Will Epstein Files Take Down the British Government?

Today's presenting sponsor is a special one for us here. The cooking media, love it. As you know, this podcast would not exist if it wasn't for President Obama. My career wouldn't exist, I don't know. Yeah, who knows where we'd be. I mean, I remember like, when I got the job with Edwards, I was choosing between that and going to work a club met as a geo, which meant basically you trip kids while playing street hockey or basketball or whatever. But as you all probably know, we've been inspired by President Obama and his work inside and outside of office. So we're excited to announce that the Obama Presidential Center officially opens this June on the south side of Chicago. It is so much more than just a library, it is an entire campus geared towards helping everyday people realize their ability to make real-world change. Beyond the immersive museum exhibits, there's an athletic center, a theater, a media lab, and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, a collection of brand new commissioned art, world-class performances, and original programming, the list goes on. It's a very special place. I'm excited to see the Obama Presidential Center hoping to get out there for like, I don't know. Yeah, because see it. Playing your visit at Obama.org and sign up for exclusive updates and special offer at the Obama Presidential Center, bring change home. Welcome to Pottape World, I'm Tommy Bittor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, hello from New Zealand. I think it's 21 hours difference here. What time is it there? So it is my phone. It is Wednesday, February 11th, at 11.07. So you're like way ahead. So you get on the plane. I got on the plane at 10.30 at night in LA time and then you land on Tuesday. So you just like Thanos a day. Yeah. And Monday, you get it back. If you come back, you'll get it back. You get it back in the way. And on the way back, you get it back. But it's like basically the easiest way to think about. It's like negative 21 or you guys are 21 behind me. But in practice, it's if you're three hours ahead. So I'm just treating you like you're a New York and I am in LA. That makes sense. I mean, I hope you've been able to lick your runes out there. There's not a lot of people talking patriots, Drake May. I was wondering if you're going to get to this. So I did pack one sweatshirt and it is a Patriot sweatshirt. Luckily, it's pretty warm in New Zealand and Australia at this time of year. But yeah, stuff. Hey, you made it and you have a 22 year old quarterback. I think I'll be back. I think I'll be fine. Listen, you know, just be grateful you made it there. I guess apparently the whole Patriots didn't play anyone good strength of schedule thing. They had a point. Yeah, that kind of bore out. That kind of bore out. I mean, you had the bonics go down. I mean, but hey, you know, you got there. You got, I'm a Jets fan. Like we haven't smelled the Super Bowl since before I was born. So no, you're, you just watch former quarterbacks when Super Bowl is shut up. And I know, I know one of our guys. Yeah. Yeah. Ben, did you see this morning or maybe it was yesterday? Who knows when it was? Trump threatened to close down the Gordy Howbridge between Michigan and Ontario. A day to social post. I want to read you a verbatim quote and tell me if this sort of vives with the intelligence you read about China back in the day. Yeah. A prime minister carning wants to make a deal with China, which will eat Canada alive. We'll just get the leftovers. I don't think so. The first thing China will do is terminate all ice hockey being played in Canada and permanently eliminate the Stanley Cup. Are you aware of Xi Jinping being in support of like a hockey genocide? I'm not. No, I'm aware of Trump in the Commissioner of the National Hockey League. But maybe, you know, if the Canadians don't want to be smart about it, you know, Wayne Gretzky's Super Maga hanging out with Trump outside. Maybe they should just rename the bridge, the Wayne Gretzky bridge, and then they keep it open. I don't know. That's a pretty good idea of the Gordy Howbridge. I was a bad ass. He was a bad ass. Yeah. All right. So we got a wide range of topics today, kind of befitting our 21-hour time difference. We're going to start in the UK where Prime Minister Kear Starmer is facing calls to resign based on his administration's association with Jeffrey Epstein. Accountability must be nice. We're also going to tell you about a landslide election in Japan and how those results could permanently change the constitution and character of the country. Trump's got a big trip to China coming up in April. We'll explain how two major issues in the US-China relationship are threatening to derail that visit. We're also going to update you on these reports we talked about last week about the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, suppressing this super duper top secret only allowed one copy in a safe whistleblower report. So since we talked, Congress finally got a copy of the thing and then some details have leaked out in the media. And then finally we're going to check in on the Olympics, we've got the cheers, the booze, the cheating scandal that somehow involves inflated penises but not sex. So we'll pack all that one, the scandal that's rocking the Olympics. The scandal for our times, if ever there was one. Yeah. Yes, indeed. Metaphorically rocking at this. And then Ben, you did our interview today. What are we going to hear? Yeah, I talked to Nilo Tabrizzi, who's been on before. He was actually just laid off from the Washington Post, where she was investigative reporter focused on Iran, wrote an extraordinary book about Iran and- Well, nothing's happening there. So it's a good time to kind of make sure we flex inside into that. Exactly. I mean, her being fired at this moment actually points to the absolute absurdity of what they just did there. But we talked about how that went down, what it was like literally, like, you know, how do they laugh? All those people, what's going to be lost with all these foreign desks going away. Their international news coverage might be going in this period of, you know, consolidation and layoffs, the jet bases of it all. And what it's like to feel like you've been laid off by a guy that could have, like, lost the change in his couch that would have paid for the Washington Post of his life. And also her impression of what's happening in Iran based on her conversations with sources. So really important conversation people should check it out. Yeah, the marketing budget on the Melania movie could have saved what, like, the entire forum heroes basically for several years. So, yeah, that's great. Well, I'm excited to listen to that. I'm sorry that that happened to her. Obviously, we here at Podsay the World cannot replace, like, major media institutions, like the Washington Post. But I think that story is a sign that they are billionaires are not coming to save us. So if you want to help support independent progressive media, you know, thanks for watching the show. Thanks for subscribing. Subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. Subscribe if you're listening as a podcast. But if you, if that's not enough for you, if you want to, you know, do even more and become a supporter of Crooked Media itself, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It really is the single most important thing you could do to help us grow as a company. You get lots of bonus content. You get ad free episodes. You get a lot more. If you just go to Crooked.com/friends for more information, we have experience explosive growth over here, Ben. People are calling us the bad bunny of podcasting. If you want to dip into that little mini scandal from over the weekend, it's like people that are mad about the Super Bowl have to show, it's like just mute it. And well, I don't have to watch. It was also like an absolute banger and a very world dough half time show with the end with all the Americas. Yeah, I had a little tear in the eye on that one. It was cool. It was like watching like a movie. It was just like a movie. It really well. And actually, yeah, it was like, I grew up in New York where there are two million, I think, Puerto Ricans. So I, like, I was like, oh, yeah, like that, some of that was familiar to me, but then it was just so deep in that culture, it was a pretty extraordinary, immersive and it like that. Anyway. Yeah, shock that Trump was mad about it. What a surprise. Oh, what a surprise. Well, kid rock show is, you know, I'm sure it's great. I love people were tweeting out like lyrics from his songs that are like about, you know, suck on my balls this or that. It's like, okay, I have fun in your Christian half time show, everybody. He'll turn point and say content there. Kid Rock hasn't been cool for 25 years. If ever. Okay. So we got, let's start with the UK because, you know, while our president has faced no consequences for his decades long, close for personal friendship with disgrace, pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, there are growing calls for British Prime Minister Kierstharmer to resign over his government ties to Epstein. So some quick context just to catch everybody up here until late last summer, the British Ambassador to the US was a guy named Peter Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was once a top aid former Prime Minister Tony Blair, though Mendelssohn had a