Trump Bullies FIFA, NATO

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It's our first international expansion since we launched Zateo here in the US in 2024. And yeah, we're the fastest growing. We've had a great launch. Guess what? The British media needed to be disrupted. You'll be shocked to hear. So we're happy to provide that disruption. But it's great to be back on the show with you. It's great to have you back. The British media really does need some disruption. It needs a little, some punches from the left, shake things up a bit. I do like, it's a little more rough and tumble over there than in the US. That's why I like talking to you so much because you come out of that tradition. By the way, if folks want to support independent media, become a subscriber. Subscriber to Zateo News. They're doing amazing coverage of all kinds of stuff, foreign policy, domestic policy. There's great opinion coverage. It is really essential reading. Also, if you like what we're doing here at Crooked Media, go to crooked.com slash friends. 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But then there's some news today about far-right leader, Nigel Farage, and some of his corruption scandals that's just fun and worth digging into. But first, we have to talk about the biggest story in the world, the FIFA World Cup. We've got nations competing. We've got unbelievable drama on the field. We've got Lionel Messi just being like a superhuman. And of course, politics ruining all of it. Mehdi, we're recording this Tuesday, 2.07 PM, July 7th. We both just watched Egypt versus Argentina. Heartbreaking end for the Egypt side. Are you as addicted to watching these games as I am? Oh, 100%. It's what I look forward to every four years since I was a kid. My first World Cup that I have a vague memory of is 1986 when England heartbreak went out in Mexico at the Azteca to Diego Maradona's infamous hand of God and then his other amazing goal. And then the first World Cup I really got into, I was 11 years old. It was the 1990 World Cup. Again, heartbreak for England. We went out on penalties to Germany or West Germany as they were then. So I've been following this for a long time. I've been following this for a long time. I love the fact that it came back to me. I remember watching the 94 World Cup. I was 15. I had to get permission from my mom to wake up like crazy hours because the time difference to watch the games in England. England didn't qualify for the 94 World Cup in the US and no one cared about the World Cup in America in those days. The stadiums were empty. Obviously, everything's changed now with MLS and with Beckham and Messi. So such a great atmosphere. I went to one of the games last week. The atmosphere in the stadium's amazing. And it's just a joy to watch football at its best. Although it's being ruined a bit by VAR. I think it's fair to say. Yeah, we should talk about VAR, instant replay basically for the layman, Donald Trump. But also, I mean, like you and I, so we were just watching this game between Egypt and Argentina. There is a feeling that Egypt was robbed because they called back a goal. Argentina made this unbelievable comeback. And after the final whistle, Egypt's coach said, I'm going to say what I think regardless of the consequences, this was clearly a manipulated match and the whole world saw it. I want to say one more thing. If they want Argentina to win so badly, why do they invite everyone to come and participate? What do you make of that quote? It's a powerful quote from a guy who's been giving some great quotes in this tournament. He's also been very pro-Palestine at this tournament. He's been talking about Palestine, bringing that into the news conferences, which has obviously bothered a lot of people. Look, a lot of people are thinking it. I happen to be a great Messi fan. I was at the World Cup final in 2022 in Doha, where he performed just miracles in that game to stop Mbappe from taking it back. And, you know, it's amazing to watch him play, but let's be clear, they definitely give Argentina and him a pass. He clearly, almost clearly red carded an Algerian player in the group stages, got away with it. A lot of Americans, a lot of Trump supporters pointed this out when he came in, when Trump came in a couple of days back to rescue Balogun from his red card. They said, what about Messi? And it's a fair point. Messi got away with that. There was no VAR on that. Today, they disallowed an Egypt goal because of a tackle that they claimed was a foul on the other end of the pitch under VAR, which is not the purpose of VAR, but they didn't do anything when Mo Salah went down at the end when they scored. So the whole thing was just, the double standards are insane and people are frustrated with this World Cup. Some of the football has been amazing. I'm an England fan. The England-Mexico game was one of the great games of all time, but at the same time, people are just fed up with FIFA. They're fed up with some of the ways that they run this place. They're fed up with Gianni Infantino, and they're certainly fed up after Donald Trump's intervention where he tainted the US men's national team. They had a great tournament came along, stuck himself into the middle of it as usual, screwed up, maybe screwed with their heads. Balogun had a great, awful match after coming back after Trump's intervention. And you just think, I keep telling people, remember the Rick Wilson book from the first term, everything Trump touches dies? That is the line. That is everything he goes near. And by the way, guys, congratulations. We've got the Olympics coming our way soon too. I know, in LA. Yeah, there were a lot of jokes being made about Trump going to game three of the Knicks series, which is the only one they lost in the NBA finals. Let's talk about the politics. Everyone has heard about Trump's intervention to get FIFA to suspend this red card against one of America's best players, Flo Balogun. Balogun got a red card. Yes, yes, he has. He got a red card in the US game against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Under FIFA rules, if you get a red card, you're out for the rest of that game. Your team has to play a man down, and then you're suspended for the next game. So I think it was a questionable call for reasons we can get into, Mehdi, about whether it was a red card or should have been a yellow card. But all the reporting afterwards said, you know what? It is. There's no way to appeal this decision. However, that apparently was not true. Donald Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino, asked him to reconsider. Here he is talking about all this on Monday, showing his soccer expertise. Let's watch. I think the referee's call was horrible. And nobody talks about that. They talk about the red card like it's fine. Nobody talks. The referee's decision to red card. I didn't know what the hell a red card was when I found out. I said, you've got to be kidding. This guy just hands up. OK, your best player is not going to play next week or in the next game. I said, wow, that's a lot of power. That's terrible. So, yes, I asked for a review by FIFA. I had nothing to do with the decision. What I did have to do is I said, I think that should be reviewed because I watched the play and he didn't do anything wrong. Yes. So when the president of the United States calls, he's just asking questions about the process. Right. No pressure there on FIFA. I don't know whether to laugh or cry when you watch these clips. If you were in the Netflix writers room, you could not write that scene. No. We're like, he's going to call out the red card and then he's going to admit he doesn't know what a red card is. And be like, no one's blaming the ref for giving the red card. The ref gives the red card, buddy. What are you talking about? First, he goes off to red card and then he admits he didn't know what a red card was. Then he goes, I called him up and then he goes, I didn't have anything to do with the decision, but you called him up. I mean, that goes against FIFA rules as well. Any kind of political government involvement, interference. It's just, I mean, he is a mob boss. That is how he approaches every problem