Lindsey Graham's Bloody Legacy

Hey, it's Tommy from Pot Save America and Pot Save the World. Last year, 2,500 people joined us at CricketCon, conversations with some of the smartest organizers, least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics to talk about how to fix this mess. Even President Obama made a surprise appearance. We're doing it all again, November 5th to 7th in Washington, D.C., with even more podcast, panels, and workshops. Plus, there'll be drinks, which we'll need after the midterms, no matter which way they go. Get tickets at crookedcon.com. If you're a friend of the pod, you get a discount too. See you there. Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Roads. Ben, you've been riding a little high on the sports hog lately, so I wanted to read you a quote. This is from former NFL receiver Plaxico Burris comparing playing for the New York Jets to his time in prison. They're both kind of similar because when I walked into prison on my first day, I was like, damn, man, you're a fucking loser. And I had the same feeling every day I walked through the door with the Jets. I mean, loser would definitely apply. This is the man who shot himself in the leg. If I can sympathize with Ploxoburus for a moment here, being a Jets fan is a bit like being in a lifelong prison sentence. Yeah, of your own making. You're sentenced to every time the NFL season rolls around, people like you probably have something to look forward to and people like me don't. Nothing to look forward to other than next season. That was a mean quote. I just thought it was really funny. It's good. It's a really good quote. We have a great show for you guys today. The executive producer of today's episode is a special one. It's Senator Lindsey Graham from the grave. I'm half kidding, Ben. Graham's funeral happened today in Washington. We record on Tuesday. And for some reason, Lindsey Graham is being treated like a head of state. It's very... Yeah, peculiar. I have thoughts. I've used on it. Yeah. So we'll get to it. Both Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu is here for the funeral and also Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They're both in town to attend the funeral. And then they're meeting with Trump. So that kind of combines our top stories. I get why both of them would show their respects to Graham because he's been a supporter of U.S. military support to both. I still don't get why it's like a bigger... set of festivities than you know jimmy carter seemingly got well both wars came to town uh and uh nothing there's nothing that Lindsey Graham liked more than war uh it there's actually like a real comment i mean i mentioned this to you that i guess if you just support all the wars you get booked on every single television show imaginable and you get a state funeral? That is seemingly what's happened. It does suggest that the one remaining sheen of kind of bipartisan whatever in Washington is like we celebrate the people that support the wars. It's kind of not a great commentary. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. All right, we're going to cover the latest from Iran, which, you know, one of the wars that Graham helped us get into. Yeah. We'll talk about the latest from Ukraine, including this head spinning pivot by a right-wing commentator named Laura Lumer, who went from being one of President Volodymyr Zelensky's biggest haters to now a huge fan and advocate on behalf of Ukraine, something just been confusing to watch. We'll try to unpack it, figure out what's going on there. Then we're going to update you guys on a major protest movement in India called the cockroach protests. We'll talk about some updates from Venezuela. including questions about where all of Venezuela's oil revenue went, its relationship with the international criminal court, the ongoing U.S. policy of murdering people in boats off the coast of Venezuela or in the Caribbean or in the Pacific. We're going to talk about China in AI because there have been some major developments in AI generally, but also with respect to China's development of frontier AI models. They're going to do some quicker updates on reports of possible U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Mali and then the horrendous wildfires in France. in Spain. And then, Ben, you did our interview today. Who did you talk to? I talked to David Remick, the editor of The New Yorker. He has a piece in the latest issue of the New Yorker profiling Gadia Eisencott, who's the chief opponent running against Benjamin Netanyahu in the October elections. Really great piece. I learned a lot about Eisencott, his backstory, what he's running on. So we talked a lot about the election Benjamin Netanyahu and Eisencott, but we also then had, you know, A bit of a debate about just how far gone Israel is politically, how likely or not likely it is that Israel will actually reckon with what's happened in Gaza in particular. Really, I mean, it's a long interview. I encourage people to check it out because, you know, we really kind of debated and went back and forth on a whole range of issues that, you know, you and I talk on this podcast a lot. And David's obviously. been to Israel probably hundreds of times. So I had a lot of thoughts on this. Everything I read about this upcoming election, it's in October, it's like, is it October 27th. 27th, yeah, yeah, this next Israeli election. Everything I hear is like like Likud, which is then yeah, was policy is doing. poorly in the polls, they maybe will pick up like 20 seats. But the Benjamin Netanyahu coalition is still just like, or the anti-NetNetahu coalition is still just like hovering around 60 votes in the Knesset, and you need 61 to former government. And it just feels like we're always on the cusp of getting rid of this guy, but they never do it. Yeah. I mean, one of the takeaways from David's piece in our conversation is, you know, Eisencott has this like very slight lead in the polls right now. But he's also not like the political animal than Benjamin Netanyahu is. And so, you know, you can detect from David, you know, he would prefer Isaac got to win. But both being able to win decisively enough to form a coalition and whether whatever insane homestretch campaigning Benjamin Netanyahu does is no foregone conclusion.

Yep. And yet, I've assumed that's part of his visit to Washington today. Yeah, this ongoing effort to say that Trump will take care of us as long as I'm the leader. Also, if you can't get enough Pod Day of the World content last week, Ben, our producer, Michael and I, we sat down and recorded an all-world episode of Terminally Online, which is a subscription show here from Crooked Media. If you want to hear Terminally online, you just have to become a friend of the pod subscriber. You get ad-free episodes, tons of bonus content, newsletters, all sorts of great stuff. Go to crooked. com slash friends and listen to us blab about stuff that is in foreign policy. Also, at the very end of the episode, our subscribers are going to hear a couple questions and answers from me and Ben for our Discord friends of the pod subscribers. So check that up. All right, Ben, let's start with Iran. So. Trump went from bombing Iran every night for about two weeks to threatening war crimes again and, you know, escalation to hitting pause on everything while baselessly claiming that Iran now wants a deal. Sort of more things changed than where they stay the same. A bunch of news outlets reported that Trump was on the cusp of this major escalation, but then held off because of concern for military leaders about dwindling U.S. supplies of air defense interceptors. We've covered this issue like ad nauseum now. The thing you need to know is that the U.S. has burned through a significant number of its most important munitions, and it will take billions of dollars in many years to replenish those stockpiles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to try to hide the cost of the war. Most recently, that is manifested in the creation of a new category to list casualties from the Iran War. They're calling it overseas operations. This category was added to the Pentagon's online casualty tracking system. I assume creating this new category is mostly their way of getting around the War Powers Act requirement to end the war within 60 days because Congress has not authorized it. Just like they rename the operation. They'll do anything to suggest that these are. You're all separate wars. Yeah. We've just fought a series of wars with Iran. No, no, no, no. It's not a long war. It's several mini wars all taped together by failure. But also, like, this kind of sneaky bullshit fits into the Pentagon's pattern of trying to cover up the cost of the war. The total U.S. casualty count is now 18 dead, 624 wounded. And the New York Times estimates that 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed. And then there's just untold amounts of damage to... bases and infrastructure and weapon systems, et cetera. We should also mention that the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence now believes that Iran's new supreme leader Ayatollah Moshtab Ahamaneh is, quote, far more interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon than his father was. Perhaps if your father and members of your family were killed, you might reach that conclusion. I'm not suggesting it's a good conclusion to reach, but it... Not that's surprising. No, it's a good conclusion. You probably don't need 18 component intelligence agencies to drive that back with it. Yeah, one psychiatrist. Yeah, one shrink. That brings us to the meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting. So here's a clip of Trump previewing his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday morning on Fox and Friends. Let's watch. There are reports now that Benjamin Netanyahu is going to talk to you about ongoing excavation at Pickax Mountain. Well, I don't need BB to tell me.

that. BB's telling me that because he wants me to stay involved. I heard BB announce that. I said, why did you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world? We hear that you're talking right now with leaders on Iran, but Iran has come out publicly and said we're not talking to the U.S. We're going to pause. Well, they just came out and said we are talking a little while ago because I always bothered me. So could you tell me who you talking to, Mr. President? But some reason, for some reason, we can be in the midst of a beautiful discussion, and they'll come out and say, we're not talking, or we didn't discuss nuclear. Well, that's all we discussed, because they'll never have a nuclear weapon. They don't make a deal. The bridges are going to be gone. Literally in less than a, I would say in two hours, most of the bridges, the major bridges will all be gone. And the power plants in one day. And, you know, if I can avoid doing that, I'd like to do that. So those are the two big things. And then there's always the desalinization plants. And who am I hurting there? I'm hurting the people. So I'm not looking to do that. I just want very simply, they cannot have a nuclear weapon. So he sounds like equally annoyed it. Benjamin Netanyahu and the Iranian leadership and then threatens a series of war crimes. And the, you know, hosts of Fox and Friends. And Brian Kilmeade. He prefers the weekend hosts like Pete Exxon. Yes, yes. Look, this is really, we should just name the fact that this is sad and pathetic weak version of Donald Trump. You know, he's lost this war. He has a couple of plays now that we've seen literally running on repeat. One, he always claims that the Iranians are trying to talk to them when they're not. You know, there's no indication that the Iranians are in any way eager to make a deal. So he simultaneously talks about how the Iranians are talking when they're not, and then he threatens war crimes. And the same war crimes. We keep, you know, hearing the same. And I'd rather he not do the war crimes. He added desalination plans. Yeah, yeah. So we have a new war crime. And that's it. This is, it's an absurd. If it wasn't like so tragic and didn't have so many real world consequences, it'd just be this kind of absurd play that we're living through where because he can't do anything to change the actual circumstances, he just keeps repeating things that aren't true. You know, I mean, we could have like a nine siren, Barack Ravid tweet about a new MOU and then, you know, more war crime threats. And I mean, it's just like literally playing on a loop here. What that tells me is that they have no... They don't know how to get out of the dead end that they're in. The Iranians won't make the deal that they want. The Iranians have a lot of leverage. Bombing Iran doesn't really work anymore. It never really did in the first place. And here we are. Yeah. And just like we're losing on every front, right? We talked about how they now, U.S. intelligence now believes Iran is more likely to try to acquire a nuclear weapon. Oops. We also learned that almost all the vessels crossing the street of Homoos in the past few days.

