Far Right Freaks Freak Over Migrants in Spain

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I'm Ben Rhodes. Then you're in New York City.

“Are there a Mamdoni sponsor gang's roving the streets or how was it these days?”

Is it a livable? Is it a blackman's still even there? I think there's, you know, noticeable absence on the upper side of people who fled to Florida for their sake of their second homes.

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There's Nick's gear everywhere. It's like still feels like it's basketball season. It's nice. People are happy, people are being kind to each other. I think the Mamdoni ethos is prevailed here.

I'm not as mad at the next as I am at the sixes right now because you stole Jalen Brown for my Celtics and you gave us Paul George who has a terrible contract and he sucks. But no one wants to hear us talk about this so we'll move on before we have to explore my pain. We got a great show for you today though.

We're going to talk about the migration crisis that both Spain and Morocco have been dealing with over the past week or so and how it is exploded through Europe and is being weaponized by conservative politicians in conservative media. We'll update you on all the latest with Iran where there's threats of war crimes, cyber attacks, much more than more things changed and where they say the same then.

We're going to talk about some announcements about a deal in Gaza, I consider us skeptical that those are going to come to be, it's very easy to put something out of true social territory to execute. We're going to explain why the US bought billions of dollars worth of Japanese yen and why that's pretty worrisome actually. We'll talk about the massive scandal and golfing FIFA yet another scandal and golfing FIFA, the good people put on the World Cup,

soccer tournament. And then you're going to hear my interview with Casey Michelle about his new book. United States of oligarchy, how America's wealthiest ally with dictators, we can the US and destroy democracy. I think the title probably gives you a good sense of what the book is about then. I was going to say, like I thought I had a subtitle. It's good. People need to know what the book's about. That's right. That's right. We talk about some real close friends

of the show. Your Kushner's Jared, your wit cough, Steve, we get into the way autocrats and

“dictators are bribing their way to policy success. It's a very important subject, I think. I know”

you too, Ben. It's not just corruption is bad because it's illegal. It's a corruption is actually weakening the foundation of our democracy in some fundamental ways that the Casey studies deeply. I think it's a great book in worth reading. There's actually a road map in there for how Democrats should respond if we went back the house and you know, inch a lot at the Senate. Yeah. I mean, I think corruption is now like the system under which America and the World Operates.

It's not like a, you know, corruption of the system. It is actually how things are working at Casey's point, Jared, and wit cough or negotiating the Iran thing they will talk about. FIFA will talk about like you can't understand what's happening in the world right now. If you don't understand corruption in oligarchy, so well worth people's time. Absolutely. Stay tuned. All right. Well, let's turn to Spain because if you've consumed even a few minutes of Fox News rather conservative

media over the past week, you've almost certainly seen images of migrants flooding into the Spanish on clay of, say, Utah. I'm also willing to bet that the coverage you watched on conservative media did not mention that say it's not on the European continent. It's actually northern Africa, but I digress. So like I said, it's a, say it's a small city to about 84,000 people in northern Africa. Spain has governed it since 1580. It's one of these two remaining small Spanish cities on

the African continent, which means that the European Union actually has two land borders with Morocco. But the thing to know is that, you know, to actually get to Europe proper migrants have to go through passport controls. You have to cross the Mediterranean. So it's not like crossing our southern

still in the continent of Africa. Starting on July 30th, an estimated 60 to, I think, 72,000 migrants

“cross from Morocco and to say it to either cut holes in the border fence or many of them swam around”

the border fence in the ocean from like a Moroccan beach to a Spanish beach. The majority of migrants were Moroccan men. There were some families in children. Spain says that nearly all of those who cross have not been returned with the exception of a few thousand individuals, 88 fatalities, most by drowning. There's been some debate as to what happened. Why was there this flood of migrants all at once? We're going to explain some likely causes, then we'll get

down to they kind of like more likely to be disinformation causes that you're seeing on the internet.

The first is economic conditions generally. So the youth unemployment in Morocco is at 37%

per capita income in Morocco is $4,600 compared to Spain's $38,000. People are pissed at the government. The government's spending all this money on the next World Cup tournament stadiums while their lives aren't improving, but if you protest like the Gen Z protesters did in Morocco,

“you get to shit kick that of you. And then there's another bucket of Spain's immigration policy”

under a Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who's from the left. Back in April Sanchez announced an MSD program for undocumented migrants to allow certain migrants to apply for a one-year work visa and residence permit. This is mostly actually for migrants from Latin America or South and Central America who know Spanish and who got to Spain legally but just overstayed work visas.

