Trump’s Dirty Diesel Deal

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This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Okay, we've been talking about QB Mail for a minute now, Bow, and wow, the feedback we're getting. I mean, so many of y'all love this stuff. You're stopping us in the street going, I love QB. And if you're thinking, wait, what? It's QB? Uh, do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise. The one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. Once you know it, you start seeing it everywhere. People ask what makes it different from basic mayo. Well, the answer, egg yolks. QB is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Burgers, fries, sandwiches, chicken, noodles. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really love food and flavors. Never use it. Whatever you're eating, QB it. So if you haven't tried QB yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. Welcome back to Posse of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rose. Ben, did you treat yourself to the food? First press briefing by the new White House press secretary, Katie Zachariah, today? I had some crudités. I had some clips that I sampled. Well, I mean, honestly, that's about all. It was 14 minutes long, I think. Why was it 14 minutes? She took three questions. I saw the first just from Breitbart. Breitbart. The most substantive of which was from Peter Doocy over at Fox. He said, as the U.S. stopped intelligence sharing with Ukraine, to which she responded, I'll have to get back to you on that. Well, I'm sure Zelensky's wondering the same thing. Yeah. Well, we'll get it. We'll get into that in a little bit. Really nailing it on day one there. But then later I saw, there's a report from Judd Legum, who writes for Popular Information, a great news site, independent media site. So Zachariah says she's a lawyer. Trump has referred to her as a lawyer. But there's no evidence that she's passed the bar in any state. And technically, to be a lawyer, you have to have passed the bar. You have to be, like, approved by the Bar Association. A reporter asked her where she passed the bar. She said, when I moved to China, which makes no sense. Chinese bar, you know. I'm sure that a Democratic press secretary who was a Chinese Communist Party lawyer would not raise any eyebrows. By the way, named shortly after Xi Jinping's visit. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything. So the timeline is, she went to law school at Pepperdine Law here in California. Beautiful campus, by the way. Right wing. Quite right wing. Cranks them out. Gorgeous. But it is beautiful. Malibu. Yeah, very nice. Then she moved to China where she worked at Zhonglun, which is like a blue chip Chinese law firm. They do work for the Chinese law firm. They work for the Chinese Communist Party and ministries. And there's a, within the law firm, there is an official Chinese Communist Party unit. Apparently, that's the thing that all these firms have to have. Does that mean she's, like, a member of the CCP? Of course not. Probably. She could be. But it's, like, to your point. Just asking questions. Imagine, imagine if, like, the next Democratic press secretary had worked at a Chinese law firm in Beijing and lied about being a lawyer. I just think they like to, to rub the hypocrisy and mediocrity in her face. Yeah, right in her face. They could pick anybody to be in this job. Well, not anybody, but anybody from their megaverse. And it's this person who nobody had heard of a couple days ago. I mean, this is not exactly the iconic role of the press secretary that we've come to imagine. You know who she worked for here in California? Our guy, Rick Grinnell. Oh, I did see that. I did see that. She was on Team Grinnell. Yeah, she was a general counsel at his nonprofit, which, again, it's a misdemeanor to, like, practice law without passing the bar in the state of California. I mean, if Grinnell was a tall, blonde woman with long hair, he'd probably be the press secretary. Maybe this is the best they can do. I mean, Trump clearly has a type. Oh, yeah. Caroline Leavitt, Natalie Harp. I'm not suggesting anything there either, but clearly likes to be surrounded by people who have a certain look. He just wants to travel in his catering cart with Natalie. Yeah. And now Zachariah. As long as we're shooting this shit. What's the over-under? On how long she lasts. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like, why do they even have, or maybe she just won't brief. Like, remember that one press secretary in Trump, one who just never briefed? Was it Spicer? Spicer just disappeared from one at a time. No, there was a woman that was in there at some point. Oh, yeah. After Sarah Huckabee, who just never briefed. Was that the one who came over from the first lady's office and just never briefed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then turned on Trump, I think, right? Probably, I don't know. Yeah, 14-minute press briefing. They clearly just didn't prep her. It's like, it's just so unfair to throw someone out to the wolves like that, to read a speech and then walk away. It's just devastating to read Cherlin. Yeah. All of us who had to brief Robert Gibbs every day and Josh Earnest. Speaking of the Trump White House, have you decided where you're going to be? Some Jay Carney erasure there. Jay Carney erasure, you're right. I'm sorry about that. Where are you going to watch the live-streamed execution of the Fort Hood shooter? Oh, God. Hard to think of a dumber, more barbaric thing you could do to help Al Qaeda. It is, you know, every now and then, something cuts your attention because it is so insane that we're going to live-stream a firing squad shooting a man in a wheelchair. Did you know he's in a wheelchair? 56-year-old man in a wheelchair. That does not evince a confident, law-abiding, values-based superpower. Oh, you don't think that's high tea? No, that is not. Well, maybe. Maybe it is high tea. That's what you do when you have a little too much tea. Too much tea. I have to think that's not going to happen. I think it's actually, I don't think it's going to happen either. I think this was like, Hegseth just being like, I don't know, I think the term like toxic masculinity is thrown around a bit too much. It's like he's just an idiot and an asshole and like the most kind of brutish thug. That is in the administration. What's scary about it in our like kind of fascist adjacent politics is they feel like they can't shock you anymore with certain things. So now we have to move to this. Like what is it going to take to shock us, you know, two years from now? Public execution live-streamed. Yeah. Why? Okay, we got a great show for you guys today. We are going to talk about Trump's diesel deal with Putin and how he is absolutely screwing over the Ukrainians right before what could be a very tough winter for them. Then we're going to talk about the reason Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and really their attacks on like MBS's vision for Saudi Arabia's future. We're going to talk about this massive protest movement by the youth-led cockroach movement in India. We'll talk just for a minute about private mercenary armies and corruption. Then we're going to bid farewell to an icon of the Pod Save the World cinematic universe, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Oh, I know, I know. We're going to miss her. I'm sure she'll have another act, right? What do you think, Lichtenstein or something? She seems to always have another life. I mean, this is a woman that was married to Gavin Newsom. It's wild. Yeah. It's really, when you think about it, yeah, she's lived a lot of lives. Yeah. I was Googling her today and there was an old picture of her and Gavin in Sharon Stone in like 2004 or 7. It was like just another era of politics. My favorite was a quote from her in one of these stories when she was married to Gavin saying that they were going to be the Jack and Jackie Kennedy of their era. I guess that didn't happen. Odd. Okay. Then you're going to hear my answer in an interview with Leslie Ann Warner. She is a foreign affairs analyst and a visiting scholar with the Africa program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We dig deeper into the conflict in Ethiopia and how it could spill out into the horn of Africa in many devastating ways. So stick around for that. Ben, should we start with Ukraine? Let's do it. This feels like a big deal. So over the past few days, there's been this flurry of extremely unhelpful activity from President Trump when it comes to Ukraine. So on Friday night, Trump stunned President Zelensky and like all the leaders, in Europe by announcing a deal with Putin that would allow Russia to, quote, apply over 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplace, another 500,000 tons during the month of November, and a million tons immediately after. And then he says something about another 3 million tons of diesel in what he describes as a short period of time. This all came via Truth Social post, as all great diplomacy does, but it's quite hard to follow. Energy expert sold the New York Times that the deal could deliver about $4 billion worth of American money to Russia, which would almost certainly be used to fund the war effort. Trump also claimed that he'd brokered a so-called energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, where the two sides would stop targeting energy infrastructure. But that news was news to Russia and Ukraine. And Zelensky said that on Monday alone, Russia broke the ceasefire by hitting six Ukrainian energy facilities. And in a bigger picture, these strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have been one of Ukraine's most effective tactics in the war effort. So it's really screwing over the Ukrainians. Trump was asked about all of this on Tuesday. Here's some of what he said. Has somebody told you that Russia is not just going to take this diesel money and use it to buy bombs? Nobody's told me anything. That's a diesel deal, not for us. That's being