are now using the Iranian designated route. So all of our efforts to get to create this new channel closer to Oman, it's a control shipping through the strait seems to have failed. The other thing that I just think is like under discussed, Ben, is just the inherent risk to this thing bumping along and dragging on because the markets can kind of like ebb and flow and the price of oil can go up and down. But every day this keeps going, we're going to see more U.S. casualties like we saw a couple weeks ago, right? And when there's U.S. casualties, that leads the U.S. to respond and that can be an escalatory cycle. We are seeing more countries get pulled into the fighting. We talked about the Houthi rebels now attacking Saudi ships and now I think oil pipelines and oil infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bahrain and Kuwait have conducted airstrikes directly on Iran. The UAE has too. We knew that from past reporting. There are, there's this question of whether the Russians are involved, whether the Russians are providing help with targeting to Iran. Like specifically, some of the reports say that Iran or that Russia might have helped Iran figure out where CIA facilities are in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and hit those. And then Ukrainians hit an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea that it said have been shipping drones and missile parts. So this starts to really just feel like a world war. No, this is a full on regional war that is, you know, ominously connecting to the other... full-on regional war in Ukraine. And look, when you consider those different pieces, again, like these countries are living in the physical world. And so they're engaged in these hostilities or they're transiting the straight through where the Iranians want them to because they're adapting to a physical world that is not the world that Donald Trump is describing on Fox and Friends. I mean, just to take the intelligence piece with the Russians, I... I mean, I don't know without a shadow of a doubt because I don't have the intelligence, but I'm pretty certain that the Russians are providing targeting information. I mean, I've heard from people these rumors that some of the Iranian strikes, you know, obviously the strikes on our barracks have been very specific. But I've heard this thing about intelligence. And also radar systems. Well, and I've heard like things about how like, you know, potentially remember when the Iranians were hitting some hotels. Yeah. That they were literally hitting the hotels where U.S. intelligence officers were staying on. almost to the floor, right? And so, I mean, the Iranians are pretty good intelligence. The Russians have really good intelligence. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I heard that from one person and another person who you actually know is kind of like, well, part of this also is that we have really bad OPSEC in these regions and that the U.S. delegations always stay at like the same couple hotels. A bunch of white dudes show up and stay at the same motels. I'm sure that's true too. But I mean, look, because why wouldn't they? I mean, it's horrible. But if you're Russia and China. Who, by the way, I mean, just to make this point, a few years ago, we're in on the JCPOA. So, I mean, just you want to see the absolute failure of Donald Trump's foreign policy writ large.

We went from having Russia and China supporting a deal in which Iran shipped out its nuclear fuel and had inspections in all those facilities to Russia and China probably, at least Russia providing Intel and China probably backfilling certain Iranian capabilities because they know that they are literally bleeding the United States in a war that is devastating to our standing in the world. I will also say on the markets are what they are, I just don't think you can sustain. these shortages without the markets catching up to the physical reality either. You know, there's just been a lot of confidence in fake MOUs and Barack Ravid tweets and MOUs that lead nowhere and oil futures. The reality stuff has not been getting out of that straight for months, you know. Yeah, and now, you know, there was this issue where the Chinese, for some reason, were not importing a lot of oil that apparently has changed. And also all the global reserves are... significantly. We've drawn down the reserves. The Chinese are no longer doing the thing where they reduce their demand to try to like mitigate the risk of this. So this is just going to get worse. And there's really not like an, I mean, at some point Trump's just going to have to. Either just call it a day and the worry started or take a really shitty deal along the lines of that MOU, which is shitty. There's not some rabbit he's going to pull out of a hat here. No. And also, there's an interview with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman who was asked about kind of who is actually handling Iran policy in the White House. And Swan's contention was that actually Marco Rubio is kind of not paying any attention to Ukraine. Or Iran. He's the Cuba desk officer. Only focused on Cuba. And that it really is like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and like JD Vance kind of dipping in every once in a while. So it's like we don't have the A team working on this thing. Speaking of which, let's talk about one of the godfathers of the Iran war, Lindsey Graham. So again, as I mentioned, this funeral was on Tuesday. It was just so weird that this was like a presidential level funeral. Like, He was not head of state. He sort of fancied himself a sidekick his whole career, right? He was like John McCain's sidekick. Then he was Trump's guy. The blob came out to celebrate. I guess, though, for a year or two before his death, Graham had been participating in this documentary project, I guess just about himself. And he let the filmmaker, this guy, Alex Holder, film a bunch of his calls and meetings, including meetings and calls with like Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders. Some of that footage got shown to the Wall Street Journal after Graham passed away, and then some of it was released online. Here are a couple excerpts from that documentary, and then we spliced into it some clips from Trump talking about Graham on Fox News this morning, and then Laura Lumer talking about Graham during her visit to Ukraine. Let's watch. Look what we've done here. I almost cried. Yeah. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this? Well, I mean, you've been pushing this for years, right? Right. It's here. I've talked to Trump as boy. Well, he's Jack. It's the best thing I've ever done. Black locks. He loves, he loves blowing stuff up. Trump and Beebe are like Roosevelt and Churchill. I mean, they're the right two guys to confront this evil. Hey, BB, Lindsay.

Hey, Lindsay. How are you? I couldn't. I'm just so impressed. Glad to be your friend. I'm glad you are my friend. I'm going to meet with the president this weekend. I'm going down to Doral. I'm going to try to get him to join with y'all in Lebanon to maybe fly some with you. Would you like that? Yeah, I get that. I think you have a point, but I've been thinking about... the other side of it for a second. We're concentrating right now in the event. If we tell Bisbalah that we're going all the way, we threaten them. But if we actually... Do it. Okay. And they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now, that's not our interest. Okay. We can do it later. Well, I'll, okay, well, that's actually good counsel. I'll put it out there as an idea. We can always go back to it. Lindsay liked war, to be honest with you, okay? And I said, you're a nice guy. How come you like war so much? It was a guy that liked war. I jokingly say, and it's nothing funny about it. He's never seen a war that he didn't like. Hi, Laura Limer here. I am currently in Ukraine at the world-famous Skyfall drone manufacturing facility. I am holding the P1 Sun drone interceptor. It's the same exact drone intercept that was held by Senator Lindsey Graham was two days before he tragically passed away. In honor of Lindsay's commitment to stand with the Ukrainian people and to stand against authoritarianism, we're going to deploy the drone to the front lines so that it can be used to kill Russians. I hope everyone caught that at the end. She was holding the drone that had been held by Lindsey Graham when he was in Ukraine. And instead of sending it to Graham's house, they're now going to deploy it to the front line to kill Russians because there's no better way to honor Lindsey Graham than to blow up some Russian kid who is probably conscripted into the army against his will. You watched that montage and you are reminded once again that. Fascism of the American varieties, just truly the stupidest fascism. And a couple of things, you know, now this will probably be the last time we talk about Lindsey Graham. One would hope. I don't feel at all bad about... you know, crapping on someone who's recently passed because, like, how many people are dead because of this man? I mean, if you kind of take him at his own self-conception that he got Trump to do this along with Benjamin Netanyahu, let's just start with, like, the hundred and something girls that are dead in that girl school. Like, that's what he's celebrating. Like, he's happy. because we're bombing girls schools in Iran. He's chortling. He's chortling. He loves blowing stuff up. This is great, you know. And so the first thing is that that's absolutely reprehensible and disgusting and fascist. The second thing is,

He's an idiot. I mean, like, it's amazing to me. You don't think Trump's Roosevelt and Churchill? Yeah, but it's amazing to me that this man for like decades was taken so seriously by all of official Washington could get booked on any Sunday television show. It could be, you know, a quote machine for every print journalist, you know. When what is the depth of his thought? There's not a solution to any problem that doesn't involve bombing a country or killing some people. To the point where Trump jokes about it. Yeah. Yeah, Trump's joking about it. He joked about it at the funeral today. Beanie! He was like, whoa, written it in, Lindsay. I hope everyone caught that. Graham's recommendation was too hawkish for Benjamin Netanyahu. Benjamin Netanyahu's like, I don't think we want to go on. I was like, chill out, dude. Chill the fuck out, dude. Like, this man is a lunatic. He's an absolute utter fucking lunatic who was like... Given this treatment like he was some deep thinker, and not just there. Europe, I'd go to like the Munich Security Conference, like Lindsey Graham is going to hold court, you know, all these different things. It is just such a sad commentary in our times that such a mediocre manful of bloodlust for whatever reason was taken and treated so seriously, you know? Benjamin Netanyahu, I'm glad to be your friend. Who talks like that? By the way, also like, does B.B., I mean. I don't think Benjamin Netanyahu knows he's on that call. But that's my point. I've no sympathy for Benjamin Netanyahu, but like, does he have any idea that there's a couple of fucking Randar dudes in there, like filming him talking about like war plans with Lindsey Graham? I'm almost positive. He does not. That's insane to me. The whole thing is insane. It's the height of arrogance to think that you're such this like historic figure that you need a documentary crew in your office recording you while you're talking to. And there's another thing in Washington just because I just need a vent about Lindsey Graham from in here. Because, you know, there's all these pay on civility and he was a funny guy behind the scenes. Like, but he's a funny guy who is a fucking crazy warmonger, you know? Like, I mean, I don't know, like Mussolini might have like told some good jokes. That doesn't mean I wanted to like honor him when, you know, like this is. This is crazy. This is like a window into the insanity of American politics in the 21st century, particularly in our post-9-11 era, that this man literally got like a state funeral today, as you point out. It was. I'm sure there are a ton of Democrats there too, you know. Oh, yeah. We all love Lindsay, you know. There's another clip from this documentary where, like, Lindsey Graham is meeting with. Benjamin Netanyahu at the Blair House, and they bring out a cake, and then Yahoo sings happy birthday to him. There's a bunch of Democrats there. Like, it's just, it's too chummy. Like, there's such a thing as too chummy in politics, guys. And, and, okay, like, I remember when Susan Rice came on this podcast and it probably harmed her vice president chances when she called them a piece of shit? I mean, that was because also, like, he was fundamentally dishonest about, like, Benghazi. Like, he knew what happened in Benghazi, but, you know, he could get on a television. Well, he says to these filmmakers, like, well, if, you know, the documentary is good, I'll take credit for it. If it's bad, I'll call you a bunch of communists. Right? So, like, he talks out loud about how he just kind of plays the game. He plays, I mean, I remember when, in the first year, the Obama administration, Rom had this idea that Lindsey Graham was going to help us close Gitmo.

