All the President’s (Corrupt) Men

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I'm Ben Rhodes, then another Tuesday another day spent waiting for Trump to make up his mind about what he wants to do and run. Yeah, we had that ceasefire YouTube subscribe to our YouTube channel. On Friday, it feels like it wasn't a ceasefire after all. It was just a bunch of true social posts.

Yeah, it was a lot of diplomacy by true social by tweets. We're going to walk you through all the latest.

There's the on again, off again, diplomatic talks and Pakistan.

There's the on again, off again, closures at the straight-on removes.

“We're also going to dig into deeper things like what life is like for people in Iran.”

We'll talk with the latest from Lebanon, including why conservative Christians are not at all thrilled with these really military. I think this is probably underappreciated story, the degree to which that this image of an idea of soldiers smashing a statue of Christ circulated on the internet over the past weekend.

Then we're going to talk about corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration and how it's impacting foreign policy. No, yeah, really. Wait till you hear about this Jared Kushner guy. Now we're going to talk about the recent elections in Hungary and Bulgaria.

The latest on the administration's slow rolling regime change. Ish efforts in Cuba try to figure out what the hell's happening there. Then we are going to update you guys about front of the show. An FBI director, cash but tell. He's having a, he's having a, he's having a, he's having a, he's having a time in the barrel.

“Soon back a few beers, 250 million dollar lawsuit against the Atlantic.”

See, we'll see if that goes to court. The discovery on that could be interesting for him. And then Ben's stick around for my interview with Nick Enrich. He was a top global health official at USAID when Elon Musk and the doge guys arrived and decided to destroy the entire agency. So he's a new book out called into the woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump

administration shredded USAID is not as you are about what Trump has done to the world and all the death in destruction that Elon Musk caused, this will make you even more angry. So I promise, yeah, good, it's worth it. No, it's way, this is a story that we shouldn't let just go away. Yes, it's a consequences of it and not going away.

And like it's one of those, the consequences are growing by the day. I mean, spoiler that the latest count that we talk about the interview is like 750,000 deaths as a result of USAID being destroyed, but the conversations Nick had with the people in charge of destroying USAID are like absolutely more maddening and stupid than you would think. You mean big balls was in the development X, Mr. Balls was not a pro on global health or pep far.

All right, so let's start with this, what we know about Iran. So as of this recording, the straight-of-home moves is closed. The war in Iran is not resolved. The talks in Pakistan don't seem to be happening and we literally are waiting all day. It's like the Will J.D. events get on the plane.

Those sort of like the conversation all day in Washington. The president's statements about it all are as incoherent and full of shit as ever. Here are a few examples from an interview Trump did Tuesday morning with CNBC. Let's listen to that. You need a at least a prospects for a signed deal.

Today and tomorrow or else you would resume bombing Iran. Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with, but

You know, they wanted to be over immediately and I just looked at a little chart.

“World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years.”

Korean War III years. Vietnam, 19 years, Iraq, eight years. I'm five months. Okay, five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly.

Look at Venezuela. I took it over in 45 minutes. It was basically a 45 minute.

And by the way, a very strong military country. We can't let traders like humor put pressure on you where they say, we want out how thick how bad that is. I'm negotiating with these people and they're telling us, we have to get out now. We have to get out now. We have to get down. I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed. I have all the time in the world. So we've done a great job.

And I don't want to be rushed by people that are really treason as far as I'm concerned. So I tried to do a little less like media criticism these days, but I feel like one follow-up would have been warranted and I would have won Vietnam in Iraq in a couple of weeks. That seemed like a moment for one. It's so clear that someone made that chart for him too.

“You know, it's not like he just came across a chart. I think what he fundamentally doesn't”

understand is that the consequences, yes, I mean, objectively, the war in Iran has not lasted as long as Vietnam. Congratulations. You get a gold ribbon, you know? Well, sir disaster. It doesn't mean that it's not a disaster, but also one of the things that I think he's missed in this whole enterprise is that the geopolitical consequences of attacking Iran specifically are actually much bigger in some ways than some of the other wars, I mean,

not war or war, but say the war in Afghanistan. You know, I don't mean to minimize that war in any way, obviously horrifying for the people who live through it, both in Afghanistan and in service

members, but Afghanistan wasn't a country of 94 million people that controls the straightforward

moves and is a significant supplier of global energy. You know, he is set in motion. He's kind of messed with the tectonic plates underneath geopolitics and the global economy with this war. And so he doesn't understand this isn't like something that's measured in like how many months of active conflict there are. It's measured in what are the repercussions of this we're going to be above all for the people that have already been killed or suffered, but also for

the entire global. Yeah, for the global economy, the kind of thing you think that, you know, CNBC might ask about it. Yeah, who am I to criticize Joe Kernan? So like I said, Ben, we're waiting all day to see JDV ants would make this trip just before we started recording President Trump posted the following message on true social. Based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and upon the request of Field Marshal

Asim Munir in Prime Minister Shabash, service of Pakistan. We've been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran. It's also such time as our leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all the respects remain ready and able and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposals submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other President Donald

J. Trump. So the I interpreted this as Trump blinking. He doesn't want to go back to war.

“The Iranians know that the Wall Street knows that oil traders know that. That's why all the prices”

are down. But he's also unwilling to lift the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which sounds like it was a precondition to get Iran to agree to come back to the table. Does that sound right to you? That sounds right to me. I think there's a couple of things happening here. The first is that, first of all, remember he was saying like a week ago that the regime is changed and they're all these wonderful people in charge now. We still keep stuck on that message,

right? Well, like it hasn't and what's happening on the Iranian side is pretty clear to me

from the outside, which is that the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hardest

Corps element of the regime, they're calling the actual shots, right? They are the ones who've closed the Strait of Hormuz, they're the ones who are collecting the tolls, they're the ones who are firing drones at the Gulf, and so some of these civilian leaders, these political leaders of Iran, may not even be able to deliver what they're negotiating at the table because the IRGC or the ones that ultimately have to sign off and they're the hardest of the hardliners. And they've got

the big guns. And they've got the guns literally. And so first of all, this is what happens when you kill the leadership of a country, right? And so they've killed multiple people, not just the Ithola, they've killed other people that could have been decision makers because they had more sway with the IRGC. And they've kind of finally settled on this speaker, the Iranian Parliament who has some credit with the IRGC. But so on the Iranian side, you've got this split and the IRGC is like,

you know what? We can sense that Trump is afraid of this war. And so why would we make a deal that doesn't get us everything we want? You know, when Strait of Hormuz is really if you want

as Trump says. But we probably don't want to make any more concessions on nuclear program.

“Why should we? This guy's scared of us. He doesn't want the war. Then Trump doesn't really know”

what he wants. He just wants to be able to say one. Clearly he wants to get like what's good headline. The dust out, which again, as we've talked about, doesn't change the underlying Ukrainian nuclear program. Sprinkle on a toilet paper. Yeah, he just wants something to say he won. But because he doesn't really know why he went to war, he doesn't even know what he's really pushing at the table. You know, before the war, there were pushing ballistic missiles,

support for proxies. That's all gone. James Shane was just a regime change. Justice for protestors killed. We're back to the JCPO in negotiation, you know. And so that's all Trump knows. And then the Pakistanis probably don't even know why they're hosting this thing. There's happy to be there. They made billions of dollars of investments in Trump and Whitkopf's kids business, you know, crypto business. So this is not the best recipe for de-escalation.

Yeah, so I saw this BBC reporter tweeted that the Iranian delegation was basically ready to

come to the negotiating table, but then everything changed over the weekend when the U.S. military fired on an Iranian flag cargo ship according to some Iranian source. And that just blew everything up. And they want the blockade basically lifted. We'll get more into the tick talk of how we got there. But Ben, I've been reading, you know, there's a great economist piece about the kind of intra-aronian power struggle that you were just touching on. It's between elected

officials, it's between the military, it's between nationalists and Islamists. And the way this kind of played out and manifested in practice was Iran sent 808 zero officials to the last round of

“Pakistan talks. Yeah, 30 of them were deemed decision-makers. And I think on the previous episode,”

we talked about how the Iranian delegation was stacked with experts and expertise and people had been in negotiations before. And that is definitely like the glass half full version of it, but the glass half empty version was the economist reported that the Pakistani mediators spent as much time kind of refereeing fights between members of the Iranian delegation as facilitating talks with the U.S. So yes, it does sound like there's a very real power struggle happening.

And no clear way that it ends besides, you know, the military probably killing a bunch of people or throwing them. Yeah, I mean, some of this is also probably like you want to go to Pakistan. It's been a little rough on Iran. It's probably sounds nice to be in a hotel with good wifi and like, you know, all you can eat breakfast buffet, you know, it's a good point. The other thing I would say is, and this gets to the true social posts, when I was, you know, in charge of

for lack of better term, like, you know, advocating for the Iran deal. There was a dynamic that would happen where, look, obviously, we were trying to emphasize all that we got in the deal. So we would lean into like, you know, they're going to submit to these intrusive inspections and they're going to ship out the stockpile and they're going to, we're going to be able to see all of their program, the Iranian mines and mills and the centrifuges all true. But sometimes

John Kerry would get a call from Javad Zarif, the farm minister, who'd be like, hey, can you guys kind of chill out and chill out a bit on the intrusive inspections piece because it's true.