rocky career that kind of like was way laid by repeated scandals. But despite that checkered history, despite the fact that it was pretty well known that Mendelssohn had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer still made him the ambassador to the US. Now, Mendelssohn was ultimately fired from that post last September, after the House Oversight Committee released a bunch of emails between Epstein and Mendelssohn that showed they remained closed. Even after Epstein had been convicted of soliciting sex from a minor, I think he was emailing him about crashing at his place, like while Epstein was in jail or on whatever that cushy jail he had in Florida. And then though, things got exponentially worse for labor after that latest tranche of Epstein files were released by DOJ that revealed that Mendelssohn was forwarding Jeffrey Epstein's sensitive government information. We talked about this last week, but it was like genuinely shocking stuff, like secret details about the US and UK response to the financial crisis, internal memos that went to then Prime Minister Gordon Brown much more. So, Starmer now says that Mendelssohn lied to him and lied to his team during the vetting for the job. Kier Starmer was pressed on this question of what vetting was done with Mendelssohn during Prime Minister's question time. Here's a bit of that answer, and then there's another clip from Starmer apologizing to victims at a separate event. And then you'll hear Starmer's even more defiant tone on Tuesday. Let's watch. Can the Prime Minister tell us did the official security vetting he received mentioned Mendelssohn's ongoing release? yn y ffordd y ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd y ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd ac yn ffordd ac ymdwch i'w'r prysys yn ymdwch i'r prysys yn ymdwch i'r prysys yn ymdwch i'r prysys 16. I wedi'r gweith i'r gweith i wedi i'r gweith i wedi'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i' Cswini i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i' i hwnnw i'r ffordd i'r fynd. Mae'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r f a no one can hear them because they are being drowned out. That is why it cannot continue. Cure Starmer is a decent man and it is no secret that I have always got on well with him and he has dedicated his life to public service. I have also dedicated myself to public service and I need to decide what I am willing to accept and what I am willing to tolerate. Okay so Ben to talk about the top labor ministers are all sticking with Cure Starmer and backing and publicly but this challenge is not really about Jeffrey Epstein. It is about for Starmer it is about getting the economy going, demonstrating a clear vision to voters, convincing the rest of the labor party that you are the guy for this moment. I have to say it feels very hard to see how he is going to write this ship and serve out a full term. He might survive this near term issue but I don't know man, he has got a dead man walking by but what do you think? I agree with you and I think it is worth kind of doing the brief journey to how we got here and first of all it is interesting and Alex and I talked about this in Pots of America Tommy but the fact that Cure Starmer wasn't even in the Epstein files right and yet he may be taken out by one person who is in the files Mandelson and all these Americans are evading all this accountability including a current president and maybe a former president. I wish we still had a system where shame and transparency you know not that the British system is perfect by any measure but at least that there is still some gravity there. I know and like Howard Lutnik like the Commerce Secretary. He made up a story about his ties on TV and then went to fucking Epstein Island was doing business deals with the guy. Fire your Commerce Secretary, no one gives a shit about the Commerce Secretary. I didn't continue. Well no but that is the point right? The point is that we don't fire anybody but look at Morgan McSweeney's central to this whole thing and I've met Morgan McSweeney a bunch of times and so I met him right when Cure Starmer became leader and this guy was like the you know David Axelrod David he was the absolute political strategist like dictatorial political strategist labor party and he orchestrated a very successful for his purposes and Starmer's purposes reorientation labor party so it's coming out Jeremy Corbyn they'd taken a left turn they basically purged all the Jeremy Corbyn people made a big show of purging some anti-Semitic elements tacked to the center rebuild bridges to the kind of Blair class of the labor party and that's where Pughman and Winston comes in because he's the quintessential version of he's not a leftist he's an operator you know he's a guy that is you know Mr. Globalization right and and all the way to the the worst parts that you know it's all the bankers has lots of contacts exactly yeah and so where this all comes together is that Mendelsen as ambassador reflected like poor judgment you know you should have looked a little harder but it also reflected a choice that Starmer made from the beginning about how to govern which is to take that kind of cautious always look over your right shoulder tacked to the center befriend the globalist approach and and you know the kind of Peter Mendelssohn politics that became I think to a lot of people at least what cure Starmer was projecting so it's both the immediate scandal it's also the fact that this was the play they made it wasn't just said in Mendelssohn's ambassador UK they kind of took on that approach to politics and it's worked out horribly for them and what the reason I agree to talk me is that like if he was a strong you know in the polls and he was doing well like I think he could survive this but but ultimately he's in the toilet with his numbers and what happens in the UK is they have these bi-elections you know these are kind of our version of off your local elections that are kind of bellweathers for the public mood is and if labor gets absolutely pasted in one or succession of those elections then I think you might see that the final damn break and in Starmer have to go yeah and they've done a lot of the shuffling stuff like I think it's communications director of Starmer's communications director also quit on Monday you know the economist noted that in 19 months cure Starmer has lost two chiefs of staff four directors of communications and eleven ministers so they've been doing the kind of internal reshuffle thing that didn't working and to your point like you know they they campaigned on you know taxes not going up it's clear they can't really keep that promise they campaign hard as an effort to you know sort of defang the right wing on stopping the small boats and cutting down an immigration they haven't been able to deliver on that in part because you can never kind of outright wing the right wing and so I think I saw Starmer's approval rating is now 23% right oh by the way Ben Axios had a list of like European leader approval ratings Macron is at the bottom with 16% yeah Friedrich Merz over Germany is at 21% here Starmer's at 23% but then also I saw you gov did surveys attracting Europeans opinions of the US and a more than 60% of the population of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain now have an unfavorable view of the US that includes 72% of Germans at 84% of dance so you have these like you have these like unpopular European leaders and then populations that are starting to hate America and just none of this feels good also by the way like police are also now investigating yeah whether Prince Andrew broke the law by sharing other documents with Epstein so back on to your like accountability point like it's only seemingly happening in the UK it's there's zero accountability back home yeah and I think though that that combination of they're actually being accountability in Europe and their hatred of America these days I think is going to motivate really aggressive investigations into the Epstein file follow ups right including of the Americans in it some of whom do business in Europe and so we may be in this kind of strange position where the most aggressive legal and journalistic follow through on the Epstein files including related to Americans is going to happen in Europe because they're pissed over there like that's one thing you take away from all those polls is people are pissed and Epstein kind of is the worst version of American hegemony let's just say right some some just just monster right who's also got this network of powerful people so you know that's something to watch too not just kind of what happens can cures in me what you can hear him doing is something you should have done for the beginning which is trying to pick a fight with Nigel Farage and just you know make it a choice essentially but but he's not a particularly combative guy he's not comfortable in the culture wars he's been very like you know defensive as you say on immigration not sure that that will work for him we'll see maybe it will maybe he can write the ship but I do think either way this kind of European anger among publics and elites is going to probably motivate them digging deep on what they can find on Epstein 100% because in fact what you're also seeing is you know like the Danish Prime Minister Meta Frederickson her approval rating is up because she told Trump were to shove it right yeah so yeah good