And I remember I was in all these meetings. You know, we had all these meetings with Lindsey Graham. And he acted like he was interested in sincerely trying to help Obama solve this problem. And then... pivoted 180 degrees to demagoguing the shit out of Gitmo and like don't release the I mean that that's who Lindsey Graham was like he wanted attention he wanted war and he got both and he got very much this enough he would like complete with BB Nainjo and Donald Trump and a drone to the front line and Sean how perfect is it that Sean Hannity eulogized him too like it's just the merger of everything that's dumb it's just weird weird weird shit Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry.me. Do you ever look at someone really succeeding in their chosen fields and think, how did they get there? And what am I missing? One thing is certain they didn't get there alone. Those who reached the highest levels of career success had mentors. They had coaches, they had people in their corner who helped them think through big decisions and see what they can't see themselves. That's exactly what today's sponsor, Strawberry.me, is all about. A lot of us know we're capable of more. We just don't know what the next step is. It starts with getting clear on what you want, not what everyone else expects. Then you uncover the blind spots and obstacles that are keeping you stuck. And finally, you build an actionable plan instead of waiting for the perfect opportunity to fall into your lap. Whether you're trying to land a new job, earn a promotion, or completely reinvent your career, Strawberry.me gives you a roadmap and a dedicated coach who is with you every step of the way. Scan the QR code on your screen or head to strawberry.me. slash world to get 50% off your first session. That's strawberry.me slash world. Strawberry. It's like therapy for your career. Positive of the world is brought to you by built. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or your mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out built. Becoming a built member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. Built points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases, future housing payments, and much more. In fact, there are tons of options for redeeming your built points. You could put it towards a future housing payment. You can go to a fitness class, like a soul cycle or berries. There's Amazon.com. There's lift rides. They have gift cards you can get at like 120 or more brands. There's just a ton of different ways to redeem your built points. And Bill's new AI neighborhood concierge doesn't just answer your questions. It executes tasks. From paying your rent and handling a lift to booking dinner reservations across 50,000 or more partners, it handles your to-do list while automatically applying your member benefits. Here's what you do. First, download the built app. Second, link any credit card or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spots become even more rewarding. And then third, ask the neighborhood concierge in the app of pretty much anything and it'll alert you about exclusive member benefits near your home. Download the built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbilt.com slash world. That's j-o-in-b-b-l-com slash world. Use our link so they know we sent you.

All right, Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington today, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for the funeral and also to meet with Trump. There's a bunch of issues on his plate. The first is this ongoing political crisis that erupted after Volodymyr Zelensky fired his defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov. We dug it to this a couple weeks ago. That maybe it was last week. Who knows? Times is flat circle. So the gist is Federov, the former defense minister. He's young. He's like 35. He's very popular because he prioritizes new technology like drones. And he was fighting against these more established old school military leaders and dogmas that led to tactics that led to higher casualty counts, basically. But people like Fedorov because he was all about preserving Ukrainian lives on the front with drones. There was a power struggle. Volodymyr Zelensky fired Fedorov that led to huge protests. Volodymyr Zelensky tried to mollified the protesters by firing the commander-in-chief and then he tried to rehire Federov in a different job. But Federov said, no. Only three jobs actually matter, the president, the defense minister, and the commander-in-chief. So that's kind of an unresolved mess that he has to figure out. During the meeting. We oddly did not or uncharacteristically did not get Trump press availabilities after any of these meetings today, probably because he had to get to the funeral on time. But Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted out like a read out of the meeting. He said that Trump and he talked about licenses for Ukraine to create their own Patriot missile interceptors and then also some possible diplomacy with Russia, although we'll see what that means. Trump has reportedly warmed to Volodymyr Zelensky recently because. He's been impressed by their kind of drone prowess and their battlefield success generally. But there's another voice that is a surprising one who might be impacting Trump's view of Ukraine, which is this right-wing influencer named Laura Lumer. Now, Ben, before we get to the Lumer piece of this, do you want to weigh in on any of the policy stuff? I will say one of the reasons I think, because I've noticed Trump warming to Volodymyr Zelensky, and part of it is that Volodymyr Zelensky didn't like... again, someone didn't fold like a tent. You know, like he actually's had some pretty tough words for Trump over the last, you know, year and a half. And, you know, Trump ends up responding to strength more than he responds to just like sycophancy and flattery, right? So it's another, the only thing I would say by Volodymyr Zelensky, who does have a major political problem. Like, you know, he's now the defense minister is out, the commander chiefs out. It does feel like. Volodymyr Zelensky is holding things a little too tight. Yeah, which is very weird when things are going well. Yeah. You would fire your defense minister and the commander chief of your armed forces. Yeah. It feels like there's a little bit too much focus on internal politics. I mean, that don't upset the progress you're making. The only thing I'm going to say, Tommy, is that I saw on the way to the Lindsey Graham funeral, Volodymyr Zelensky met with Andy Burnham. And I was, it was funny to me because I realized that's the fifth. British Prime Minister he's dealt with since the war began. Wow. He's had Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, and Andy Burnham. And they've all had the exact same, you know, I'm credited to the British, you know, they're very consistent in this, you know, we support Ukraine. But I was looking at Volodymyr Zelensky thinking like, this poor guy probably can't keep track of the British Prime Minister. Do you think Truss had time for a meeting? Was it with the lettuce? I think she did. I think she like, I mean.

It may have been in the lettuce window. I don't know. Do you see Bojo or Boris Johnson was just over in Ukraine and actually spent like 90 minutes of the front line filming a documentary? No, I didn't see that. I've not watched the documentary, obviously, but it was sort of, look, it's impressive. To go to the Ukrainian front line or like the so-called kill zone is not a place I would want to be. It takes some courage to go there. I think he was there advocating on behalf of support for Ukraine. I'm not going to give the guy. I know you don't have to hand it to a meme. I'm not a big Boris Johnson fan, but I just was sort of surprised to see him there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he's grasping for a legacy. And Brexit didn't turn out too well. Yeah, that's a good point. All right. So back to Laura Lumer. Laura Lumer, right wing. Crank once chained herself to the Twitter office door in New York because she had been kicked off a platform. Didn't you wear like a Star of David? She wore a star of David. She resigned to protest compared herself to Jews during the Holocaust. She's a nut, but she has had a major change of heart when it comes to Ukraine policy. So she's kind of nutty and pretty vicious. She's also like the world's biggest Trump sycophant. And he loves her for that. So she has serious influence in the White House. We have covered the fact that she has personally managed to get a ton of national security staffers fired by accusing them. Almost the entire first NSC. Yeah. There was this one anecdote where she's sitting in the office meeting with Trump and Mike Waltz, then the national security advisor, like walks into the meeting late and just gets machine gun down. And she took a bunch of scalps, including the head of the NSA, like senior people. Lumer used to hate Volodymyr Zelensky. She used to openly oppose support for Ukraine. She literally called Volodymyr Zelensky a jihadi apologist. I didn't even know where that came from. She used to say Ukraine was full of Nazis. Like she fully internalized the, you know, the Russian disinformation. Feverish maga view of the Ukraine. But now she is in Ukraine visiting. She's suddenly become Ukraine's biggest defender. And she even got an interview with Volodymyr Zelensky himself at the presidential palace. So we're going to play two clips for you. This first clip is Laura Lumer talking about her previous hatred of Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky during an interview she did with some Ukrainian media. Let's watch. I said really terrible things. I said, I don't care if Ukraine gets conquered by Vladimir Putin. I said, I don't care if Ukraine gets taken over by Russia. I said, I don't have any problem with Vladimir Putin. I used to mock Volodymyr Zelensky for not wearing a suit. I used to, you know, spread. I used, I didn't realize I was consuming Russian propaganda. After the election in 2020, you know, so many conservatives were banned. They were banned on social media in America. And we were shut out from, you know, being able to. make appearances on certain news stations, right? We had cancel culture. They were blacklisting people. And I kind of referred to it in a book I wrote as being sent to a digital gulag. And...

When I was shut down and I lost access to my accounts, I was approached by Russia today. I realized they're very, very good at deception. They're very, very good at emotionally manipulating people. Most of what I had been seeing online before I got access to my accounts again was RT and telegram channels. It's not the most self-aware moment to refer to a digital gulag while sitting in a region where they were. Millions of people sent to actual gulags. Yes. But now this is, let's watch a bit of Lumer interviewing Volodymyr Zelensky while she was in Ukraine. You went to McDonald's? I went to McDonald's, yes. Yeah, yeah. President Trump's favorite fast food restaurant. If you could please explain to the American audience, how is supporting Ukraine? With U.S. tax dollars, America first. Are you saying that the Ukrainian government under your direction is going to send teams of drone manufacturers to America free of charge to help Americans boost their drone manufacturing? We want to do joint manufacturing and I don't know, free of charge. You regret campaigning with Democrats in the United States. There were some internal polling from Ukraine that showed that only 17% of Ukrainian... people have a favorable view of the United States, which I'm confused. It's not higher because we send them so much aid. You don't know too. You believe he's the best president. The best president of the United States. Now, history will answer. True or false? Were you doing cocaine with Emmanuel Macron or were you not? You have a message of gratitude for the American people. How does it feel to be called a Nazi? Would you be willing to sign the peace deal with Russia in the Oval Office? Yes, I'm ready. I've always said to President Trump that I'm ready to come to the United States, to Oval Office, or to... Mar-a-Lago, it depends on President Trump. Oh, which do you prefer, Mar-a-Lago? If you could sign it anywhere, Mar-a-Lago or the White House. I don't know. It depends on President Trump. It's very beautiful, Mar-Laga. Have you ever been to Palm Beach? So we mostly just played her questions and not his answers because you want to show just how sycophantic is. She's really, like, kind of mama-birding and, like, vomiting up the, like, Naga-approved answer. Like, how great is Palm Beach and how great is President Trump? But, Ben, what do you make of her? her turn here and maybe the impact. All right. First of all, the stupidity of America in 2026 is once again on full display here. Off the charts. Number two, you know, there's this thing she does where she calls out different people, you know, on Twitter where she wants Trump's attention to go after these people. It's called getting loomered. It's actually a verb. It's happened to a lot of our former, you know, colleagues and some friends. Usually for having, you know, feverish anti-Russian, you know, anybody who signed a letter like criticizing Russian disinformation or something, like she'd mind that and, like, demand their security clearances get yanked. I wonder if she's going to retract all that now that she's awoken. The scales have fallen from her eyes about the fact that there is such a thing as Russian misinformation and disinformation. I'm not holding my breath. I...