in life. Bullying, intimidation, corruption, bribery, transactional relationships. Clearly he's built a very close relationship with Infantino over the years. Infantino invented a peace prize to make this man-child president of ours feel good about himself after he was rejected again for a Nobel Peace Prize. And it's just, I know Ben wrote a great piece on his substat that I saw making this exact point that it is a metaphor for international relations right now. The stuff we're seeing around the world, the destruction of the quote-unquote rules-based order, American hegemony, talking about a Donro doctrine, regime change wherever he feels like. And now you bring that to the World Cup. Yeah, I mean, there's like a little piece of me that doesn't begrudge Trump for like advocating on behalf of his country, but it is impossible to kind of disaggregate the corruption here. Because you said, you know, Trump operates like a mob boss. I mean, FIFA is basically a criminal organization. I mean, 2015, we all got to see, I think it was seven FIFA officials dragged out of a hotel in Zurich, prosecuted by DOJ, I think for about $150 million worth of bribes and kickbacks. Yeah, there's been massive corruption and crime scandals involved with FIFA. In fact, I'm going to do a shameless plug here, Tommy, and say, I just finished recording. We're about to put out part three. We did a three-part series called The Dark Side of the World Cup, where we looked at some of those corruption stories. And we looked at the relationship between FIFA over a hundred years with authoritarian leaders, Mussolini in the 1930s, the Videla regime in Argentina in the 1970s, Putin, all of these controversial World Cups. The difference here is, in all of those previous tournaments, there's been all sorts of dodginess, but it happened behind the scenes. Yeah. The thing about Trump is he just does it brazenly in plain sight. Just brags about it. Yeah, that's a very good point. It's also, you know, like just back to FIFA for a minute. I mean, the process for even like the host selection for the country selection is sketchy as hell, right? I mean, DOJ alleged that Russia and Qatar had bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights. And then this last time, like not to get into all the details of how the selection process works, but FIFA basically compressed the process and made it really short. And they have this sort of informal continental rotation rule that made it so only. Only the Saudis really had time to bid or the ability to bid. They also ignored their own rules around human rights. And I don't know about you, Mehdi, but I've been not that surprised to see all the Saudi Aramco signage around all the venues, right? I mean, there's clearly like a financial. Get ready for 2034 in the kingdom. FIFA 2034. That's going to be an interesting one. Look, Infantino is so mired in scandal and corruption that Sepp Blatter, his predecessor, the guy who was in charge when you mentioned what happened in 2015, the guy who was. He's literally banned. The former president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, is so corrupt that he's been banned from attending a World Cup game till 2028. Sepp Blatter comes out on Twitter and says, what is going on here? This is too much. Like when Sepp Blatter says you've gone too far in football corruption and rule bending, that's bad. That's shocking. That's shocking. That's shocking. That's shocking. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's finally socially acceptable to talk about mental health, but actually reaching out for help when you need it is a different story. New data from BetterHelp confirms exactly why. BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma Report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages them from doing so. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally, and it works. With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. 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It's just a seamless experience, way easier than going to a cash exchange place or dealing with ATMs. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. Terms and conditions apply. So just stepping back, the opportunity to be a part of the WISE app, the opportunity to be a part of the WISE app, the opportunity to be a part of the WISE app, and the president of the United States and the head of FIFA allegedly conspiring to get America's top player back on the pitch, clearly, you know, absurdly, when after they'd said there was no appeals process. I think that, again, tells you a lot about what is happening in the world with the quote-unquote rules-based order. And the Europeans, I mean, the Europeans, I have a very low view of all the European governments because, you know, they bitch and whine in private. They mock Trump behind his back. But to his face, they suck up to him. They think that sucking up to him is the way forward. I don't know if you saw this astonishing piece that started texting Trump in language that he recognized. Using all caps. They do all caps in their tweet, in their texts. They use short staccato sentences. Mark Reuter, the NATO Secretary General, who's a big Trump sycophant, he talks so much like Trump that his friends think he's in character and hasn't broken character. You have the Norwegians are afraid to text Trump because they didn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize. So the Finnish president texts on behalf of Norway. Like, this is embarrassing for us as a nation that our president, is treated like this across the. I don't know how MAGA are so proud of Donald Trump, got this done. He is a joke on the international stage. In the first term, the United Nations General Assembly literally laughed out loud as he was speaking at the UN. Trump had to stop and kind of. He couldn't believe that they were laughing to his face. We've had multiple hot mic moments where Western leaders are mocking Trump, not realizing that they're on tape, they're on mic. And now you have this situation where he's abusing European teams at the World Cup by acting in this manner. And then he goes to, NATO, I know we're going to talk about NATO. And then he attacks European countries again and again says, I'm going to take Greenland. Yeah, so let's talk about NATO because wither the rules-based international order and all the sucking up you mentioned. So Trump is there now as we're recording this for the NATO summit. His first meeting is with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. There's a big dinner on Tuesday with the 30 some odd leaders. I'm sure that'll be a blast. Then Wednesday, I think it's the summit itself. Trump has meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and then Syrian leader Ahmad al-Shabaab. That'll go well. Yeah, another fun one. So there's a lot of stuff to discuss, a lot of the big ticket items here. Let's just start with sort of the broader US-NATO alliance because for years, Trump has attacked NATO as an institution. He has at times, he's refused to reaffirm the principle of collective defense, the Article 5 commitments where attack upon one is an attack upon all. He browbeats NATO allies to spend more, which was not unreasonable at first, but now we are demanding 5% of GDP on defense or defense related infrastructure, which is, that's a ridiculous amount of money. Trump has threatened to remove troops from Europe because he's mad that European countries didn't want to go to war with Iran. Again, because that went great. And then there's the whole Greenland thing, the whole invading Greenland thing. The whole stealing a European country's territory. But so to your point about the kind of the ass-kissing approach, here's NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte trying to put a good spin on some of these disputes. Look at President Trump in the G7. It was a big success that meeting I had a very good visit with him last two weeks ago in the White House. So I have every confidence in this summit. You've been credited as sort of being the Trump whisperer on behalf of this alliance. You're shaking your head. But the point is this, I just like the man. I think what he is doing for NATO