netanyahu government, they had disagreements about things. There was a famous incident where a Palestinian had committed an act of terrorism in Hebron in the West Bank. But he was also, you know, flat on his stomach and it was under control and he had been disarmed. But an Israeli soldier was so incensed that this guy had done this, that he went. Over and shot him to death. Now, Eisencott favored and put into motion the prosecution of the soldier. This is not a proper thing for a soldier to do under any ethical military understanding, whether Israeli or American or otherwise. Bibi initially in the first hours afterwards agreed. But then he went to social media, thanks to his son, Yair, who you've probably heard a lot. You know, kind of dominant. Don Jr. figure. And thought, ah, I need to be on the side of where the anger is and immediately called the father of this guy who had really, in essence, killed, murdered the Palestinian soldier, no matter how horrible it was. And so there's a difference. There's a kind of, if you're willing to credit it, a moral difference that people remark upon. Look, it seems to me like he'd be less egregiously. Performatively fascistic as Netanyahu is more likely to uphold, at least for Jewish Israelis, the judicial system that Netanyahu is trying to dismantle, perhaps model a certain kind of ethics and morality in some of his conduct that Netanyahu doesn't. But I want to kind of push on a couple of things. Sure. But I do think one other thing that we're leaving out. I think one thing that he would act on much more aggressively is that Netanyahu allows Smotry. And Ben-Gavir, who essentially run the West Bank, to allow settler violence to run wild. And by extension, allow the possibility of annexing in the end of ends the West Bank, much less there's even a movement, a smaller movement among settlers to start resettling Gaza, astonishingly. I don't, I think that would be markedly different under Eisenhower. Yeah, but the thing I want to press on is this, which is, you know, and I heard your. I heard your interview with Rahm Emanuel, you know, who, you know, went to Tel Aviv University, gave a speech excoriating Netanyahu. I do think that there's a feeling among a lot of people, I think I'm one of them, but, you know, even more so among Palestinians, certainly, and their growing supporters in this country, that sometimes Netanyahu is a useful lightning rod because we get to talk about how much we hate Netanyahu and how terrible he is. And frankly, even Rahm frames it as, look at what he's done to approval ratings for Israel in this country. But Israel supports these policies. They've moved to the right as a country, as you say in your piece, like, you know, even nobody's running on any kind of just solution for the Palestinians. Well, I'll remind you, Ben, the United States, the majority at one point supported many terrible things with the Vietnam War. Iraq. I don't know what the poll numbers initially on Iran were. They're probably oppositional. But the question is, is an entire country irredeemable? I don't think the answer to every question is Netanyahu. And I'm not sure the question to all of Israel's and Palestine's ills is Gadi Eizenkot by any means. It is. It is. It's a meliorist answer. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. But I guess it does. Now, in some ways, actually. Serve as a bit of a cover for the fact that most of Israeli. society supports the project of greater israel supports maybe not annexing the west bank tomorrow but um does not foresee the palestinians ever having self-determination are we not reckoning with that because it's kind of easy i don't think that's entirely factual and i don't think it's unchangeable i think um it wasn't so long ago that the considerable majority of israelis include jewish israelis were pro two states how you would get there was the question how long it would take to get there is another question i'm not i'm not you know um giving a moral sheen to any of this i'm just giving what the facts are i think that's one thing nadav ayal talks about this in the piece he's a columnist for yudiot ahrenot a kind of center left by israeli standards a columnist and he said the one thing that you have to understand that is probably not very well understood or or is forgotten is october 7th shattered israel's sense of security and and and the state protecting them to such a degree and it was so shocking and violent and and lured that for a lot of people they became their fright became a form of politics so that you had people living in the kibbutzim near gaza in kfar aza in bari and other places like that these were peaceniks these were people who were running aid to gaza these were people who could not have you know they wanted a two-state solution more than anything even after the second intifada and as you know the country has run much more to the right not just since october 7th but since for a generation well since the assassination of rabin too you could argue absolutely even longer ago in the mid 90s so the and netanyahu's talent perversely darkly is to exploit that fear to understand that fear know how to give voice to it know how to manipulate it at the same time and we can get into the trump netanyahu relationship these guys run on parallel lines trump has learned from um netanyahu and netanyahu from trump if you were to go to israel and i know you've been you would hear the language of enemy of the people um all the language that trump uses a deep state that is now common parlance for netanyahu he knows how to exploit people's fears and that is his politics i i think it can't be underestimated sometimes how powerfully an individual leader can persuade including