They expected about half a million applicants. They got 1.2 million and it pissed off a lot of other

countries in the EU that are worried about immigration and far right parties weaponizing it. And then there was a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court that was misinterpreted to mean that migrants arriving in Spain by sea could not be deported. And then finally the the role of the Moroccan government, there have been reports that the Moroccan military was waving migrants through or that there just weren't border patrol guards at the fence that separates

the two areas and it was just very easy to kind of like walk up to the fence, climb out onto rocks, swim around the fence and then get to Spain. There's been a history of Morocco using immigration as a total of punish Spain in 2021. Moroccans were pissed at Spain allowed leaders of a rebel group into the country for medical treatment and then were accused of letting 10,000 migrants into save to in retaliation. So that all brings us to the kind of fringy Israel did it theory.

Now there's some like context here that makes this relevant. Well first of all, Morocco and Algeria they don't get along. Morocco claims sovereignty over the Western Sahara by out while Algeria supports a rebel group called the Polisario. As part of the Abraham Accords, Israel's deal with Morocco, the US recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Western Sahara, Algeria did not like that. Also Spain has been a pre-vocal critic of Israel's conduct in Gaza and of the war in

Iran. I've seen Israeli media and commentators have suggested that one way Israel could punish Spain is via sauta and migration, but this theory exploded on social media, but frankly it's probably that is more to do with just a lot of commentators just like you use really government than anything Israel actually did here. Regardless Ben, right wing politicians left to politicize this issue. Here's a clip of President Trump and far right reform UK leader Nigel Faraj both talking about it.

You know I saw Spain yesterday and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people and that same thing's going to happen to us if the Republicans don't get elected. If we're not in office, our country will be invaded at levels that may Spain look small-time. That's going to be a talking point for the bid terms. Believe me, unless we get a reform government, those scenes you're seeing in Spain today,

many of those young men, lots of them dangerous, we'll be heading towards Calais and coming to our

country too. My sprawage always in the woods for no reason. Ben, we're seeing the shire,

like what's going on? Sorry for the long wind up there. I want to get your sense of how potent the political issue is. I mean it's hard not to think back to 2015 in Germany in the Syrian migrant crisis. And then the reaction you've seen by EU countries and how they're handling this. I don't know about the, this kind of, you know it might be, tell me, remind me of like the caravan. You know, playing the hits from the first Trump presidency before the 2018 midterms,

“we saw all this fox coverage of some massive caravan. It was making its way. I think that,”

look, there's a potency to anti-immigrant politics. There's a potency on the far right to images of migrants trying to make it into Europe. I don't doubt, and we should talk about the way in which we've already seen far right parties beyond just the Trump and Farage try to take advantage of it. That said, there's a big difference from 2015, which is whatever you think about what happened in 2015,

make it to mainland Spain. And so there's not like a real shift in the demographics of Europe

or any countries, right? So to me, this feels much more like the caravan where it's like, this is scary. These people are coming. We have to stop them. You know, if you don't vote for us, like they'll make it here and it'll be terrible. But it's not like there actually are these people now in mainland Spain or in the Shenzhen zone of Europe where they can move around. So I kind of feel like it's more in the political stunt category of things. Now that said, I thought what was

interesting is, you know, the AFD for instance, the European, the German Far right party that we've talked about, this was kind of tailor made in the laboratory for them because they got to say, this is the influx of migrants, this is coming, Israel's behind it. So there's this kind of hidden

hand of great great replacement theory kind of to a T, right? I'm sure Tucker Carlson will

make some a this. Like somehow Israel is facilitating a migrant invasion, the Jews want to replace us with the brown people. Like, so I do worry that this is going to kind of live on in the darker recesses of far right politics in Europe. But the facts are just not what anybody's saying. Like Trump said hundreds of thousands, that's not true. There's suggesting these people are like walking around Madrid when they're actually in like a Spanish enclave of North Africa and most of

them have been returned to Morocco already. I do think that, you know, look, I don't know that these really government had anything to do with this, they probably didn't. It is the case that Spain is this kind of whipping boy for Trump and Netanyahu and other rights politicians. Yeah, because the positions they've taken on Palestine because of the positions they've taken on immigration.