is great news. When it comes to the Strait of Hormuz, when it comes to Iran, first of all, all NATO allies agree, it was crucial that Trump degraded the nuclear capability of Iran. I think this is massively good news for Israel, for the Middle East, for Europe, for the whole world. At the center of this is the NATO allies committing to an increase of defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. This was, of course, a major priority for President Trump. You've said that the goals of this summit are delivery and implementation of that commitment. This is President Trump basically achieving what since Eisenhower, American presidents tried to achieve, which is to equalize the defense spending between the U.S. and Europe. Trump is now achieving. The success story is that when you combine 2025 and 2026, Canadians and Europeans spending more than 250 billion dollars extra compared to 2024. This is amazing. So that was Ruta speaking with Dasha Burns from Politico. Mehdi, it's hard to tell like what's real here and what's, you know, Trump being kind of just an asshole. Do you think that the U.S. is actually on the cusp of a split from Europe and NATO or is this just like the constant posturing he does? Yeah, it's hard to say because I don't want to ascribe some kind of strategy to a man who doesn't have strategy, a man who changes his mind based on what side of bed he got out of, what he saw. What he saw on TV, what he saw on Twitter, the last person who spoke in his ear. Like too many smart people, Tommy, have spent years trying to come up with like, oh, but Trump means this. And you know, I get it. You and I, we move in foreign policy circles. We read long essays in foreign affairs. People, it's their jobs. They have to get paid. They write these things like the Trump doctrine, the Trump, there is nothing, right? This guy, treat him as he is, right? Treat him as the idiot, village idiot that he is, that he couldn't find Greenland on a map if his life depended on it. He lied today and said it's surrounded by Chinese. And Russian ships. It is not surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships. And this idea that, oh, NATO, he doesn't even understand the NATO budget, right? He thinks that people pay the United States. That's not how it works. Nobody pays anyone. It's your own proportion of your own defense spending as a proportion of GDP. And Ruta there, you know, first of all, salivating over the idea of $250 billion extra for defense at a time when people are going through an affordability crisis, when people can't afford to put food on the table, when there's still child poverty across Western Europe. For me on the left, I'm disgusted by that kind of attitude towards defense spending. He's not just saying it's a necessity. He's excited about it. And number two, the guy was prime minister of the Netherlands, right? He was the leader of his country. He was a powerful man. Look at him now. How does he look his wife and kids in the eye? Like complete sycophant, lives up Trump's backside. Like what? How do people like this? I just wonder about these people who suck up to Trump. Do they have no self-respect? What do they do? How do they go to bed at night? It's just, the mind boggles. And look, that's their strategy to try and suck up to Trump, not piss him off. I don't think it works. This will always come back to bite you in the ass. You either stand up to the bully together, or he picks you off one by one. I mean, that is something we learned in the playground as children. At one point, the Danish government, Tommy, you saw that reporting a few months ago. They had like troops ready to mine the runways. They had blood supplies. That's insane that a European government was preparing for a US invasion. And we're all supposed to pretend that everything's fine. And then this guy turns up today, by the way, he turns up in Turkey. He says, I only came because my friend Erdogan invited me. Then he berates Germany. France and Italy for not supporting the war in Iran. Hold on. Last time I checked, Turkey didn't support the war in Iran. Good point. Funny. Funny you didn't criticize Turkey while you were sitting in Turkey. And by the way, Erdogan took him straight to his white palace, this massive complex filled with Ottoman-like soldiers with Turkish soldiers on horseback, taking Trump's love in it. Can you imagine how much he's going to talk about the ballroom when he gets back from Turkey? Oh, yeah. We're going to have to build two of them. Yeah, there's sort of the Mark Ruta approach to the ass-kissing versus the Mark Carney approach. Who is arguing, we got to stop appeasing this guy. We got to bring together the sort of so-called middle powers to forge our own alliances and move forward. I personally would find myself more in the Carney camp, but I don't know how much progress he's made on that yet. On the spending thing, look, I'm with you. 5% is crazy. It's worth just saying two things about that number. First of all, it is plucked out of thin air. It's not based on any kind of defense analysis or need. Second, it's not going to happen, even if all the NATO allies agree to it, because the target is 2035, when Trump, we all hope, will be long gone, as will many of these leaders. And then third, within that 5%, like 3.5% of the money is supposed to go to military spending. 1.5% is defined as security-related investments, which could be like roads, bridges, cybersecurity, like anything you want it to be. So you could just recategorize shit. 100%. They're going to play with the numbers, of course. Fast and loose. They're back in the short term. They want to give Trump a win, right? They understand this guy doesn't do detail. He doesn't do substance. He doesn't understand anything. So you give him quick wins. You send them a text with caps letters. Do you see that story, one of the stories in the Wall Street Journal, that the EU foreign policy chief, once she saw Trump got mad that they were talking about sanctions on Russia, she started calling sanctions terrorists. That story's incredible. There's an anecdote in there about an all-European member, head of state meeting that turned into a therapy session. There's a story in there about Trump trying to do a video call with. Emmanuel Macron of France and Justin Trudeau of Canada, and he couldn't get the thing to unmute, so he threw the tablet across the table on the Oval Office. Manchild. I mean, I'm telling you, manchild. It's so embarrassing. We can laugh about this, but it really is. I know a lot of Americans don't travel abroad, but for those of us who do travel abroad, the image of this country is such a joke. I mean, people talk about patriotism. You and I and people on the left are lectured by MAGA about, do you love your country? Are you proud of your country on the 250th, on 4th of July? Yeah, I'm an American citizen. I love this country. I love this country. I'm proud of this country. That's why I can't stand what's going on. You think it makes me feel good as an American to go visit the UK or visit Europe or go to India and have people just laughing about your country, that you elected this fool for a second time, that he's doing this crazy stuff, that the American people are tolerating it? It's bad for our country when you become an international laughingstock. Yeah, and look, the elephant in the room on this defense spending is it's going to go to a bunch of US defense contractors probably, right? Which is why Trump, I'm sure, loves it and is getting donations. Well, he's trying to increase our own defense budget by incentive. Yeah, and I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's insane amount. Yeah, 1.5 trillion. It's insane. And also, you know, on your point about the double standard around patriotism, I mean, it was very glaring to me the way the Zoran Mamdani's sort of 4th of July speech was covered compared to things that Trump says all the time, like this was a dead country until I came back, right? Like garbage can for the world. No one runs down America more than Trump. One sort of last point about this Europe stuff. I mean, Trump is out there musing about whether he's going to remove US troops from Europe. The CNN had a