But the RGC, I mean, he didn't necessarily say in these words, but basically it was giving

him problems with the hardliners back home, right? The RGC didn't want the deal or they didn't like aspects of the deal, like the intrusive inspections where you could just show up and look at stuff. And so it hurt him in the Iranian system if we were leaning into that. Imagine if you were the Iranian negotiator and you know you're probably out at in front of the RGC a little bit in Pakistan and you're like, well, yeah, maybe we could ship the dust out and exchange for this

“and you know you have to sell it back home to these killers in the RGC. And then all of a sudden”

you wake up on a Friday and Trump is true social posting all these concessions that you actually didn't make. This straight will be open forever, which is, you know, not something that I'm sure the Iranian's agreed to, that they're not going to be enriched uranium. Trump was posting a the RGC guys, I guarantee you called the fuck called up the negotiators and we're like, what the fuck, hey, maybe come, uh, pay a visit to us, you know, and it's like, uh, and so of course

they're like backing out because they don't want to get killed by the RGC. And so Trump is literally in dangering the negotiators by what he's doing. Yeah, I can sense that. It's a good strategy, no, it makes a lot of sense. Um, okay, so let's, let's do a bit of the tale of the tape about how we got to this point. And like you said earlier, we recorded a bonus episode for the Pateau of the World of YouTube on Friday about this like, flurry of social media activity. So please subscribe

to Pateau of the World of YouTube to make sure you don't miss any of this bonus episodes. And also, when you subscribe and you like and you share this stuff we do on YouTube,

with the Iran talks and not factual, uh, not like propaganda because Ben, I made the mistake of

“watching a clip of, um, uh, Hugh Hewitt on his show interview in Eli, like, about the latest,”

I always miss his very talks. It was like a parallel universe where everything was solved.

The war was a triumph. We they'd figured it all out. So I was guys live with the, the reality that that's not true. They do a lot of dust. You know, a lot of that. If Obama had done this, they'd be yelling about how we let the regime in place. So, they left the blessing missiles. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Last week, we had this flurry of claims from Trump on social media. You mentioned a few of them, but let me just read them. Uh, Iran is agreed to never close this trade of whom

is again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the world. Not sure that one held up. Uh, the USA will get all nuclear dust created by our great B2 bombers. No money will exchange hands in any way, shape or form. Uh, then finally he said Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited all caps from doing so by the USAA. That one I liked. So, uh, it was all bullshit. Um, Iran had only announced a partial opening of the straight. And then by Saturday,

“they'd walked back even that partial opening because the Iranians were pissed.”

The Trump said, well, we're going to continue our blockade of the straight. Uh, then things escalated further after the Iranians attacked two Indian flag ships attempting to transit the straight. Trump called those attacks a total violation of our ceasefire agreement. Um, and then he re-opt his threat to destroy Iran's civilization. It's civilian infrastructure. Uh, by saying, you know, if they don't take the deal, the United States is going to knock out

every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran, no more Mr. Nice guy all caps us how we fended that one. The US later boarded and seized an Iranian vessel that was en route from China, the US seized a tanker and the Indian Ocean. So things just kept escalating escalating. Uh, on Monday, Iran's speaker of the parliament and lead negotiator, Muhammad Galibath said Iran will quote, not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats.

Uh, and quote, we have been preparing to show new cards in the battlefield. So I was excited for like a new card, you know, midseason twist here. So, um, then obviously like, like, my, by working assumption has been that Trump wants a deal or he wants the war over. He wants to punt to this as far down the road as he possibly can and just do a CNBC hits and convince a bunch of commodities traders. He had traders that he is in fact, uh, could have folds on everything

and taco, whatever you want to call it and just like not make their lives harder or not increase the oil of energy. But also he refuses to admit that he hasn't accomplished all of his goals. There will be people pushing him from the right to actually get the HEU like I've zero doubt.

I've zero hope that these railies will actually, um, adhere to this demand that they never

attack. And they're still in Lebanon. Lebanon again. Yeah, and they're still occupying Lebanon. We'll get it. It's all the details of that later. So I don't know, man. Like, oh,

“this is as clear as mud. But like, how do you see this playing out in this moment?”

I think if you look at the Iranians, um, they know they don't have to give much, you know, in some ways, they could choose to give nothing and the war just kind of freezes. I think what they want, though, is money. You know, they want either unfrozen assets, like, you know, we heard rumors of $20 billion. They want either, you know, probably more comprehensive sanctions release so they can to sell oil without it being sanctioned. They want to tax the

straightive, or moves in perpetuity. They just want revenue, you know, and what will they trade to get that? They will not trade away their ballistic missile program because they've just demonstrated how much they need it. They're not going to trade away their support for proxies because it's kind of

existential to them that they have these proxies, um, and they're not going to say that they'll never

enrich uranium. They're not going to say we won't have a nuclear program. So I think what they had the trade away is the dust, you know, because the dust is not, frankly, that important, which isn't, just isn't dust, by the way, it's just, it's enriched uranium. It's highly enriched uranium, like it's so weird. So we have to call it dust because he has to say that he obliterated the program, but anyway, because fundamentally that means nothing to them. They still have centrifuges

that they can operate. If they choose to, you know, have a covert nuclear program, they just take this centrifuge underground and accumulate more dust, you know. So I could kind of see some deal where they ship out the AGU, and I don't know, maybe they promise not to enrich uranium for some period of time, which, by the way, that promise is worth nothing absent, like rigorous inspections, which I don't think they're submitt to, right? And so then Trump says he got the deal of the

century, it's so much better than Obama's Iran deal. You know, it's going to be probably a lesser version of the Iran deal, and that it'll be like the dust for some sanctions relief, you know, in the war's over 15 years instead of 10 or something. And if you think about, yeah, but that it will be a phone, they can say 100, you know, like they've learned that deals are fungible. They've learned

Right. It's a two and a half year deal, and they'll reassess at that point, or maybe they'll

“just cheat and have a covert nuclear program. And so you could see this world in which Trump”

declares victory because you got the dust out. If in the straight or four movies, it was open before the war's open. Again, measure that against what he said the beginning of the war. There's going to be regime change. We're going to obliterate, you know, their nuclear program, they're going to we have to end their ballistic missile program. We're going to destroy their navy. Well, clearly, we haven't destroyed their navy because they've closed the straight or four movies

with like a bunch of speedboats, you know. So he's not achieved the things he said he would, and it was totally unnecessary to launch this war, kill all these people, up in the entire global economy, you know, permanently lose the Gulf States, you know, as people that are alive on the United States and on and on was all that worth it to get like the dust out, you know, does anybody in America even care about the dust? Which in it? By the way,

it had already been dusted as far as we were concerned based on Trump's claims. And the question is, and I have a question for you, Tommy, is like, this is a huge, huge question, is like, will the right wingers accept? Because that's the total capitulation of the Iranians. Yeah, I think that where they're what they will tell themselves, the story they'll tell themselves, is lucky, destroyed, all of, you know, it's behind, you just sort of all the nuclear facilities.

It will take a generation to build them back. They have no revenue. The military capacity is, you know, the fraction of what it once was, therefore that is some big win when it's like,

whatever one has always said about military efforts to shut down Iran's nuclear program.

It's like you can set them back, but you cannot permanently take it away or solve the problem. And I think, they'll conduct some selves that the problem has been, you know, as solved as much as it could have been. What I think we know in reality that could be like a garage somewhere in Iran with some nuclear center, if you're just spinning, it's enriching, you know, uranium to the great they needed to be. There are just in this fantasy world where this is a

“game of risk. Because I think the most important thing we've learned from this war”

is that the demonstrated capacity the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz is worth 10,000 risk missiles. It's worth far more than support for his blow, you know, like, and they can't, whatever capabilities around lost, they gained a much bigger one, and showing that just firing a few drones at some tankers and threatening to the Strait of Hormuz gives him control of the global economy. So congratulations, Hugh Hewitt and Eli, like, you've just

empowered the IRGC more than anything that has happened since the 1979 reserve, Trump win.

Except for maybe the Iraq War, which empowered them significantly. So, it's a second time.

Another big one. But then Yocans have given the IRGC a gigantic win. This episode of "Potty of the World" is brought to you by Wild Green. Wild Green is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries and fresh pastas. Unlike many store-bought options, Wild Green uses simple ingredients you can pronounce in a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly, enrich your nutrients, and antioxidants. Plus,

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“One group that didn't get a win here is the Ronnie people. Let's talk about what life is like for them.”

Right now to the best we can. So the estimate you see in terms of civilian casualties in Iran is about 1,700 people. I think we should assume that that's a massive undercount. But that would only be the direct death toll and that is far from the only impact. So the Center for American Progress put together a report that talks about the kind of the human environmental costs of the war. That includes the US and Israeliirstrikes that release these

toxic chemicals and pollutants into the air. Remember when the Israelis bombed this big petrochemical facility it was like you know there was it raining like acid for days on people. All right, God knows what that did to civilians. That there have been you know further erosion of Iran's health care infrastructure, which is already under enormous stress before the war, because of anti-government protests and decades of sanctions and mismanagement.

And then Iran was experiencing this massive water shortage. Again, before the war that is gotten worse because you know at least one of their desalination plans was bombed. And then on top of that then, so the Iranians have dealt with like an almost total internet blackouts and so war started. And I would just ask anyone like a badge and any modern economy running without an internet for two months. Yeah, it's impossible. Every business is screwed, right?