for her when we're unpopular over there and you're seeing polling like leaders benefit in the polls from seeming tough in you know the in confronting Trump like we know o'r gweithio. One of their updates, so last week we did this big section on Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. She had been in the news a bunch because she was weirdly on the scene at the FBI's rate of the Fulton County election office in Georgia, which was very weird, turned out Trump told her to be there. And then there was this mysterious Wall Street Journal report about Tulsi blocking a whistleblower complaint from being sent up to Congress in part because it was highly classified, but also seemingly because of politics. So since then, the intelligence community's inspector general has turned the report itself, the whistleblower report over to Congress. The so-called Gang of Eight, which is the chairman of vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chairman and ranking member in the House Intelligence Committee, then the speaker, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader, and Senate Minority Leader, all of that access to it. There's also been some news reports about the substance of the whistleblower report. The Guardian says the NSA intercepted a conversation between two individuals connected with a foreign intelligence service, talking about someone close to Trump. Now, the sourcing in the story of the Guardian story is a lawyer for one of the whistleblowers and bizarrely been like, the lawyer initially told the Guardian that the call was between a foreign intel person and a Trump aide, but then had to like clarify the deemed spoke. So it's all a little weird. And then the time's kind of followed up on that and they said it's not clear what the individuals are from, but that the discussion itself involved Iran and the report, the whistleblower report was drafted around when Trump was considering whether or not to strike Iran, so maybe that gives us some more visibility into this thing. The Times also says there's a debate about the underlying value of the intelligence or whether these intel people were gossiping or spreading this information or what, but it does seem pretty clear that Gabbard screwed up either unintentionally or intentionally by not getting this report over to Congress and the time frame required. And while there may have been some complexity to it given, you know, the level of classification and limited reasons to distribute it, she also passed a copy along to Susie Wiles Trump's chief of staff, which suggests there was some like political ass covering happening. So I don't know, man, like what do you make of this as we're getting these little drips of information? Anything like any clarity? No clarity. Trump to the conspiracy theorizing heavy Steve Whitkopf vibes in here, you know, maybe not a Trump aid, but he's involved in Iran, you know, I don't know, but we don't know. We don't know. We don't know. Here's what jumped out to me, Tommy, I mean, first of all, people should know, sure, the NSA vacuums up all these calls, and I presume that Trump's NSA is probably even less restrained than the Obama NSA, which got in a lot of hot water. But it's very unusual for there to be a complaint like this. So in other words, you know, presumably incidentally, there might be collection that involves an American with foreigners or foreign intelligence services or governments. There's nothing unusual about that. It has to be pretty, you know, alarming for someone to do this, I think. So that's one point. I agree. The second point is that Trump's style of decision making and the kind of loose nature of having like this inner circle that encompasses people in government and out of government kind of lends itself to this kind of problem, because I actually have talked to people in foreign governments who deal with the Trump administration. And what they do is because there's no formal process that works, right? Like just having the meeting with Marco Rubio or the State Department doesn't work, you just start calling people that are in Trump's orbit, you know, you're calling WIC off, you're calling Jared, but you're also calling like somebody you know is going to Mar-a-Lago next weekend. Hey Roger Stone. You're calling fucking Roger Stone or you're calling Steve Bannon or people who you think get in the door to see Trump, you're calling Tucker Carlson, you know. And it kind of lends itself to this, you know, we've talked about it lends itself to corruption. It also just kind of lends itself to like potential malign influence, right? Where, you know, you're trying to court some foreign intelligence service or government is, you know, this is our guy. Let's go to that guy. And, you know, meanwhile maybe they're doing business with that guy too, you know, like this whistleblower complaint is probably indicative of much bigger problem that is obviously going to be the case if this is how you conduct foreign policy. Yeah. And like we're seeing this play out in the domestic realm too, I mean, there's all these guys, lawyers, former aides, the Trump that are basically setting up cottage industries where they start to sell you a pardon, right? You pay them a million bucks and they'll get to the right person to get, you know, whoever pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez of the former, you know, head of state who is convicted of trafficking 400 tons of cocaine to the United States, like sure, you know, nothing's off the table here. So you're right. This does, it's a weird story, you know, Tom Cotton or Republican from market saw as like playing it down, saying it's no big deal. He buys that. He did the right thing. Yeah. Real straight shooter there. But I don't know. Hopefully we'll learn more. This is one of those things where like the fact that it's classified, I think kind of leads to so much more lore, like maybe if they could just put it out, it might be, it's probably, yeah. That's a big deal. I'd love to know. I think the big deal is what it says probably about how business is done, you know, which is just murky. You know, there's a reason you have process. There's a reason you want the people who deal foreign governments to be employees of the United States government. You know, there's a reason you don't want your Middle East envoy to have a son or who's in the crypto business doing huge deals, right? Like all these things just lend itself to this kind of, this kind of, you know, ambiguity. Yeah. The Wall Street Journal. I had a piece out, I think yesterday about like, I pray with the total is like 1.4 billion has been made by the Trump family from their crypto businesses with like Zach Wickoff, Steve Wickoff, son in charge of it. So yeah, there's a lot of avenues for corruption. Not the other world is brought to you by American giant. It sucks when you buy a new t-shirt where it twice, wash it a couple times and it's just gone. Just falls apart. It looks like crap. A lot of outerwear. It's not made to last. And especially when you need it to be warm out. This time of year, good hoodie is essential, but it can be tough to find one that will last through the season. The American giant classic full zip hoodie is made to last a lifetime. So you can count on it to bring you comfort and warmth year after year. Slate magazine called it the greatest hoodie ever made and from Cotton Disipper, it's made right here in the U.S. A. Love my American giant sweatshirts. I do too. I got great sweatpants too. Speaking of items, I need to hold up to a lot of wear. My kids are constantly smearing crap all over them so they get washed all the time and they still fit great. They look good. The day I got them. 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And the best part, you just scoop and serve. It's a freezer, no thawing, no prep, no mess, just nutrient-rich, clean food that feels they're happiest, healthiest days, so you get more of them to share together 11 and I love our dogs. We do. We do love our dogs. Like family, they are family. And so, of course, you want to feed your dog the best food you can. You want to make them happy. You want them to be healthy. You want them to have more energy and a better mood, more calm and focused and softer for all the good stuff. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to sundaysfordogs.com/world50 to get 50% off your first order. Or you can use the code world50 to check out. That's 50% off your first order at sundaysfordogs.com/world50. Sundaysfordogs.com/world50 or use the code world50 to check out. All right, Ben, let's turn to Japan. Our Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi's gamble to call a snap early election to consolidate her power. It turned out to be a staggering success. So Takaichi's party, the LDP, won this historic victory on sunday, they picked up more than 100 seats outright, which means the LDP has about 316 seats on their own. And then with their coalition partners, they now control over 350 of the 465 seat lower house of the national diet, which is Japan's legislature. So Takaichi basically pulled a reverse cure stormer here she got, like when she became Prime Minister, she barely got enough support from within the party to get the job. than a hundred days later, she calls us away. and then she delivered her party a supermajority through it. And the win was because of her, not because of the LDP's popularity. The LDP as we've talked about before, like they've basically ruled Japan's in 1955 with two brief kind of interruptions. But after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's resignation in 2020, the party's been a bit of a mess. They've had a bunch of like terrible candidates for Prime Minister and they've been losing support. And so what Takaichi did is she seems to have almost single handily revived the party and in the process destroyed the traditional opposition parties. They just got crushed on the polls. And so the question now is, what is she going to do with this power? Takaichi has talked about drastically ramping up Japan's defense spending in Japan's defense industry. That's an option. She's talked about amending Japan's constitution in particular article nine, which renounces war and codifies Japan as a pacifist nation. That language was basically written by the US and imposed on Japan in 1947 after World War II. She's also talked about major spending to juice the economy and drive growth. So we just don't know. I guess we'll now wait and see what she decides, be able to be a hybrid, maybe it'll be parts and other parts. But the thing to know is that basically no one can stop her, like not the opposition and parliament, not her own party. Then what did you make of the results and how she ran and what it means for the balance of power in Asia and the partnership with the US? Well, it connects back to what you said about the Prime Minister of Denmark, right? 'Cause Takaichi, and we said this at the time, like she got into this fight with the Chinese and she doubled down on it. And that nationalism played well. Like we're at a time when people one strong leaders just seem like they're standing up for national interests. And so she's another case in point and she's on the right. But I think frankly, you could be on the right or the left. If you, you know, people want to see kind of strong leadership and she kind of sense that mood. Now she's very conservative. And then that leads to what the ramifications of this are. And look, I mean, Japan has been in its constitution, a nation dedicated only to having a self defense, not having any militarism given its past and given the US rule and drafting that constitution. But it also has had this kind of building set of complicated relationships in this neighborhood. It would take a long time to unpack why. But you know, I think the, from the outside in, from the Chinese or South Korean perspective, for instance, it said Japan didn't necessarily a tone for its wartime sins in the way even that a Germany has. You know, the ruins are still raw. But at the same time, from the Japanese perspective, the Chinese Communist Party has been stirring up anti-Japanese nationalism for a long time. And it is virulent. I mean, I see some of this stuff. And so it's got to be kind of scary to have this giant country next to you that is getting stronger and stronger and is part of its identity is kind of hating, you know, Japan. And at the same time, the US is not the reliable security guarantor that it has been because Trump, and while he hasn't really, you know, single that Japan this time around, can you really trust that the US is going to be there to defend you against China? And so I think there are some natural things that we're building over time in terms of the security dimension, the region in terms of the US alliance. And then along comes, you know, the Margaret Thatcher of Japan. And I think we're going to find out what it's like. And while I think some of this was inevitable, and she may also think maybe I can jumpstart growth by putting a lot of money in defense, I don't know. But it's a little worsen, you know, because if you got this flashboard in the Taiwan Strait, and that's what got her in trouble with the Chinese in the first place, and she said that that was, you know, important to Japan's defense. And you start to have a more musk-good Japan. It's going to freak out the Chinese. And you know, it just adds to the tinder box feeling of geopolitics right now. Yeah, that was one of my takeaways, too. I mean, look, just in terms of what she could do, like, you know, she could take steps that make the Prime Minister more powerful, right? Like you could, she could change it so she has more power during her crisis. She could lower the bar for future constitutional amendments. She could just sort of like add clauses to the Constitution that recognize the self-defense prohibition of the military. There's sort of like sort of smaller, more incremental steps she could take than the ones I could have laid out at the top. But like, I have the same reaction you did then, which was, you know, the FTE mentioned that, like, the Beijing War and Taki chi against, quote, retracing the road of militarism. And as you said, like, obviously, the Chinese are more than a touch hypocritical here. But it does worry me that one of Trump's like core policy things is pushing countries like Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan to invest more in defense spending, right? As we are seeing a rise in these like right-wing parties in these countries, then it's like, I don't know, guys, this could end very badly, but we've seen it before. - Yeah, that collection of, you know, that access has not always been the best in the past. But I think that the, you know, foreign policy, sometimes people don't appreciate that success is just the absence of worst things happening. And if you look at Northeast Asia, you've got like nuclear-armed North Korea divided from US-aligned South Korea, emerging Chinese Communist Party superpower in Beijing, Japan, like, there's been stability somehow among those countries in the sense that there hasn't been a war. And economic growth has been allowed to, you know, explode in people trade even if they, you know, don't like each other. And now, if all of those countries are turning, you know, with the exception of South Korea for now, in this kind of direction, I don't know, like, can that hold for 10 years? I mean, 'cause, you know, she's got beef with the Chinese, but I'm sure the North Koreans too, in vice versa, you know. And so if the US is kind of receding from this role of being the kind of security guarantor and we're so big and present, then nobody will mess with it. If we're kind of pulling back from that, the concern is, you know, there's opportunity maybe having a different balance of power in the world and new rules, but the downside could be giant vacuums. And you know, the road of militarism to quote Chinese propaganda, leading to, you know, uncomfortable destinations. - Yeah, in a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Xi Jinping's purge of all the senior leaders in the Chinese military. And again, for what folks even understand there's like, the PLA, the Chinese military, it's not like the country's military. It's the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party. So you're not necessarily elevated because you fought hard or bravely. It's like you greased the right guy. You bribed the right official. So you could have people with like zero fucking actual military experience at the top of the organization who don't really fully understand the horrors of war at a time when you have this rising military in Japan. And yeah, like you said, like sometimes, you don't get a lot of credit as a leader for the dogs that kind of didn't bark or the problems that didn't arise during your tenure, but what you outlined could be a big one. Speaking of China Ben, so there were two stories that are China that we wanted to flag. The first is Hong Kong media local JBLI was sentenced to 20 years in prison under the national security law. The China imposed on Hong Kong back in 2020 after the huge protests in 2019 and 2020. So this sentence, Jimmy Lai's sentence, is the longest sentence ever given under the national security law. And it probably means he will die in prison unless something changes. He'd be like late '90s when his sentence technically ends. The prosecution is clearly politically motivated. It's an effort to shut down his newspaper Apple Daily. It's an effort to just crush any lingering hope for press freedom in Hong Kong generally. So that is very bad. The second story is about Taiwan. So the financial time's reported that the Trump administration is pulling together another really large arms package for Taiwan that includes some big ticket items like Patreon missiles. Back in December, the US approved an $11 billion arms sale of Taiwan, which was massive then. And they say this next package could be nearly double that size, the number they quote in the story is up to 20 billion. The FT says when Xi Jinping talked to Trump on the phone last week, he raised this and they quote sources in the story saying that Beijing has warned the US that the arms sale could derail Trump's visit to China in April. So Ben, I just kind of, I found this confluence of issues, interesting, because I think you and I have said on the show, like we both assume Trump only cares about economics and getting a trade deal with China. However, in the past, he has promised to get Jimmy Lai out of prison. He actually said it would be easy to do so in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, who now has kind of gone quiet on the subject. But like, you know, it put up a shut up time. And the question is whether Trump will spend any political capital pushing Xi on Jimmy Lai or any other human rights issue during this visit. The cynic in me does wonder, Ben, if