report that Trump has considered. They said he mused about cutting the level of US forces in Europe by a third. Earlier this spring, the US halted some troop deployments to Europe, including 5000 to Germany after Friedrich Merz, the chancellor said that US was being humiliated by the war with Iran. There's been reports that the New York Times reported that the US is going to cut aircraft and warships that they made available to NATO, including F-16s and F-15 jets and reallocate other resources. This all becomes more significant in the context of the war in Ukraine and this Zelensky meeting. And, you know, Europe's future if the US backs away from NATO. I think the thing that confuses me, Mehdi, is NATO basically exists to deter a Russian invasion of the NATO allies. Trump clearly doesn't give a shit about Europe. So why does he care so much about demanding that they all spend more money? It doesn't really logically make sense. No, nothing he says logically makes sense. Think about it this way. Trump loves who the two leaders he loves. He loves Vladimir Putin. He loves Xi Jinping, right? He loves the leaders of China and Russia. He goes out of his way to say, we shouldn't have war. I want to be friendly with Russia. You know, he's talking, he always says, why did Russia get kicked out of the G7? Why did it become G8? He's obsessed with these guys. And yet today, his argument is I need to take Greenland because it's surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships. Well, that's fine, isn't it? Aren't they your pals? Like there's no logical consistency to this guy's arguments ever, especially in international affairs, where he's all over the place. I just mentioned he attacked France and Germany for not supporting the war in Iran while he praised Erdogan, who also didn't support the war in Iran, who also didn't open Turkish airspace to American jets. And now he's offering Turkey F-35s, even though his own first term administration, Mike Pompeo and co, put sanctions on Turkey because you're using Russian military hardware, which undermines American military force projection. So there's, you know, looking for consistency with Trump is insane. Yeah, it's a fool's errand. That would just drive you mad. 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So let's talk about this. Politico had a great breakdown of kind of why they got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. They got into it. Trump apparently says, you know, whatever he asks everyone for something, he delivers, so sure. Not true. Not true, as I just mentioned with Iran. You did mention Iran, yeah. They also both, you know, they fancy themselves indispensable strongmen. They both have a contempt for democracy, the rule of law, the press, so I'm sure that gives them something to talk about. As you said, though, this was not always the case. They were not always buddies. Back in 2017, Turkey agreed to buy this Russian air defense system called the S-400. 2019, at which time the Trump administration said, hey, guys, like, you can't have this S-400 system going and purchase and operate American F-35 jets because the Russians could use the S-400 infrastructure, the radars, et cetera, to gain a bunch of intelligence about its stealth capabilities, its vulnerabilities, and then use it against us in battle. So Trump cuts Turkey off from the F-35 program. That cost Turkey billions of dollars, pissed off Erdogan. In 2020, Congress passed a law that prevented the U.S. from providing Turkey with F-35s as long as they have the S-400 system. And then fast forward to today, Mehdi, another person who opposes the U.S. letting Turkey have the F-35 is Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Here he is, I know you're a big fan of his, here he is on Fox News recently. I think that everybody understands that notwithstanding the personal friendship that President Trump has with Erdogan, it doesn't make Turkey a friendly or a friendly state to the United States. To the contrary, it's a regime that's infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States. He harbors Hamas, the Hamas terrorists. He supports them. He finances them. He's thrown his opponents in jail, all of them. He throws more journalists in jail than anyone can understand. So he's not exactly a model ally of the United States. This is not a force for peace and stability. And if you give this kind of radical regime that admittedly smiles to America when it is necessary, or smiles to the President of the United States when it's necessary, when you've given that power, you're going to see aggression in its wake. I wouldn't do that. The chutzpah of Benjamin Netanyahu saying Erdogan throws journalists in jail. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is the number one killer of journalists on planet Earth today, according to every study done. I mean, I'm not defending Erdogan imprisoning journalists. In fact, I wrote a piece for The Guardian maybe 15 years ago, pointing out that Turkey was one of the top jailers of journalists in the world. But in the last two and a half years, we've seen what Benjamin Netanyahu has done to journalists in Gaza. There's a couple of things here with Erdogan, Tommy. One is, you're right that in the first term, there was this clash over the Russian military hardware. But I don't think that was Trump. I don't think he involved himself. I think that was Mike Pompeo. I think that was the hawkish ring of the party. That was Jim Mattis. That was Mike Pompeo. That was John Kelly. That was the traditional Republican hawks, the NATO hawks, the anti-Russian. I think, Trump gives a damn. In fact, he said today, yeah, I'm fine with giving the play. They asked him today in Turkey, what about the Russia angle? Yeah, doesn't care. Doesn't bother him. So I don't think Trump, that was not a Trump decision, I suspect. I think that was one of the many things that happened in the first term that he didn't really pay attention to or try and stop. He's always been pals with Erdogan. In fact, I checked before we're coming on the show, 2012, he travels to Istanbul with Ivanka to open the Trump Towers in Istanbul. And then Prime Minister Erdogan turns up as the guest of honor, the VIP, to cut the ribbon at the opening of Trump Towers. Ivanka puts a post on social media thanking then Prime Minister Erdogan for supporting Trump Towers in Istanbul. So they go way back. Trump loves these transactional relationships. He loves Erdogan for the money and he loves Erdogan for the power. He said today, he's a strong leader. He said it twice, Tommy. When Donald Trump repeats himself, pay attention. He's a strong leader, strong leader. He loves this idea of strongmen, right? Because he wants to be one. He envies them. He came back from North Korea in his first term and he said, everyone stands to attention when Kim Jong-un speaks. Why don't my people do that? He said on Fox with Peter Doocy at the time. So this is, he loves him for his power. He loves the money relationships. I've always said for years, if you want Trump to get off your back, if you're, if Ayatollah Khamenei had wanted to avoid the Iran war and stay alive, all he had to do was build a Trump Tower in Tehran. Or some Trump coins. That is the simplest. And you think I'm joking? People listening, I'm not joking. Ahmad Sharra, president of Syria, former Al-Qaeda leader, has been in talks reportedly to open a Trump Tower in Damascus. And Trump now sends him, cologne, as we know, their pals, their buddies, right? So we can laugh about, oh, this sounds crazy, but that is how Trump runs United States foreign policy. Let us be clear about that. Oh, no, the people he loves are all ones with transactional relationships. Like he loves, you know, the, whatever the field marshal of Pakistan, you know, some like guys been accused of extraditional killing and, you know, horrible, you know, war crimes. You put a strong man in front of Trump and Trump goes weak at the knees. Very quickly on Turkey and Israel though. Yes. I've been saying for a while, a lot of us have been saying Turkey, is next in terms of Israel's crosshairs, the Israeli leadership. And I'm not just talking about Netanyahu, Tommy, and Naftali Bennett, who's