And so on top of that, you know, the US in Israel is targeting major industries like petrochemical and steel. You need those industries to rebuild the country and also to get the revenue to rebuild the country. I saw one analyst told the Wall Street Journal that the disruption to the steel industry

put it risk more than 5.5 million jobs within Iran and then another 1.2 million at risk because

it impacts on the chemical and farmer industry. And so again, to sum it all up, there are all these protesters who Trump said he was going to rescue, who are now like staring down the barrel of a more hard line regime, right? They traded the older hominate for the younger hominate,

“the IRGC is more entrenched. And life is just exponentially worse for them. The disasters”

economic situation somehow got worse because we bond the shit out of it. Yeah, I think that we live in this world in which, you know, our new cycle focuses on this place when the bombs are following and then, you know, it's same impulse as Trump. Trump kind of reflects the worst aspects of America. It's coming through with Trump. If I can just get this off the television set, you know, and actually to him, it's the television set for most of his own phones,

then, you know, we'll think about other things. We'll think about, I don't know, the ballroom or the next war against Cuba or whatever. But I think what you're reminding us is of the people inside of Iran, like this war is going to be with them for a very long time. It's going to show up in, you know, deeper poverty, deeper repression, maybe health effects of some of these things that have been done, that millions of people will, and actually millions of

Iranians were also displaced, you know, millions of people's lives are worse because of what Donald Trump did. And that's the kind of moral outrage that sometimes missing, you know, when people talk about like Democratic opposition, the war that's about like, he didn't ask Congress the right way. It's like, what about the fact that, like, the briefing? Yeah, he just fucked over like millions of Iranians and perpetuity, both Arabs and Lebanese and the US civil service members who died

or were wounded, their lives were never going to be the same. And I think we kind of have to remind

ourselves that they're human costs. I think the other thing that they're mentioning is, you know,

“there's a world in which protest resume, you know, life is shitty there. But the IRGC is now like”

more dug in. They frankly think that they just weathered. If we can weather Trump bombing us and these really bombing us, we can deal with these protesters. And there's less of a threat of the

at some future date, you know, they probably think, well, Trump doesn't want to get another war.

“And I think the other thing that's happened, I'd be curious, and we won't know until we ask,”

you know, actual Iranians are just hard because in that block out of my other things, these diaspora Iranians that were very supportive of the war, like Resa Palavi, who was calling on people to rise up and suggesting he was going to go run a transition. Those people have to be pretty dread discredited because, oh, you would think. Well, you and I talked about this. I mean,

people who push for wars in the wars go bad. They are almost never discredited in Washington.

So I'm sure they'll have a friend there. Yeah, a friend in Washington would have been with in Iran. Again, he told these people that he was going to run some transition, Trump cast a messide the same way he did, Maria Machado and Venezuela. So it'll be interesting to see how the diaspora kind of adjust to this because I think there's a lot of splits, the people that advocated for this now look like they just advocated for something horrible to happen to their

country and not suggesting that's what they wanted to happen, but that is what happened. That's what happened.

“So I think it, yeah, but every metric life is worse for Iranians. And there's just no time”

frame for building it back. I mean, Iranian state media put the cost of rebuilding Iran at $270

billion. Yeah. Where is that money going to come from? And even over in the UAE, the Wall Street Journal

reported that the Trump administration is considering basically a bailout for the UAE because there economies have been hit so hard. So like the entire golf is feeling this ripple out. And so then like maybe the best news we have for you guys today, at least in this kind of bucket, is that the ceasefire is mostly holding in Lebanon. On Friday, Trump posted untreated social like we mentioned earlier, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They're prohibited

from doing so by the USA enough as enough. Axios reported that this caught these rallies by surprise. And then Yahoo was, quote, personally stunned and alarmed by the message. It's nice to take that one. Trump later elaborated to Axios saying Israel has to stop. They can't continue to blow buildings up. I'm not going to allow it. Again, I'm very skeptical that that will hold. But God, I would have loved to hear Joe Biden say that one fucking time at the end of Gaza over the

course of two years. Anyway, the IDF though is still occupying a huge chunk of southern Lebanon. The IDF calls it a forward defense line. We should call it what it is, which is Israel invading and occupying another country. A bunch of Lebanese people use the ceasefire to return to their villages and just check out their homes. They found them destroyed in many cases flattened to the ground by US military provided bulldozers last week, 40 Democrats voted to block the sale of military

bulldozers to Israel because they're using for this kind of stuff. But unfortunately, that vote failed. Folks on social media over the weekend then might have seen this pretty shocking image of an IDF soldier literally sledgehammering the face of a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross.

This happened in a Christian town in southern Lebanon. When I first saw this image, I thought it must

have been AI-generated. Be as it looked designed and allowed to inflame sectarian tensions and erode support for Israel among evangelicals. But nope, turned out it was real. In a statement notably, a statement released in English, Netanyahu said he was stunned and saddened by the soldier's actions and he condemned the act in the strongest terms. So the soldier who vandalized the statue and the soldier who took the picture were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 day military

detentions. But there were six others on the scene who were going to be punished separately, probably a slap on the wrist or something will find out. But the damage was done. This incident outrage conservatives, outraged religious leaders. It sounded isolated incident. Folks probably

“remember that the only Catholic church in Gaza was sheld a couple different times and the”

priest there was wounded in one of those shelings. So Ben, we've talked before on the show about how Israel's biggest supporters in the U.S. are not American Jews. It's evangelical Christians who like want the rapture to come. Do you think these stories will kind of will dent that support? Because you do see this narrative get lifted up by Tucker Carlson a lot for example. I think so. I mean, in first of all, I'm dubious of the ceasefire.

One statistic I saw Tommy was that, you know, there was a ceasefire with his blood in late 2024. There was reached. And the UN, the UN force in Lebanon reported 10,000 Israeli violations of that ceasefire. That's the same thing before this latest war started. And we saw the same thing in Gaza. Israel's violated the ceasefire in Gaza hundreds of not thousands of times. And so what they do is what Trump wants is again, Trump doesn't really care about the people in Lebanon or Gaza.

He wants it to be a low enough level of violence that it's just kind of not leading the news. You know? And so if Israel's like occasionally bombing Lebanon in perpetuity, that's fine, as long as it's not like the big show where they were, you know, oblitering Beirut. So county skeptical about the directives to Netanyahu to prohibit him from doing this in Lebanon.

is that there's a bunch of converging things happening. Is that you have, yes, like in Lebanon,

“these are some of these villages that are being destroyed or Christian villages.”

Some of them are Christian, like, you know, they've lineage that goes back to like the Bible, you know, like the New Testament, like this is a holy land, you know, for Christians, like this is where this war is happening, where Israel's occupying territory. And, and some of the people, the priests have been killed in the bombing. I saw, you know, a child that had met with the Pope was killed in the bombing like this.

So these different things that are touching this space, when you add on top of that, Trump posting the picture of himself as Jesus and Trump, you know, putting out this, threat to annihilate Iran on Easter morning, you know, happy Easter. There's a disrespect in disregard for Christianity in both the actions of these really government and in the personal actions of Trump. And so the evangelical Christians are having a double

reckoning because they're both like, huh, Trump, I thought we liked him. He got rid of Rovey Wade, but it turns out he's mocking Jesus. Now he seems like the anti-Christ. And, uh, like, I, you know, I thought Israel was our friend, but they're blowing up, you know, Christian villages. And now, there's this, you know, picture of an Israeli IDF soldier, like death, you know, desecrating Jesus. Of all the things to post in social media, you take literally

“slaking, taking a sledgehammer to Jesus. What are you thinking? What are your hobbies?”

Uh, I did. What is that, guys? I did show you the impunity. I mean, you see this and that's an IDF social media, like, yeah. Remember when you used to be the most moral army in the world? Oh, yeah. I guess that took more than that. And there was another incident I think in a church instead of the Lebanon where a bunch of IDF soldiers like staged a fake wedding inside an orthodox church. And, and probably didn't realize like how profoundly offensive that was for a bunch of Christians

in that community. And that went super viral on social media. So like, people who, again, whose feeds push them this kind of content have seen example after example after example, and are now like, that this whole most moral army thing. It just been tossed out the window. And we're not even talking about the disrespect and treatment to Muslims, Palestinians, your average or like Lebanese person. Like that is unfortunately priced in.

Well, and you also remember they, uh, that is really government closed, uh, on Palm Sunday. Yes. The church of the Holy Sepulchur, to the highest representative of the Vatican.

“Yeah. Literally where Jesus was born. Yeah. So I, I, I think that, look,”

it is the case that a lot of Americans and American Christians actually probably didn't know until a few months ago that there's a huge Palestinian Christian community that includes and encompasses the most holy sites in the Christian church. Yeah. Bethlehem. And Tucker Carlson, people like that are now really, you know, hitting on that point. And so I think it does risk lowering the floor of support for both Israel and Trump because, you know, people who are actually

care about their Christian faith, they're going to be upset about this. It also is a very dangerous gateway to a certain kind of anti-Semitism that is one of the older kinds of anti-Semitism. Well, the Jews are the ones who killed Jesus. Exactly. Exactly. And it's very dangerous. And again, like, it's Trump and BB that, you know, it doesn't just justify in any way, it shows why these kinds of wars are so dangerous for anti-Semitism, you know, because they lead people in those directions.

Yeah. And again, like the, the cost to civilians on the ground in Lebanon has been

unbearable, right? I mean, there's the direct casualty number, but then there's the million people

who have been displaced, and the people who came back to their homes that had just been leveled. We reached out to doctors with our borders to see kind of what they're experiencing on the ground in Lebanon. And we got this note from an emergency physician. Dr. Tian Menden, let's listen. I mean, people don't understand what the injuries look like that we were seeing before the ceasefire. Now, beyond the acute injuries, we're looking at a generation left with lifelong disabilities.