I wonder about this. There are a couple things in terms of like what this portends. One is just that like... You sense, Tommy, I know like me, you occasionally dabble in the Magaverse to just see what's going on because it's interesting. You do get the sense that there was a center of gravity to the Magaverse through the 2024 election. And now that like Trump is this kind of diminishing figure, everybody's kind of going in their own directions, you know, like Tucker Carlson is going deeper into the like Russian well. Laura Luma is moving to the Ukrainian side. Like there is a sense of kind of. Everybody's running in different directions, and MAGA is fracturing. It doesn't have like a... For sure. Because it never really had a coherence other than Trump. He was the center of gravity holding it all together. And so now people can see he's just out for himself, so everybody else is out for themselves. I have some sympathy, you know, like having been a little critical of Volodymyr Zelensky's recent political moves. This poor guy has to, like, leave, like, the situation room and all these horrible casualties. And then he has to, like, as part of his job, because, you know, he has to do it, sit there with Laura Lumer and put up with that. And be like, how was McDonald's? I don't, I'm not suggesting anything here, Tommy. I'm just, I'll pose the question to you, like. I think Laura Lumer probably like a lot of people in the Magaverse responds to money. Like do we think the Ukrainians maybe gave her stake in a drone company or something? Like the thought had occurred to me that there might be some incentives here. Look, that's a big question. So look, first of all, I will say I'm glad she's moved to a better place. I'm going to watch closely to see if there will be an impact. She reaches people that are hearing only the kind of RT telegram Russian disinformation version of. events of the war of the conflict of Ukraine. So maybe she can change some minds. Who knows? I do think it's kind of hard to do like a 180 that hard. So the most compelling explanation I've heard is that Lumer is very pro-Israel. She's like virulently anti-Muslim. She actually tweeted something about how great it was being in Ukraine and not seeing any Muslims. So, you know, she's still like a bigot. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. have become extremely vocally anti-Israel. I think she tends to zig when they said. Yeah. Yeah. And so Tucker Carlson and Candice both went to Russia. So she's like, I, Laura Lumer, I'm going to go to Ukraine. That's one way to sort of think about it. She asked Volodymyr Zelensky about Tucker Carlson specifically a couple times. She keeps calling out what she calls the woke Reich podcasters, which I think is like Tucker Carlson, Lumer. I think Nick Fuentes is probably in that bucket. She told Politico that she asked Volodymyr Zelensky for, quote, information on American influencers who are getting paid by Russia. She said, make sure you give that information to me. So she's trying to mind for intelligence that Tucker Carlson is getting paid by the Russians.

You're right that that is ironic since in the past she has been, I think, quite credibly accused of taking money to support issues. For example, one day she was suddenly... She was very in support of this arcane law regarding Venezuelan oil exports. All of a sudden, it was a... real focus of hers and everyone's like, hmm, okay. There's a lot of rumors that she gets paid to tweet things because Trump sees them. Now, she was asked this directly. She said, nobody paid me to go on this trip. I haven't received a dime, certainly not from the Ukrainian government or anyone else. We'll see. Now, she's also. She's trustworthy. We'll take her to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, she's, um, Much like a lot of the Niagara World, she has a grandiose vision of herself. Politico reported that there's a debate in D.C. about who will take on Lindsey Graham's mantle as like the influential Warhawk in D.C. They asked Laura Lumer about this. Here's a quote. She said, maybe that person has to be me. I would like to serve as an envoy for President Trump. So that's how she thinks of herself. Now, Trump did see that she did this video. Apparently he like retweeted it saying very good. Laura Lumer also tweeted after the Volodymyr Zelensky meeting. that Jared Kushner is going to visit Ukraine in the next couple of weeks, in part because she pitched the idea to Trump. It is crazy. You remember that Steve Witkoff, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, ostensibly the people working on a Russia-Ukraine peace deal have never visited Ukraine, but they've been to Russia a bunch of times. And I've met with the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, which raised some concerns. Some real concerns. Now, her, like, kind of... Her stated kind of explanation is media ecosystems that she fell down the RT kind of conspiracy well. She got into the Russian disinformation space. There's probably some truth to that. You know, like propaganda is very powerful, but also to your point at the very top of this. You're a moron, but you think Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky is also a Nazi. Yeah, that was always a bit of a stretch to me. You know? Yeah. So, but, you know, again, she refers to herself as a Pentagon correspondent in the course of these conversations. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Loomer had talked to Trump twice since she got to Ukraine. So maybe she will influence. the very highest levels of the U.S. government, which explains why the Ukrainians rolled out the red carpet for her. I think there's something else that's happening, which is there's a sense that maybe the Ukrainians are winning. You know, they're hitting deep inside Russia. So maybe there's like some front running here. And I just kind of caution people.

you know, there are these swings in like who people, you know, for a while it was like the Russian, well, actually for a while it was like the Ukrainians are going to win the counteroffensive. And then for a while I was like the Russians are winning. They're grounding them down. Now it's like the Ukrainians are winning because they're striking deep inside of Russia with these drones when in fact the front line doesn't really change. You know, the war is a tragedy. And so I don't know. I'd beware of like over interpreting. battlefield events, because I feel like that's part of what's happening. It's like, oh, maybe the Ukrainians are the ones we should get back behind because, you know, I think we should be back in Ukrainians for other reasons, obviously. Yeah. But there's a bit of a kind of front-running feeling to this. For sure, like, you're right, that there's sort of these kind of narrative momentum swings constantly. I do think there is some truth of the Ukrainian... narrative swing storyline lately because they've been able to almost fully cut off Crimea. The Crimea thing is interesting. From supply lines. They're also hitting like oil and gas infrastructure deep in Russia to the point where there's real supply disruptions, which may have a very long-term impact, but the Russian will adapt. Well, actually, there's another thing that she mentioned that I think is another factor here, which is the Ukrainians really have become the leaders in the world in drone technology. And they're cranking out these drones and they're innovating. And that's both militarily very useful and important. And frankly, the defense tech industry in this country, which has the Don Juniors of the world and one a piece of this. The Ukrainians, I'm sure part of what they're doing is dangling. Oh, yeah. Hey, joint production of these drones, like both, you know, because there's a real need for the U.S. military, but also because there's a lot of money made in defense tech. So that may be not just Laura Luma, but a backdrop of people wanting in on this. you know, drone industry they've got. Oh, I would not be surprised. And look, this is my opinion. I don't have any evidence of this. But if Volodymyr Zelensky were to dangle, some sort of suggestion that maybe, you know, he could partner with the Trump family on drone production. Donald Trump Jr.'s drone business. Right. Like, they know how Trump's bread is butter. They know what he wants, which is money and to sell crypto and to get paid. So we'll see. Pots of the World is brought to you by select quote. With endless information at our fingertips 24 hours a day, it's easy to go down to research rabbit hole on literally anything. Restaurants, hotels, home appliances, even something as boring as your bath towels. You can spend days pouring over reviews if you are not careful. Luckily, there's no need to add another item to your research list. Select Quote is a life insurance broker that does the homework for you. Their license agents shop over 100 policies and find you a better rate for free. With select quote, getting life insurance is fast, it's free, it's easy. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. Simply answer a few questions, then their agents shop with carriers to find you the best quote tailored to your specific situation, even if you have a pre-existing condition like high blood pressure or diabetes. Select quote customers save an average of 30% on the policies. That's a good chunk of change back in your pocket every month. Over the decades of a policy term that really adds up. SelectQuote has been doing this for over 40 years with 11,000 reviews on Trust Pilot, rated excellent. Putting off life insurance can cost you in more ways than one. Get the peace of mind that comes with knowing you and your family are covered, plus more money in your pocket each month. Get your free quote at selectquote.com.com slash world. That's selectquote.com slash world. SelectQuote.com slash world. They shop, you save.

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All right, Ben, let's switch gears here. Let's talk about China and AI. So the tech world was rocked a couple weeks ago when a Chinese company called Moonshot rolled out a new AI model called Kimi K3. This model seems to have almost fully narrowed the gap between the capabilities of the frontier U.S. AI models and what China is offering. So we're talking about anthropic, open AI, the best of the best in the U.S. and then China. So there was an immediate economic impact. You had chip and AI company stocks selling off hard over the next couple of days. By some estimates, trillions of dollars in semiconductor market value were erased within days. It was very similar to the Wall Street panic after the release of Deep Seek, which was this Chinese AI model that came out in January of 2025 that was cheaper and much more efficient than the U.S. models, but still quite good. So in this case, independent analysts compared K3 to models by OpenAI and Anthropic and found it underperformed only the newest releases. And you can use K3 for about one third of the price. So it's a very well done model. But soon after that freak out by Wall Street came the accusation. So the Trump science advisor and tech advisor accused moonshot of essentially stealing U.S. models and also violating U.S. export controls by acquiring the top of the line Nvidia chips to train its models. Remember, the U.S. is supposed to prevent the best AI chips from getting sold to China. But it seems like the Chinese again and again and again have found ways to kind of end run about those export controls. The Trump administration is now trying to figure out how to respond to K3 in these seeming breaches of rules. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to put sanctions on Chinese AI firms and potentially ban the models from U.S. markets. Meanwhile, you see some staffers that these top American AI companies are circulating an open letter calling on the U.S. government to slow down AI development. There was also an extremely alarming incident recently where this open AI training model managed to escape its test environment, log onto the internet, hack into another company to complete its task, which is sort of like the nightmare sci-fi AI scenario. And it just happened and we're all going on. I guess existing with nothing changing. So China's not slowing down. They've been putting together the AI equivalent of a Belt and Road initiative. They've been promising to give developing nations access to Chinese AI models and also training. Ultimately, it sounds like China wants to bundle together. like a telecom technology, it's cloud computing, it's data center tech, and then the AI models is a package to kind of like offer the Chinese internet to the world. In the US, yeah, and in the US we're all like, oh, no, that's a big espionage risk and whatever, but, you know, for good reason for that. But the US offering is basically just limiting competitor access to our chips. Yeah, we're not a risk at all either. We're the good guys in the world, right, right, right.