morally the temper of the country i i you know sometimes i get criticized for being too positive about obama you'll forgive me then but compared to what i'm saying is that i'm not going to compared to what? In other words, the moral hope, the sense of optimism, the sense of possibility that he radiated to people who might not have been his natural allies was considerable. And now we see the absolute polar opposite in Donald Trump. How do you like them apples? Yeah. And so, Eisenkot, again, he is not what you would hope for, particularly in the aftermath of the Gaza war, which is so horrific. And it's not what you would hope for to immediately solve all the problems of the West Bank and everything that you and I could name while standing on one foot. But it's a comparison of what your choices are. That's the nature of meliorist politics and not protest. And that's what I'm trying to describe, not endorse. You know, one thing that I was haunted by, David, though, and this is where I might push a little bit on. Sure. Whether Israel can kind of come out of this darkness. It was very moving to read about Eisenkot's loss of his son, how he described the abyss that he feared falling into. I couldn't help but thinking, you know, there's well over 100,000 Palestinians who've lost children, family members. The consequences, the kind of absence of any Israeli capacity to see that or to empathize. I don't think that's a universal. I would, I would, I would. Well, nobody in politics. I mean, there's no political figures emerging. No political figures emerging saying, look at what we're doing. These are equal in humanity. There are, but they don't. There are such political figures, but they're in deep minority and get nowhere in the electoral. Look, what was the temper? The temper of the United States after 9/11. I, you know, I wrote a piece shortly after October 7th, warning about that because I could see the dangers. President of the United States, Joe Biden, for all his immense faults in the handling of this. And we just published a piece by David Kirkpatrick, which really went through the way Jake Sullivan, well, the entire security establishment, including Biden, just completely mishandled the situation. But the first thing Biden did say, when he went to Israel, was essentially we feel for you. October 7th is a disaster in all the ways that he described and Israelis could readily describe emotionally and intellectually, but don't make the same mistake we did. Don't act out of rage, which is precisely what the United States did and precisely what Israel did, precisely. Now, what is the proper military response to, to a slaughter of 1200 people and the 200 hostages and et cetera, et cetera? Unclear, unclear to you, Ben, unclear to me. - It's not what happened in Gaza, I'll tell you that. - But it certainly is not what happened in Gaza. You and I can agree. And obviously endless numbers of people can agree. But, you know, you wrote a speech and are involved with a president whose temperament is thus that, and this is not a defense of Israel right now, but it's an acknowledgement of how history works is that, "Countries are capable of committing horrible ills, "whether structurally or militarily, "whether it's the return of the Ku Klux Klan "and Jim Crow or the Civil War or Vietnam, "and it doesn't make them irredeemable forever, "but it demands moral reckoning. "It demands political reckoning. "And it happens, and, you know, Obama, if anything, "remains criticized on the left "for being too meliorist in this way." I don't agree. There it is. That's the way, at best, in this fallen world, at best, history works in the wake of disaster and cruelty. - I wanna ask you one thing about, you know, as someone who's read "The New Yorker," since I can remember reading anything, you are a place that people look to to understand world events and to get like a point of view, if not always opinion, but I wanna ask about language. - Mm-hmm. - In this context. - Mm-hmm. - One of the things, you know, you're in New York that is now governed by Zoran Mamdani, who I think is reflective of where public opinion is moving, you know, maybe not everybody's where he is, but that's the direction of events that are, or the direction of opinion. You know, he's had this video out, you know, talking about Netanyahu's responsibility for genocide. And I know you have to think about these things as both a writer and an editor. - I do. And people use those words when they back, when they make their argument for them, and I have no problem with them. - I was, you know, in reading your piece, like the way you describe Hebron, for instance, full of checkpoints and privileges for small numbers of settlers amidst, you know, over 200,000 Palestinians, like, that feels like apartheid to me, you know? Or when I look at Gaza, and I compare it to what happened to the Rohingya, or the Uyghurs, or in Darfur, to my standard, it's genocide. And I'm just wondering, when you think about the reckoning that needs to happen for Israel to change course, and I think the reckoning that is still happening inside of parts of the American Jewish community that kind of don't want, that kind of want Israel to be the Israel that they remember, you know, Golda Meir, as Joe Biden often reminded us. - Yeah, but Golda Meir wasn't Golda Meir. Do you know what I mean? I think some of this is over-romanticizing the past. - It's over-romanticized. But my question is, do we need to speak more forthrightly in calling things genocide and apartheid and using a language to get the attention? - Well, I don't mean to be gingerly at all in my description of Hebron. Hebron is racism full stop. And it's racism in concrete. It's racism in the