I visited a young woman a few days ago and I see you who, uh, we treated when she came through the emergency department, she'd been walking along with a friend when both her legs were blown off. She managed to survive her initial injuries, but when I visited her a couple of days ago, she was hooked up to dialysis, because the muscle destruction from her injury was so extensive that it had started destroying her kidneys. I also recently visited a migrant woman who'd been

a patient out of clinic for years. She was injured in one of the very first strikes in the south,

and she's still in the hospital. She's led into a brainstem and spine. She's paralyzed. Her home is destroyed, and the people who would have cared for her were killed in the same

during the war, either because they couldn't reach health care or their doctors were displaced,

“or hospitals had to shut their outpatient clinics to direct resources to trauma and emergency care.”

Yesterday, our clinic diagnosed a young pregnant woman with a baby who had died in utero. Imagine having a fully formed, wanted, and loved a baby, and having its heart stopped because the health care system had collapsed. These are complications that if they get caught early, they can be treated, they can be delivered safely by sea section when there's a functioning system. But there isn't one. So I look, you often hear people say, "Well, you know,

the IDF military campaign in Lebanon is the most justified of all their actions, because there is this real threat from Hezbollah and for rockets, et cetera." And it's like, "Okay, but there is a flip side to that argument about the human cost for people living in Lebanon, who have no association with Hezbollah, probably hate them." And that's some examples I've been.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that strikes me, looking at that clip,

“is these people and doctors at that border, they've been in a lot of difficult places,”

and you could hear her voice like breaking. And it's the same thing we experience in Gaza. Like, the scale of this destruction is not normal even for a war. Because you hear it in a voice, like the things that are happening, kind of go beyond, there was a civilian casualty event. You know, because again, this gets it, why is this, why is it necessary to go after the health infrastructure

if you're targeting Hezbollah? Like, it just, clearly this war went well beyond targeting Hezbollah. Either because there was no targeting or because there was indiscriminate or because there was really objective to kind of paralyze the Lebanese society while you take something love it on. Now, the other thing I want to say to me, and I'm going to say this at the beginning, many thanks to the world though, Lebanese American who sent me some wonderful Lebanese olive oil.

Okay. Because, you know, she was not this war of ours expected. Yeah, grateful for our coverage of Lebanon, but actually the reason I make this point beyond just thanking that person is Lebanese Lebanese, I know, hate that their country is only seen as like this war zone. Like if it's a beautiful cosmopolitan. Yeah, if it's on the news, it's because Hezbollah and, you know, rubble and bay root. And what the olive oil reminds me of,

this is this incredible place. One of the prettiest places. It's one of the, yeah, it's this gorgeous

country. They produce wonderful things. They, like, have wonderful artists. I mean, I, it's worth naming this because there's something dehumanizing about how we kind of like, you know, the camera only turns on these places to show, like, rubble and then a commentator talking about his bull. You know, like, like, it's, like, the vast majority of Lebanese, including Shea Muslims are not, like, his bull operatives, you know, just normal human being. They root

is usually, like, an incredibly cosmopolitan city, not just a bunch of rubble from Israeli bombs. You know, and so the, the, the ratio of the, the humanity of people cannot be a consequence of the war. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be this way. It's a bunch of political choices made by political leaders. All right, let's turn to just the broader problem within the administration of the failure of diplomacy

“in the role. I think you and I both believe that corruption has played in all of it. So Trump,”

when he has diplomatic problem, he does not send experts as we've discussed. He sends it's idiot son and logic or Kushner and his idiot golf buddy Steve Woodcoff. And the issue is not just that they're in over their heads, which they are, they very much are. It's that they are corrupt. They have

these huge financial conflicts of interests. And we basically have no visibility into the specifics

or how those conflicts of interests might impact their decision making, especially we're talking with the Middle East, right? And Jared Kushner's got all this golf money. So let's just go through the examples, because we've talked about this before, but I don't know if we've done like a comprehensive kind of like corruption conversation recently. So Kushner is this floating on boy. He meets with the Board of Peace. He meets with the Russians. He meets with the Iranians.

He's in Gaza all the time. He's talking to these Israelis. And the, the White House, they talk about Jared like in this role. He's making this big sacrifice because he doesn't take like the White House salary. Yeah. And don't, for those who might have been, who might believe this bullshit, Jared is an unpaid volunteer because volunteers don't have to make ethics disclosures and release their personal financial disclosure forms. So we only know because a previous press reports

that Jared's investment firm affinity partners got $2 billion from the Saudis and he got

hundreds of millions more from the Emirates and the Qataris. We also know that at the World Economic Forum and Davos earlier this year, Jared was ostensibly there as Trump's Middle East on boy, but he's also soliciting funds for his firm. The New York Times said Jared was trying to raise another five billion for his fund. I assume most of that would come from the Saudis if he had his

the little we know about Jared. Eric and Don Jr. recently announced they're going to work for a

“drone manufacturing company, which later merged with a publicly traded Trump company that owns”

golf courses. So that makes a lot of sense, Ben, is totally on the up and up.

Forbes estimated that between from 2024 to 2025, Don Jr's net worth went from 50 million to

300 million. Eric's went from 40 million to 750 million and barren Trump, who is a college sophomore, is estimated by Forbes to be worth $150 million dollars all that tied to cryptocurrency stuff. And then finally, Ben, I know you've heard of truth social, but did you know that it's revenue does not just come from spammy ads for mailholder brides and Chinese peptides and things of that nature? They also, we'll do it a little multiple choice game here. What business did Trump

media, the owner of two social get into recently via a six billion dollar merger? Was it a orbital data centers, b fusion energy, c non-woke AI, d anti-woke legal services, via its acquisition of liberty legal, which is an anti-woke legal services company for patriots who don't want their case law to be totally gay. All right, so in my mind, it's probably orbital data centers or non-moke AI, and I'm going to go with non-moke AI. Sorry, my friend, is fusion energy.

Really? Yes. The Trump's recently got into the fusion energy business. The conflicts of interest are so massive. The media barely covers them. Do you see the reporting of the other day that's like Jared Kushner's conflicts are barely mentioned. This is harming our national security and it's

kind of just not part of the conversation. First of all, we should say, there's a highly evolved

network of corruption between Russia, the Gulf, the U.S. far-right, kind of McAverse, Hungary. There's just a lot of money that kind of swashes around this space. What's interesting is Jared gravitates to all the places that are the most corrupt. Interesting of that word. So, you know, the hotel deals in Serbia, like probably one of the most corrupt countries in Europe in an extension of Russian interests in a lot of ways. Or obviously, he's vacuuming up money in the Gulf.

Pakistan, as I mentioned, has a partnership with World Liberty Financial, controlled by Trump and

“Whitkoff kids to launch a stable coin. So that's why the why else are the talks in Pakistan.”

So the point is that Jared is negotiating issues that are directly related to the interests of these countries that are paying him in the countries that are paying, if not him, his family members. And simultaneously raising funds for his business while he's negotiating. And I think what is so grotesque about this is, sure, like in some ways, this is kind of how business is done. And parts of the world, like there's a lot of corruption, you know, there's some big

commercial deal, and there's some money that exchanges hands under the table. But what Jared is leveraging is literally the U.S. military. Like the U.S. military is an instrument of his corruption. Our capacity to sell weapons to the Gulf countries, or to protect the Gulf countries, or to go to war with the opponents of the Gulf countries, is directly related to both his diplomatic portfolio and probably the reason they're writing checks. And so it's just a higher scale

corruption, because he's not trading like small. It's not like, hey, like, you know, we're going to do a soybean deal. And I'm going to get some money under the table or Hunter Biden. I'm going to get a $50,000 a month retainer from charisma to sit on their board and hopefully get influenced to the big guy Joe Biden. Now, this is like billions of dollars that are being paid because he has the power of the U.S. government behind him. And it is a shame on the U.S. media that they don't name

that that should be in the first paragraph of every story. It should be has to be. And not for like

partisan reasons, because like, how are you informing your readers? Tell people why. Why is Jared at the table? Why is he at the table? Why are these talks failing? Why do we keep reading that like Jared and Steve Whatkov didn't understand the substance of the nuclear negotiation? All right, they're not nuclear scientists. They're there because of corruption. And like, Steve Whatkov's unzack is the co-founder of World Liberty Financial. Yeah, the crypto firm that like, it

sounds sure sounds like a big scam or a Ponzi scheme. Like, you know, who's, you know,

“who's mad at World Liberty Financial recently? Then is Justin Sun. Remember that crypto billionaire”

that pumped billions into World Liberty Financial? Wow. What a coincidence, right at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. This guy's attacking World Liberty Financial. The Qataris gave Trump the plane.

“There's the real estate deals all across the world. And you got like, you know, I'm never”

what was it the Gaza peace agreement event when some world leaders like, hey, Trump can I get Don or Eric's phone numbers? Yeah. Yeah. They know the president of Indonesia. Yeah. One of the biggest countries in the world is like, hey, can I get Eric Trump's phone number? What do you think that's about to get his advice about how to deal with development in Ota and Indonesia? Like, no, I mean, and this is all like just happening on the open. I mean, one thing I've heard

you guys begin to talk on PSA about, you know, the project 2020, nine, like what happens if Democrats win? Like, the accountability goes so far beyond Donald Trump's senior, you know, like the combination of the fraud and crimes that are being committed. And also the need to have laws

that prevent this kind of corruption is got to be like one of the first spate of executive orders

from a Democratic president. Totally great. And Trump also got rid of all the inspector generals at all the agencies that might be providing like watchdogs of this. They close the, remember, they close the DOJ Club Talkersy Task Force. They stopped enforcing Ferra, which is the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which is trying to prevent, like, you know, foreign agents from buying influence in Washington. There's been a bunch of reporting recently

about this friend of Trump's from like the 80s and 90s named Paolo Zempoli. If you read about this guy, fucking guy. The one who knocked down his ex-wife, something. Yes, yes. The student boys with Trump and like the 80s and 90s, he was, I think, a modeling agent. Now, Trump made him the special envoy of the president of the United States for global partnership. Has a very Epstein ring to his buddies with Epstein. And he told the F.C.