released into the world. That's not being released to us. Russia hit six energy sites on yesterday, according to the Ukrainians. What evidence do you have? Well, Ukraine hit many sites the day before. But Russia has not broken the peace. Five. I'll let you know about that later. But they're hitting each other. But it'll all come to an end. They both they both wanted to come to an end. They just don't know how to get there. What gives you such confidence that who wants the war to end more than Zelensky? Only in dealing. That's what I've done my whole life is deals. OK, so Zelensky learned about this deal in the press. I think his whole team was like meeting with Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcock down in Miami. And they sprung this on them and then threatened to. Cut off intelligence sharing by the United States. If Ukraine didn't abide by this energy ceasefire, Zelensky didn't react well. So on Saturday, Trump said Ukraine should, quote, get a new leader who can make a deal. So, Ben, everything about this is terrible. It's like Trump only cares about this war and ending the war in the context of like diesel prices in the midterms. But diesel prices are up because the war in Iran, not because of Ukraine. And then at current rates, like the U.S. would burn that first tranche of like whatever, 300,000 tons of diesel in, I think, about 14 hours. Yeah. So it's not even. You're going to have an impact. But giving Russia all this money would have an impact. I mean, Zelensky told ABC News that the deal will allow Putin to, quote, kill us, kill our children. He also said, OK, if they want energy ceasefire, we're open for this. Don't attack us. Don't kill our children. We will stop attacking your diesel. And I think it's a fair, fair deal. So he's just saying like, hey, if they do it, we'll abide by it. Ben, I'll pause there. Like, what did you make of this announcement? Why he did it now? Why it's always backed by all this rage at Zelensky only? Yeah, this is one. One of the kind of crazier things that Trump has done of late, and that's a competitive list. First of all, as you point out, this is a blip. This is not going to lower diesel prices in the United States. The reason diesel prices are up is because of the many months, you know, log jam of getting stuff through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a much more significant share of the world's diesel than comes out of this deal with Russia. So what's weird to me about it, Tommy, is that this is not going to, you know, it's not going to be a big deal. It's going to be a big deal. It's not going to affect the price of things. Like if you're in Iowa and you're a farmer and you're, you know, paying more for everything because of diesel, because of trucks, because of fertilizer, like it's not like suddenly it's going to go down. Yeah, the harvest is now. So Trump is like hoping that what, like people will be like, oh, Trump just made a diesel deal with Putin. I'll ignore the high prices and vote for the Republican candidate. Like it's not going to work. So it's just this kind of fictitious effort to look like he's doing something and avoiding taking responsibility for he's the one that raised diesel prices by launching the war with Iran. So doesn't solve the problem that he created and doesn't frankly solve his political problem, I don't think. Then when you look at this energy ceasefire, if you like, I was, I spent a lot of time like trying to unpack it. And it seems like the way the Russians are interpreting the energy ceasefire is it only applies to refineries because the Ukrainians have been hitting refineries in Russia and that's what's causing huge problems to the Russians. Like lines for gas, like, you know, all kinds of shortages. Ukraine doesn't have any fucking refineries because Russia blew up the only refinery in Ukraine, right? So the energy ceasefire is not an energy ceasefire. It's a gift to Putin. It's saying Ukraine can no longer hit your refineries. You can continue to take out all kinds of energy infrastructure inside of Ukraine. So Putin gets lots of billions of dollars worth of money. Putin gets the kind of validation of this deal. Putin's diplomatic, that's been invited to the G20. Putin himself may come to the G20 in Miami later this year. Putin's just getting, getting, getting, getting, and Ukraine's just getting screwed. And then when Ukraine points out that they're getting screwed, Trump demands that they like get rid of Zonsky. I'm not sure how they're supposed to do that anyway. Like we're just going to have a coup inside of Ukraine. So this is making ending the war in Ukraine harder because Putin will now feel like, oh, I got to double down here. I got this great opening. It makes it harder for the Ukrainians because they feel like, if they hit Russian energy infrastructure, maybe this Intel sharing that they depend on for both targeting, but also for, to be clear, some of the intelligence is defensive. It's like, watch out for this incoming Russian ballistic missile. So it's, it's counterproductive in any way you look at it, essentially. Well, let's talk about this Intel piece real quick. We reached out to Lexi Sorokin, who's the deputy chief editor at the Kyiv Independent. And he's, he talked to us a bit about the intelligence cutoff and what it could mean. Let's listen. Yes, sir. Thanks for having me on the show. My name is Lexi Sorokin. I'm the deputy chief editor at the Kyiv Independent. Let's listen. So, let's start with the intelligence cutoff. boon to far-right politics. The second thing is it's hard to overstate because you kind of have a sane washing that happens when you read like legacy media portrayals of Trump's foreign policy. The scale of the catastrophe of Trump's foreign policy. He decides to attack Iran and topple its government. He fails to do that. That drives up energy prices. That helps Putin. That screws over people in the United States and in Europe and around the world. And then he has to try to make up for what he did, reward Putin, who's an ally of Iran. And Russia is providing intelligence to Iran to kill American service members, to bomb American bases. This is like Russian intelligence, Russian material flowing in. So the country that is helping Iran defeat the United States in a war is being rewarded with billions of dollars in sanctions relief. It's absolute fucking madness. And then the last step back point is Putin coming to Miami. We just had Bibi Netanyahu indicted ICC war criminal in New York. We're going to have Vladimir Putin indicted ICC, warrant for his arrest, and for Netanyahu coming to Miami. And we're sanctioning the criminal court to defend these fucking war criminals. I mean, this is, that's why this one thing is actually bigger than even the insanity of Trump doing this. It exemplifies just the complete strategic failure and moral failure of his foreign policy. And the Ukraine war is getting worse, for the Russians in particular. I mean, did you see the latest NATO casualties numbers? They estimate that in September, Russia had 50,000 casualties, 5-0, 28,000 killed in action, the rest incapacitated. That's up from the usual, like, 30,000 rate. But even that, like, Putin is seen as being able to replenish that. Like, he's not going to have to institute a draft. He's not going to topple his government necessarily by doing this. The other thing that's just disgusting and that kind of links it to these other conflicts, Ben, is, I think it was the New York Times had this report about Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff cooking up a deal with the Russians where, basically, Jared and Steve go and get their benefactors in the Gulf and have them buy Lukoil, which is this massive, sanctioned Russian oil and gas firm, which would allow them to evade U.S. sanctions, basically, because it wouldn't get purchased by a U.S. company, send a bunch of money directly back to the Russians and get Putin paid and then, like, take care of Kushner and Witkoff's guy. It's, like, it's stunning. Corruption. It is, and you can tell by Jared and Witkoff's approach to this and Trump's that the real prize for Trump, sure, he has an affinity for Putin. Sure, the world that he wants is a world where he and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping kind of sit on top and reign everything. Yeah, it's Yalta 2.0. But it's, yeah, exactly, with these fucking guys. But it's also money, right? There's money to be made in Russia. They've had, like, their nose on oil deals. Energy deals, real estate deals. They want into that Russian market. It's bigger to them than Ukraine. There's not money to be made in Ukraine like there is on a scale to be made in Russia. Right. That's what they're ultimately in pursuit of. And they've been trying to end the war in order to make those deals. And Putin knows that. That's why he sent all these, you know, people responsible for business deals to Alaska for that summit with Trump. That's why he sent the sovereign wealth fund guy to negotiate with Jared and Witkoff. But, like, now, failing to do that, they're just starting to make the deals now with the war going on. Like, they're like, fine, we, you know, the war might keep going, which suits Putin, right? Like, okay, fine, Jared and Witkoff, you get a few billion here, a few billion there. Like, we'll deal with your Gulf, you know, patrons to, like, do this kind of weird three-dimensional chess so that everybody can make a little money. And the Russian war machine gets replenished. So, by their rush to make the deals, they're just going to keep this war going. He's not trying to end the war. He's perpetuating the war. And since we live in a world devoid of accountability, we should just point out, again, this is a man who said he would end the war on day one. And here we are two years into the Trump administration. Yeah, I just, I can't overstate how corrupt this is. I mean, like, Lukoil has all these oil and gas assets that, like, can't be used because of the sanctions. The Carlyle Group, which is a big American firm, had, like, a bid out to buy it. But now it seems like Trump is more interested in this end run where Todd Boley, who owns the L.A. Dodgers and has, like, no oil and gas experience that I know of, buys it in conjunction with these, like, Gulf autocrats who purchased, you know, the Trump World Liberty Financial, like, the crypto company. Like, it's just insane levels of corruption. And it's just going to get worse because as these guys start to, you know, reach the end of the clock of the Trump administration, the money grab is just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. And it, like, it connects to what we were talking about with, like, Man City and every, like, everything in the world is going to end up being owned by, like, a bunch of people. Yeah. By, like, a few hundred people. You know, it's crazy. Like, oil companies, sports teams, like, media conglomerates, like, that's the world that they're making, you know, and that's the world that's going to be, like, broken apart on the back end of this. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Quince. 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I've mentioned before, I have tons of stuff from Quince. I have basic essentials like t-shirts. I have some really great shoes. I've gotten some really nice sweaters. But also, the other day, I was getting my daughter dressed. She's three. I was putting on some leggings and I looked at the label and I said, "Quince." And I was like, "Hannah, I didn't know you were shopping at Quince for the kids." She said, "Yeah, I buy their stuff all the time." I was like, "Do you know they're a sponsor and that we have a code, and you can get a discount?" She was like, "Oh, good to know." So, don't be like my wife. If you go to Quince, please use the Pod Save the World code. Make your bed your favorite place to be this season with Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Pod Save the World. 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And also, they taste good, so the kids will take them. And also, you don't have to worry about them being filled with crap. They're actually good for you. And Hiya also launched a teen daily multivitamin for ages 13 and up. It includes 15 bioavailable vitamins, which are good for your body, your methylated vitamins and minerals like B12 plus myo-inositol and vitamins D3 and K2 to support bone growth, zero sugar, monk fruit sweetened, and packed in their signature refillable glass bottle. We've worked out a special deal with Haya. Receive 50% off your first order on any of their products. To claim this deal, you must go to hayahealth.com slash world. This deal is not available on the regular website. Go to h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-t-h dot com slash world. That's w-o-r-l-d to get your kids the full body support they deserve. All right, Ben, let's turn to the other disastrous war on Trump's watch. So the Iran war. Last week, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen repeatedly struck airports in Saudi Arabia, including King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing at least 20 people. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen repeatedly struck airports including King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing at least 20 people. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen repeatedly struck airports in Riyadh, killing at least 20 people. The Iran-backed Houthis are hosting or about to host these huge international conferences. One is called the World Petroleum Council Energy Congress, and then in a couple of weeks is the Future Investment Initiative or Davos in the Desert. Davos in the Desert, yeah. Houthi rebels made the surprise advance in Yemen. They took a bunch of territory along the Red Sea. That could allow them to control shipping in and out of the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The Yemeni government has since launched this counteroffensive. They have a bunch of Saudi support. The Saudis have support from U.S. advisors and intel guys. But so far, despite repeated asks from the Saudi crown prince, Trump has refused to bomb the Houthis directly. Trump was asked about this over the weekend. He said, quote, So, look at doing more to support the Saudis. He also later said on Tuesday that he might ask Turkey to get involved and that the Houthis are, quote, behaving very badly. So, Ben, listeners might be wondering, why bomb airports? And my My answer would be that doing so lets them attack like the heart of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's vision for the future of Saudi Arabia, right? Because he wants to diversify away from oil and gas. He wants to bring in more tourists, more international businesses, the artificial intelligence industry, et cetera. And when you bomb the airport and make it unsafe for these travelers, that's just not going to happen. And to make matters worse, like the Houthis figured out how to get missiles and drones or cruise missiles, whatever it was, past these most – the most advanced U.S. missile defense systems on offer, right? So the Saudis spent billions of dollars on these U.S. weapons that still can't seem to defend them. So again, it's like – I don't have a lot of empathy for Mohammed bin Salman, but again, I ask, can you imagine how pissed he must be right now? Did you see that Claude might have played a role in the – Tell me more. That they might have used Claude to figure out how to – To redirect missiles. Unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. So here we are. Thank God we're building these tools that nobody is asking for. Here's the thing. Is it good that the Houthis are doing this? Absolutely not, right? But if you look at what the Houthis and what the Iranians are doing, they are essentially trying to pay back what has been done to them. It's reciprocal. So if you look at the Iranians, they have been sanctioned. And now bombed, particularly their energy infrastructure, for years. Like they can't sell oil or they can't get their oil revenue. So they're like, you know what? Fuck you guys. We're going to start bombing the Qatari gas field, the Saudi – we're just going to start spreading this pain around too. The Houthis have been bombed for many years. The airport in Sana'a has been bombed by the Saudi-led coalition. Including in July, which kind of kicked this conflict back up. Yeah. And so – And so once they got the opportunity and the capability to do this, particularly in the context of this war going on, this is like – this is the tale of the war, right? Like if you bomb the Houthis for over, like, I don't know, a decade now, like this is going to come home in the same way that bombing the Iranians repeatedly is kind of coming home to everybody. And there's this kind of feeling that there's no consequence to violence. There's no consequence to war. Like – Yeah. And so Mohammed bin Salman seems to have matured somewhat as a leader. We've pointed that out. And yet the things that he did early in his tenure, including this kind of insane war that he launched against the Yemenis, this is the blowback to that. And this is why you don't do that. Like this is why the wars have long-term consequences. And absolutely you're right. Like they're trying to shatter – and they have temporarily at least – shattered this idea that Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are going to be this haven for tourism and sports and international trade. And not just kind of like the world's, you know, gas station. And this is a big fucking problem for MBS because they can't make this go away. Ultimately, like unless they want to invade Yemen and occupy it, they're going to have to make some kind of deal with the Houthis. So, yeah, I'm sure like in the short term it might help them if Trump starts bombing the Houthis. But like they're going to be there, as we've said. And this is why ultimately you need diplomacy. Yeah, and you'd also, you know, used to see the Houthis. Kind of, you know, people talk shit about them. They call them guys and flip-flops. So, it's like, well, it turns out the guys and flip-flops can do a lot of damage with Claude and some Iranian missiles, you know. People used to say that about the Taliban. Yeah. Now they're sitting in Kabul. Yeah. And also like the Houthis seem to have a more coherent ideological project. Yeah. They're – for what it's – I mean, again, I'm not like supporting that. But their commanders seem better trained or at least more experienced in fighting while the government forces in Yemen that are backed by the Saudis are more fractured. Because of, you know, things we've talked about previously like this split between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. And also because these Yemeni commanders lied and said they had like 200 guys, you know, a 200-force strong, you know, battalion or whatever. And it was like 20 dudes and the rest were just like collecting – Salaries. Salaries, like ghost soldiers. So, it's really bad. And also like, again, like all these conflicts are metastasizing. I don't know if you saw this, but like the Pakistanis are getting pressure to come in. They signed this joint defense. It's compact with Saudi and Turkey. And, you know, like Pakistan's got a big military. They've got like 660,000 soldiers. They've got all these planes. But the war with Iran is very unpopular in Pakistan because they have a large Shia minority who is not going to want to see the government go to war. But also the Saudis just gave them, you know, like a $3 billion emergency loan to help them stay afloat. So, they're getting cross-pressured. And so, it's just like there's all these ways this thing is like spreading and getting worse the longer it drags on. I'm just going to say, like we haven't done World War Watch in a couple of weeks. Like if you look at the inkblot of where the wars are, right, like in Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, like imagine that inkblot spreading to, you know, Pakistan, Turkey. I mean, this is not – this is why you don't start wars without plans. This is why like diplomacy