construction. It's racism in the construction of its physical being. Hebron, modern Hebron is the way it is, 1967. I mean, we could probably go back to the Bronze Age, and this is part of the problem of discussing this too much history and not enough geography. I don't mean to be flip about it. But in the wake of 1967, a very small group of settlers came in with a very clever diabolical plan, as they took, you know, led by Moshe Levenger, who was a kind of Ben-Gavir of his day. And he staged a seder at an Arab-owned hotel. I think it's called the Park Hotel. I can't remember. And really, that's how the settlement there, Kiryat Arba, began. Because what they did was they established, and this is a phrase you know well from your life in diplomacy, a fact on the ground. They refused to leave. And the Israeli politicians refused to uproot them. And over time, this became a permanent fact of the matter. And Kiryat Arba, is now what is permanent, but a state of cruel presence in Hebron, a city that, if you are a zealot of a certain kind in Israel, and there are no small number of them, you consider much more important than Tel Aviv, because of its biblical meaning. So I, you know, I have no illusions about the way Hebron came into being. I have no illusions about the cruelty and uprooting of Palestinian villages throughout the West Bank. You know, I met with those people repeatedly over the years. I think in their description, it's all accurate. You know, for some people, there's a litmus test of terms. And I was, you know, for example, David Grossman, who is, we don't really have an equivalent of this. He is kind of a liberal, moral Israeli who sees efficacy, historically and otherwise, in a state for a people that has been pursued, discriminated against, slaughtered, and almost obliterated from the face of the earth to have a homeland. But David Grossman, with great pain in his heart, in an interview, I think with an Italian newspaper, used the word genocide. But there was a long explanation of it. It wasn't just, yeah, it's just genocide, and that was the end of David Grossman's point of view. Edgar Carat, another liberal with very similar politics to David Grossman, doesn't, because he feels that if you use that word, that ends all conversation, and it leads, nowhere good. You could argue with either one of them, and people do. My job as a journalist, me individually, doing my work, is to go describe fairly, you'll forgive me the facts on the ground, a representation of the voices in the air, Palestinian, Israeli, and the range of those. It's never accomplished perfectly. I'm not there to beat a drum in a kind of op-ed sort of way. So it's, different people have different languages, and they also have different purposes. But I, you know, I just try to do that work as honestly and descriptively as I possibly can, and give voice to people who use different languages, but to put pressure on bullshit, and dishonesty, and obfuscation. I remember very distinctly, because I'm old enough, when Jimmy Carter used the word apartheid, he got all kinds of shit. All kinds of shit. And it's not least in the American Jewish community, which I, you know, quite well. And who has had a greater success in that region than Jimmy Carter? But I think language is important in a way, because there's a reason why there's a desire to obscure certain terms, because it kind of avoids a certain accountability. There's even language, you know, you quote a phrase that always bugged me when I was in government, because I heard it from the Israelis, mowing the grass. That's talking about- No, but it's presented, it's presented. No, no, I'm not putting that on you. You put it in quotes. That's the bullshit it is. Yeah, no, I'm not, this is not, this is, this is the language itself. And, you know, I figured you'd appreciate this as someone who deals in language, you know, has been kind of used to, there's a different set of terminology that we apply to in Israel to somewhere else. And I guess what I'm saying is, and this is more a political point, I guess, that in the same way that Jimmy Carter might have been a friend to Israel that they should have listened to when he issued that warning. That maybe Azour Mamdani, by speaking a certain blunt truth, is offering actually something that's more useful than a Chuck Schumer in saying like, this is what we see happening. If you, if there's to be a moral reckoning in Israel that goes beyond just electing someone that is somewhat better than Netanyahu, but is not really going to do anything about the West Bank fundamentally, you know, how can we as outsiders, try to galvanize that moral reckoning. I was always told when I was in government, and you and I talked about this at the time, there was this theory of the people who knew better, you have to wrap your arms around the Israelis and make them so comfortable that they're willing to make changes. Well, David Kirkpatrick's piece shows where that leads. And so I'm just kind of wrestling with this question of what is necessary to communicate that this is an intolerable reality? Well, here's a precedent. You know, I didn't see Obama cut off military aid to the Israelis. He did, you know, the reality is actually in the 2014- In fact, the package he left them with was quite considerable. Which I was, look, I didn't like that. You knew my views at the time. I do. In 2014, though, he did say to Netanyahu, we're going to cut off, when they did the ground invasion of Gaza, we started to restrict weapons shipments. And it was not long after that that they stopped that ground incursion. Now, they had not had an October 7th, but he was willing to do that at that time. Obviously, it didn't go far enough. In