“So I think it's also like the juiciest target imaginable because it's Spain. If it was Italy,”

they probably wouldn't be making as much noise. But yeah, I think that the facts actually matter in the sense that part of what led to some backlash after 2015 is there actually were millions of Syrian refugees and other refugees from Africa and Asia coming into Europe. Like, that's not happening here. Yeah. So their ability to continue to freak people out, they'll be able to motivate their own people. But I don't think that this is going to be like a, you know, a swing

issue for people in the middle of because there's no new people there. Yeah, no, I meant more like kind of the media political reaction for a fellow. Yeah, but you're right on the merits. I mean, from January to June, illegal immigration to Spain is down over 32% from that same period the previous year. And we're talking about like small totals. That's like a total of 12,000 people in six months, which I think shows you how much of an outlier actually the say you did situation

was where you had, you know, 60,000, 70,000 people flooding across a border in, you know, like a week. What's really happening is Spain and Italy are mostly dealing with the arrivals of boats from

“Africa and it's sort of a continent wide problem. And again, you know, I think a lot of these European”

countries were mad about this Amnesty program because they thought it might draw more people to Europe generally because they're trying to get to Spain. But again, it was supposed to be for like overstays of visas for workers from Latin America. You are seeing a reaction though. I mean, you know, the Italians were pretty hard out of the gate, like essentially saying they're going to cut off, you know, certain ties with Spain, France started increasing checks on the Spanish border.

I mean, it's just interesting like in Italy, you have Georgia, Maloney, who's a far-right leader, who's worried about and even further, far-right party challenging her. And then the rest of the year, both like the social democratic parties, the extent they exist anymore, or like Macron, the kind of squishy middle parties are all flipped out about the far-right winning future elections. So they all reacted pretty strongly. Although over time, I think the kind of political response

from Europe evolved to praising Sanchez for his like kind of swift handling and expulsion of all these migrants. And this is what we're saying. Like when these people got to say, they were greeted with nothing. They didn't have food, they didn't have water. Again, like nearly 100 people died, they're exhausted, right? You know, they're swimming in the ocean trying to get a better

life for themselves. And basically, they were met with a military response and kicked out of the

“country as fast as Spain could get them out of there. So it's hardly a story that I think others”

will want to replicate if you're thinking about migrating. Yeah, and look, the human tragedies, like the people who drown, the people that probably lost things along the way, these people that were just seeking better life and didn't get it, I will say Tommy, like I don't, I mean, I spent a lot of time with this story just like you because it was everywhere online. And I'm not here to like, you know, validate a conspiracy theory. There are videos of the Moroccan's kind of

somewhere involved in this. Yeah, the Moroccan's have this skate facilitated this.

Yeah, you could not have this scale of people just all the sudden getting through like this if Morocco wasn't facilitating that. And I do think it's pretty dark when countries like weaponized migration like this. And I do think it's important to kind of frankly get Pedro Sanchez back here, like his amnesty policy had nothing to do with this. And in fact, as you point out, his amnesty policy has been good for the people that have been able to work. It's been good for

the Spanish economy, which needs those workers. And it has not done anything to drive up the levels of immigration quite the opposite. They've actually come down. And so I think part of what is happening here too that, like, should be called out, is that people are seeking to delegitimize all turn into approaches to immigration. You know, Sanchez has a more humane approach that it has an

amnesty component that is not dissimilar from like a pathway to citizenship in the United States,

which I think should be a part of any solution to the immigration issues that the United States has. And people like Trump and people like forage and people like the FD and people like Maloney, like relentlessly went to delegitimize anything other than the most hardline approach.

“And so I think it's important to speak up in defense of Spain and how they've handled not just this,”

but how they've handled immigration generally. And I think it's pretty dark. I don't know what Morocco was doing. The Israel Nexus, like we had to be careful. Obviously, like this is immediately going to be turned in the darkest version of the Great Replacement Theory. Yes, that's what happens. There's also a lot of Russian disinformation. I think we're pushing kind of narratives around this issue. And I think that freaked out some people in Europe, some European leaders.