Whatever people see me, they want something. They want access to the president. I tell them

“by Boeing. If you want to make the president happy, by Boeing. It's the simplest thing in the world.”

It's like just talking about access trading. Can we say one other thing about this, which is the stock market? It's been extraordinary to watch this, first of all, because there's an irrationality.

You see it kind of going up. Part of the problem is Trump looks at that as a useful metric.

There's two problems. One is clearly someone is doing massive insider trading. And there's been, the BBC has a great investigation people should look at that they've accounted for all these trades before Trump makes an announcement of people essentially betting on Trump making that announcement and making hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's happened repeatedly on both Iran and on the 13 minutes before true social posts. And so somebody is fully profiting. But the other thing

is the market is just a bullshit indicator for how the economy is going for people. Because it's a bunch of fucking traders sitting in front of computer screens, betting on currencies, betting on the price of oil. So even if you're going to get fucked and there're going to be oil scarcity and your gas prices are going to go up, they can still make a ton of money on trades by just betting where the currencies are going to go. And the prices we're all seeing reported daily in the news are like futures prices

usually, which are often or less than the actual price of a barrel of oil if you were to pull up to co-weight and throw one in the back of your truck. It's just such that whole thing is corrupt. Capitalism has kind of reached its late stage Frankenstein monster, you know, where it's just a vehicle

“for people like this to grift off of us. You know, I think it's great that we're betting on when”

Maduro is going to be deposed. Some insider can make hundreds of thousands of dollars and calcium. Some, yeah, you couldn't be a Trump insider. You're going to be like a, you know, a special force. I'm not trying to pun them, but like, of course, you shouldn't have that. There's a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people can think of what things are going to happen and they can make money off it. Yeah. All right. Well, that was nice to get that off our chest.

By the way, if you guys want to support a media company that will always report on a Jared Kushner's

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outstead after losing the parliamentary elections to a party led by his former ally Peter Magiar. It was an election that focused on anger about corruption. And frankly, you know, anger at Orban's total failure to deliver for his country. Many supporters of democracy writ large are hoping that this election might provide a playbook for how to defeat other authoritarian creeps like Orban. And also that it might be a bell weather that might help us just kind of see the future

and determine which direction Europe is going to go because there's a lot of far right parties that have been doing well. So that brings us to Bulgaria then. They just had an election over the weekend that seems to have some of the same dynamics at play four months ago. There are these major protests against corruption and the economic state of the country which forced the former government to resign. The progressive Bulgaria party, aka PB, they just wanted a landside

victory on Sunday with 44.7% of the vote. The leader is Bulgaria's former president, Ruman Radov. Now that's more of a ceremonial position, but he is a former fighter pilot. He commanded the Bulgarian Air Force. And, you know, he's sort of an engine character like like Orban. He took a bunch of pro-Russia sounding positions. He opposed Bulgarian military assistance to Ukraine. He's criticized EU sanctions. But there are questions about whether

he's sort of like posturing for the election or whether he's really committed to these positions or whether, you know, he's more of a pragmatist than Orban ever was. I guess we'll find out. But Radov's win was bigger than what the polling anticipated. This coalition should have a majority in Parliament now. The former Prime Minister and the Gorb-Party, I love the names of these

parties overseas. The Gorb-Party came in second with like 13% the Liberals got like 12%

or closer to 13% too. Ben, any thoughts on sort of developments you've seen in Hungary since

“we last talked? And how you might interpret the elections in Bulgaria from over the weekend?”

I think, first of all, in Hungary, Pierre Maggiard has been as aggressive as you could possibly wanted him to be. And signaling that he's going to go after Orbanism. And people may have seen these videos if him literally going on the state television, which did not allow him to appear the entire campaign and be like, my first fucking thing to do is going to be shut your ass down. You know, like, I mean, take some guts. It'd be like, you know, going on CBS News very

wise and being like, yeah, we're shutting you guys down. Yeah. I'm not like a big fan of like censoring the media, but like walking into state TV and saying to your face live on air. Yeah, it's only like your full of shit and now it's time to pay the paper. It's kind of funny. And by the way, it's hard to overstate the extent to which Orban turned this. I mean, he literally would not allow Peter Maggiard as an opponent of his to appear on, you know, so this goes beyond Fox News.

Right. This was literally state media. So I think Maggiard is fully just fighting doing what he's doing. He's signaled. He's going to go after the corruption, including Orban's family members. He's signaled that he would arrest BB Netanyahu as a war criminal if he traveled to Hungary. I mean,

corruption that it undergirds it. That's good. You know, the potential bad is there's a bit of a

strong person in Maggiard and doing this and I don't know what he's going to build in his place.

“Yeah, so he was a fetus party member and so we'll see. But so far is so good. But I think what we're”

seeing in Bulgaria is a broader problem. There's two issues. One is just like whether the far rider they do they have the momentum or not. And you can find now evidence that they don't Orban lost, Maloney's backtracking away from Trump, or you can find, you know, it looks like there may be getting a foothold in Bulgaria. Slovenia, which we talked about, that election where the progressive actually got the most votes, it appears that the, you know, creepy far right guy,

Johnson is the one who's going to be able to form a government. And I think the problem for the EU is all Russia needs is one spoiler. I mean, and they have that in Slovakia, this guy Fiko said that too. One country where people are probably just pissed about prices because people are pissed about prices everywhere. And so they vote out the incumbent progressive party and then the kind of pro-Russian party gets in. And then all of the sudden they're like putting satin in the gears

at the EU on sanctions on Russia, it speaks that this is not sustainable. Like if all Russia has to do to like fuck up the whole EU is just find one relatively small central Eastern European country where there's an anti incumbent mood and kind of surf it into having restrictions. Now none of these people can, it's important people knows none of these people can take the role that Orban did. Like Orban was an absolute hub for far right activity, for corruption.

There's rumors that the Russian money was going to the Hungarians and then going to CPAC, you know, like he was, he was bigger than just like a vote for Russia's interest in the EU. But I do think that this speaks to a problem where the EU has to get away from like unanimity of decision

making because they're always going to have some pain in the ass, leader in some country.

Definitely definitely, but I agree with you that it does look like a bit of a mixed bag in those recent elections. But there's also like interesting soundings like Nigel Faraj was was asked about his relationship with Trump last week and he said, "I happen to know him, but that's by the buy." And it was like the basically lived in the lobby of that Trump hotel. No, he's just kissing his ass, non-sap, a Lord David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator,

was more critical. He said, "Trump was heedless of the moral element of leadership and undeserving of support." He said, "Moral line has to be drawn somewhere and this week, Trump went beyond a dozen an op-ed. In Germany, we've talked about the AFD party, the neo-Nazi party, they're distancing themselves from Trump, especially the Iran War." And then Marine Le Pen news like a long time ally and supporter of Trump told the French media that Trump's moves

in Iran were erratic and the consequences would be "catastrophic." So again, like it's just this

weird place where the far right is willing to be critical of Trump on Iran in ways that

inexplicably cure-stormer, the Labour Prime Minister in the UK, with a 50-point underwater approval rating, will not even know every time he does, it seems to benefit politically.

“It tells you, and we said this last week, but that Trump is the best thing going for anti-far right”

politics, because he's such an albatross on these people that they're running away from him, but to your cure-stormer point, if the fucking AFD can figure out that one-way to booster numbers is to stand up to Trump, it's pretty extraordinary that cure-stormer can't seem to draw the same lessons. Yeah, look, I guess in fairness, it's easier to be an opposition, and when you actually have like government-to-government relations and you're managing the special relationship, like I

sure there's some way Trump could punish you. I just think I'm from a political malpractice, I think I've tried to be charitable, I don't believe what I'm saying. Yeah. No, you're fucking kidding, not to go on the trip, that was sentiments. Yeah, Georgia Maloney had no problem saying Trump. Yeah, like why is King Charles like, you know, don't come here, you know, like you, you're pissed about this word, I mean, Britain gets a significant amount

of its energy from Qatar that's now offline, like that's going to screw over a bunch of people, like, I just just know, what are you getting? I mean, actually, one, let's just look at the other standpoint, like, what is cure-stormer getting from being kind of getting calls, scared not when stretch-out. Yeah, you're gonna call Neville Chamberlain on the reg. Yeah, yeah, it's going great. You have Trump's gonna take the King to like a monster truck rally or something.

Oh my god. You buy you a wonderful go to the ultimate fighting event. That'll be fun. Maybe he can be a part of Joe Rogan's like pilot psychedelic program. Uh, take a little eye-begame. Yeah, take a little, take a little silocybin MDMA journey.