like China gives Jimmy Lai 20 years, so they can cut a sentence down to five or 10 and Trump can call that a win and they sell their guy in jail, but put that aside. But this arm sale to Taiwan, it does feel like a much bigger hurdle and kind of harder to unwind, given where the Republican party is and given the congressional role in arming Taiwan. So I don't know, what was your read on what's happening here? And like, whether this actually creates some real turbulence for Trump as he heads to Beijing in April. I think it does. And first of all, we should say Jimmy Lai is a hero. And he's rich enough that he could have gotten out of there at a certain point and lived a certain kind of life. But he stuck by his newspaper and his principles. Interesting contrast to Jeff Bezos, by the way. Jeff Bezos was not at risk of going to prison at all. Jimmy Lai gave everything up for what he did. believed, all we were asking Jeff Bezos to do is, you know, keep funding something. I mean, it just shows a difference. It's notable. I don't think that Xi Jinping would let Jimmy lie to prison. I mean, if I had to bet on it, because he's a hard ass, you know, I mean, he's, you know, that he just purged the military. He's quashed to sent in Hong Kong. I think he wouldn't want to be seen to be, you know, even doing a favor for Donald Trump in this kind of human rights space, like it's a space where there's usually a slam door. I hope I'm wrong, but my sense is that that wouldn't be in the offing. It might have been earlier, you know, at the beginning of the Trump administration. But but now, I mean, I think she's all his moves suggest a guy internally and externally who's moving at a deliberate pace, but only in one direction, you know, and that's that's a fairly confrontational direction with the United States on certain things. That leads me to Taiwan. Like, I think Taiwan is the issue that we're going to be paying a lot more attention to over the next year or two. I mean, it has not featured yet, but it is the flashpoint. You know, they, they continue to shovel these weapons at the door to the Taiwanese. Trump probably likes arms sales for a variety of reasons. They do, you know, provoke Beijing. And in the past, the way that the Chinese have dealt with that is, yes, sometimes by canceling meetings, never a presidential visit, though. That would be a huge signal if they actually did that. I don't think they will. But what they tend to do in response is they'll do some like really aggressive military exercises around Taiwan. You know, they'll fly over their airspace or fly missiles over their space or, you know, have like an armada that is uncomfortably close to the Taiwanese, you know, land. And, you know, that that always can risk getting a little scratchy, right? And, and so I think that's what we're going to see is like this kind of a bit of a spiral, unless Trump just chooses to kind of throw Taiwan overboard and agree to some formulation that essentially abandons them in terms of the U.S. coming to their defense. Either way, I think, I think Taiwan is going to be something that we're talking about more and more over the next year or two. Yeah, definitely want to watch as we head to April in particular. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to clean your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. 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It's simple paying rent is better with built and now owning a home can be better with built too. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com/world. That's j-o-i-n-b-i-l-t.com/world. Make sure to use our URLs. They know we sent you. Finally, Ben. The winter Olympics are happening in Italy as we speak. So the host cities are technically in Milan and Cortino. The events are really happening all over Northern Italy. Breezy Johnson won the first gold medal for the U.S. and downhill skiing. U.S. figure skaters won gold in the team competition in part thanks to the quad god, Ilya Malonen. Did I say that right? I don't know. Two great names. Quad god and Breezy Johnson. My daughters run to the quad god. Quad god. You can do these jumps and nobody else can do. In the back foot. Yeah. Fucking wild. There's also been some heartbreak. Lindsay Vaughan, she was trying to come back at age 41 and trying to compete with a torn ACL. I do not understand how you do that. But have this horrible crash and had to be airlifted off of the course with the tibia fracture. That was tough. Speaking of painful things to look at, Vice President J.D. Vance was booed when his face was shown on the stadium big screen of the opening ceremony, but he is not mad about it Ben. Speaking of not mad, Donald Trump decided to personally attack a freestyle skier named Hunter Hess for daring to say that he doesn't agree with everything happening in the U.S. at all times basically. Love all the free speech, absolutists in the White House. Then finally, we have to talk about this evergrowing cheating scandal that is turning the sport of ski jumping upside down. The German newspaper built reported that ski jumpers were allegedly injecting their penises with high eluronic acid to enlarge them. This is how this scheme would work. Ski jumpers were special suits. They are specially made based on the size of the individual athlete's body, including the crotch area. So those measurements are determined by a 3D body scanner and they are taken in front of a doctor. So that the total size of the suit matters, though, because even a small amount of additional fabric or material on the suit can create more drag and more lift and help you fly farther. So the theory goes, you inject your junk with this acid. It's like a lip filler basically. It swells up. You get fitted for a bigger suit with more surface area. You go further. Now, this story is probably total bullshit and the junk juicing would have happened like months ago when the suits were made. So we can't like got and test it now. But it is one of those stories that is too good to fact check. Ben, I have not had the Olympics on the last couple of days because I was on a plane for seven trillion hours and now I'm in a time zone. I can't understand. But what events are you watching? First of all, I feel like this last segment is getting edger and edger with each passing week. One thing on the JD Vance and then the Olympics. It is weird and important that we at an Olympics in Europe, we're kind of like the bad guys. We're like the Soviet Union used to be when they showed up at these places. Our JD Vance is getting booed. Our athletes, poor athletes are having an answer for ice and most of them are saying the right things. But as an American, that should make you uncomfortable. I mean, and the other time, I was on the US delegation to the closing ceremonies of the London Olympics and they were cheering for American athletes. They were cousins or something. So that was a little jarring. Yeah, I love the Winter Olympics because I watched, I found myself watching curling. Love, love a little curling. And they trying to explain that to my kids was like an interesting journey. But I like the idea that there's still these subcultures of people around the world that do like one thing obsessively. I totally agree. And then every four years, like you get to see their excellence at it. Box lead is the same way, right? It's like, well, the better athletes over the box lead. I mean, you're sprinting as fast as humanly possible and shoving a heavy S lead, but it's cool as hell. It is. And you know, I watched figure skating's on a lot of my asses. I didn't want to watch Lindsay Vaughn because I had a sense of foreboding about the ACL film, freaking me out. But on the ski jump, junk scandal, the sides being physically uncomfortable thinking about it. I'm bad enough with like injections to begin with in my arm. I don't know what to name me. I mean, it just, it is interesting how performance enhancing drugs that used to just be like, you know, professional wrestlers, juicing steroids, or, you know, Mark McGuire, they seem to get like as the rules to capture them become more aggressive. There's always some new frontier, you know. And this may be the final frontier though. I can't think of one beyond this to tell you. John choosing usually the juice shrinks the junk. There was a Norwegian team that was kind of like tampering with their suits to fly farther. So there's some precedent here. I feel like we're all getting clickbaited, but it's just too fun not to talk about it. Or they're leaking this so that people think that they've got bigger junk. There you go. I mean, that's why both of us are recruited for ski jumping. There wasn't, do you see this? Do you see this Norwegian athlete today? I can't say this guy's name. I'm not even trying to. Oh, the guy who made it his guilt. Yeah. Yeah. Just dude, Sturla home lagrid. I don't know. It's one of those names where the two of the vowels are attached. So he won the bronze in the 20 kilometer by Athalon that he used his post when interview to disclose that he cheated on his girlfriend and was heartbroken and wanted to get her back. Here's the quote. I told her a week ago and it's been the worst week. of my life. I had a gold medal in life and there's probably a lot of people out there who look at me differently now, but I only have eyes for her. Sports has taken a bit of a backseat these past couple of days. Yeah, I wish I could share this with her. I'm not ready to give up. I hope that committing social suicide might show her how much I love her social suicide there. I think it's meaning like bearing his soul on Norwegian TV. That's one way to give a speech. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting. These athletes, this is like the one moment. You know, every, you know, maybe in their lives that they're going to have a camera pointed at them in a large audience. And some choose to like have political protest and this is a different choice. But to me, that's what it reinforces. Like, what do you say if you get one shot to make some announcements in the world? I don't know. I'm curious if there's any follow up on this story because I don't know. Yeah, this is like the Will Smith slap of Olympic speeches. Also, dude, you won the fucking bronze. You know what I mean? You're stealing the shine. This woman must be so pissed. She's like, you're, you're, you're, yeah. Now you're in there. It's like the Reynolds pamphlet in Hamilton. Now I sound like a total lib. But you're just just, you're just kind of humiliating this woman all over again in front of the whole world. I don't know. It seems like we're judgment. I will say, I love that event. And when I, like, the idea that you're going to ski and shoot things and, you know, so that's the winner of Olympics. That's what the kind of stuff I like. These kind of sports that make no sense. Is that one of the ones where you like, you cross-country skis and then you're like, hard as exploding and you lay down and you're like, yeah, I think that's what it is. It can be wrong. But I think that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that sport because like, who invented that? Like some, some fins fighting out the Russians or something. That's exactly right. Yeah. It's like it's like dudes up in Finland battling like Soviet troops and the trees and World War One. Yeah. We should make this a sport, you know? You're like, you're against really good, you know? You're good. Oh, man. Yeah. I love the Olympics too, man. It's fun when you're like with a group, you know, the kind of like nationalism, the juices get flown, get a good USA, USA, China going, it does just suck. Like these poor athletes are being asked. They're up, they're doing press conferences because they have to. They're getting asked political questions. They're trying to offer like really measured responses. And then the president of the United States, fucking unloads on. A tweet from Jake Paul or something. What are we doing? Yeah. What are we doing? Come on. I mean, Jesus. It's just like everyone's just got to be mad about fewer things. Like I will vote for a presidential candidate that promises to like not tweet about the half-time show of the Super Bowl to ban gender reveals just like a couple like just to shut up after like 8 p.m. You know, like no like white nationalist videos about the Obamas where you like turn them into monkeys. He's like, how about that? That's like all I'm asking. Well, I had to tell you Tommy, like I got me thinking about, I mean, I thought this before too, but we've got the Olympics here in LA in two years. And Trump is going to be the fucking president. Yep. And that thing is going to be a nightmare because he's going to be like on his way out, Mad King, you know, Rosebud moment for Citizen Kane. Like what should be a really exciting thing to have the Olympics coming to Los Angeles. I have like this foreboding about, you know. I do too. Yes. I mean, he's got the World Cup and then he has the Olympics. You know that like that asshole is going to like crash the podium when some American wins a gold medal and just like stand up there and like take it from them and assume that he actually won the 100 meter or whatever, like Maria Machado them. Go be in a war, like a Twitter war with a men's basketball team the entire time or something. Yeah. We'll bomb Canada half way through it. That's an uplifting close. Well, look, I love the Olympics. Yes. Very fun talking with you from all the way over here. I will not be on the show next week because I don't even remember why I think we're just like we're flying back that day or something, but Ben's got a great guest host lined up for you. Do you want to announce an hour? You guys hold on that. Yeah, we're going to miss you, Tommy, but we've got a great guest host. I'm in a loyal Dean who you know. I'm in just great unbelievably smart about the world about the Middle East in particular. I'm sure we're going to be able to cover a lot of that ground. So we'll miss you, but I'm going to be here. And yeah, I mean, I'll be in Munich this week for the Munich Security Conference. So I will be bringing some euro gossip back with me to the world. I'll be I think I'm going to like, substack through this Munich Security Conference here, you know, like impressions. I love it. I love it. I was actually at what's happening with the German lawmaker who is the one who is interviewing AOC at the Munich Security Forum. So she's all pumped and it'll be great. I'm glad you're doing that. By the way, for the AOC some props. I don't know if you saw her like she she she's been throwing haymakers. So she she stood up for the Cuban people. I know if you saw her like pointing out the she basically point out the that unbelievable humanitarian crisis that we are rating, you know, whatever you think of the Cuban government that the why is it normal that we are just like starving people to death collectively punishing these people as part of this kind of regime chain strategy. She took a massive whack at APEC after that New Jersey race. So I like this AOC moving into our space. She's usually been domestic. I like World O AOC. And she's great. She's really smart. It's one of the best speakers we got in the party. All right. Well, that's it for the news portion of the show. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for enduring this time change. But stick around after the break here to hear Ben's interview with Nila Tabrizzi about getting laid off from the Washington Post, like what that experience was like. What we're all missing out on now that the Washington Post is, you know, no foreign news coverage. So very important conversation. Don't miss it. Potty of the world is brought to you by three day blinds. If you're one of those people that needs to sleep in complete darkness, that is me. But your blinds always allow light in at the crack of dawn. You need three day blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the US. And right now, if you use my URL, three day blinds.com/world they're running a by one get one 50% off deal. We can shop for almost anything at home. 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So they're a brand you can trust. Right now, get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three day blinds. Head to three day blinds dot com slash world for their buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, shutters and drapery for a free no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to three day blinds dot com slash world. One last time, that's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the number three, DIY blinds dot com slash world. Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome back to pote de world, investigate reporter and author Nilo to breezy. She's also co-author of the book for the sun after long nights. The story of Iran's women let uprising, which I we've recommended before, but truly, especially given what's going on around everybody should pick it up. But Nilo, it's so good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, great to see you. Okay, so let's just start with the big event in your life, which is you were part of the massive layoffs at the Washington Post. Sorry, we're sorry for you for that. We're sorry for the world for not getting the reporting of you and your colleagues. I mean, I just to just begin, I guess there was some sense something was coming. Were you still shocked by the that this happened to you at the scale of this kind of describe the lead into that event? Yes, so while I was reporting on a story about a massacre in Russia and Iran, that's when I started hearing about these big layoffs that were coming. This was, you know, two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago. We heard they were coming. We started to hear rumors and we had heard at first that, you know, management went to the head of the international desk and let them know that they were shutting down, you know, the Middle East team nearly all of the foreign bureaus would be shut down. And we had heard that Peter Finn, who's the head of international, who's been a mentor to so many of the post that he said, I'd rather be laid off than be a part of this plan. And so that started to trickle down. And so we started to put the pieces together just with people talking in the newsroom. And we learned, you know, that sports likely was going to get cut. International was going to get cut. But everything that happened was so much more severe than any of us prepared for. I mean, I was on the investigation's desk. This was not a desk that was supposed to be cut or any of the rumors that we were hearing. And we lost a good number of people on my desk as well. So how does this happen? I mean, so there's just, just practically speaking, you're all called on to some zoom and they announce these layoffs and then you're packing up your desk. I mean, is it, was it just the sense of the rug being pulled out from under you? And and