It did because it can get out of control really fast. But it's also a reason why you shouldn't have Israeli political figures using on television that they're going to punish Spain. Of you. I mean, that's something that happened, right? So people can find these clips of these beep commentators in Israel, you know, talking about how they need to punish Sanchez and Spain for the recognition of Palestine. And then yeah, I was talking about it. Like, yeah, that's not

a, it was not like a totally fringe thing. Like there was some, there was, it wasn't without like some basis in like, I don't know, videos people can watch. Yes. It does mean that it happened

“that way though. Yeah. And, but I think that the, like, punishing Spain for being progressive”

is, is clearly a part of some of the motivation of some of the people involved in this, like Trump, right? Like I don't think he'd be doing this if was Italy. Well, Spain, it was because Spain opposed the war in Iran. It's more than anything for him. Yeah, it's opposed the war in Iran. They wouldn't let the US use bases, neither, by the way, would Italy. You know, they've obviously been out of spoken up Palestine. You know, I guess they won the World Cup. That seemed to be

just a big of the World Cup. Like it was not long ago, that all of Spain was cheering on a player named Nico Williams, whose parents walked 3,000 kilometers across the Sahara to a similar but different city where they climbed a border fence, lied and said they were Liberian to seek asylum. And then, you know, decades later, they have two kids actually who are playing professional soccer in Spain. One of whom was a star on the Spanish national team that just won the World Cup.

So, you know, a reminder that we like immigration in certain contexts, Spain and everybody else,

“but one reason then, you know, I think all of us are, we watch Trump's comments there. We're not,”

I don't feel great about the way he or the State Department is going to handle this. One other reason to give you pause. So, there was a recent conference in Rio, it was called the AIDS-2026 Conference. This is a guy named Jeff Graham, who's the head of PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Program, displayed a map of Africa, highlighting six countries, all of which were misplaced on the continent. Nigeria was landlocked.

The Ivory Coast was on Africa. The East Coast, Mozambique was in the Horn of Africa for some reasons. So, just, you know, shout out to OpenAI, which clearly generated this map, but also shout out to Marco Rubio State Department for like, you know, really being the attention to detail is there. Good work. The thing about this is this was like a stupid era and these are on hard countries to identify. Even, like, even if you couldn't identify every single country in Africa,

like, you know, Nigeria because like these are not difficult. But the reason it hits harder is there's a history here of Trump calling Africa, you know, shittled countries of Trump letting in white South Africans and saying there's a white genocide happening South Africa, of Trump boycotting the G20 in South Africa because of the alleged white genocide that's not happening

of zeroing out USAID, of basically just relentlessly indicating you don't give a shit about Africa

while demonizing, you know, any migrants have come from there. So, these things lie in harder, like, in an oral administration, be like, what a dumb fucking thing. And this one, it's like, what a proof point that these people are racist assholes. Yeah, that's like, yeah, and these dumb racist idiots literally don't care about us. And yeah, it is in fact true.

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that's 50% off your first order at Sundays for dogs.com/world Sunday's for dogs.com/world or use the code world at checkout. All right, Ben, let's do a quick update on Iran where it's you know, Warcrime's Groundhog Day. So last week, Trump basically threatened to wipe Iran off the map. Again, the New York Post counted and said this was his 13th such ultimatum. It's a good reporting there. Then he backed down, which is obviously a good thing. It probably, it's likely

they trumped back down because he got a call from a humble and solemn on the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a rather gulf autocrats that have given him bribes. Trump also tried to claim that the US and Iran were close to cutting a deal to reopen the straight and then on the nuclear program. I don't believe that for second, been then he wind when the Iranians contradicted him. Again, we're not going to go into all the details of this back and forth because it's just so tedious

and repetitive and this is like the cycle we're stuck in. But a few things that are important

that we want to update you on. So first, there was a rotors report that the US has used quote virtually

all of its precision strike missiles during the war with Iran. So we're almost out of attack missiles. Remember those were big topic of discussion around Ukraine. We're almost out of precision strike missiles in the US that used about half of the US stockpile of Tomahawk missiles, which you know,

“there's war game estimates of what would happen in the US China war. I think under like when we're fully,”

when the stockpile is full, we're out of Tomahawk missiles in a week. So being down to half of that stockpile means we're pretty screwed if we get into a fight with China. Iran and Oman are reportedly working on a deal to oversee control of the straight-of-formu is going forward. The gist is that ships entering the straight will have to use this route controlled by the Iranians that are across a close to Iran's shore ships exiting the straight will pass closer to this US preferred route

on Oman's coast. And then Oman and Iran would split revenues from a service fee, which Trump will try to claim is not the same thing as a toll, but is obviously the same thing as a toll. Just for fun, Ben. Here is Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. Is he still the archivist? I think he lost that job, right? He got fired as archivist. Yeah, and that's scary, guys. He's now scared of it. Oh, yeah, that one. He's talking

about the importance of freedom of navigation at an event just last month. If we create a precedent, in the Middle East, where a nation state can decide that they are going to control an international waterway, charge a toll, and if you don't pay them, blow up your ships, we have created a very dangerous precedent, which will repeat itself in other parts of the world, including in this region. So what does that stake here is not simply the issue of what's

happening in the straights of war moves. It's a very fundamental principle about freedom of navigation. And if that is threatened, then I think the global economy is threatened, and the rules which

cannot be allowed to happen. So remember that one? Going forward, more of those comments. And then