and the UN system matters. Like because right now, there's kind of – There's no clear landing for this plane anywhere. No, there is not. And like the key – so, going back to like Iran proper, like the key economic choke point for the Iranians in this war has been shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Remember, like in normal times, 20 to 25 percent of the world's seaborne oil and gas goes to the Strait of Hormuz along with about 20 percent of the world's liquefied natural gas. Since the war started, the Iranians have like managed to choke off shipping through the Strait kind of in a – Now, a couple weeks ago, we talked about how crude oil shipments were back up close to pre-war levels because of this new process, these ship-to-ship transfers that were protected by the U.S. Navy. However, since Sunday, six ships have been attacked in the Strait. The Financial Times ran the numbers and the number of ships hit in the last two weeks is 24, which is the highest number of the war, nearly double the first two weeks in March when 13 ships were hit. Obviously, Iran is trying to slow. Iran is trying to slow or stop these ship-to-ship transfers, which have been this like key, you know, new tactic by these Gulf countries to get oil out. Also, though, more broadly, Ben, like Iran just does not seem like it's preparing to cut a deal. The Wall Street Journal reported, quote, Satellite images show Iran is strengthening sensitive locations, including nuclear sites in border areas, to make them more resilient to attacks. The government is also preparing Iranians for renewed war, sending paramilitary forces to read war stories to kindergartners, advertising training in firing shoulder-mounted, anti-aircraft missiles, and holding rallies. So just like add that to the list of the reasons I think Trump is likely to escalate things after the midterms. Yeah. I mean, remember how much talk of a deal there was in the MOU and the 9 million Barak Ravid tweets with sirens about like the deal is going to be announced tomorrow. I mean, these people don't want to make a deal. And it kind of connects to the Russian thing that you were saying about the far right in Europe. First of all, whenever the U.S. does manage to put some Band-Aid on this. And get some ships through. Guess what? The Iranians figure out some other way to fuck. Because they're there. Because they have a lot of options. They live there. They live there, right? What they're seeing is, just like the Russians are saying, wait a second. You know, the European support for Ukraine is beginning to really hurt incumbent governments. The far right is running against that. Maybe if we like squeeze the pain on energy and on refugees, like that will help the far right. But if you're the Iranians and the Houthis, you're like, wait a second. Like we're putting the. The petrodollar at risk. We're putting the stability potentially of the Gulf monarchies at risk. Like why wouldn't they want this thing to go on? Like they've suffered a lot over a lot of years. Now they're seeing like the pain level go up for their enemies. That's us, the United States. That's the Gulf. That's Europe. And this is the Pandora's box that has been opened. And just thinking that we're going to bomb them until they say, all right, we've had enough. These are people that fought like a near decade long war again with Iraq in which. They sent waves of, you know, teenagers essentially to, to charge into gunfire and lost hundreds of thousands of people. This is not a regime that's going to like capitulate because Donald Trump did a true social post and Pete Hegseth took some testosterone this morning. Yeah, and Brent crude is up at like 105, 106 when we were coming in here to record. So, uh, the markets are no longer shrugging off the war and the cost of energy. Um, all right, but let's turn to India where once again, uh, massive protests have upended life in New Delhi. So just a quick reminder of what. The cockroach movement is, um, in may of this year, India's chief justice called unemployed young people in India, cockroaches, uh, after that young, mostly like Gen Z protesters, they adopted the name. They started calling themselves the cockroach junta party or CJP, uh, the CJP and then thousands of young people. They took to the streets at the time to protest this terrible medical school entrance exam process. Ultimately those protests were so successful that they pressured India's education minister to resign. So now the CJP, they're calling for the resignation of the chief election. Commissioner, uh, here's why last year, the election commission launched this quote, special intensive revision, uh, of the voting roles that has now struck more than 130 million names from those voter roles. Many people believe this process is just simply designed to benefit the BJP, the prime minister, Modi's ruling party. So the CJP, the cockroach junta party, uh, they started holding protests, but then on Saturday, the police cracked down hard on the protesters trains to Delhi were canceled. Protesters were put on hold. under house arrest. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was arrested while protesting. and a bunch of cjp leaders were detained en route to delhi friend of the pod indian journalist rana ayub has been reporting from the ground this is a voice note we got from her about what she's seen i was beaten by a wooden baton and and accidentally according to the delhi police um ironically just a few within a few minutes they recognized who i was so it's not like they didn't know who they were hitting i was detained for i was detained for an hour by the delhi police because i questioned um them giving a free pass to the right-wing goons according to a report um that has just been released by the company to protect journalists about 35 journalists were detained attacked in various incidents the supreme court of india has given directives to the delhi police that movement uh of the public should be allowed that peaceful protests should be allowed but none of them have been followed by the delhi police the modi government or the delhi police i have not something uh seen something like this i've been a journalist in india for the last 20 years and i've seen the worst instincts of narendra modi over the last 12 years and even then what i witnessed in the last three days has been unprecedented even even if if one were to go by mr modi's own uh standards so after this week of crackdowns uh thousands of protesters hit the streets again monday but then cjp leaders were arrested again on tuesday so by the way i'm not sure if you're aware of this but i'm not sure if like this this story is ongoing finished we'll pause there i mean political analysts think this second round of protests is different because um a resignation from a senior minister this time it's less likely because like for constitutional reasons and also be a tacit admission that this voter purge was wrong as opposed to like a examination process which is like fucked up and modi could easily just have a scapegoat there um but like my question here is whenever you hear politicians especially in the u.s talk about india we refer to it as the world's largest democracy if the ruling party is striking 130 million people from the voter rolls yes and then arresting opposition leaders arresting protesters preventing peaceful protests is it a democracy anymore like are we that tipping point for india well they're kind of like us right like democracy is a spectrum and they're like tilting pretty heavily in the direction of an authoritarian spectrum they have been moving in that direction pretty steadily but they're not moving in that direction pretty steadily for the last you know decade at least um you know the look rana first of all uh this is a woman that has covered you know the gujarat riots in which muslims were massacred she's covered kashmir like she's covered all manner of like political crackdowns she herself has faced persecution for her to say that she's never seen anything like this tells you something now i think number one you're right the difference with the protests about education that is a pain in the ass to that is an embarrassment to the government but protesting the purging of the voter rolls is getting at the regime's kind of survival mechanism right which is they're beginning to think they may not be able to keep winning elections so they have to start controlling who can who cannot vote and protesting that is kind of protesting the political function of the hindu nationalist movement and the party led the bjp party led by narendra modi when you look at what they did too like it's not just that they cracked down on the protest they were trying to prevent them from happening at all so some of these people were going to come to delhi on like trains they like shut down the trains then they got on planes they arrested the people when the planes landed like the leadership of these they couldn't even get to the protest right so this is why it's not just a heavy-handed response to protests this is saying freedom this gets your point about is it a democracy freedom of assembly which is about as basic as a democratic right as there is one that we can still do here in the united states um that they're saying that well that doesn't exist here so it's a combination of saying we can purge all these people from the voter rolls and then nobody can protest that that's when you're starting to feel like this isn't just like hey we're on the authoritarian spectrum like we're tilting over into a place where sure there may be some semblance of democracy some local elections like you can protest certain things but you cannot question the dominance of like the ruling party here whether or not the ruling party could win a free and fair election and and that that is scary for the quote-unquote world's largest democracy it's scary for us because we have like a leader who probably would like to do that here too you know um so yeah this is a huge um this is a huge story uh and because like if india tips all the way