The Chinese are offering something that sounds like a better deal. So, Ben, a lot of things happen in here of the last couple of weeks. What did you make of this kind of latest shot across the bow from China and kind of the all these developments, you know, the response from Open AI and others? Here are the couple of headlines I see because part of what's happening in the Chinese, we've talked about this a little bit, but it's really, really important because... In part because we did these export controls, they kind of were trained to figure out how to build models with less compute, you know, less inputs from chips and other things, on the cheap. And also because... Once there's kind of an open source model that you can create, right, that's kind of out in the world and people, you know, people have open source their models. And so the Chinese can, they're not stealing intellectual property when it's open source, you know. They're just kind of building a model off of what is openly available. And here's the danger for American AI companies. It's that the Chinese are building models that are almost as good as the American models that cost a lot less money. Well, what models do you think people are going to buy? If you're a developing country or if you're just a customer in the United States that doesn't want to pay top dollar to use the tokens that you have to spend to use Claude or chat GPT. So the reality is whatever the Trump people say, like open source Chinese AI is here to stay. And we live in, for better or worse, a capitalist global economy. It tends to be the case that in capitalism. if there's a similar product for a lower price, people tend to buy it. In fact, that's how the Chinese have beaten us in a lot of these tech issues over the years. So I don't think you can whack them all this thing. I think you have to, I mean, I would prefer that the U.S. and China were actually negotiating about guardrails around AI instead of this kind of absurd notion that there's like a foot race to get it. Everybody's going to get it, you know. Now, on this, you know, that... I had a couple thoughts in the chat GPT thing about like escaping and doing all this stuff. You know, I have two kind of... conflicting views. And it's kind of like a lot of things that we're speculating here. But on the one hand, it just proves the point of it's insane that we're not regulating this technology, that there's no legislative or executive branch effort. You know, the Trump people have talked about needing to test new models before the release, but they haven't made that mandatory. On the other hand,

Like, I keep noticing Anthropic and Open AI kind of putting out, oh my God, we've created this model that is so powerful at the precise time that they're talking about having an IPO, right? It does feel to me like sometimes they're hyping. This is existential. This is technology is going to take every job. This technology can do all these wonderful things like to juice their IPOs to, you know, not to. I don't know what you think. I mean, you follow. Yeah, possible. I mean, yeah. I don't know when there's IPOs are going to be. It's probably pretty soon. Yeah. So I don't know. The point is the headlines are. The Chinese are going to have AI too, and we're not to adjust to it. And it's insane that we're not regulating this more than we are. Like, that's kind of my steady state on this. Yeah, no, I firmly am in the like I cannot believe we're not regulating these companies. I mean, it does seem like athropic used to be very, very honest about the potential disruption to jobs from their models and the power of them. And now they're all raining it in because they feel like, oh, they scared everybody. And, you know, they didn't like the feedback. So now they're all kind of like lying about it. I don't know if you saw this, Deena Jerome Powell from. meta released some John Cornyn-ass video as like a one-minute ad basically about how great AI was going to be and like don't believe all the fear and doomerisms. They're all trying to like walk back the fear that they created by describing to us their own technology. And mostly I'm just mad at our government for being asleep at the switch. And I don't trust any of the people. I mean, I don't know about Dario Amadeh. He seems like. materially different, but I don't trust Sam Altman. I don't trust Elon Musk. I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg. I have no idea what Google is doing. So who knows? Yeah. And I think that the, I mean, to Wade domestically here, the only outlet for the anxiety people feel right now is in this data center backlash that we feel happening across the countries, which is real, you know. But I think that anyone running for president. in 2028 is probably can be running as a tech AI populist. You know, my worry is the window to be putting some guard rules around this technology is not 2029. It's like now. Yeah, and if we don't build the data centers, I mean, they're going to get built somewhere. Yeah, no, they are. I mean, and, you know, the data centers are about training the AI models. They're also just about like, where do you think, you know. What do you think Uber Eats runs on? Right. So better to put the guard rails, I mean, I would rather that the focus be directed at, hey, what guardrails do we need to build around these technologies? And how can we negotiate with the Chinese around guardrails on things like nuclear weapons and biological weapons and military uses of AI? That's where to direct this energy. you know, as much as it is saying NIMBY issues about data centers. Yeah, I think the data center stuff, like I think it's real and it's out there, but it's, I've been told by some people in swing states who've done polling and focused groups and research that it is more people who live in, like, close proximity to the data centers. That's where it's felt very strongly. Yeah. And then there's sort of like 31 flavors of different reasons people oppose them that range from like real to conspiracy to environmental to whatever. But I don't know if it's going to be like quite the panacea that someone on the left think it's going to be in elections. But I guess we'll see. I do think.

You're right that as a place we're channeling this. No, I think you're, yeah. So I think you're right that it's not, it's hyped. The reason it's hyped is because people have nowhere to direct this concern about AI. So it's like, this is the physical manifestation of AI. So I don't like that. The thing you can stop. When in fact, actually, I don't think stopping data centers is the solution. The solution is actually trying to regulate. how these technologies move out in the world. And unfortunately, that's not happening. Yeah, we got a couple more things for you guys. So we're going to turn to India where the cockroach jaanta party or CJP protest movement has been upending Indian politics for two months now and just scored a historic win over the weekend. So we did a bonus episode last week on the Pod Save the World YouTube page where we dug into the CJP protest deeper. Please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. If you want to hear that, so you never miss a bonus. Ben also discussed the CJP protest with a great journalist named Rana Ayub in a previous episode to check out that if you want even more depth. But here's sort of the abbreviated version. Students in India who want to go to medical school. They have to take this grueling admissions exam. It is enormously important to your future. It is insanely competitive. There's like 2 million kids competing for 137 or so slots. They spent months, if not years, studying. Some even go into debt to pay for tutors. And then this year, about two weeks after taking the test, students were told they had to retake it because the questions had leaked online in validating the results. And this was just crushing for many students and at least 20 kids killed themselves. as a result of the anxiety, the frustration, whatever it was in learning they'd have to take this test again. The protest movement started to protest the handling of these exams. And the protesters called for restitution for the families of these kids who committed suicide and called for India's education minister to be fired. Over time, as always happens with these protest movements, they grew broader. They're about inequality and corruption and youth unemployment and much, much more. So last week, protesters marched on India's parliament. They were brutally beaten by security forces. They were tear gas dragged away by the cops. It was horrible. The CJP, by the way, got its name, back in May when India's chief justice called unemployed young people cockroaches. So the protesters named their movement after that comment. Initially, the government tried to denigrate or ignore these protesters. Eventually, Prime Minister and Rendra Narendra Modi decided it had been too big, gotten too big to ignore. He released an Instagram video promising some limited reforms. Mostly, it didn't really cut it. Mostly he was mocked for like kind of looking weird. And because he reposted the video like just as authorities were cutting off the internet. So people were like, hey, Narendra Modi, you're putting out videos now as you're cutting off our internet. On Saturday, the government finally blinked. India's education minister resigned. This was a rare and pretty major win. The only other time Narendra Modi has bowed to pressure like this was the 2021 farmer protests.

Here's journalist Priyanchi Sharma with Peak TV on the street with the protesters as the news of the resignation came out. A lot of people never thought this will happen. A lot of us also thought that the minister will not resign. That's not what happens in this government. That's not what usually happens. But still, this youth and the power of this youth, the power of the number of people, lacks of people that came out on the streets, made this happen. And they have made something that looked impossible happen. This government. is known to not even listen to protesters. They ignored even this protest for almost a month. So for that kind of a government to accept these people's demands shows that they did not expect the youth to show up in these numbers. So what do you think got Narendra Modi to blink here? I think he was totally losing control of the situation. And I think it is a big deal. We have not seen Narendra Modi bowed to public pressure like this much, if at all, as prime minister. The education minister was a senior BJP guy, like someone who was kind of in the Narendra Modi circle. So that's notable. The question then becomes, is that enough to kind of staunch the bleeding here for Narendra Modi? Right. But now, as you say, this is about youth unemployment as well as the education system. Will the movement continue and be focused on these other issues? And can they kind of concretize their demands? Can they channel it into opposition politics? Or does it kind of lose steam as people move on to other things? It does feel to me just in general, though, like there's a permission structure that's been created by these young people to start to criticize the government. And it's a government that is kind of... clamped down on dissent, intimidated opponents. And that's a hard. thing to put back in the Pandora's box. Yeah. A couple updates from Venezuela. So first, Ben, there's this great financial times piece that's worth highlighting that says the U.S. has collected more than $13 billion in revenue from Venezuelan oil sales this year, but no one seems to know where the money is gone. Seems like an important detail. The funds are supposed to be spent on the Venezuelan people, especially like earthquake reconstruction. But Trump also brags about how much money the U.S. is now making off of Venezuela. So... sort of conflicting messages there. The second thing, Venezuela is officially withdrawn from the International Criminal Court. In the past, the ICC has investigated parts of the Venezuelan armed forces, so that could be part of it. But also, this comes as the U.S. is targeting in trying to dismantle and delegitimize the ICC in the wake of its criticism of Israel and the war in Gaza. The ICC is also facing its own internal turmoil as one of its prosecutors, Karim Khan, faces calls to resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. So far, 82 of the 125 member states have voted in favor of Khan's resignation. And then finally, Ben.

The Washington Post had a great piece on the ongoing boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific that are supposed to be about targeting drug traffickers. According to the Post, at least 67 boats have been attacked and 221 people have been killed. But the strikes have not stopped or reduced the amount of cocaine coming into the U.S. despite Trump's claims. Prices remain the same. Purity is high, which is an indicator of supply consistency. And then criminal organizations have developed new tactics, which include... using larger boats that stay closer to the coastline to lessen the probability of U.S. firing at them using aircraft that take off from secret airstrips to get away from the U.S. military and then bribing officials to say where U.S. ships are so the smugglers can just avoid them. Long story short, we got lots of war crimes and murder and seemingly no benefit. So again, great work, everybody. You just gave a great snapshot into the Trump era return to... colonialism in the hemisphere because I asked, I think last week or the week before Times of the Flat Circle, what are the American people getting out of this colonial enterprise in Venezuela? Well, you know, apparently $13 billion that nobody can account for. The Venezuelans withdrawing from the international criminal court. So coming in line with American foreign policy, I guess, in being opposed to international justice. Coincidentally, when Benjamin Netanyahu is facing an arrest warrant from the ICC. And we are committing murder in the high seas, not even more crimes because there's not even a war. We're just murdering people. That's kind of a good snapshot of what Trump era imperialism looks like. Murder, money that disappears, and the destruction of international justice. Excellent. Not to be dark about it. No, it's a great combo. It's kind of what's happening. Well, I know everyone is hoping that with that record that Trump finally gets a Nobel Peace Prize. And this might help. The Washington Post reported that Trump is now considering launching a new war in Mali against an al-Qaeda affiliate named J&IM. This would probably just be air strikes, although not rolling anything out. But it would be the eighth country that Trump has bombed in his second term. The post has the leading voice pushing to bomb Molly is Seb Gorka. Yes, yes. He's counterterrorism advisor. I haven't heard that guy in the name in a while. When Seb Gorka, the kind of creepy. It's a Hungarian fascist. Yeah, Hungarian fascist who's running counterterrorism, apparently at the White House, wants to do something. It's probably a good idea not to do it. I'm not sure why this counterterrorism episode in Mali will go any better than the... All the others? All the others just seems like a terrible idea. More of the same. Also, we wanted to talk about just the horrifying wildfires that are burning large swaths of France and Spain. The fires have burned over 100,000 acres in France, nearly 200,000 acres. in Spain. More than 360,000 people in those two countries have had to flee their homes. French President Emmanuel Macron called it the worst crisis in France since World War II. It's being described as France's largest ever peacetime evacuation. Unfortunately, things might get worse this week. So this summer, Europe has been hit by several climate change-driven heat waves. Temperatures could exceed 100 degrees again this week. The fires also come after a wet winter, so there is a lot of vegetation to burn. Longer term, Europe is warming faster than any other continent, thanks to climate change. So terrifying story for these people. Pray for rain, I guess. It's also a reminder that while climate change is...