“finally, Ben, there's these reports that Iranian hackers or Iranian linked hackers have infiltrated”

municipal water systems in at least seven states. The first state to sound the alarm was minnesota,

where hackers got into about three dozen municipal water systems minnesota, then when public with this, that clearly helped other states kind of look into what was happening there and identified that they too had been hacked. And here is how President Trump thanked minnesota for this good work at a press event recently, let's watch. Minnesota, do you want to get the check together? So U.S. intelligence thinks that Iran was

hacking municipal water systems in the U.S. Donald Trump thinks it was Tim Walls, who looks to me like, you know, he knows his way around the computer. So Ben, there's reports that SENCOM has on the shelf that intensive two-week military campaign, if things go south. And these negotiations, CNN reported that SENCOM sent out a blast email to its team saying it was, quote, looking for creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran, the big old brainstorm here on the

war. At this point, I don't really know what's left to say about this conflict other than that Trump has lost it and it's time to move on. But how concerned are you about the cyber attack element that seems new and kind of scary? Yeah, I'd be concerned. I mean, there's a few different things to say here. First of all, I do want to say one thing with Mark Rubio. He laments the precedent being set by a power trying to control waterways. At the same time that he Mark Rubio is supervising

a total blockade of any ships reaching Cuba with oil. Good point. So Mark Rubio is actually in addition to being an idiot who's made to look like a fool day by day because Donald Trump contradicts him on the Iran talks. He also is like wildly violating his own rule when it comes to the free flow of shipping when it comes to Cuba. The attack comes, the idea of the U.S. being almost out of these precision. I mean, this is, again, because Congress is so ineffectual

and the Pentagon doesn't tell us anything. I know we say this every week. We have the cost of this war is staggering and it's hundreds of billions of dollars and it's replacing all these weapon systems and it's fixing all these bases and it's caring for all these wounded service members. We don't know how badly wounded they are. It's all these things and so this kind of reinforces the price tag of this thing is just much higher than they're telling us and it's frankly,

you know, I'm not like Mr. Readiness over here but it's never good when you run out of weapons

particularly defensive ones. It's just another stupid and they'll try to blame like Ukraine. I see them try to blame Biden for giving a sense of Ukraine. Look, if you didn't launch a stupid war, we wouldn't be running out of these things. So if I was a Democrat, I wouldn't have a problem

“taking that right on. Now on what's happening, I think the basic simple thing that people need to”

keep in mind is that because the United States has far more to lose from chaos, from global economic shortages than Iran, we lose any escalation battle. And if you look at what the Iranians have done recently, they've shown that they have different ways to escalate. So after this kind of latest round began, you saw them attack Jordan and Kuwait and exposed the fact that there are less defences that if they expand the map of the countries that they're willing to attack to basically be anybody

that hosts any U.S. military facility in the Middle East, there's just not enough defensive weapons in the world to protect all those places. So that inevitably, if the U.S. does its big two-week show force here, there's going to be a lot of damage and a lot of destruction. Yeah, and a lot of death tragically in these other countries. And so these leaders are surely calling Trump

being like, "Don't escalate. They're going to like rain down havoc on us." And never mind the fact

that the continued shortages to the strait before moves and disruptions in all these different markets is going to hurt the American economy. And the Iranian economy has been ground to a halt by a blockade in sanctions for a long time. They can weather that. The Iranians have a pretty sophisticated cyber capability. So the idea and the Iranians are very reciprocal. So the idea that if you bomb our water supply and Iran, we're going to launch cyber attacks to disrupt your water supply in the United

“States, I believe that. And so what the Iranians keep demonstrating is like escalation. There's not”

some level of escalation that the United States can reach that isn't going to end up hurting the United States more than the Iranians because we just have more to lose than they do. And our friends

than the Iranians do. So every time this thing ratchets back up, it's worse for us than it's for the Iranians. And there's just not some magic list of targets here. There's not something we can

hit in Iran that we haven't like. I mean, we hit everything on the target list. Yeah, the first

“period was a list. We would have hit it. I mean, that's how we hit it. So what are we doing now?”