how did they, how did the person who did this? explain why they were doing this. - Yes, so the run-up to the lead-off was really shocking. So I had my last story published in the newspaper on a Tuesday. It was about the build-up of vessels and aircraft in the Persian Gulf. So it was really precarious time. We get an email that evening that everyone has to be on a Zoom at 8.30 in the morning, Wednesday morning. And we are told not to come into the building and that there's going to be a significant restructuring and refocusing. And so all of these set off alarm bells early Zoom, not being told to come into the building. And the way it was presented to us, it was a 30-minute Zoom call where Matt Murray, our executive editor, said that there had to be a significant reshuffling of the post, still unclear. Even when I think about that call, I don't really understand the vision or what they're trying to do. And then our HR rep came and we were told, after this meeting, you're going to get an email from us that will let you know if your position is eliminated or retained. And I was one of the more than 300 people that got an eliminated email. And this is layoffs, unfortunately, are part of our business, right? This has happened. I was laid off from vice 10 years ago. And it really pains me to say the way I was laid off from vice was so much more humane than what I just, when I experienced at the post, because at vice, we were called in. It was also a mass layoff. Our entire team was laid off. But I had the opportunity to look at who was laying me off and actually be able to speak and have a conversation. But we got these cold emails. And there was people that have been there for 27 plus years of service. There were also laid off in this subject line email. So it was really, yeah, it has felt completely destabilizing and has been very ungrounding. And I'm lucky, you know, I'm a US-based employee. I'm a member of the post guild. So, you know, I have some type of protections and things like that, and I have the safety of the guild. But I'm really concerned for people who don't. People who are international staff that are not US-based employees, contractors, translators, drivers, all of this different local staff that supports a reporting. I mean, this is something that's being felt for so many people. And also, it's a horrible look in the industry. You know, other companies can look at this and decide that they may want to follow suit. Well, what's the-- yeah, I mean, give us a sense of the scale of what was lost in terms of foreign coverage and that's obviously what people come to this podcast for. You know, what is being lost with those bureaus, both in terms of the reporting and the ability to get stories and communicate what's actually happening in places around the world. And also, like you said, I imagine the ripple effects are beyond the people laid off. It's the local fixers and it's the vocal stringers that may be not show up on the balance sheet. But if the foreign desk is gone, that's probably hundreds of other people that are gone, too, right? Yes, we're still trying to understand that. Exactly how many people are affected. But this is a huge loss for our industry, for people who read our paper. I mean, so many important policymakers read the Washington Post. And so I think the ripple effects will be, you know, will be felt all over. So they cut the entire Middle East team. They cut the Ukraine team. So we had two reporters that were there. We had Francesca Ebel, that was based in Russia. She was our Russia correspondent. She was also cut. Names that for me were the by-line definers of the Washington Post sort of no longer there. Like I had come to the Washington Post from New York Times because I loved the coverage of the post. And I loved, you know, Louisa Lovelock, Love Day Morris, Kareem Fahim. Like I could go on, people that have really inspired me. And we are all, you know, worse off not being able to read this reporting. And even right now, I mean, the area that I specialize in covering Iran, it's a really confusing moment, right? This is a story that is really important. It's in flux, you know, even the last story that I did about Iran was our extremely high traffic driver to our papers, a really high red, while circulated story. And we're still in the middle of what's going on there. And so for me, there's people that took the risk to speak with me for work that I have to hit pause on right now. And that's something really difficult to tend with. - Yeah, actually, I want to ask you about that because, you know, yes, people might think this is terrible. There's just, there's already been a consolidation of a lot of farm bureaus, right? Like the LA times used to have them, you know, the Baltimore sun used to have them, right? Now it's basically the New York Times has them in the Wall Street Journal. But to your point, I read the Washington Post when I was in the White House, you know? It was like I read an intelligence report. You know, like it taught me something that was going on. Or your book, which, you know, kind of grew out of, I'm sure reporting you're doing at the paper. One of the reasons people should read it, what's so extraordinary about it is like, you see these protests in Iran, but you don't really know what's going on there. Or even people, you know, Iranian Americans and maybe they can talk to their family, but you found literal journalists who would collaborate with you, take risks on the ground to get this story. And I read this, you're reporting in your book. And I'm like, well, I understand this movement, the Women Life Freedom Movement, you know, much, much better with much greater nuance and understanding and motivation than I would just kind of formulating an opinion based on what people have in X, you know? Like, and so what do you think the texture is of our ability at a time when things are so complicated around the world? How much are we losing with these kinds of layoffs? - I mean, I don't even think we'll be able to grasp that until the some real consequences come out from the fallout of this really, you know, short-sighted and horrific decision. I mean, for example, if we just look at Iran reporting, right? That's mostly what I was doing at Visual Forensics. My colleague, Yegona, was the Iran Bureau. It was a, yeah, the Iran Correspondent based in Turkey. She too was laid off, so both of us were laid off during this incredibly pivotal moment of reporting, right? I mean, over 6,000, close to 7,000 confirmed deaths of protesters in Iran that were killed in this latest uprising. This number will continue to climb. We're still trying to understand more about people who were killed, what the future of the Islamic Republic looks like. This is a really tenuous moment for Iran. And we don't have anyone there, right? We haven't had anyone based in the country since my colleague, Jason Rosayan, was unjustly imprisoned. And it was his tenure anniversary of being released from having prison. And so we've had to figure out creative ways to do journalism from afar and do important accountability based reports. So what that's looked like for me in the context of reporting on Iran over the past month has been verifying extremely grim visuals and being able to take in all of these videos we're seeing from eyewitnesses and actually put together a story or a piece of analysis or an investigation from that. And I'm really crushed that our audience is going to miss out on that. And as well, policymakers who are reading our paper and trying to understand more about what's going on, they don't have access to that anymore. And there's just fewer and fewer places that do this really important work and foreign work on Iran and other countries. Like the pool is shrinking. And healthy competition is really great for reporters. There's a camaraderie among reporters. And there's also a, oh shoot, I wish I could have gotten this story. And there's like a really important dynamic that is there. And once you cut that all off and it's just one or two news organizations that robustly cover an area, I mean, everyone loses in that. And that that's really, really disappointing. Yeah, I always felt like when I was in the White House that the Times Post journal competition was very useful because they kind of push each other. Well, look, I mean, the elephant in the room here is Jeff Bezos. And we don't know what's in Jeff Bezos' head. What we do know that it's indeniable is that whether, you know, some years the post was turning a revenue, some years it was losing money. But couch cushion money for Jeff Bezos. So what is that? I mean, you would almost understand it more if it was like some family run newspaper that survived on the revenue. And you could then tell yourself, well, these people like literally can't afford it. Jeff Bezos literally could afford to lose $1 billion that you were running a newspaper. What is your, what is that like to know that there's someone who could have kept these positions and chose not to? And does anybody have any indication as to why that might be? I clearly changed the opinion section to suit Trump. But I don't know why you have to limit foreign coverage unless maybe he doesn't want people to know what's going on and places like Iran. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I wish I had an answer. I mean, I think that's why really important media reporting is crucial in this moment. I've been waiting to see, we have fantastic media reporters at the Washington Post. And I'm having to read about what happened in my own newsroom from competitors. And so that's also something that's really alarming. But I mean, yeah, you're right. It's poor leadership. It is really hard to know. It's just really hard to contend with the fact that someone who does own our paper could fund it. I mean, that's been brought up several times. But also the leadership that has been in place has just not been sufficient, you know, are, you know, Will Lewis, who was our publisher, those recently, recently left. I mean, he came to the newsroom once in his tenure. He made one speech to the newsroom. And generally, many of us did feel that he was very engaged beyond that. Not exactly Marty Baron, you know, who, yeah. No, I mean, and that's, you know, the culture of the post. It's a really, really special place. Like, when I, it's the newsroom that everyone collaborates with each other. And even, like, there really isn't. desk on desk trying to out scoop each other. Everyone's working with each other, and that's a really defining feature of the post, and I think that this has really been harmed by this action, and if I'm trying to, again, read the tea leaves as much as you are, even though I was employed there, I'm trying to understand the strategy. Part of the strategy I'm hearing is, oh, we want to focus on national security. Well, your national security desk is only as good as your foreign desk, right? Because it's collaborative, and our foreign reporters will report out storylines, collaborate with the national security desk and do incredible robust reporting. So I just feel like this was, yeah, it's hard to make sense of this decision because it feels completely irrational. Well, I want to ask you about this, and maybe this relates to what I also want to ask you, what you're maybe too early, but if you have thought about what you're going to do, but the point you're making is so important, I want to emphasize it. Sure, you keep the Washington reporters who are reporting a national security eye, they're calling people like me and my old job, or they're getting in the intelligence community. I'm not diminishing that, that's really important. But I used to sometimes, I could feel like, 'cause I was there during the period of media consolidation, and I used to find it was interesting that I would have Washington-based reporters calling me to ask me what was going on in Egypt, you know? And I'd be like, why don't you call someone in Egypt? I mean, I can tell you what we think is going on, but that is such a wrong way at looking at the world, right? I mean, if you only look at Iran, the country you've focused on, from the perspective of Washington, it's about our interests, it's about our politics, it's about, you know, it's not about people in Iran, or even the leadership of Iran, right? So, where do you, the question I want to ask, 'cause I'm sure you agree with the premises, where is that kind of reporting going to go? Because increasingly, there are these kind of independent journalists who are like doing pretty extraordinary stuff online by themselves, but they don't have the infrastructure of a newsroom. There's the smaller giant, or not smaller, there's a smaller number of giant organizations like the Times at BBC, there's TikTok, you know, and just, you know, someone in Iran uploading a video that, you know, we can watch. I mean, how do you think we're going to get that non-Washington story about the world? - I think there are fewer and fewer places that we're going to get that from, right? Like, you said it yourself, I mean, the Times is reporting robustly, and like looking at foreign stories, so is the BBC, but that's kind of it now. And doing this type of work is really, like, it is a team effort, right? Because, you know, I'm verifying a video, I'm interviewing eyewitnesses, I'm writing the story, well, every story that I've worked on has been made better by the people of part of it, and by the editors who are part of it. And many international editors who were also mentors were let go. And so, and also, you know, you need safety and infrastructure to do this work responsibly, right? You don't want to just send people into the middle of conflict zones without any training or any type of safety. I mean, that that's really dangerous. So this, you know, unfortunately, just limits our access to information and makes it really dangerous for people who want to pursue this, you know, individually. - And do you have any sense of what's next, your next chapter is, or is still digesting this, I'm sure. - My Oprah's next chapter, I still, you know, I've, the one bright part of this is that people have been so incredibly kind. Like people that I admire, companies that I love have reached out and I've been having great conversations with people. I'm also conscious of the fact that I've been going really full speed for the past year. So I do, you know, I do want to continue my investigative work. I want to keep reporting on Iran. I still want to do open source work. There are fewer and fewer open source teams too to do this type of work. But yeah, no, I have some ideas, but nothing's said yet. - And last thing, I mean, since I have you, just what is your impression of what's happening in Iran? I mean, we know kind of the machinations here, but kind of building on a conversation. Do you have any sense of the mood in Iran at this kind of tenuous point where the protests have kind of generally been quashed? They may be bombed. They may not be, what's your read on the mood there? - Yes, I mean, I can say confidently, you know, there's been a little bit more internet access the past few weeks, which is nice. So I've been able to communicate with sources more. I have never encountered people with such across the board, like just deep trauma that people are living in. I've interviewed people on their worst days, but this is just awful. Everyone that I speak with, that I speak with just says, like they can't even form thoughts. You know, one of my sources who's incredibly chatty said, next time we talk, maybe I should come up with a list of things I need to talk with you about because my brain can't process or bring in information. Or another source of mine said it was the first snow in Tehran a few weeks ago, and you could still see blood underneath the snow. Like it's, people are now living in this, just, yeah, just like completely unprocessed trauma of the massacres that they have witnessed and have happened to their friends and loved ones. Everyone that I know, every source that I know knows at least one or two people who've been killed. And that's just, it's extremely difficult to process that. So, and everyone that I've talked to has extreme anxiety, they say, we're waiting to be bombed at this point. Do you think it's gonna happen or do you think it's not? And the other thing that's really difficult is this protest moment sparked out of a currency devaluation, right? But the shut off of the internet and everything that happened in the last month, I mean, the job situation is even worse. That it's not like the currency has leveled out, it's continuing. So, by the government just shutting off the internet, well, a lot of people rely on the internet for their job and their livelihood. And that door has been really shut to people. So, it's really, it's grim. It's a population of people who are in deep trauma and grieving and feel increasingly stuck and are waiting to see whether or not they're going to be hit with air strikes. - Well, those are the kind of stories we need to hear. Nilo, where can people follow you in the meantime or are you kind of gonna be on the social media cleanse? - No, you can follow me on acts at end to breezy. - Okay, well look, I'm so sorry about what happened to you and your colleagues on like a personal level, but also just kind of a reader level, you know? And my hope is that you will find a way to do the kind of reporting you're doing and the evolving iteration of a media that doesn't just become so inward looking. But if people want more, I really encourage people to pick up for the sun after long nights. You will meet extraordinary people, you will see a protest movement from the ground up, you will understand Iran better, much better by reading that book. It's really kind of a classic actually of a different kind of reporting that I'd seen, which is you collaborating with people on the ground. So, thanks for that and thanks for joining us to talk about what I'm sure has been not so great a week for you. - Awesome. Yeah, it's great to chat with you anytime. Thank you so much. - Great, thanks. (upbeat music) - Thanks again, Neil, for doing the show. And, I guess I won't see you next week. - Safe travels, yeah. - I hope it's my, yeah, it's, it's crazy man. - Well, I'm safe. I mean, you'll be safe in Australia and he's on fun travels, yeah, yeah. - Fun travels. Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney. - I had a great night out in Brisbane at the G20. - Nice. - Kind of one of these epic Cody Keenan nights. - Oh, yeah, I know. - Saw the sunrise, my friend. - Yeah. - Awesome. All right, guys, sexy. - Yeah. - Potsy of World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alonaminkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldspin. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are Miitami Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. 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