off the political radar in America because our president is an idiot and a climate denier, it does not mean that the impact is not coming for all of us in some former fashion soon. Yeah, I don't know if you've noticed Tommy, but it's pretty fucking hot everywhere. And I do think to connect a couple of these threads, the two biggest things happening in the world, arguably, to me, are the rapid acceleration of climate change and the diffusion of artificial intelligence. And we're just not dealing with those two things at all right now under Donald Trump. And so the cost of the Trump era can be measured in dumb wars and terrible decisions and the destruction of USAID and the big, beautiful bill. They're also measured in what we're not doing. And I think people should kind of bear in mind any kind of normal government would be very focused on these twin existential challenges of AI and climate change. And they're not. And whoever comes next, hopefully a Democrat, I think those things are going to be like at the top of the agenda. Yes, a lot of makeup work to do. I noticed our friend Mark Landler, who's the New York Times, who has covered the White House in the State Department during the Obama years and then went and covered British politics in the UK and then recently went to France. He got the assignment of going down to Bordeaux. to talk to wine owners. Yeah, I saw it's in Bordeaux or Z. I mean, and that's not just that I like Bordeaux. I mean, that would be a massive economic hit. Huge economic. So I think it's taking a huge tourism hit. Yeah. So interestingly, when they're horrible fires in like Napa Valley, it can impact the taste of the grapes, in part because the smoke hangs around in the valley between the two mountains. It gets trapped. In Landler's piece, he said that the winds kind of move through faster, so hopefully it will push the smoke out. But there's sort of crucial periods where either the grapes are like kind of ripening and turning red. That's when smoke can kind of get into them or during harvest time. It can impact the taste of the wine. So you could have like smoky wine. For a season, obviously that's not the end of the world. It would be much worse if like all these historic vineyards and locations that have been around since like the 1600s are burned to the ground. And it's already an industry that's got hit hard because Gen Z is not drinking wine. There's all these tariffs. I don't know, man. Come on. Drink some fucking wine for God's sake. Help our French friends out. But yeah, no, I obviously it was not a fun time to go to Bordeaux when they're just dealing with this horrific tragedy. But I imagine, I'm hoping that Landler picked up a couple cases or two for himself. Helped out the, help out the industry. He's a hardworking guy. He probably did. Hardworking guy. Finally, Ben, sometimes someone so deeply random enters the chat that you have no choice but to hand it to the gods of chaos. Michael wrote this last one. I have not seen this video yet. But the following song is the latest release from an artist who peaked in 1984.

Is this the Boy George song? He's also not Jewish, but regardless felt compelled to weigh in on the Israel of it all. So, Ben, I've not watched this yet. I've seen this, unfortunately. So I'm cold watching it. This is Boy George's latest single. We will dance again. Michael wants us to pay particular attention to the genre that Mr. George has chosen. It's reggae, right? I don't know. I'm about to find out. I'm head of Michael on this one. You say genocide. I say war. When you're attacked, it's what the army's for. Musicians holding flags, mouthing like sheep, propaganda fueled by the internet, feels so weak. But trust me, we will dance again. But if you're ever confused, I stand with you. Um, not the worst song I've ever heard. Not the best either, though. No. It did make me feel like I was, you know, on a boat in the Caribbean. Probably wouldn't be singing about genocide in that context personally. Yeah, it's interesting lyrics choice. Is that where we're going here with like the kind of influencer campaign to improve the standing of Israel? Because I don't think that's going to. I think that's going to do it. Yeah. Boy, George, what has he been updates for the last 40 years? No idea. Yeah. I can't even really remember why he was big in the 80s. I just remember his name. Culture Club. Okay, Karma Chameleon, obviously. Oh, yeah, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, I don't really know a lot of other songs. Do you really want to hurt me? That was the other banger. That's it for us today. You were going to take a quick break, but then you're hearing Ben's conversation with David Remnick. Set up by the Boer George. Set up by Boer George about hopefully a post-net and Yahoo future and what the hell is going on in Israel. So stick around for that.

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All right, I'm very pleased to welcome to POTSA of the World, Dave Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, someone whose books, articles, edited articles I've read for so many years. David, in addition to editing, still finds time to report, and he's made five trips to Israel since October 7th. His latest piece in this week's New Yorker. profiles the leading challenger to BB Niniao in the upcoming Israeli election, Gadi Eisencott, ahead of the elections on October 27th. I should say also the New York Radio Hour, which David usually hosts, is excellent listening. David, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, Ben, and I have to stipulate, it's a little weird since for years I've been asking you questions. You have. And actually, I've got to be one of the... most oft turned to sources for the New Yorker of the Obama years, let's just say. I think all the checkers know you by now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is fun. This is great fun about a very important topic. I mean, it's a great piece. People should read it, particularly people who don't know much about Gadi Eisenstein-Scott. I wanted to start by asking, you know, he had been the chief of... the IDF for a number of years under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was briefly called back into the Israeli War Cabinet after October 7th. He lost his son in Gaza. Why do you think he is running to be prime minister? What was your sense of what the motivating factor is for him to enter politics like this? Well, as you know, Benjamin Netanyahu has been prime minister longer than anyone in the history of the state, longer than Ben-Gurian. I think 19 years all told. I first encountered him writing a profile in the 90s. You know, he had that first term, and then it was interrupted, and then this long stretch of time. And... It is proven very elusive in trying to defeat him. All kinds of center-left and centrist candidates have run over the years. And, you know, I think my sense of Benjamin Netanyahu is not far distant from yours, but the one thing that you have to acknowledge about him is that he is a ruthless, deeply effective political campaigner when it comes election time. And they have a very different system than we do. And that matters for him. His job politically, and there's nothing that's more important on this earth to Benjamin Netanyahu is the sustaining and construction of a political coalition. Because you have to rule by coalition. There's no party big enough to gain 61 seats, which would get a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. And as a result, that probably, I think if I had to guess, takes a, you know, it makes a bad thing even worse. Certainly right now you have an innately right wing, and obviously I'm showing my politics here, but you have an innately right wing, Benjamin Netanyahu, made extremist in the Israeli context in the assemblage of his coalition by having Itamar Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.

But if he wanted to get rid of those two, he can get rid of them by assembling a different kind of coalition. So there's a ruthlessness to him that has to be stipulated. And even though Gotti Eisencott, who, as you say, was a military leader and is ahead in the election by any polling, is not necessarily going to win. He wants to be prime minister. I think people... have lots to say about him. But one thing I think that they do credit him with is a certain sincerity. Again, I'm not asking you to agree with all his politics. And as we'll discuss going forward, he's not the answer to the Palestinian question for certain. But I think there's a sincere desire to at least heal more of the rifts in Israeli society and to preserve, to a far greater degree, the democratic nature. of Israel, and again, I'll stipulate again, it's a democracy that does not extend certainly to the Palestinians in the West Bank in Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also arguably to the Palestinian citizens of Israel itself. There is a sincerity there, and also the one thing that everybody knows about Gotti Eisencott in Israel is that he's a grieving father. that he lost his son in the war and two nephews. And this has real appeal put alongside the incredible cynicism of Benjamin Netanyahu, who never went out of his way to console, say, for example, the families of hostages or parents of the lost. It's a strange coldness in him that people... even a lot of his supporters dislike. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of places to go. I mean, I want to stick with a piece for a bit before kind of pulling back the camera. It's not just that lack of empathy. I mean, you know, one thing you write about that I think has not got a lot of attention here. is in addition to stonewalling any proper inquiry into what happened on October 7th, the security failures, the failure of the IDF to respond, the fact that the IDF was up in the West Bank defending settlers instead of on that border, that there's actually kind of these conspiracy theories that Benjamin Netanyahu has spun that, you know, he was, the deep state didn't wake him up. It's all everybody else's fault. Somehow Benjamin Netanyahu becomes the victim. of what happened on October 7th on his watch astonishingly. I mean, how prevalent is that mindset among his supporters? The conspiracy theories? Yeah. The conspiracy theories are very prevalent, and they range in character, but they're roughly all the same as you've described them. You know, in 1973, Israel was taken by surprise by the Egyptian and Syrian armies, famously on the morning of Yom Kippur. when, you know, the state of readiness was very low, even though there were hints and intelligence that the Egyptians were planning an attack.

And for the first few days in 1973, the Sinai Peninsula on the Egyptian part of the front and the Golan Heights on the Syrian part of the front were overtaken by Syrian and Egyptian forces. And it looked like it was quite conceivable, despite the strength of the Israeli military, that those tank forces could have reached central Israel. Could have reached Tel Aviv, could have reached, you know, all those coastal towns and cities, could have been an even greater disaster. The war turned around. When the war ended, soon thereafter, in Golda, year was the prime minister, there was something called the agranat. Commission, chaired by the chief of the Supreme Court. And it was a very thoroughgoing investigation about intelligence failures, military readiness, the kind of thing that to some degree we saw after 9-11 in this country. And the result of that is many of the top leaders of the security establishment resigned or just quietly laughed or were fired. And Golda Meyer herself, after some time, ended her political career. By contrast, after October 7th, Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything he could to either ignore the issue or tamped down the issue of a similar commission of inquiry, an official commission of inquiry. And he doesn't want it because he would have to answer these questions. Now, lots of the people in intelligence and military who had positions of great responsibility have since stepped down. Because you're absolutely right. That was a colossal, colossal failure of strategy over the years, having to do with how Gaza was dealt with, even on Israeli terms. Forget how you and I would look at it. But, and misplacement of troops and emphasis and what's called the conceptia, how the conception of how Gaza was being dealt with. And quite frankly, Benjamin Netanyahu's emphasis was solely on, or primarily on, Iran itself, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and kind of regarded... Gaza and particularly Hamas as a bunch of thugs running around with AK-47s who were no more capable of overrunning the fence, much less at 100 different points, as the man in the moon. And I would, I'd say useful in some ways to be a face of Palestinian governance relative to the PA. Precisely. That's part of the conceptia, which was to elevate and to fund via Qatar. Yeah. Hamas, while degrading the Palestinian authority, because the Palestinian authority, if it had been stronger and had more political credibility, they have their own internal problems and corruption and all the rest, would have heightened the possibility of having to deal with the Palestinian question at all. And that's exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu never wanted to do. He wanted to so-called minimize...