in that direction well then it's you know trump she putin and then modi wants to get at that table too you know not great well shout out to rana for being out on the streets with these protesters and putting herself at risk to cover it before we take a break um I just want to pitch you guys on a new crooked mini series called long play it's back on the air uh you'll want to check it out it's our friend and former White House colleague Jennifer Palmieri an award-winning journalist Aaron Haynes they spent months traveling across the American South they talked to voters politicians strategists and organizers to discover what it's going to take to finally turn the South blue it was a fascinating podcast you're going to learn a lot about a region that is frequently written off by Democrats tune in to long play wherever you get your podcasts pod save the world is brought to you by select quote life insurance we all know we need it but we keep putting it off because we think it's complicated or expensive and that will live forever stop telling yourself you'll handle it later and take care of it today with select quote in 15 minutes you could have coverage that fits your life and your budget here's what makes select quote different their licensed insurance agents work for you not for one insurance company they compare options across multiple carriers to find you the right person to work for you it's all about the right coverage at the lowest price they've been doing this for nearly 40 years and have helped over 2 million people find coverage even if you have health insurance they can help high blood pressure diabetes heart disease their agents know which carriers will give you the best rate for your specific situation if you're healthy they can get you same day coverage with no medical exam other brokers push policies that pay them the most select quote their agents actually shop for you select quote they shop you save get the right life insurance for you for less at selectquote.com world that's select quote.com world go today to get started pod save the world is brought to you by simply safe when you think of home security you might imagine cameras or a doorbell that captures video but those can only record a break-in they can't prevent one from happening that's the difference with simply safe unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after a break-in is already underway simply safe is built to stop it before it starts smart AI powered cameras watch for potential threats and alert a live U.S based security specialist ready to intervene the agent intervenes in under 30 seconds speaking through the camera to stop an intruder in their tracks and calling for urgent 911 dispatch when it's needed most our CEO Lucinda just got a simply safe system installed she said the app is easy to use it allows her to arm and disarm the system directly from her phone from anywhere she also said that she's ever like wondering oh did I 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for massacring civilians in Iraq apparently his new company which is called vectus Global okay um they were hired to work in the Congo to fight with m23 the rebel group backed by the Rwandan government that is just known to commit atrocities Prince's mercenaries they were conducting drone strikes on m23 targets um and then last month the story is about how Prince's troops and these Congolese soldiers were ambushed by the m23 and a bunch of Prince's guys were killed or wounded including someone named Tim Kennedy who I had not heard of but apparently he was a special forces guy in the U.S Army who became a professional MMA fighter and then he hosted TV shows on the History Channel and Discovery Channel then I guess went back to being a mercenary that's like a weird subculture like we're kind of right-wing History Channel yes ecosystem like literally private mercenary so anyway just read the story it is worth your time but Ben it just like made me think about like can you imagine like okay the corruption that we know about that's happening between like Jared Kushner and the Russians is one thing could you imagine what the like Congo minerals deal side you know agreements are with Eric Prince and his private mercenaries who apparently according to this story they're collecting taxes related to the mining sector a private mercenary force is collecting taxes on behalf of the Congo I I I think that what like people don't understand is the extent to which like the privatization of intelligence and Warfare and you know net security in in places like the DRC has just been mushrooming for years and basically what you have down there is you've got like Eric Prince type you know or outfits doing this stuff you've got you know you had the Wagner group that's now kind of the Russian state that DRC like like you know is just crawling with this and that's providing security at these mines where you have like semi-slave labor, like getting us the minerals for our phones. Like this is, this is both dark and not disconnected from our own lives because this is where a lot of like minerals come from and metals come from that we rely on. And that's why there's all this money sloshing around. None of the money reaches the people in these countries or the workers in those mines. It lines the pockets of like corrupt politicians and people like Eric Prince. Yeah. And I should have mentioned Eric Prince donated $250,000 to the Trump campaign the first time around. And his sister is Betsy DeVos, who was the education secretary and the DeVos family, they're big Republican donors who give millions and millions for Republican causes. And this is going to be a growth, it already has been, but as the world becomes more fractured and unstable, and as we've talked about, there's less peacekeeping in places like this, this is what's going to fill the vacuum. Just kind of totally corrupt, privatized armies, essentially. Yeah. I mean, I think Prince is doing drone activities on the ground in Haiti, for example, with his gangs there. And they're doing- Not helping. Yeah. I mean, and it's a fascinating, like they're doing drone attacks and military stuff. I'm sure they're also doing like intel gathering, blackmail operations, like, you know, the kind of black cube Israeli stuff that we've seen. Like this is, there's a dark world out there. And this is, every now and then some journalist goes and like shines a flashlight at it and you're like, holy shit. Yeah. And like Prince's scene is like pseudo-connected to the, to the U.S. government. There's this anecdote in the New York Times story about how he like went to the, I think it was the Belgian embassy to try to get like a bunch of drones out of customs there. It's like, it's just crazy shit that's happening. And he's down in Latin America too. I think he's in Ecuador or something. Yeah. Just weird shit. Okay. Finally, Ben, some sad news about our esteemed U.S. ambassador to Greece, Kim Guilfoyle. Like Icarus before her, Kim flew too close to the sun. I think her Amex bill caught fire and then it melted her. I think that's how that parable goes. We can kill the music now. We talked about Kim. Production value is going way up. It's top-notch stuff. That is some good music right there. Actually, Michael did the score. He learned how to play violin. So we talked about Guilfoyle's travails on last week's show. At the time, I think it was just one story, right? It was her and this lobbyist from a Greek business and her like steering money his way and then seemingly dating the guy. After we recorded, the journal had a piece about Guilfoyle begging a Trump donor to urgently pay off her $100, $100,000 Amex bill. Then there were reports about a State Department inspector general investigation that found Guilfoyle demoted her head of security because he didn't answer his phone at 4:00 AM when she called to demand more ice. I think she was shit-faced in Mykonos. We've all been there, man. We have all been there. We've all been to Mykonos shit-faced. You fire that grandpa who works for you. Then finally, there was another Wall Street Journal story where they got their hands on audio of Guilfoyle in Davos, trying to beg to get into a dinner honoring Air Force One. I think that must have been the final straw because begging to get into an event honoring Eric Trump is too pathetic for even Marco Rubio. You know what I mean? That's just a bridge too far. Oh, God. And so, Trump on Monday said he was looking to fire Guilfoyle and then on Tuesday, they said they accepted her resignation. Here's Mr. Trump talking about it and then we'll discuss. Yeah, I like this. So, President, on Hillary Guilfoyle, she was almost a member of your family. How surprised were you to learn about these allegations? What did you think of that? No, she wasn't a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago, but she wasn't. No, she once agreed she was doing a good job, but we didn't like what we were reading. So, Ben, as they say, don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened, right? I'm sure what happened too is not only were this like a spate of stories like this, but I'm sure that like these stories come up, somebody just took a peek under the hood. Oh, God, yeah. And there's probably like another 25 of these things because like if you're like shaking someone down for your Amex bill, getting hammered at FOIA and demanding ICE and firing people, like there's more fire underneath all that smoke. And so, they're just trying to like dump her overboard before this thing continued to mushroom. Clearly, the Wall Street Journal had like sources inside. Coming out of the woodwork. Yeah. I am wondering what, you know, compromise she has on the Trump family. I'm hoping so. Because he can say, oh, we didn't really know her. She was like, she spoke at the two Republican national conventions, you know? She's engaged to Don Jr. She was like, you know, I mean, maybe she didn't have the wedding with the Russian oligarch paying for the island. True. But I don't know. Like this does suggest, by the way, the target rich environment