one of the opposition leaders, former prime minister, could be the next prime minister of Israel, has said, Turkey, watch out, right? They've all targeted Turkey, the leaders of Israel, the military leadership. There is a lot of chatter in Israeli national security circles that something has to be done about Turkey, quote unquote, the Muslim brotherhood, as you heard Netanyahu say. Remember, Israel's greater Israel vision is to be the top dog in the neighborhood, to control as much territory as it can with as little resistance. As there is, it has tried to do that in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, to varying degrees of success and failure. And having taken out Iran, or in their eyes, taken out Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran is still obviously still a powerful player in the Middle East, as we've seen. For them now, Turkey is the next regional hegemon that has to go. And that's why Netanyahu's pissed off today. That's why he's put out a statement saying this upsets the balance of power in the Middle East. Yeah, no shit. It upsets the balance of power. And, you know, a lot of people, the Turks are talking openly about the possibility of there being a war between Israel and Turkey. The Israelis are saying it. It's something we, and I hope your listeners and viewers are paying attention to, it could be the next big, God forbid, hotspot in the Middle East. Can you imagine an Israel-Turkey war? Turkey's a member of NATO. So what side would the United States be on that? It would be an absolute nightmare. You're right. And that's why he doesn't want the SNAF 35 to answer, because they want to maintain their qualitative military edge in the region. And, you know, the ability to act with impunity. We should just quickly, before we move on, I mean, it's just worth noting, like, what you mentioned that Trump repeatedly called Erdogan a strong leader. What does that mean in practice? Well, ahead of the summit, the NATO summit, Turkish authorities arrested opposition members, a couple of journalists, even a stand-up comedian, I think 200 people in total, according to the Guardian. For insulting the president, which is a crime in Turkey. Turkey blocked a gay-friendly cruise from docking, because apparently that would send the wrong message. And then, you know, not as recently, but, you know, Erdogan has jailed his main political rival, the mayor of Istanbul. They sent police to storm the party's headquarters, basically sort of dismantling with force his opposition. Basically a Stephen Miller wet dream. That's exactly right. All right. So you mentioned Iran a couple of times there. So let's turn to Iran. In Iran proper, the Islamic Republic is holding the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's historic funeral ceremonies. He is obviously was killed many months ago, but his body has been waiting for a safe moment when they could bury him and do all the pomp and circumstance. This is going to be a week-long event. There have been a bunch of dramatic images in the media of like tens of thousands of mourners in the streets of Tehran. There have been also reports about Iranian citizens furious about all the pomp and circumstance, given the way he cracked down on protesters. The ceremony started last Friday. His body was laid in state for public viewing. There was a long funeral procession that started Monday. It's going to set to continue into GOM, where his body will be flown. The ceremonies, I just saw this, I don't know if you saw this, Mehdi. The ceremonies also included Khamenei's relatives who were killed in that initial U.S. and Israeli airstrike, including a coffin for his 14-month-old granddaughter, which really just, I think, hammers home the impact this war had on innocent civilians and kids. Not seen at any of this is his son, the new Supreme Leader, Mushtaba Khamenei. He has not been present at any of these events, raising questions about, you know, his fitness, his ability to lead, his health. Families, of the 175 people and school girls killed in the U.S. strike in Minab on the same day that Khamenei was assassinated, attended the funeral at the Grand Masala in Tehran over the weekend. They traveled about 800 miles to be there. And then speaking of that horrible airstrike on that girl's school, Mehdi, CNN reported today, Tuesday, that U.S. military commanders ignored warnings that their intelligence on military targets in Iran was out of date, and they approved strikes on years-old intelligence that had not been updated or corrected before the war had started. That included this airstrike on the girl's school. Mehdi, I know full well that the U.S. military has a long and troubling record, to say the least, when it comes to civilian casualties. But what message do you think it sends the world that, in this case, the Trump administration will not even admit what is so obvious that this was a U.S. missile that hit this girl's school? Not just won't admit, but when Donald Trump was asked recently at the Evian G7, summit, I think it was in France, at a press conference, he was asked about this by a reporter, and he got annoyed. He goes, I don't know why you're asking me that question. It's old news. And whenever he's asked about it, he always diverts it to Pete Hegseth. He's like, I asked a Pentagon. He's happy to throw someone else under the bus, because even he knows killing 120 school kids is not something you want to try and justify. Yeah, I mean, the American military chief has been on Capitol Hill saying there's investigation. We've been hearing words about an investigation for a while. They're not going to take responsibility. They're going to hope that people just move on and forget. Obviously, the rest of the world is not. It was a crime, I believe. Especially, we don't know what the role of the AI was involved in this. There's a lot of reporting about whether AI was involved in the decision to do this. This was a girl's school next to a former military compound. It wasn't part of the compound. It was separate. People could see it from Google Images. It had at one point been part of it, but wasn't now. And as I pointed out recently on an Al Jazeera show I did, do you know how many schools there are on U.S. military bases across this country? Are we okay now to bomb? Would we be okay with a foreign adversary of the United States bombing a school and say, well, it was on a military base. It's kind of our fault. No, no one would say that. So let's not say it about the Iranians. And as for Khamenei's granddaughter, I mean, look, whatever you think about Ayatollah Khamenei, and people are right to be critical, and there's been people in Iran, a lot of people in Iran don't like him, but clearly from the funeral, a lot of people do like him. Whatever you think about Khamenei, just like whatever you think about Gaddafi, whatever you think about Saddam Hussein, whatever you think about whoever enemy du jour is, you cannot just go around killing people because you don't agree with them, don't like them, they're not listening to you. Again, I said Donald Trump's a mob boss at the start of this show. Just recently, he threatened the Iranian negotiators who were in Europe for this signing ceremony. He said you could get killed on the way home. I mean, who talks like that? Which world leader? American presidents have killed a lot of people, but who's spoken like that? I don't remember even George Bush who spoke like a cowboy and threatened people and talked about crusades, but telling negotiators in the middle of a diplomatic negotiation, do what we say or we'll murder you before you leave the negotiations. That language, that approach to politics, that's what we have to call out. Yeah, that was a shocking comment. But speaking of killing negotiators, I mean, there was this jaw-dropping report in the New York Times last week that I wanted to ask you about, which said that the Trump administration was so concerned that Israel was going to assassinate Iranian officials involved in peace talks with the US that the US asked other countries to warn Iran that this could happen. No, the two officials were Iran's foreign minister. Abbas Rachi and the Speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf. Both of them had been on the kind of Israeli target list since the beginning of the war. We know that there was basically a decapitation effort early on in the war, but the US had asked Israel to hold back once the negotiations were ongoing, but were so concerned that they would not, that they had to warn them. Mehdi, what do you think this says about the divergence in strategy and the lack of trust between the two sides of the US and Israel, that the US was warning Iran via an intermediary? This is a New York Times reporting, which Netanyahu got very upset about, of course. I mean, look, some of us have been saying this for a while. You don't have to be on the left. You don't have to be anti-war. You don't have to be pro-Palestine to say that Israel is not an ally of the United States. It has its own interests. And I get why people now, some people, some people on the MAGA right are making this point. Joe Kent quit the administration, the former director for counterterrorism for Donald Trump, and he's made this point. He's made the point that even if you supported this war, the regime change done quickly and replaced with a quote-unquote moderate leader, the Israelis killed all of those people in the first strikes. They were in the next door building, apparently. I mean, Trump admitted this, right? He went on camera and said, oh yeah, we had all these number twos and they got killed by accident. That's how either A, incompetent the US and Israel are, or B, the Israelis are, of course, screwing the US over. Because the Trump administration agenda is not the Netanyahu agenda. We know Trump wants a quick war, in and out, glory, rah, rah, rah, Maduro style, get the oil prices back down, get the Strait of Hormuz open. That's what he wants. The Israelis want the complete and utter destruction of Iran. They want a failed state that can never, ever pose any kind of threat to them or support any groups that fight them. So that is a big divergence in strategy there. And yeah, the Israeli assassination policy has been going on for years, Tommy. It went on under the Obama administration, and your administration, unfortunately, the government you were part of, didn't do anything about it when they were blowing up nuclear scientists in the middle of negotiations. That was a problem back then. This has been going on for a long time. When there were negotiations in Gaza with Hamas, the Israelis blew up Hamas. In 2012, I think it was, they blew up the top Hamas guy who had just signed on to a truce, and the Israelis murdered him before the truce could go into action. Because the Israelis have a long history of killing negotiators in the middle of negotiations. That is why some of us say they are a rogue state. It's not just that they do bad things, human rights abuses. Everyone does human rights abuses. It's the way they behave on the international stage. Openly, Netanyahu is openly saying, if an Iranian leader pops their head up, we will kill you. Again, that is a mob boss attitude. In the post-war period, we've not allowed leaders to say stuff like that. The UN doesn't allow you. The UN charter doesn't say, I can just threaten to kill whoever I like in a foreign country, because I don't like the look of their, the cut of their jib. There's actually, there's a great book about Israel's historic use of targeted assassination called Rise and Kill First by Ronan Bergman, a great Israeli journalist. It's worth reading if you want to expand upon this. Lastly, on Iran, Mehdi, there is this ceasefire. There was a clear deal done. I have almost zero hope that that will ever happen, but I'm hoping that the ceasefire holds together and the Strait of Hormuz remains open because we want oil and gas to flow through. We're speaking on a day where some tankers have come under attack, where the U.S. has rescinded waivers on Iranian oil sales. Everyone's pretty pissed off. This is the question, right? Like earlier this week, once again, there were attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. I assume it's because these tankers were not going via the Iranian designated route, which is the way that they're going to try to control passage to the Strait of Hormuz going through. It's reported that the U.S. is going to revoke the general license authorizing the sale of Iranian oil. They also threatened additional consequences. We don't know what that means, but in the past, it has meant sort of, quote unquote, targeted airstrikes. I mean, it just feels like this thing is being like, this ceasefire is being held together by duct tape. And the only thing preventing it from returning to war is Trump just wanting to keep gas prices low. But I mean, what's your level of anxiety about resuming conflict? I think post-November, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. I think my colleague, Swin Soup, saying it's a tear reported several months ago, or several weeks ago, excuse me, that U.S. intelligence believes that the Iranians know they can hold out till the midterms. They know that they have this oil weapon that can cause severe harm to the Republican Party and their prospects in these elections. And they know that's why Donald Trump's holding off. When I hear Mark Levin and all those other hawks who are mad at Trump for doing any kind of deal with Iran, when I hear them say, well, best case scenario, he's just replenishing our munitions, rebuilding our stockpiles so that post-November we can go back in and finish the job. And JD Vance kind of hinted at that recently in an interview he did. So it is a very cynical position. I wouldn't put it past this administration that that might be the ultimate end goal if they see all other things failing. But look, we have a fake ceasefire in Gaza. We have a fake ceasefire in Lebanon. We have a fake ceasefire in Iran. And in at least two of those three theaters, Israel is the one basically undermining those ceasefires. In Gaza, we've had 1,000 people killed in this ceasefire. We've had 200 kids. It's insane how many people have been killed in a so-called ceasefire. We shouldn't forget about that in Gaza. Oh, Gaza's over. No, it's not over. People have been killed every day. Kids have been killed every day in Gaza. So it's not only not over, it's just that people living there are just in a sort of constant state of hell. You know, like they can't get the infrastructure they need. They can't rebuild homes. The aid's not going in per the deal. I mean, the Board of Peace has just been immune. Have you seen that, Tommy? Yeah. That they've given themselves criminal immunity from any kind of lawsuits or criminal complaints for their actions in Gaza. But just on this specific deal, yeah, I don't think we're going to see a deal anytime soon. Because remember, Tommy, it was ceasefire, and then it was 60 days we'll do some nuclear negotiations. You know this better than me. It took Barack Obama, what, four, five years to get the JCPOA up and done? The idea that you can do any kind of deal similar to that in 60 days is insane, especially when you have Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, dumb and dumber, leading your negotiations. You know, Obama sent Ernest Moniz, an actual nuclear scientist, to negotiate with the Iranians. We send the property developers from Manhattan. Who just want to cut some deals. I'm scoping out, you know, some future ways to get rich. Beachfront property, Jared's always obsessed with. Yeah, someone to sell crypto to. Posse of the World is brought to you by three-day blinds. If keeping up with the news lately has you wishing you could just pull the shades and tune out for a second, we get it. Honestly, it's exactly why we installed three-day blinds at the crooked offices. We all need a little extra privacy these days. There's a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters, and drapery. It's called three-day blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of high-tech blinds. They're the leading manufacturer of high-tech blinds. They're of high quality custom window treatments in the US. And right now, if you use my URL, www.3dayblinds.com. They're running a buy one, get one 50% off deal. 