the Palestinian question and keep kicking the can down the road year after year after year. And the only time he ever spoke up about two states, which is when, and you'll, maybe you disagree, is when Obama forced it down his throat and basically made Benjamin Netanyahu give a speech at Barlan University in favor of two states. And after that speech was over, Benjamin Netanyahu faced one of our... American diplomats and said, okay, I said it. Now can we move on? There was no sincerity in that speech whatsoever. So a couple things about Eisenstadt before I wanted to. kind of take a step back here too. But the first is, I thought one of the more extraordinary anecdotes in the piece was him describing a meeting in the early days after October 7th when Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to focus on Hezbollah and wanted to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, who they ended up doing that later. Not exactly right. The military establishment wanted to open a second front immediately. This is on October 11th after they've called on Eisencott and Benny Gans to become part of this war cabinet, I think, in an attempt to broaden support. Yeah. For Benjamin Netanyahu himself, who was in terrible political trouble because of the disaster of October 7th. Yeah. And Benjamin Netanyahu was kind of on the fence. Biden calls Benjamin Netanyahu and says, don't do it. Don't make this into a regional war. Concentrate on Hamas. We can discuss that too. Yeah. And the Defense Secretary in Israel, the chief of the general staff, many members of the intelligence establishment want to go after Nasrallah. Because they partially, they knew we did not know, which is they had this capability against Hezbollah, which turned out to be rather remarkable on a pure military and intelligence level. And so Biden gave his advice. And it was up in the air. And literally the planes were going to head toward southern Lebanon and Beirut. And Eisencott, in particular, campaigned in this very tense meeting against this operation. And it was called off. So that was a very dramatic moment. Yeah, no, it was. And my question, does that suggest a man that might be less likely to want to prosecute this? regional war against Iran in Iran and Lebanon and does does that suggest you somebody that might show more restraint if he got into that office and maybe not in the West Bank which we'll get to but but in the wider region it suggests that but I want us to be very cautious and realistic Ben in other words I think you and I share this is what we want is a

just resolution of a historic problem. Eisencott may be a man of the center or even a closet man of the center left, as many older people in the defense establishment are, which is a weird thing. And they can talk us through that. But if you campaign on that slogan about two states or resolution in the wake of October 7th, you are going to get elected nothing. Not dog catcher, not anything. So he's rather quiet about that. What he does present is, you're right, somebody who did not want to jump into a regional war, even though he has no illusions about Iran or its, you know, it's proxies elsewhere in the region. And he suggests a much more moderate, sane... open and honest insofar as that can be accomplished, public image. And even when he was in the Benjamin Netanyahu government, they had disagreements about things. There was a famous incident where a Palestinian had committed an act of terrorism in Hebron in the West Bank. But he was also, you know, flat on his stomach and was under control and he had been disarmed. But an Israeli soldier was so incensed that this guy had done this, that he went over and shot him to death. Now, Eisencott favored. and put into motion the prosecution of the soldier. This is not a proper thing for a soldier to do under any ethical, military, understanding, either Israeli or American or otherwise. Benjamin Netanyahu, initially, in the first hours afterwards, agreed. But then he went to social media, thanks to his son, Yair, who you've probably heard a lot about, who's this kind of Donald Trump Jr. figure, and thought, ah. I need to be on the side of where the anger is and immediately called the father of this guy who had really, in essence, killed, murdered the Palestinian soldier, no matter how horrible he was. And so there's a difference. There's a kind of, if you're willing to... credited a moral difference that people remark upon. Look, it seems to me like he'd be less egregiously, performatively fascistic as Benjamin Netanyahu is more likely to uphold, at least for Jewish Israelis, the judicial system that Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to dismantle, perhaps model a certain kind of ethics and morality in some of his conduct that Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't. But I want to... kind of push on a couple of things. Sure. But I do think one other thing that we're leaving out, I think one thing that he would act on much more aggressively is that Benjamin Netanyahu allows Smortrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who essentially run the West Bank, to allow settler violence to run wild. And by extension, allow the possibility of annexing in the end of ends, the West Bank.

Much less, there's even a movement, a smaller movement among settlers to start resettling Gaza, astonishingly. Yeah. I don't, I think that would be markedly different under Eisenhower. Yeah, but the thing I want to press on is this, which is, you know, and I heard your interview with Rahman Manuel, you know, went to Tel Aviv University, gave a speech excoriating Benjamin Netanyahu. I do think that there's a feeling among a lot of people, I think I'm one of them, but even more so among Palestinians, certainly, and they're growing supporters in this country, that sometimes Benjamin Netanyahu is a useful lightning rod. because we get to talk about how much we hate Nenyao and how terrible he's been for Israel and I was destroying this relationship. And frankly, even Ramtan frames it as look at what he's done to approval ratings for Israel in this country. But Israel supports these policies. They've... They've moved to the right as a country, as you say in your piece, like even nobody's running on any kind of just solution for the Palestinians. Well, I'll remind you, Ben, the United States, the majority at one point supported many terrible things. The Vietnam War, Iraq. I don't know what the poll numbers initially on Iran were they're probably oppositional. But the question is, Is an entire country irredeemable? I don't think the answer to every question is Benjamin Netanyahu, and I'm not sure the question to all of Israel's and Palestine's ills is Gotti Eisencott by any means. It is, it's a miliorist answer. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, but I guess does Benjamin Netanyahu in some ways actually serve? as a bit of a cover for the fact that most of Israeli society supports the project of Greater Israel, supports maybe not annexing the West Bank tomorrow, but does not foresee the Palestinians ever having self-determination. Are we not reckoning with that? Because it's kind of easy to... I don't think that's entirely factual, and I don't think it's unchangeable. I think... It wasn't so long ago that the considerable majority of Israelis, Jewish Israelis, were pro to states. How you would get there was the question. How long it would take to get there is another question. I'm not, you know, giving a moral sheen to any of this. I'm just giving what the facts are. I think that one thing, Nadaviyal talks about this in the piece, he's a columnist for Yudiyot Ahronaut, a kind of center left by Israeli standards, a columnist. And he said, the one thing that you have to understand that is probably not very well understood or is forgotten, is October 7th shattered Israel's sense of...

security and the state protecting them to such a degree. And it was so shocking and violent and lurid that for a lot of people, their fright became a form of politics. So that you had people living in the Kibbutzim near Gaza, in Kfaraza, in Bari. and other places like that. These were peacenics. These were people who were running aid to Gaza. These were people who could not have, you know, they wanted a two-state solution more than anything. Even after the second intifada. And as you know, the country has run much more to the right, not just since October 7th, but since for a generation. Well, since the assassination of Rabin, you could argue. Absolutely. Even longer ago in the mid-90s. So, and Benjamin Netanyahu's talent, perversely, darkly, is to exploit that fear, to understand that fear, know how to give voice to it, know how to manipulate it. At the same time, and we can get into the Trump-Natinejo relationship, these guys run on parallel lines. Trump's has learned from Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Netanyahu from Trump. If you were to go to Israel, and I know you've been. You would hear the language of enemy of the people, all the language that Trump uses, deep state. That is now common parlance for Benjamin Netanyahu. He knows how to exploit people's fears. And that is his politics. I think it can't be underestimated sometimes how powerfully. An individual leader can persuade, including morally, the temper of the country. I, you know, sometimes I get criticized for being too positive about Obama. You'll forgive me, Ben. But compared to what? In other words, the moral hope, the sense of optimism, the sense of possibility. that he radiated to people who might not have been his natural allies was considerable. And now we see the absolute polar opposite in Donald Trump. How do you like them apples? Yeah. And so Eisencott, again, he is not what you would hope for, particularly in the aftermath of the Gaza War, which is so horrific. And it's not what you would hope for to immediately solve. all the problems of the West Bank and everything that you and I could name while standing on one foot. But it's a comparison of what your choices are. That's the nature of milieuist politics and not protest. And that's what I'm trying to describe, not endorse. One thing that I was haunted by, David, though, and this is where I might push a little bit on whether Israel can kind of come out of this darkness. It was very moving to read about... Eisen Scott's loss of his son, how he described the abyss that he feared falling into. I couldn't help but thinking, you know, there's well over 100,000 Palestinians who've lost children, family members. The contrast, the kind of absence of any Israeli capacity.

to see that or to empathize. I don't think that's a universal. I don't think that's a universal. I would, I would, I would, I would. Well, nobody in politics. Deny that, but I, it's much more prevalent. No political figures emerging saying, look at what we're doing. These are equal in humanity. There are, but they don't, there are such political figures, but they're, but they're in deep minority. and get nowhere in the electoral. Look, what was the temper of the United States after 9-11? I wrote a piece shortly after October 7th warning about that because I could see the- President of the United States, Joe Biden, for all his immense faults in the handling of this. And we just published a piece by David Kirkpatrick, which really went through the way Jake Dan Sullivan... Well, the entire security establishment, including Biden, just completely mishandled the situation. But the first thing Biden did say when he went to Israel was essentially, we feel for you, October 7th is a disaster in all the ways that he described, and Israelis could readily describe emotionally and intellectually. But don't make the same mistake we did. Don't act out of rage. Which is precisely what the United States did and precisely what Israel did. Precisely. Now, what is the proper military response to a slaughter of 1,200 people and 200 hostages and et cetera, et cetera? Unclear. Unclear to you, Ben. It's not what happened in Gaza. I'll tell you that. But it certainly is not what happened in Gaza. You and I can agree. And obviously, endless numbers of people can agree. But, you know, you wrote a speech and are involved with the president whose temperament is thus that, and this is not a defensive Israel right now, but it's an acknowledgement of how history works, is that countries are capable of committing horrible ills, whether structurally or militarily, whether it's the return of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow or the Civil War or Vietnam. And it doesn't make them irredeemable forever, but it demands moral reckoning. It demands political reckoning. And it happens, and, you know, Obama, if anything, remains criticized on the left for being too meeliorist in this way. I don't agree, but there it is. That's the way, at best, in this fallen world, at best, history works in the wake of disaster. and cruelty. I want to ask you one thing about, you know, as someone has read the New Yorker, since I can remember reading anything, you are a place that people look to to understand world events and to get like a point of view, if not always opinion, but I want to ask about language in this context. One of the things, you know, you're in New York that is now governed by Zohran Mamdani. who I think is reflective of where public opinion is moving, you know, maybe not everybody's where he is, but that's the direction of events that are, or the direction of opinion. You know, he's has this video out.