for Democratic oversight of Trump administration grift. And it's just going to be hard to know where to look, like what to pick, you know? Because this is, I'm sure, not the only thing like this that's going on. Yeah. It's gonna be like showing up in Galapagos. It's like the first American. You turn over a rock, you find some new species. My favorite part of the story was that Marco Rubio went to Greece. He gave this big speech about rescuing Western civilization. You could tell he wanted it to be this huge moment for him and like maybe a campaign set piece for 2028. By the way, I watched the whole speech. It was like vapid. Just, oh, God. It's like a pop history lesson and some bullshit about whatever the Spartans and fighting. But also, there's a cool background with the Acropolis. But then they had like a cut shot boom that just showed like the lame little crowd. And he was just like kind of half-assed. But all of his stories were ruined because he got questioned about Kim Guilfoyle. And it was so funny. Yeah. Yeah. Lil Marco like trying to become the intellectual of Western civilization that, you know, the corner that J.D. Vance has been trying to stand on. And I mean, it's actually, it's entirely like a great juxtaposition because somehow, despite the world's historical corruption and incompetence that is on display every day and that features on most of his podcasts, they really do have the self-conception, some of them at least. I don't think Trump really gives a shit. But J.D. Vance and Rubio, that they are part of some rebirth of Western civilization, when they're not. If anything, they represent the absolute moral rot of Western civilization. Like Western civilization, whatever that is, has just turned into nothing more than a money grab. And the fact that Kimberly Guilfoyle is like the ambassador while Rubio is giving that speech, like illustrates the point perfectly. You like to put yourself up as these like paragons of morality and Christianity and values that go back to, you know, Plato or whatever, when in fact, you're just empowering grift like this. That's all this is. Yeah. I've been reading this book. It's called The Nerd Reich. It's Silicon Valley fascism. One of the best titles. I saw that. Fantastic title. I was jealous of the title. It's about how all like all these Silicon Valley guys got kind of radicalized by this dude, Curtis Yarvin. And he's kind of like apocalyptic visions of the future that really influenced people like Peter Thiel. And then, you know, Peter Thiel basically created J.D. Vance's political career in a lab. His VC is venture capital career too in Silicon Valley. And it is this very like paranoid, like doomsday cultish view of the future where like, because black people are coming to Europe from Africa or like Syrian refugees are in, Germany, it's going to mean the end of Western civilization. What are we talking about? And it leads to this kind of, you know, to nerd out for a second, like pop Nietzsche, like Superman, Superman stuff, where what we really need to save Western civilization from these black and brown people is like the complete empowerment of a strong man with some tech overlords to control our lives. Great men, Leo Straussian, like great men are going to birth seasteading villages in the fucking Mediterranean where we'll all live. Yeah, we're going to create utopian societies on like Epstein Island or like in part of El Salvador, like Naib Bukele, you know. Fucking idiots. Meanwhile, fucking Kim Guilfoyle's stylist, Fancy James is traveling with her to Paris Fashion Week. That's all this is about. It's not even like, it's not even about like these, they grab onto ideas to justify the like the abhorrent behavior they're engaged in. My favorite, so Kim put out a long tweet. I read the tweet, I read the tweet. Okay, this is my favorite part. It's like, you're right. Yeah, she's like, that's the best part because it's like that reads like number one, something that any like foreign service officer, public affairs person would be like, oh, that's like, but also like who's the audience for her legacy building? No, like who in like five years is going to be like, what was Kim Guilfoyle legacy as ambassador to Greece? Oh, she's strengthened the corridor. Like nobody fucking believes that. Trump's cutting a diesel deal with Putin. She also said, I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service. Like, ma'am, you are a former prosecutor who put in writing, Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things about her corruption with the Amex bill guy. And then was caught on tape saying, you know, I can deliver the world to you, which you deserve. I'm going to make you a lot of fucking money. You don't have, you don't have the fucking, you know, U.S. ambassador to Greece.com. She should be kissing my ass. I see Nikos every fucking day. I'm flying with him to Paris. I'm with him for a fucking week. He loves me, honey. I spent Christmas with him. New Year's. Okay. Stod like everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream. The best is yet to come. That's our deal. That's our RNC speech. Oh, God. What was it? The 2001? Was that the one they lost? Yeah, that was the COVID convention, right? The White House. You know, she will pop up somewhere. This woman never goes away. Like, she would survive a nuclear holocaust and, like, somehow emerge with a grift on the other end, you know? My favorite part was, like, there was a potential deal floated to pay her a million dollars to get this dude, Eric Dieters, who was the one who was asked to pay off the Amex bill on Tucker Carlson's podcast. The Journal called him, and he said, a million dollars for a podcast appearance? Isn't she the ambassador to Greece? This is completely nuts. Also, like, you know, with all due respect to Tucker, like, have you seen the list of guests on there? Yeah, it's not. Like, some of them are not the kind of people that— It's not a crazy booking. Yeah, it's a lot. It's not the hardest booking, apparently, to get on that show. Yeah, it's got a big audience, but, you know, there's some good conversations and good guests on the show, and then there's some real clunkers. My favorite about that is— The guy who blames Churchill for the World War II. Or you're scrolling through, because, like, every now and then, it's been interesting to hear his opposition to the Iran war. And then there'll be, like, you know, some conversation about global energy markets, and the next one is, like, why demons are taking over society. Yes, or, like, why the media refuses to acknowledge there is a white genocide. Yeah, yeah, in South Africa. Or, like, an exorcist explaining how to get rid of the demons or something. You know, like, I doubt that guy was paid a million bucks to go on Tucker. No, I don't think so. Did you see, by the way, that the— and I don't know how much to, you know, trust all these numbers, but that the traffic to a bunch of things, including Tucker's show, went down when those Russian bot farms were hit? Okay, yeah, so the Ukrainians bombed the Yandex data centers in Ukraine. In Russia, which there are a bunch of reports that, like, aggregate bot activity is down. I've seen other people yelling and saying those reports. I don't know what to believe. I don't know what to believe, but— It was interesting. It wouldn't shock me, yeah. It is interesting because it, like, I actually think, I mean, the interesting point here, and maybe we can have someone on to talk about this, but, like, data centers are going to become the next military target. Oh, yeah. We've seen the Iranians shoot at it in the Emirates. We've seen the Ukrainians take it out. Everything, you know, militaries run on data centers. Like, disinformation campaigns run on data centers. Like, AI is obviously trained on data centers. Like, no reason to think there won't be military attacks on data centers, or, frankly, as people get more and more angry about AI, like, sabotage the data centers. Like, this is a new, you know, horizon here. Yeah, it's a brave new world. Okay, that's it for me and Ben, but stick around for my conversation with Leslie and Warner. We are going to talk about the situation in Ethiopia and all the ways it could spiral into the Horn of Africa in very devastating ways, so stick around for that. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Hungry Root. Why does figuring out what to eat always feel so much more difficult than it should? There's the playing the daily I-don't-know-what-do-you-want game on repeat. There's the days when you just run out of time or energy to plan or cook after a long day. 