“That sounds like more fun. The eye-beganship. No, no, I think you, let's, uh, I'll be in the other”

clinical trials. I'll be in the MDMA one. I will take you and I can take King Charles. Is Camilla gonna come? I'm sure she's just gonna come. We'll take them to this fear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see if, like, Denko, kind of run it back. It's run it back. Have a good ass time. Yeah. Okay, we solved that one. So let's find some more things.

that a senior delegation from the US had visited Cuba for negotiations. It's like the highest level

talks since the Obama administration. Um, those talks were reportedly about like economic reforms getting them to a market-based economy. Um, some releasing some political prisoners, not regime change. The talks have been primarily with President Rao Castro's family, not with the President of Cuba. Um, Castro's 94 years old. So again, he's gonna regime change himself pretty soon, but his kids are included, including his grandkids. Um, his son, Alejandro Castro, uh, Castro Espin,

who is known as the one I'd been because of an eye entry from when he was in Nincola. Ben, I know, you know, this guy. Um, he's been part of them. Then there's Rao, Rodriguez Castro. It's supposedly Rao's favorite grandson. He was like his bodyguard, his body guy. Um, he's like the keeper of Castro's phone and controls like messages that come to and from him. He's also known as the crab because he was born with a six finger on one hand. These guys have awesome nicknames.

Imagine if like the Obama kids were known as like the crab. It's like the one I meant. I would say I probably spent. I'm not kidding over a thousand hours with Alejandro Castro because we'd have these marathon multi-day negotiating sessions or at least hundreds of hours, uh, several. And, and I look, I'll say like, yeah, he lost an eye in Angola. Um, you kind of notice it. Um, I mean, there's something in there, you know, but uh, there's a fundamental on seriousness

“to how they, you know, I never was like, I'm off to meet the one I'd man. You know what I mean?”

Like, these people seem like they're fucking kids in a movie. It's like, it's the same way that Caspatel likes to, you know, work out at Quantico. Like, there's a fantasy camp element to them

giving these nicknames of the crab and the one I'd man. Um, that's the first point. The crab was not

an act name that I would want. No, no, or the one I'd man. No, uh, the crab was got in this it continued. It's in English. Well, what are these talks? What is happening? What's happening here? So, I think what's happening is that Iran is making them pump the brakes on this shit as I guess by threshold question because yeah, like, uh, they know it's not going well. No one has any bandwidth to do another regime change, at least not militarily. So like, what, what is the path?

How do you slow the roll? I assume that what they want is, um, some, so it's interesting is they clearly think Venezuela was a huge success. Trump talks about it a lot. And look, the problem for Trump is, sure, he got Maduro. Delci Rodriguez is in there. She's cracking down on all her opponents encouraging all the Maduro. Including Maduro people, but she's still, you know, socialist, you know, strong woman. Um, and, and I guess we get some oil occasionally from them or something.

But here's the problem. Like, most Americans just don't give a shit. Like, no Americans,

“like, you know what, my life is demonstrably better because we suppose Maduro writes that people in”

Miami. So then I think they look at Cuba and they're like, well, we could do that, right? Like, we could, you know, get rid of the leader and, but here's a problem. Like, they, they don't have oil in Cuba, you know, and so I imagine the potential deal could be, I'm sure the Cubans have been willing to open up their economy. They were before with us. Um, and what what you might, what Cuba has is real estate, right? So they have beach front property quite literally, like the whole North

coast of Cuba facing Florida. It's beautiful beaches or beautiful keys. And you could say in a very crap way, hey, the Miami Cubans can come in here and own this land and develop hotels on it. Maybe the Trump, throw in a Trump tower too, and like, of course. And me, you may be Miguel Dias can now the president of Cuba. He goes, you know, he's the Maduro in this scenario. And they try to find some Delci Rodriguez type person that the Brawl Castro is okay, kind of taking the place.

The, the problem with this is, is first of all, Dias can now doesn't run Cuba. I mean, that's evident by the fact that they're, he's not, he's not, not even in the way the Maduro ran

Venezuela. Like he, he was never, Raul has been the kind of, you know, emeritus leader of the

country. The, the militaries got a deep interest in the economy, because it's a sanctions economy and they control a lot of stuff. And Dias can now is kind of an aparachic who's kind of the frontman.

“So I think that the, the Eli lakes of the Cuban hardliners know that just getting Dias can now”

doesn't change that regime at all. Like it just means musical chairs in the presidency for what a real estate dividial. And it's kind of like, like, why do we go through all this? What we like, yeah, to what I mean. We did a fuel blockade. We killed Cubans literally because there were power shortages at hospitals. Like we've killed Cubans with our sanctions in the recent months so that like some Miami Cubans, tight with Marco Rubio can like invest in real estate.

democracy tomorrow, which they're not going to regime change themselves, there's not much for them

“to concede. They can release political prisoners and, you know, again, like give property to”

Americans. But like, I just, what is this all about? I don't know. And what's help America? And once again, like it seems like through these talks, the administration is further empowering the next generation of Castro's. So we're system-powering, yeah, this six finger guy and the one I got and rinse repeat. I don't know, man. I guess hurry up away and we'll keep watching. Final story then. So long time listeners of the show know that we have issues with some of the people in

the administration, but that we're huge fans of FBI Director Cash Patel. Yeah. He is eminently qualified for the job. He's a great leader. He's an expert in all facets of law enforcement. And so it was shocking to me, personally, to learn via a recent report in the Atlantic magazine, the cash is not nearly as popular within the FBI itself as he is with us on this show. So according to this report, Cash Patel, the FBI Director. He's routinely drunk on the job.

And by the way, this is a 24/7 job. He is, the piece says that on multiple occasions, his security detail had trouble waking Cash up because he was so shit-faced. And in one instance, they had to make a request for equipment used by SWAT teams to break down doors. So that is, that is drunk. I don't know that. I've been that drunk in a long time. I guess he didn't have, what's that product, you guys? Yeah, you just didn't have the ZBI.

It's like, it's a 400 ZBI. You can help him out. We could ship them since I'm happy to help him out. Because again, I'm a big fan. The Atlantic piece reported that meetings with FBI staff have been, have to be scheduled to round his hangovers, and that he is, quote, erratic suspicious of others and prone to jumping the conclusions before he has an esoteric evidence. Seems like bad tendencies for the FBI Director. He's also incredibly paranoid about getting

fired to the point where he flipped out about some random IT issue and thought it meant the way us have locked him out of his accounts. Now, this paranoia might be justified. The article says that senior White House officials have had conversations about who might replace Cash. We also saw Minecraft head, Dan Bungino, leave his job as deputy to go be a podcaster again. So Ben, I mean, this is not the first report that outlines all the ways that Cash Patel

is kind of a joke and treats the job like it's fantasy camp. There was this request to go jet skiing at a conference of our closest intelligence sharing allies, the five eyes. We know that Cash uses the FBI's private jet to fly to Italy for the Olympics, to fly to Pennsylvania, to watch his girlfriend sing at some low rent wrestling contest to

fly to a place called a Boondoggle Ranch. I love it. You always include that. I love the Boondoggle Ranch.

“I want, can we go? I'd like to go to the Boondoggle Ranch. If I can get us a ticket, will you go, Ben?”

It sounds like the kind of place where that guy shot Dick Cheney in the, or did Cheney shot the guy in the face. Yeah, if you and I go, that'll be us. But like this is the first time I've seen the argument that the people in the FBI think Cash Patel is a threat to national security because of his missed management of the role. Now, the counter argument you hear is like, look, every minute, Cash Patel is designing his like FBI Punisher logo. Challenge coin is a minute. He's not like

fucking up on going FBI operations. I'm not sure I buy that. I see a pretty big opportunity cost here. But what did you make of this article? Oh, I have some thoughts, man. So first of all, I love that he's soon the Atlantic for turn 50 million dollars, $250 million dollars. When Lorean jobs owns the Atlantic, so I think she can cover the legal business. Dig it in the couch for that. Also, what's interesting about this is that

we saw the guy like shotgun a fucking beer at the Olympics with the hockey team. And he looked like Will Ferrell in old school, like member when Will Ferrell, shotguns for a spear and he's like, yeah, like that's exactly how cash is happening. It's just like it was activating all the, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it is completely believable that this guy, I mean,

“we know he was at like Rauze, member of the, I think maybe when Charlie Kirk got killed or something,”

he's like, you know, he's waiting at Runga for me. Yeah, he's always in Las Vegas. It's

something called the Poodle Club. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you don't go there to drink Seltzer. You know, he's not the kind of guy where there's a club soda on the plane. He's kind of guy's getting the two bottles of tea. But so it's eminently believable that he's a drunk. And to be serious about it, like you remember Tommy, like when should happens, like the FBI director, I remember the Boston Marathon bombing? Like I'd just laughed, but yes. Okay. So you'd just laughed. So Bob Mueller was,

I mean, rest in peace, was in the fucking situation room for like hours, you know, and, and he's briefing Obama, and he's on the phone with agents in Boston, and he's managing up and down and around, and he's briefing Congress, like, should happen on the regular, where, and there's

stuff like that we never learned about, like ongoing investigations that were so sensitive,

that is a 24/7 job, literally. You will get woken up in the middle of the night and asked a question,

like, who do we have to notify about this? Or can you call your counterpart in this other country, because there's a terrorist plot. And we need someone at the FBI director level to call the head of MI5 or something. Like, should like this happen all the time. So if he can't function on the job because he's hammered for hours at a time, like, that's dangerous. I'd also say, like,

“what is cash, Patel, even doing in this job? Because, like, what is his vision of the FBI?”