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Let them do the same for you. Right now, get quality window treatments that fit your budget with Three Day Blinds. Head to www.3dayblinds.com. For their buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, and drapery. For a free, no charge, no obligation consultation, just head to www.3dayblinds.com. One more time, that's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the number three, D-A-Y, blinds.com. My name is Erin Haynes. I want to do a couple things on UK politics since you've covered these folks for a long time. You know a lot of the players here. And it's a big week for UK politics. It really is. So we've talked on the show a bunch about the kind of saga of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party and the rise of Andy Burnham, who, for folks who don't know, he's the newly elected Labour MP who is likely to be the next Labour Party leader and thus the next Prime Minister of the UK. Keir Starmer is going to step down soon. Also today, though, on Tuesday, far right reformed UK party leader Nigel Farage announced that he is going to resign from Parliament, which will trigger a by-election. And then he's going to go ahead and run again for that seat. We'll explain more in a second. But let me play this clip from Farage before I explain why the hell he would want to do that. Today, I will resign as a member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which should happen, I hope, in short order. No, I've decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by-election. It's a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go. And that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election. I will fight to win. I will fight to continue the political revolution that reform has started. And I would say this to you, the voters of Clacton, if I win, you win. Because if I lose, they win. And we will never, with the two old parties, get the type of fundamental change that we need to fix broken Britain. Thank you. Okay, so listeners might know that Farage is dealing with a bunch of corruption scandals. First, we learned back in 2024, he received a five million pound gift from a crypto billionaire who lives in Thailand. Strings attached. No strings attached. It was just a gift. Just a present. The Times of London revealed that he also got a bunch more gifts from a wealthy benefactor, including some fraudster from the US. He's also dealing with competition from a new far-right party called Restore Britain, led by a creep who I'm sure you know, named Rupert Lowe. They're trying to- Who was just on Joe Rogan, I believe. Oh, wonderful. Although, yeah, I think Elon Musk is a big fan of Rupert Lowe. He is. They're trying to take votes from reform by outflanking them on the right on immigration. So, Mehdi, I reached out to a friend in the UK to say, like, why is Farage resigning to run again? This person said, quote, to stop the investigation in Parliament, to try to do a Trumpian style, this is the establishment versus me for the people, BS, and because he is an attention-seeking tosser. I don't totally know what tosser means. I love that term. Tosser's a good word. You should start using it. It's a good word. I've lived in America too long. 12 years I've been, I don't think I've said tosser. That's a good reminder that that's a good word to have in your arsenal. Did that sound like a good summary? I mean, and I saw it like, the Tories, it sounds like no other party's going to run in this by-election because they're trying to. Yeah, that's the best part of the story. So, this guy, Farage declares a by-election because he's under pressure like never before. So, just for people in the US watching, for liberals in the US who think the media has been soft on Trump and that Trump has gotten away with softball questions and coverage for the last 10 years, times that by 100. That is what Nigel Farage has gotten away with for the last 15, 20 years in the UK. He has been treated as a guy you have a beer with in the pub. When he goes to the pub, he's like, I'm going to go to the pub. I'm going to go on TV. He's treated as a pundit, you know, your everyman, voice of the working class, even though he's a former city finance guy who went to private school, gets millions of pounds in gifts from billionaire friends. And he's had a really soft ride. And for the first time in his life, I think now, as he's seen as a serious contender for prime minister, a bunch of newspapers in the UK, specifically the Guardian and the Sunday Times, have done some great investigative reporting and found out, number one, this crypto billionaire living in Thailand, Christopher Harbin, gave him a to declare, by the way, the gift then became a reward, then became security money. And then it turns out, we find out that he also got security provided, housing provided, accommodation provided by a guy called George Cottrell, nicknamed Posh George. American listeners will love this. He's from aristocracy. He's like a character out of a TV show. His mother, I discovered today, used to date King Charles. His father went to school with Prince Andrew. Come on, George Cottrell. And listen to this. You want to hear the best bit? He's so close to Farage that he calls Farage daddy. So this guy has given stuff to Farage that, again, Farage did not declare. These are the equivalents of money. And he's a convicted fraudster. He was prosecuted in the United States of America for wire fraud, actually indicted on 21 charges of money laundering extortion. He did a plea deal with the Justice Department, went to prison for wire fraud. He's giving money. He's giving the equivalent of money to Farage. So Farage is under pressure. So what does he do? He does the most Trumpy thing you could ever do. Look over there. Give people a distraction. Flood the zone with shit. I'm going to do a by-election. The problem he has now is that all of the parties have called his bluff and said, we're not running against you. So he's running in this by-election that's going to cost a taxpayer. Well, they're saying they're going to pay for it. We'll see. He's running in this by-election against one candidate called Count Binface, which is literally a man who has a bin on his face and a cloak around his arms, and he goes and stands in every by-election. I love that. Go Google it. Look on YouTube. He did a great interview with Sky News after the Andy Burnham by-election. So this is British politics. You've got the son of a woman who dated King Charles. You've got Count Binface. You've got wannabe Trump, Nigel Farage. And in the midst of that, the UK is about to have its seventh prime minister in a decade, with Andy Burnham is about to take over from Keir Starmer, who is super unpopular. He's more unpopular than Liz Truss, the woman who couldn't outlast a lettuce. Starmer is more unpopular than her. So Labour are deciding to switch gears, middle of a parliament, bring in this guy, Andy Burnham, who also won a by-election. He's coming in as Manchester mayor. No one quite knows what he stands for, but he looks good in a black T-shirt. He's got nice eyelashes. He makes some good lefty-sounding noises. He said some good things about why Israel should have done a ceasefire in Gaza. He's talked about raising taxes on the rich. We shall see. Well, so I know Andy Burnham's been around for a while. He was in Parliament. He's been around for a while. I covered him when I was a journalist 15 years ago. What do you make of him? What should we know? Well, here's interesting. He ran for Labour leader in 2010, came last or second last. He ran for second to Jeremy Corbyn. That was a shock result. Corbyn wasn't supposed to win, the left-wing candidate. Now he's running for a third time. And I think of a guy in America who ran for president three times and finally got it, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Although the analogy with Biden is really Starmer, right? So Starmer comes in. He comes in with no real love for him. He comes in because we wanted to get rid of the other lot. Tories were in power for 15 years, get rid of them. Biden comes in really because of a pandemic and people want to get rid of Trump, not because there's some people