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Something like there's a Severino pasta that you just throw in the oven and then you have an easy, delicious family meal. You're going to love Hungry Root as much as I do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first order plus a free item in every box for life. Go to hungryroot.com slash world and use the code world. That's hungryroot.com slash world. Code world for 40% off your first box and a free item of choice for life. Corrupting our democracy works best when we forget that we, the people, are in charge. I'm Stacey Abrams, voting rights advocate and host of Assembly Required. In my podcast, I'm talking with some of the sharpest minds in politics and in civic activism to help us figure out how to fight authoritarianism and win. My podcast doesn't just diagnose problems. We give actionable steps to help you feel a little more connected and a lot more empowered to make change in your community. So check out my podcast, Assembly Required. New episodes drop every Tuesday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. I'd like to share hair color's best kept secret with you, Madison Reed Hair Color Bars, where our licensed pros use our award-winning ammonia-free hair color bars to deliver salon-gorgeous results and 100% great coverage without the traditional salon price tag. Visit madison-reed.com and use code PODCAST20 for 20% off your first visit. We can't wait to see you. I am very excited to be joined by Dr. Leslie Ann Warner. She is a foreign affairs analyst and a visiting scholar with the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment, for International Peace. She has over two decades of experience working in foreign policy, and I'm so glad she joined me today. Leslie, great to see you again. Thanks for having me on, Tommy. So a couple weeks back, Ben and I did a long segment on the fighting and these sort of scary statements out of Ethiopia that suggested that the country might be headed back to war. You wrote a great piece about all of it for just security that was really, really helpful to me. And then we jumped on the phone and you talked me through kind of all the complicated elements. And it was so helpful that I wanted to actually talk to you about that. And I wanted to actually get you on the pod to have you back and just have you talk directly to our listeners. So I'm very grateful for your time. I think you also have another piece about Ethiopia coming out on just security. Is that right? Yes, I am deep in the process of writing, basically unpacking how we got here, what the key differences are between the 2020 conflict and the current conflict that we're seeing, how the regional picture is different, how the domestic picture is different. So it'll be very interesting, I think, despite the circumstances. So I look forward to seeing that in just security. Excellent. I look forward to reading that and then repeating the smart things you say and making them sound like they came from me because that's kind of how this show works. But listen, it's a complicated story, but it's a really important one because a lot of people's lives are at risk and there is also huge geopolitical significance. So let's start with kind of the proximate events. And by the way, I should mention we're talking on Friday, October 9th. Last month, there were these armed groups in Ethiopia. They announced this new coalition and they announced that they were going to do and they announced a plan to essentially topple the government to topple Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Can you tell us a bit about these groups and what you made of the announcement and then the degree to which they are trying to deliver on that promise since? Sure. So first of all, thank you so much for devoting time and attention to this very important issue. I think it's important that people more broadly understand the impact that this sort of conflict is likely to have not only on Ethiopia, but also on the wider region. And for the United States specific context, most people don't know that the Ethiopian diaspora is actually the second largest African diaspora in the United States. So it's relevant to the United States specifically. To answer your question more directly on the anti-government coalition that was announced just days before the conflict broke out, approximately seven groups, which include the Tigray People's Liberation Front, announced that they had a anti-government coalition. What we've seen so far is that, in the initial days of the conflict, which broke out on September 23rd, only about three of these groups have actively participated in operations with the TDF. What that means is that this might just be an alliance on paper only, or an alliance in name only, or essentially a situationship. What I'm watching for moving forward is whether this alliance is actually operationalized and whether they actually start to coordinate more. What they represent is a threat potential to the government. But again, we would have to see whether that's actually operationalized. And it does seem like there has been some fighting, right? I mean, you keep seeing reports of drone strikes at airports in Ethiopia, and then there's reports of government troops moving north to the Tigray region and possibly Eritrean troops crossing the border into Ethiopia. Is that right? That's right. And I want to pick up on the Eritrean part of this. So for one, there is a very complex history between Ethiopia and Eritrea, including during the previous conflict, between 2020 and 2022, in which Isaias and Abiy essentially colluded to attack the TPLF because they shared their view that the TPLF was a threat to both of them. What I'm watching right now is the EDF, the Eritrean Defense Forces, never actually left Ethiopian territory after the previous conflict. And what we saw, I think it was October 7th into October 8th, EDF troops were moving south. What I was watching during that incident was the further the Eritreans move south, the more likely it is that they would come into direct conflict with the Ethiopian military, which then raises the stakes of this is not just a domestic conflict. This is a possibly interstate conflict and possibly harder to deescalate. And I think that just the last point I would make is I think we should talk about the role that air power will play in basically deciding how this conflict unfolds. I do want to talk about that. I mean, so let's say, Listeners might know, just some more basics, though. civil war in Ethiopia between 2020 and 2022. It pitted the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean government, as you just said, against the TPLF, this group that was basically the people who used to be in charge of Ethiopia before Abiy Ahmed's election in, what, 2018, 2019. The death toll of that war was astronomical. The estimates are between 300,000 or up to 600,000 people, making it one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. There was this kind of fragile peace agreement, but now it seems like conflict is resuming. And as you mentioned earlier, the Eritrean government seems to have switched sides and is now fighting against the Ethiopian government. Why do you think that happened? And how concerned are you about a full-scale war between those two countries? I mean, how much worse do you think that could make things than the previous fighting? One of the things that is very different about the current conflict that we didn't see during the 2020 to 2022 conflict is that instead of the Eritreans fighting on the side of the government, they're now fighting on the side of the Tigrayans. The significance of that is that even though there's still a lot of mistrust between Eritrea and the TPLF, it's a situation in which the enemy of my enemy is my, I don't know if I would call them friends, but I would call them acquaintances maybe. And so because. Because Isaias was left out of the Pretoria agreement, he now sees additional incentive to ally himself with groups inside Ethiopia, not exclusively just the Tigrayans, but there's speculation that he may also be working with Amhara Fano militias to destabilize Abiy. The bigger picture of this is that Abiy has been very bellicose in the last year, year and a half, about needing sovereign access to the Red Sea. What this means, and the significance of this, if you look at the manner in which the 2020 conflict was fought, and you look at the initial days of this conflict, it was very clear that anti-government forces in Tigray were attempting to target the main artery through which Ethiopia gets 90 to 95 percent of its overland traffic. That would be devastating to the Ethiopian economy. It would also, it just creates a huge liability that Abiy has decided that a country of his, of Ethiopia's size and stature cannot be landlocked. And so even in his, he got inaugurated for another term on Monday, and he had a speech in which he specifically mentioned the need for sovereign access to the Red Sea. Eritrea sees that as extremely alarming, because they're not going to be able to do that. They're not going to be able to do that. And so that implies that he would then try to take the port of Asad. Another element of this complex history is that for 30 years, Eritrea had been annexed by Ethiopia. So there's, there is some understandable paranoia that perhaps under Abiy's leadership, certain parts of the country, if not the whole country, could, you know, no longer be under Esaias' control. I think what is head-spinning for nerds like us is that Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with Eritrea. And then he turned around and launched this devastating war against his own citizens. And now we're talking about possible renewed conflict between Abiy and a lot of his neighbors. Is the assumption that the peace deal with the Eritreans was just part of a long con to go after as domestic rivals? Or how do people make sense of that moment in hindsight? When I was a hill-staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the night before Abiy was elected as head of the then ruling party of Ethiopia, we were supposed to fly into Addis for a staff delegation. We received news that he had been elected and he was perceived as a moderate, a progressive, someone we could work with. And when we landed in Addis, it was notable that there were, um, there were armored personnel carriers, uh, all over the city. They were really preparing for things to go off the edge if the ruling party didn't, quote unquote, pick the right candidate, given what was the broader context of what was happening in the country. During our meetings and during this, the very nascent days of this political transition, it became clear that given the type of government that Ethiopia had, uh, semi-authoritarian, we, there was a belief, uh, in the United States and with, quote unquote, like-minded partners that Ethiopia, uh, Abiy was someone that we could work with. And we were very, very relieved. And as a result, we had a massive blind side with regard to what he was actually planning. So we knew for context, the Tigrayan element of the ruling party, Tigray, Tigray is 5% of, of the total population of Ethiopia. But they had ruled the, they had dominated the ruling party basically since 1991. And Abiy was not Tigrayan. Um, and, and it was, it was very clear that when he came to power, there was going to be a shift and power was going to be moving away from Tigray. Obviously, Tigray doesn't like, like this. And this is one of the reasons we saw the, the conflict come out in, in 2020 and why we've seen it revived for slightly different reasons this year. I think that we were really thrilled to understand the indicators and warnings that things were going off the rails in Ethiopia, because we were so focused on here's someone we can work with. He's doing the right things. We didn't necessarily understand that he was doing the right things in order to play the long game of, of targeting his internal political rivals, which is something that he also needed to do. So that was very rational, but we, we misread it. Interesting. Um, let's talk about all the ways that this conflict took place. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's feels like it's become a proxy war. Um, the United Arab Emirates is all over the horn of Africa. They, they, they helped broker the 2018 peace deal, uh, between Ethiopia and Eritrea, but they also, I believe, uh, you know, military bases in the region. They have helped provide the Ethiopian government with weapons to defeat the TPLF. Um, I think they also run the port in Somaliland. Um, and I think the Emiratis maybe were either okay with, or maybe pushed the, the, to recognize that. Um, then there's Egypt and the Saudis. Uh, I saw recently that, uh, leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Somalia and Eritrea, uh, all attended a summit in Egypt, Ethiopia and Egypt have this high profile dispute over a hydroelectric dam. Um, there's just so many other countries that seem to have equities or are kind of interfering in the region in ways that are unhelpful. Like, how do you make sense of the kind of proxy war element of this? Tommy, this is a interlocking web conflicts that could become very destabilizing, not just internally in Ethiopia, but also in the Horn of Africa and then across to the Gulf. There are, so to start with the anti-government coalition that was announced shortly before the conflict broke out, whether or not it's actually operational right now, the fact that it exists means that there are several entry points through which regional powers can strike Abiy, which is a vulnerability. It may not be, he may not feel it right now, but there's potential. That he will feel it in the future, depending on what that coalition decides to do and how it decides to operate, um, jointly if they, they decide to. You mentioned the gathering in Alamein earlier this month, which that, that may be more symbolic than real. Um, so one of the questions I had when the Eritrean military started heading south a few days ago, which in my mind didn't really make sense because if you're the Eritreans, are you really going to take on the, the Ethiopian military? Are you really going to give Abiy a pretext to come across the border and mess with you? I would think no, if I was a rational person, but you know, who knows? Anyway, I started thinking, does Isaias think that Sisi, Burhan and, uh, Hassan Sheikh, the leaders of Egypt, um, Somalia and Sudan are going to militarily come to his assistance? I don't think that's the point of, of the gathering that happened in Alamein. So it's, it's to be determined what this, you know, the internal coalition plus the regional, um, the regional collection of actors that Abiy has upset. It's unclear what that is actually going to result in, but the fact that these, these relationships and these connections are forming is very problematic. And then zoom out and you have the UAE-Saudi dynamic. So if you look at how, how the UAE and Saudi have had tensions over Yemen, which has then bled over into the conflict in Sudan, and it would not be surprising if that then bled over into the, the burgeoning conflict in Ethiopia. And then zooming out even further, if you think about the geopolitical context, one difference between 2020 and now is that the world is a lot more distracted and there's a lot less attention. Even, you know, going back to Sudan, Sudan is the largest, the world's largest humanitarian and displacement crisis. and yet you barely hear people talk about it. So if you add Ethiopia on top of that, top of this, the potential for miscalculation and for things to escalate and for proxy conflicts to just start catalyzing instability is very alarming and honestly keeps me up at night. Yeah, I mean, look, you made this point to me when we talked last, and it's honestly what freaked me out about the whole situation, which is, you know, the war in Sudan has been raging since 2023. It started as a civil war between, you know, the Sudanese military and this group called the RSF. They had once been aligned to take out the civilian government of Sudan, but they had a falling out and have been fighting since. And it's created, as you said, the largest humanitarian disaster on planet Earth. And we have the Emiratis funding the RSF, so there's that proxy war element. And it just feels like you mentioned that there's a fear that these conflicts could essentially merge and they could just become more regional than anything else. And- Yeah. And it just, it's a terrifying thought. I don't know what, I didn't know what to make of it or what the international community could be doing to stop it, in your view. Some of the instability we're seeing in the region is being fomented by friends of the United States. So, for example, in Sudan, the UAE is widely believed to be supporting the rapid support forces who are committing the second Darfur genocide of this century, which is just appalling to- To have to say that. And the fact that that's being done by friends of the United States, friends of both administrations in the, both parties in the United States is absolutely appalling. We see Gulf differences of opinion on the types of governments that countries should have is really playing out and exacerbating the situation. And if you put that lens on top of Ethiopia, there's the potential that both regional power and extra-regional powers, like from the Gulf, decide to pick their own favorites so that they can, they can basically perpetuate the proxy conflict they're having in the Gulf and in Sudan in a new theater in Ethiopia. I mean, it just, we're now at the part of the conversation where it's like, okay, this is very heavy and depressing. It's just so clear that, like, this is a case of the international order, such as it was, collapsing, and all the institutions that maybe once were supposed to be, you know, in a way, were supposed to be, you know, in a way, were supposed to be to mediate or prevent conflicts like this have just been failing. I mean, if, let's say, like, Donald Trump left office today, there was a president in charge who cared a lot. Would the kind of first thing you would advise them to do be to push on that, that proxy element? Like, tell the Emiratis, tell the Saudis, tell the Turks to knock it off? Like, is that the kind of lowest hanging fruit in terms of making it better? So, Tommy, I think during the previous administration, we spoke, not we, not me personally, but the Emiratis were spoken to very nicely, based on my understanding, that they should please kindly stop supporting genocide in Sudan. They said, we don't know what you're talking about. And from what I understand, the conversation moved on. In my opinion, that sort of approach is not necessarily serious, because if they are believed to be fueling the conflict, and they are not actually, we're not imposing tangible consequences for what they are doing on that side, and what Egypt is doing on the south side, then it is not a serious conversation over, you know, how to de-escalate. One of the things I often think about, and as I thought about this when I left the State Department in 2023, was there's an episode of Succession in the final season in which Logan Roy talks to his kids, and he says, I love you, but you're not serious people. I remember it well. Yeah, and that's what I often think about when I think about U.S. engagement in these conflicts. If you're not actually going to impose tangible consequences on the people that are making it worse, then it's not serious. What is even the point here? Yeah, well said. I, well, I just, I guess hope springs eternal that the next group of people, you know, first of all, Jared Kushner won't be running foreign policy, so you won't have someone who just took— We don't know that. Well, let's hope. Hopefully you won't have someone who just took giant checks from the TARIs and all these people, billions of dollars worth. But I also, like, this is a bipartisan criticism, and I think the next Democratic administration needs to get much tougher with the Emiratis in particular, as you're recommending here, because they are acting like arsonists, and a lot of people are dying, and it is disgraceful. Dr. Leslie Ann Warner, thank you so much for doing the show. We appreciate your time. Thanks for having me on, and thanks again for covering this issue. Thanks again to Leslie Ann Warner 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. We're working with some of the sharpest minds in politics and in civic activism to help us figure out how to fight authoritarianism and win. We give actionable steps to help you feel a little more connected and a lot more empowered to make change in your communities. Hello, beautiful. I'd like to share hair color's best kept secret with you, Madison Reed Hair Color Bars, where our licensed pros use our award-winning ammonia-free hair color to deliver salon gorgeous results and 100% great coverage without the traditional salon price tag. Visit madison-reed.com and use code PODCAST20 for 20% off. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Tom Thumb. It's time to stock up and save now through October 27th. Get $10 off when you spend $25 or more on participating items. Just look for participating item tags to earn on eligible items from brands like Hellman's, Carondo, M&M's, Oreo, Persil, and Continental. Clip once and save through October 27th every time you shop. Grab these hot deals before they're gone. Save on brands you trust. Restrictions are a must. See website for full terms and conditions.