Because all that seems to get him geeked is to have, like, ultimate fighting people come in train agents, or to change the logo. Like, he has no vision of, like, how to reform the bureau. Like, he's not even, he's so incompetent and people are so innocent that he's not even prosecuting Trump's opponents, because they do incumbent do that. I mean, and then the last thing is, I read the piece and it kind of explains to me, Tommy, I don't know. Remember when he was, like,

posting, like, through the Charlie Kirk investigation, like, we got the guys in custody, like, it felt like drunk tweeting. We've all been there. Absolutely. When I've done it, it's usually been like, I'm at the end of a dinner that's not that interesting. So I started looking at my phone. I've had a few, and I'm like, ah, I'm going to tweet about this. No, you're not the FBI director. No, usually for me, I'm going, I'm walking back to the main stage at Coachella,

“the Molly's wearing off. I just want to weigh it on the Hungarian election. You know?”

Yeah, you run out of things tucked at Katy Perry about, so you're just going to weigh it on the Hungarian. Katy just went here, you're, you're takes on the Hungarian. Yeah, so you're going to share it with your body and face. All she wants to talk about is the beaver. All I want to talk about is Orban. It's, like, I got to tweet it out. One group, one organization that seems to have kind of grasps, who cash is, is whoever made this Lego movie about him. I don't even know if it's the Iranians anymore.

They're all going crazy. It's like, yeah, entirely in me, but whoever made this one had a good ass time with it, let's watch crazy eyes, let's go. Keep the tell crazy eyes, Epstein files, cover up lies, willpins is real clap back, Iran has your team help. Go viral, family shots in hockey, spiral. We can blackouts, paper, noise, freakouts, and my fire. Melted down what a leakout, hurting the pros and stalling the pros, the whole bureau burning.

We didn't start the fire, it was always burning. This is the world that's burning, we didn't start the fire,

but can't shoot the one who's talking the whole damn thing. Maybe AI is good. I mean, we found a good use for it. Yeah. The amazing thing about that is that there's every single narrative of that cash, because we've been covering them all on this podcast, is somehow in like a one minute video, like from, I mean, he does have crazy eyes, hitting hammered at the end of the podcast. Guys call him Kakad Cash. Yeah, him posting the wrong guy was caught in Charlie Kirkland.

And everything that this guy's done, like, they can just grab that and within like an hour,

“like, turn out like this AI video that's honestly like pretty interesting watch.”

Now, they always have the Israel control thing. They always have. So they always have, you know,

the likes is woken to go off and he's massage honey pot, honey pot, but yeah, man, it couldn't happen to a better guy than Cash, I've just said. I wonder if there'll be a calcium market on how long it takes her to dump him after he's fired. Yes, we'll find out. You know, if he can't have a SWAT team guard her, actually, notes on the IRGC leg of any of that in there. They left that out. That there was a SWAT team that basically provides security for his girlfriend. Come on, guys, do better.

Do better IRGC whoever made this. Wow, good stuff. Anyway, hopefully Trump fires Cash Patel. Yeah, he's on a firing spree lately. It's just self-evident. Maybe the point is it just, things just haven't been the same since Bungino left. Yeah, he's holding a whole place together. It was holding a whole lot of shoulders with his gigantic square Minecraft head. Okay, that's it for the news portion. The show will please stick around from my conversation with Nick

Enrich. We talk about his book into the wood shipper. It's a whistleblower's account of what it was like when USA had got dozed by Elon Musk. His idiot friends and, uh, presumably reportedly allegedly a whole bunch of ketamine. So stick around for that. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the

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“telling me it's like, now the best way to spend money abroad is just palates a cash. Just look at”

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always get the best exchange rate. You can use it the buy stuff. It could not be easier. If you

go to multiple countries, try Wise, especially when the dollar is going to be worthless. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. Terms and conditions apply. My guest today is the former Bureau of Global Health's Director of Policy Programs in Planning for USAID. His new book is into the wood shipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded USAID. It's very evocative title and I assume one where you needed

much less ketamine to come up with it than Elon did for his famous tweet. Nick and Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to meet you. Um, so let's start by just, you know, kind of talking about a bit about your time and work you did at USAID pre-Elon. Uh, you were there for over 12 years across Ford administrations. What did you focus on? And what was your proudest accomplishment? Yeah, so I was, um, as you said, the Director of Policy Programs in Planning for

the Global Health Bureau, which was essentially the CFOCO position of that bureau. My job was to make sure that we had the resources we needed for global health and that we were using them as officially as possible to achieve our health goals. Um, and, you know, my job was to come up with ways to make

“things better. And, um, I think that's, that's where I was the most proud. One of the, the last”

things sadly that I did, um, in the last administration was come up with a new, uh, global

policy for the agency. We had actually never had one before for our whole global health sector.

And we thought that this would be a great way to get a little bit more, um, uh, efficient in the way that we would administer our programs. I also had a list. Um, when I heard those was coming in, I had a list of things that I wanted to do to improve the agency that I thought would be the kinds of things that don't should be excited to hear about. Obviously, quite naively, because, um, I never actually got a chance to, to share any of those ideas. So, like, far from battling these

guys, you were like, oh, I got some ways to make this place more efficient. Here's my literal list of things we could do to, you know, make money go further. Yeah, they were called the Department of for an efficiency. And, you know, in the abstract, it sounded like a good idea, um, but the reality was it was no such thing. Yeah. So let's talk about that reality. So by now, I imagine everyone listening knows how this story, unfortunately, ends. It's Elon Musk and the bunch of, like,

young, arrogant, uh, kids from the tech world, just rampaging through USAID and destroying it. That decision alone is estimated to have already led to 750,000 deaths just so far.

“So, but I think, listener and might not fully grasp just how careless, um, an ignorant,”

the people in charge of this process truly were. Um, can you recount for listeners a story you tell in the book about what a couple of doge staffer said to you after most employees at the agency had been placed on administrative leave? Sure. Um, that it wasn't until after most of the employees were placed on administrative leave or fired that I was given the opportunity to explain what we even did in global health. So I just gave a quick overview, um, talked about the

infectious diseases that we were to stop our work to help save, uh, new, uh, new our babies and mothers, and, um, and a few other of the just top line highlights. And it was, I was kind of met with a stung silence from the leadership of USAID at that point, um, and the chief of staff of the agency, um, kind of like looked at me and said, wow, I had no idea. You did all that. When I think of what USAID didn't global health, I just assumed it was, you know, abortions. What is your reaction

in that moment? What, what, what, how do you have an address, a comment that ignorant by someone who's supposed to be the chief of staff at the agency? It was very difficult to decide whether to laugh or cry. And you I didn't want to argue with him, um, because I knew that wasn't going to get me anything and get me anywhere, but, um, it would just betray this extraordinary level of ignorance and to think that these were the people that had made the decision to give rid of all of our staff before they

there was this moment where Elon and the boys come into USAID, it's clear they're going to destroy

“some parts, but it's not clear yet if they're going to like completely upend the entire, you know,”

agency, me ultimately they got rid of what like 83% of all programming and fooled that into the

State Department. Um, and so before USAID was was fully gutted, you decided to author and then release to the media some memos about the impact to become a whistleblower. Can you tell listeners of what you put in those memos and how you made that decision in whether you think it made any, like, did anybody read your memo? Did anyone rethink what they were doing? Well, so what I put in the memo is that there were three memos. The first was to describe everything we had tried to

do to restart our lifesaving programs, which was something that Secretary of State Rubio had promised was going to happen as they tore down USAID, but yet they didn't let us restart any of our programs and, um, in fact they stopped us at every possible turn. So that was the first memo. The second

“was about how they decimated our staff and really just traumatized the workforce for the, about six”

week period in which I was responsible for global health. Um, and then the third memo documented

what the impacts were going to be of the cuts to USAID, including potentially up to 2.6 million

lives lost per year. Um, and, yeah, it tens of millions of mothers not being able to receive emergency lifesaving care and numerous other issues. Did it, did it make a difference? Well, USAID was still destroyed. Um, some of the contracts that had been terminated that were necessary to do our most lifesaving projects were actually restored in the few days after my memos were released. But that was about it. I had kind of hoped that this would, uh, light a fire under Congress

or, um, others to be able to, uh, like shed some light on exactly what was happening there. But, um, unfortunately, the end of the story is not a happy one. Yeah. Marco Rubio is real villain in my view because, you know, he was once a huge supporter of USAID and it's work. Um, in fact, I've heard you say another interview is that people the agency were a little bit relieved when he was named Secretary of State because his records suggested that he understood USAID, he understood

the value and that he might support it or protect it. Why do you think he completely turtle on this and reversed himself and like what, what's your take on Rubio now? Yeah. I mean, he did certainly did not live up to the, um, the estimation that I and other other staff at USAID had thought we were going to get, which was a long time stonch supporter of foreign aid and development. Um, instead we got lies. We got, uh, Rubio saying that no one has died as a result of the

cuts to USAID, which was just blatantly not true. And he went further and blamed the USAID, uh, career officials, uh, for being insubordinate for not, um, restarting programs that his own team was preventing us from doing. And look, maybe, um, you know, he got lost somewhere in the connection between the, the waiver that he allowed to restart life-saving programs and, um, when that was not allowed to actually be implemented by, by doge, but this is the problem when you hollow out an agency of

all of its expertise and replace it with completely, um, you know, incompetent and unknowledgeable and unqualified of the things. There was this chaotic period, right? We're like, Trump takes over.