part because, you know, all the political capital was spent on the Iran deal. So one fight with Netanyahu of that scale was what the system could bear at the time. I regret that. I can, maybe my value here, and this is not to argue with you, but to present what I'm hearing in Israel back to you journalistically is the following. This did come in the wake of October 7th. This did come in the wake, as we now know, of, in fact, the Hamas not only planned to break through the fence at 100 points and do what they did and get as far as they possibly could, but on the morning of October 7th, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas and the chief planner, with Mohamed Def, sent a communication to Nasrallah in Beirut and to the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran to please join the fight immediately. They had been discussing such an attack for a long time, but Hamas, for reasons of security, went forward with it on its own because they didn't want to, you know, have an intelligence collapse. Which, by the way, counteracts part of the Netanyahu, right? Right. Right. Right. It's a narrative that the Iranians were responsible for October 7th. Well, I think they would say that their responsibility extends toward cooperation throughout arms and all the rest. It's not as if Iran had no connection to Hamas. Let's be realistic here. Well, Qatar did, too. We didn't. And I think Israelis also, their defensiveness, and this is not my defensiveness, it is their defensiveness I'm stipulating, is how come you're picking on us all the time? I've never seen any campus demonstrations Sudan, or Congo, or Rwanda. We're not arming the militaries carrying out those atrocities. Yeah, that's a $3 billion question. Yes. But still, there's no outrage there. It's not all about arms. So, again, I'm relaying back to you what I'm hearing when I go there. You know, Zoran Mamdani, when I hear him described in awful ways from various people as somehow anti-Semitic, or I think it's just wrong and outrageous, to be perfectly honest. You know, Tom Friedman wrote this morning a piece about how he thought he could be more constructive. I'm not sure that was realistic either. Did you read this column? I did. I did. And that's kind of my point is that maybe it is constructive to have people of that prominence saying, and not suggesting everybody will agree with it, but that this is not like a, acceptable reality, essentially, you know. But look, I. It's not an acceptable reality, but I think my assessment is if in the best of all possible worlds, you know, to be Voltairian about it, it's going to take a while on all sides for all kinds of reasons to reassemble the notion of two states, because even that phrase rings hollow and old and defunct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Defunct. But, you know, Peter Beiner, who I have respect for and listened to, just had dinner with him, but when Peter talks about a one. You know, one state with human rights for all. I get it, you know, on a moral sense. But from an Israeli sense, I think they think that's a recipe for Bosnia, for Yugoslavia, for immediate bloodshed on all sides. And I don't know that there's a Palestinian polity or opinion that that's feasible either. So it is deep. Not only is it horrifically painful to look at all the loss and slaughter and bloodshed and sheer outrageous stupidity all over. But this is also a great deal of pain to know that this is not going to be. It's not going to be, quote unquote, solved in an eye blink. It just isn't. I mean, do you see a way? No, because there's three things I can see. There's the one state that Peter describes. There's the two-state solution. Or there's the annexation of the West Bank and not the cleansing of Palestinians. I don't know what other. Or there's some confederation or something. The third is just beyond unconscionable. Beyond unconscionable. But. And I think it's possible. I can't guarantee it. I'm not there. And that's not my job here. But if the political choice is between Eisenkot and Netanyahu, the chance of that third option of annexation, of further ethnic cleansing is much greater, immensely greater. Yeah, I know that. And look, that's a good place to leave it. I'm glad we could have this conversation. You're right. I mean, Eisenkot. It's the curse of all curses, liberal Zionists. I get that. But I should add, you know, because there weren't enough horrible facts stated in our conversation, that even if Eisenkot wins, young voters between 18 and 25. Are more right-wing, right? Are more right-wing. Yeah. And when you see these letters from people in the security establishment who have long experience of all this bloodshed and don't want to see annexation and don't want to see. Ethnic cleansing and do want to see state, two states. These are generally older people. Yeah. And that's not very promising either. Well, look, we didn't solve the problems of the world, but we identified a lot of them, David. Next time. You'll have to come back. Anytime. Look, people should read your piece. I learned a lot about Eisenkot. I've learned a lot every time you go over there. So please keep going and reporting, as you say, because we need to understand what's happening. So next time in New York, we'll have a meal. Good to see you. Anytime. All the best. Thanks again to David Remnick for joining the show. And we'll talk to you guys 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. My name is Jennifer Palmieri. And we're hosting a new series. It's from left, right, and crooked media called Long Play. You can binge the whole series right now by subscribing to Long Play series on YouTube. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.