power revolution for Biden. And Starmer faces the same problem, same incumbency issues, the same lack of charisma, the same inability to communicate in an era where communication matters, the same right-wing press onslaught. And now they are switching mid-gear to another candidate who's being coronated, Tommy. There's not going to be a leadership election, really. And I keep thinking, the American in me keeps thinking about the analogies here, where Kamala Harris taking over without a contest and people being really happy at the beginning, but the honeymoon could end very quickly for Andy Burnham. Right now he's very popular with the Labour Party. I think he's the most popular politician in the UK. But we know that can change fast. You and I have seen that with multiple leaders in multiple countries. That honeymoon can end very quickly. So I would like to see Andy Burnham put out a vision very quickly of what he stands for, what he's going to do, how he's going to be different to Starmer. Remember Kamala Harris's biggest problem? She never said how she would be different to Joe Biden. And I think Burnham's got to come in and say, I'm going to do these things differently. Because if he doesn't define himself, Rupert Murdoch will define him. Elon Musk will define him. Nigel Farage will define him. His own rebels will define him. I agree with you. Listen, I think Starmer hurt himself. By not kind of painting a vision for the future, by trying some big, bold things, by doing something to get the UK out of this rut that it's been in really since Brexit a decade ago. And look, I think- I'm also trying to love bomb the right, right? You know, my biggest objection to all center left parties, you know this, is you cannot appease the right. Stop trying to appease the right. Be yourselves, offer a positive program to your own base. All that happens, we saw it with the Democrats and now we've seen it with the Labour Party, which is you chase after right-wing voters and all that happens is that right-wing voters reject you because they go for the real stuff and your own base then rejects you because they think you've betrayed them and you're stuck in no man's land. And we've seen that in the United States with the Democratic Party and we're seeing it with the Labour Party in the UK. And then you gotta deliver something on the economy or else people are just gonna be a rip shit. Speaking of the rise of the far right in Europe, Mehdi, I was not thrilled to see today that a Paris appeals court upheld far right leader Marine Le Pen's embezzlement conviction, but shortened the length of her ban from holding office, which effectively lets her run for president next year. For those who don't remember, Le Pen ran in 2022. She had 41%. Of the vote, this five-year ban was put in place in 2025. It got shortened, shortened, shortened, and now she could run again. Now, in the past, the non-far right parties in France have come together to keep the far right national rally out of power, but that won't happen forever. Le Pen is certainly the front runner right now and we're kind of staring down the barrel of a 2027 election that could lead to a far right president of France, which is a very powerful position, and over in the UK, we're pretty close to another election where we could see a Nigel Farage as prime minister. So, a little nerve-wracking. It's not great for Europe or the United States. It's not great for the West. I think the Canadians dodged a bullet only because Trump intervened. Otherwise, they were on course for a hard right prime minister as well. Carney got lucky with Trump's intervention. But you look at the rest of Europe, it's not looking great at all. Labour did defeat the Tories in 2024, but now, you know, for the last year or so, Reform and Farage have led in the polls. There's not another election, due for a couple of years, which is some good news. But if there was an election tomorrow, they would be the single largest party in Parliament. They might not win a landslide. They might not win a majority, but they're the single largest party. Look at Germany, Tommy. I just did a show for Al Jazeera, my head-to-head show in London. I interviewed Maximilian Krah, who's a German AFD member. I don't want to. I've refused to have AFD on my show for years because they're kind of so close to the neo-Nazi movement in Germany. They're a far-right party in Germany. But they are now leading in the polls. They are the second biggest party in Parliament. They're about to win the state election. They're going to play elections this year. You can't ignore them, right? These parties are heading for power, in some cases have power. You have the AFD in Germany, backed by Elon Musk. Surprise, surprise. You have Restore, backed by Elon Musk in the UK, another far-right party. Reform, we talked about. Then in France, Marine Le Pen, her party is leading in the polls. She's run for president three times, Tommy. The last two times she came second, as you rightly said, it's because the rest of the French political establishment got together and said, we just vote for the centre-right guy or the centrist guy, anyone to stop Le Pen. It's all tactical. It's becoming increasingly harder to do in France because the left is saying, well, why? What was the point of doing that when we got nothing, right? So you'll have a lot of left-wing voters who will refuse to turn out, just like they did in 2024. And they'll say, well, what's the point of this? I don't like the choice I'm being offered. So there's a very good chance that she becomes president of France next year, which is an insane statement. You would have laughed at me if I'd said that 10 years ago, but that is where we are. And in Germany, there's a lot of pressure being applied to Friedrich Merz, who's the conservative chancellor of Germany, the centre-right leader, to drop their firewall with the AFD. All the German parties say, we will never get into a coalition with the AFD because of our Nazi history. But there's pressure coming from some parts of the political establishment in Germany to say, you know what? We should drop that firewall. It's time to just mainstream the AFD. So it's very worrying across Europe. Obviously, Georgia Maloney is already prime minister in Italy. She's moderated herself since coming to power, but she has a neo-fascist background. Her party does. It's not looking good. And that's why I'm saying the left has to offer a vision. I was reading a great book. I interviewed him recently. Omar Aziz, the Canadian author, Mark Carney speechwriter, has a new book out. It's called Shadow of the Republic. And it's all about fighting fascism. And he made the point to me that the left can't just come along and say, you know, fix the economy and here's some policies. The left has to offer a story, a story, a purpose, a community, a vision, because that is what the right is offering. As dystopian, as dark as it is, they're offering that story to their followers. And we can't just have bureaucrats and technocrats like Starmer fiddling around the edges. We actually have to give something for people to believe in and for people to vote for. Otherwise, we are effed across the West. Yeah, and the story has to be hopeful and optimistic. And patriotic and not just like, hey, remember that shit before Trump 10 years ago? What if we went back to that, that period of time when politics- What was the Hillary Clinton line? America is already great. That was her response to make America great again. Yeah, we can't just kind of run it back to the old establishment days. Mehdi, great talking with you. I'm sure we'll be covering all of this stuff on Zateo, on Zateo UK. Boy, you guys picked a pretty good time to launch. I know, we launched and then you had a prime ministerial resignation, the return of Andy Burnham and now Nigel Farage resignation. Good timing. That is very good. Very good timing. Thank you so much for joining the show. Everyone, subscribe to Zateo. Go check out Zateo UK and talk to you soon. Thanks so much. 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 Mitch. My name is Ashley Andrew. You can binge the whole series right now. 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