Elon comes in doge goes to USAID first. There's like a freeze-on programming, then they say,

oh, life-saving stuff will continue. Then it's clear that that's not happening. Like, now that you have some time in space from that period of time, was the chaos lying, was it people not really knowing like what the left hand was doing for to the right or like, what was happening there? Like, what was all the competing statements in the confusion and the kind of bullshit that was coming out of, uh, the Trump administration's leadership in that period? Yeah. I mean, certainly

“they were lies and there was cruelty, um, to an unbelievable degree. But I think the thing that people”

maybe underestimate the most and maybe what has the most, um, the most relevance for other agencies, perhaps, is the level of sheer incompetence that we saw. These were people who were not just unknowledgeable of global health or international development. They had really no idea how government even works. And frankly, they were really terrible managers of people in projects. So, you know, they had been tasked with an unreasonable assignment to dismantle, you know, an agency that delivered

four and eight, but over six decades. And you can imagine things are going to go wrong with a project like that. And when they inevitably did, the people who were in charge just had no idea how to fix those problems. And ended up just making things worse. It was a lot of, like, table smacking and yelling at each other and not understanding what was happening because they had

great way to run a railroad there, get rid of all the people understanding the building and then

try to dismantle it. Um, if you had, like, two minutes in an elevator with Elon Musk, and in that

“period to explain to him what he did and the impact it had on the world, what would you tell him?”

You know, somebody said that the image of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. And I would like, I would love to convey that because I do feel like the destruction of USA had nothing to do with improving efficiency or fighting waste or realigning for need with some, you know, the, the new president's priorities. This was the, the, just destruction of an agency for the sole purpose of satisfying the ego of a billionaire.

And it's something that I'm still quite angry about as you can probably tell.

Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, I'm sure, like, waking up every day to read these insane tweets from this, like, ketamine-addled monster who received it to just take Glee in, in harming the agency, upsetting employees, um, being an asshole, but it just must have been horrifying. Yeah, I mean, there was a day where I think he tweeted over 40 times between, like, three and four o'clock in the morning about USAID. And this was on a Sunday night and on that Monday morning,

there were some of my colleagues were asking me, is it safe for us to come in the building? I mean, he's calling us criminals. He's calling us at ball of worms. He's calling us evil. And, and, you know, I didn't really know what to tell them. I mean, the good bureaucrat I was, I said, well, we haven't gotten guidance to not come into the office, so we should still come. These were kind of my, my normal tendencies that that I had to fight against and what took me so long

to decide that there was, there was no way that I was actually fulfilling my oath as a civil servant

“to be doing what I was being told to do. And that's why I eventually felt like I needed to stand”

up and say something. Yeah, I mean, it is hard to remember back to those days where he's essentially accusing USAID of being like a criminal organization and evil. And I mean, just the, the vindictive nature of the attacks was, you know, shocking and baseless. Um, so let's just look forward a little bit. Um, a lot of voters genuinely don't want to spend US taxpayer dollars overseas, whether it's on a war or development. They think it's a waste. You probably heard all the kind of isolation

this nationalist arguments against foreign aid or or foreign spending that can frankly be really convincing. Um, but I do think some of those people could be persuaded by national security arguments in favor of foreign aid. So in your opinion, uh, what are some ways that destroying USAID is hurting our national security now and making Americans less safe? Yeah, I mean, the, the, the, the, there's

several ways. The first is specific to, uh, infectious diseases. And that's the one that keeps me

“up at night because I think the shortest term threat is from a new disease or an existing disease”

that we're no longer able to detect, um, coming to our borders because we are currently flying blind when it comes to an early warning system that we at previously set up, uh, within USAID to help countries detect and treat and respond outbreaks before there was any chance of them spreading. And now those systems have been ripped up and we have no idea. We're basically, uh, conducting, bioseafety and biosecurity policy by crossing our fingers and hoping. So that's the thing that

that scares me most. And what we saw, um, when we would get, issue these warnings to the, the, the douche team and the political pointies as they were tearing it down was just, uh, they couldn't understand. So when I tried to explain, for example, that when they froze a, they froze clinical trials testing new drugs for drug resistant tuberculosis, um, that these were our antibiotics of last resort. And when we interrupt treatment of those, it allows for the potential development of new strands

of an airborne infectious disease that we no longer have any antibiotics to treat. And when I would say that, I, I, I, I told that to, um, to the, the leadership at USAID and they told me, they asked me if I could make Barney style slides to explain them in a way that non-health experts could understand. Barney style. Barney like the prognosis or children's dinosaur. That's, um, who, who are those for for, for, for Trump? I guess I, I don't know if they Barney for, I mean, it's certainly, it's certainly

was for nobody that was going to be making rational decisions about national security. Yeah, that's unnerving. Uh, I, I'm trying to imagine what a, a Barney style briefing about, um, driver's in tuberculosis looks like, I don't want to watch that show. I could tell you that much not with my kids, but okay, continue. That's, um, horrifying. That's an awful image. Yeah. So, so that, that's sort of the, the most immediate threat that keeps me up on that. The longer

what it was, um, preserving partnerships in ways that are done so much more efficiently and effectively,

then you'll ever see from, what can be run out of the state department or the department of defense

“when we try to lead by, um, coercion and the use of force. I mean, um, I think it was, uh,”

General Madness under the last, uh, Trump administration said that if you cut foreign aid, you're going to need to buy me more bullets. And I think that's really true. Um, President Obama said that, uh, for many people around the world, USAID is the US. And I think that's right, too, because a lot of people, the, the only engagement that they ever had with the US was through the generous support that we offered them under the banner of from the American people.

And I'm afraid of what's going to happen in the world where that no longer exists and they don't have that image of of the United States. Well, no, luckily, everything else is going really great. And we, um, have kicked off this catastrophic regime change war and Iran. We had a president tweeting, you know, praise Allah on Easter and insulting all Muslims and all Christians at the same times. I don't, I don't really know what could go wrong there. Um, okay. So again, looking forward,

like you, you, you couldn't put USAID back as it was if you wanted to, right, because all the infrastructure and partnerships and expertise, it's gone and there's just no way of kind of like fixing that. Um, but the next Democrat who who wins the presidency is going to want, I imagine, some sort of reformed updated version of USAID. Do you have a sense of kind of a back of an envelope kind of sketch of what that might look like? Or also, is there anyone like a group of

experts out there somewhere kind of trying to rethink USAID for that next iteration that hopefully we could, you know, get through Congress or get done and get back running? Yeah. I mean, I actually

“maybe a more optimistic than you. I believe that USAID could be rebuilt and not that difficult,”

in, in, not that difficult of a way. Um, and frankly, I think it should, like, again, let's not think that it was torn down because that was a good idea or that it wasn't working or anything like that. The reality was, as I mentioned, it was torn down by a people who had no idea what it actually did. Um, the, the, the, the counter argument is to keep it where it's now being trying to fold into the state department. And I think that's a problem for several reasons. First,

I think it ends up having, um, you know, for the same reason that we wouldn't, uh, just suggest combining the state department and the department of defense, which are two separate pillars of

foreign policy. So two is development, which is a third critical policy, uh, a pillar of foreign policy.

And, um, we're already seeing what them trying to run, um, for an aid out of the state department is major problems because of that tango, as they try to, um, kind of shoehorn it into their transactional diplomacy where they exchange the idea of HIV treatment for millions of people and exchange for access to critical minerals, for example, which is just it really kind of defeats the purpose of everything that we've learned about how development policy works and builds partnerships over

years. So that's one piece. The second is, as I mentioned earlier, having, having an independent agency that is the, the face overseas of American generosity is symbolically important. And that flag

“and that logo of the handshake and the four American people, I think is important, um, for”

projecting, uh, American goodwill and generosity overseas. And, and I think that that, that on its own has, um, has value. Um, for personally, I find that folks who, who say, well, you know, it's over USA has done, and nothing's coming back. It's kind of like a lack of boldness and a lack of creativity, um, that sort of allowed USA to collapse in the first place. And so I'm, I'm hoping that the next administration, um, even the next Congress is looking forward to boldly taking on the rebuilding

of USA. And I think it's something that is not a hard lift. I think it's very popular, um, overall when people understand what it is, right? It's less than 1% of the, um, of the federal budget goes to goes to foreign aid. And with that amount, we've saved 92 million lives over the last 20 years. So I, I don't think it's a, it's a hard sell. I think it just does require the political,

willpower to, um, to say, look, this is what we want. And there are always to make it better.

It doesn't have to be exactly the same. Like, there are some valid criticisms of USA, and there are ways that we can use this opportunity to make it less, um, less likely to foster dependency over time, more likely to partner, uh, more closely with local organizations, um, have a little bit more flexibility in the earmarks that that Congress has set for us, so that we can address overarching problems rather than kind of stay sure. There's tons of

rebuild USAID. All right. Well, let's hope that others and Congress share your optimism.

“The book is into the woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration”

shredded USAID Nick and Rich Secretary of the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again, Nick and Rich are doing the show. And, uh, I have a feeling that we're going to be

talking to you before next week, guys. Yeah. Because Wednesday maybe is a deadline still. We don't know.

JD Vance piecemaker. Yeah. Maybe JD will go to Pakistan. That's a long flight for JD Vance.

“Also like the security requirements, like it was dangerous for our diplomats to be in Islamabad. Like”

I can't imagine what goes into, I mean, you want to talk about cost of war, like the cost of

securing JD Vance in Islamabad has got to run into the tens and tens of millions, at least. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's about it. And, um, not the way I love talking about, like, I salute you. Keep a general staff of Pakistan. Like it's so cool. We're a criminal general. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for your health. State sponsor of terror. Like, you know, L.T. Like, you know, Laskar. I'll tell you. I'll tell you like anyway. Sure. The Indian government loves that. Pots of world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Elona Minkowski. Our producer is

Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bondergee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are Me Tommy V. Thor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Canter. Audio support by Kyle Segland and Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote. The account man, William Jones, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Matt DeGroat is our head of production.

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