you know, talking about Benjamin Netanyahu's responsibility for genocide. And I know you have to think about these things as both a writer and an editor. I do. And people use those words when they back, when they make their argument for them and I have no problem with them. I was, you know, in reading your piece, like the way you describe Hebron, for instance, full of... checkpoints and privileges for small numbers of settlers amidst, you know, over 200,000 Palestinians, like that feels like apartheid to me, you know. Or when I look at Gaza and I compare it to what happened to the Rohingya or the Uyghurs or in Darfur. To my standard, it's genocide. And I'm just wondering when you think about the reckoning that needs to happen for Israel to change course. And I think the reckoning that is still happening inside of parts of the American Jewish community that kind of don't want, they kind of want Israel to be the Israel that they remember, you know, Goldemeyer, as Joe Biden often reminded us. Yeah, but Goldemeyer wasn't Goldemeyer. Do you know what I mean? I think some of this is over-romanticizing the past. But my question is, do we need to speak more forthrightly in calling things genocide and apartheid? and using a language to get the attention. Well, I don't mean to be gingerly at all in my description of Hebron. Hebron is racism full stop. And it's racism in concrete. It's racism in the construction of its physical being. Hebron, modern Hebron is the way it is, because in the wake of 1967, I mean, we could probably go back to the Bronze Age, and this is part of the problem of discussing this too much history and not enough geography. I don't mean to be flip about it. But in the wake of 1967, a very small group of settlers came in with a very clever, diabolical plan as they took, you know, led by Moshe Levenger. who was a kind of Itamar Ben-Gvir of his day. And he staged a satyr at an Arab-owned hotel. I think it's called the Park Hotel. I can't remember. And really, that's how the settlement there, Kiryat Arba, began. Because what they did was they established, and this is a phrase you know well from your life and diplomacy, a fact on the ground. They refused to leave. And the Israeli politicians refused to uproot them. And over time, this became a permanent fact of the matter. And Kiryat Arba is now a, what is permanent, but a state of cruel presence in Hebron, a city that if you are a zealid of a certain kind in Israel, and there are no small number of them, you consider much more important than Tel Aviv because of its biblical meaning.

So, I, you know, I have no illusions about the way Hebron came into being. I have no illusions about the cruelty and uprooting of Palestinian villages throughout the West Bank. You know, I met with those people repeatedly over the years. I think in their description, it's all accurate. You know, for some people, there's a litmus test of terms. And I was, you know, for example, David Grossman, who is, we don't really have an equivalent of this. He is kind of a liberal, moral, Israeli who sees efficacy historically and otherwise in, a state for a people that has been pursued, discriminated against slaughtered, and almost obliterated from the face of the earth, to have a homeland. But David Grossman, with great pain in his heart, In an interview, I think with an Italian newspaper, used the word genocide. But there was a long explanation of it. It wasn't just, yeah, it's just genocide. And that was the end of David Grossman's point of view. Edgar Carrot, another liberal with very similar politics to David Grossman, doesn't because he feels that if you use that word, that ends all. conversation, and it leads nowhere good. You could argue with either one of them, and people do. My job as a journalist, me individually, doing my work, is to go describe fairly, you'll forgive me the facts on the ground, representation of the voices in the air, Palestinian, Israeli, and the range of those. It's never accomplished perfectly. I'm not there to beat a drum in a kind of op-ed sort of way. So different people have different languages, and they also have different purposes. But I just try to do that work as honestly and descriptively as I possibly can and give voice to people who use different languages, but to put pressure on bullshit and dishonesty and obfuscation. Yeah. I remember very distinctly, because I'm old enough, when Jimmy Carter used the word apartheid, he got all kinds of shit. Yeah. All kinds of shit. And it's not least in the American Jewish community, which I know quite well. Yeah. And who has had a greater success in that region than Jimmy Carter? But I think language is important in a way because... There's a reason why there's a desire to obscure certain terms because it kind of avoids a certain accountability. There's even language, you know, you quote a phrase that always bugged me when I was in government because I heard it from these Israelis, mowing the grass.

That's talking about... No, it's presented. It's presented, Ben. No, no, I'm not putting that on you. You put it in quotes. As the bullshit it is. Yeah, I know, I'm not, this is not calling you. This is, this is that the language itself, and, you know, I figured you'd appreciate this as someone who deals in language, you know, has been kind of used to, there's a different set of terminology that we apply to in Israel to somewhere else. And I guess what I'm saying is, and this is more a political point, I guess, that. In the same way that Jimmy Carter might have been a friend Israel that they should have listened to when he issued that warning, that maybe Azuramam Dani by speaking a certain blunt truth is offering actually something that's more useful than a Chuck Schumer in saying, like, this is what we see happening. If there's to be a moral reckoning in Israel that goes beyond just electing someone that is somewhat better than Naino, but is not really going to do anything about the West Bank fundamentally, how can we as outsiders try to galvanize that moral reckoning? I was always told when I was in government, and you and I talked about this at the time, there was this theory of the people who knew better, did you have to wrap your arms around the Israelis? and make them so comfortable that they're willing to make changes. Well, David Kirkpatrick's piece shows where that leads. And so I'm just kind of wrestling with this question of what is necessary to... communicate that this is an intolerable reality. Well, here's a precedent, you know, I didn't see Obama cut off military aid to the Israelis. He did, you know, the reality is actually in the 2014. In fact, the package he left him with was quite considerable. Which I was, look, I didn't like that. You knew my views at the time. I do. In 2014, though, he did say to Benjamin Netanyahu, we're going to cut off when they did the ground invasion of of Gaza, we started to restrict weapons shipments. And it was not long after that that they stopped that ground incursion. Now, they had not had an October 7th, but he was willing to do that at that time, obviously didn't go far enough. In part because, you know, all the political capital was spent on the Iran deal. So we won fight with Nainiao of that scale. was what the system could bear at the time. I regret that. Maybe my value here, and this is not to argue with you, but to present what I'm hearing in Israel back to you, journalistically, is the following. This did come in the wake of October 7th. This did come in a wake, as we now know, in fact, the Hamas not only planned to break through the fence at 100 points and do what they did and get as far as they possibly could. But on the morning of October 7th, Yaya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, and the chief planner with Muhammad Def, sent a communication to Nasrallah in Beirut and to the Revolutionary Guard Corps in...

in Tehran to please join the fight immediately. They had been discussing such an attack for a long time, but Hamas, for reasons of security, went forward with it on its own because they didn't want to, you know, have an intelligence collapse. Which, by the way, counteracts part of the Benjamin Netanyahu narrative that the Iranians were responsible for October 7. Well, I think they would say that their responsibility extends toward cooperation throughout arms. and all the rest. It's not as if Iran had no connection to Hamas. Let's be realistic here. Well, Qatar did too. We didn't. And I think Israelis also their defensiveness, and this is not my defensiveness, it is their defensiveness I'm stipulating, is how can you're picking on us all the time? I've never seen any campus demonstrations about Sudan or Congo. We're not arming, the military is carrying out those atrocities. Yeah, that's a $3 billion question. Yes. But still, there's no outrage there. It's not all about arms. So, again, I'm relaying back to you, you know, when I'm hearing when I go there. You know, Zohran Mamdani, you know, when I hear him described in awful ways, you know, from various people as, you know, somehow anti-Semitic or I think it's just wrong. and outrageous, to be perfectly honest. You know, Tom Friedman wrote this morning a piece about how he thought he could be more constructive. I'm not sure that's, that was realistic either. Did you read this poem? I did. I did. And that's kind of my point is that maybe it is constructive to have people of that prominence saying, and not suggesting everybody will agree with it, but that this is not like an acceptable reality, essentially, you know. It's not an acceptable reality, but I think my assessment is if in the best of all possible worlds, you know, to be Voltaurian about it, it's going to take a while on all sides for all kinds of reasons. To reassemble the notion of two states, because even that phrase rings hollow and old and defunct. Yeah, yeah. Defunct. But, you know, Peter Beiner, who I have respect for and listened to, just had dinner with him. But when Peter talks about a one state with human rights for all, I get it, you know, on a moral sense. But from an Israeli sense, I think they think that's a recipe for. Bosnia, for Yugoslavia, for immediate bloodshed on all sides. And I don't know that there's a Palestinian polity or opinion that that's feasible either. So it is deep, not only is it horrifically painful to look at all the loss and slaughter and... bloodshed and sheer outrageous stupidity all over. But this is also a great deal of pain to know that this is not going to be, quote, unquote, solved in an eye blink. It just isn't. I mean, do you see a way? No, because there's three things I can see. There's the one state that Peter describes. There's a two-state solution, or there's...

the annexation of the West Bank and not the cleansing Palestinians. I don't know what other, or there's some confederation or something. The third is just beyond unconscionable. Beyond unconscionable. But, and I think it's possible. I can't guarantee it. I'm not there. And that's not my job here. But if, if the political choice is between Eisencott. And Benjamin Netanyahu, the chance of that third option of annexation, of further ethnic cleansing is much greater, immensely greater. Yeah, no, that, and look, that's a good place to leave this. I'm glad we could have this conversation. You're right. I mean, Eisencott. at least provides, you know, the corrective of no-nin-yao and hopefully a disempowerment of the Smotrich and Bengavirs of the world. And we'll wait for the David Grossman's and... The late-grade amazas is... Yeah, but that's not going to happen overnight either. David Grossman's, I must tell you that even if I... I miss Amazes these days, too, you know. Yeah, yeah, but, you know, I'm not so sure how popular Amissau's or David Grossman are. They're not. They're not. That's my point. I know. They're considered... It's the curse of all curses, liberal Zionists. I get that. But... I should add, you know, because there weren't enough horrible facts stated in our conversation, that even if Eisencutt wins young voters between 18 and 25. Are more right wing, right? Are more right wing. And when you see these letters from people in the security establishment who have long experience of all this bloodshed and don't want to see annexation and don't want to see ethnic cleansing and do want to see state, two states, these are generally older people. And that's not very promising either. Well, look, we didn't solve the problems in the world, but we identified a lot of them, David. Next time. You'll just come back. Anytime. Look, people should read your piece. I learned a lot about Eisencott. I've learned a lot every time you go over there. So please keep going and reporting, as you say, because we need to understand what's happening. So next time in New York, we'll have a meal. Good to see you. Anytime. All the best. Thanks again to David Remnick for joining the show, and we'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethcote, Jim Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffat, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.