The only thing left is war crimes, or hitting the same ship we've already hit, which I think is a lot of what we've been doing with these air strikes. And I do want to say, like, I said this before, but like, there's this kind of reflux of thing where we're like, well, the military is doing a great job. It's just, I don't know. I'm not, I don't know. I'm sure that men and women that are like told to do difficult things are doing a great job executing orders. But like, I don't know what the

fuck Sandcom strategy is in this war. There's a thing called the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their job is war planning. I'm sure Sandcom is very much in on that game too when it comes to a run. If you're doing a no bad idea as in a brainstorm all staff email for like, yo, how do we win the Iran war? It does suggest that the planning wasn't quite as good as it might have been, or you would have wanted it to be. Yeah, you should have done that before. And, and I, to be now to be

sympathetic, if they don't know what their mission is, Tommy, like, if they're told, hey, destroy as much of the Iranian nuclear program from the air as you can. Well, they've done that. Yeah. They've bombed all the targets. Maybe even bomb this mountain where they maybe predictably moved all this stuff. Like, but, I mean, they've emptied the kit on the nuclear program. They were told to topple the Iranian government, well, you can't do that with air strikes.

Now they're being told to like reopen the straightaway moves when Iran is right next to the straightaway moves. And, and so there's just not some military option that we're going to pull out of a hat like six months into the war that's going to make Iran come out and capitulate.

“Everybody knows that. And, and that's why, you know, when Trump says the Iranians are desperate to”

talk, that means Trump is desperate to talk. When Trump says we're only talking to the Omanis, well, that means he's talking to the Omanis, we're talking to the Omanis, like he's just gaslighting and lying is a way through this thing. Right. And, hoping that enough people watch Fox News is, like, believe that the Iranians are begging for talks. That's clearly not what's happening.

And I think one of the things to get acclimated to is that there may never be a deal.

Because the Iranians may just decide, like, we don't need a deal. I mean, I, you know, maybe there'll be some deal like where they essentially are making a toll on the straightaway moves. But, even if that doesn't happen, I think the Iranians are like, well, we're going to find a way to extract some revenue from that straight. And the Americans will move on and, you know, maybe invade some other country. And that's it. The Americans lost this war.

Yeah. Trump is lost this war. It is not going well. Speaking of wars, not going well. I'll turn to Gaza last week, Trump posted the following quote. "Today, the Board of Peace reached a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. This is the monumental step towards lasting peace and security. The agreement will be carried out in the carefully structured phases. As disarmament is completed as early forces will withdraw

in the international stabilization force. We'll work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors." And quote. So, as with all Trump announcements or claims generally a progress in Gaza, we are quite skeptical. Here's a couple of reasons for that skepticism. First, a member of the Hamas negotiating team told the Wall Street Journal the following quote,

"We didn't say disarmament. We didn't say handing over the weapons and we didn't agree on any Israeli involvement." So other than that, Mr. Trump, the accurate statement, "That same negotiator told CNN that the weapons would not be decommissioned or destroyed, rather the plan is to put them in storage, supervised by this technocratic national committee for the administration of Gaza, however, that committee has been blocked from entering Gaza by

Israel and remains just like the sitting in Cairo or somewhere in Egypt." There's also this dynamic where the Israelis want Hamas to go first, Hamas wants these really to go first. So, Hamas wants Israel to withdraw from part of Gaza that it is currently occupying and then let more aid into Gaza before they will disarm. But no one expects Netanyahu to do any of that before his October election. So, the most likely outcome is just kind of the status quo.

Then you have Netanyahu being pretty silent about this deal while the far-right attacks it.

We know that historically Netanyahu always attacks right when he is in political distress.

And then we should say, the idea has been pounding Gaza. I mean, there's been like thousand-plus people killed since the quote unquote ceasefire that everyone celebrated. There are 30 people have been killed since this just new deal was announced. So, like, it doesn't, you know, not a very, not a lot of ceasing to fire. There's a lot of fire

“happening by the idea. So, Ben Big picture, like, life is hell for people in Gaza.”

You have millions of people live in intense Israel restricts the entry of the most basic things you would need to do reconstruction. The water systems are broken. You know, people are getting sick from drinking just basic water. Medical infrastructure is decimated and in short supply and still

of just babies with, like, chickenpox, just like horrendous stuff. And so, I, you're in this

workplace, well, obviously we want this ceasefire to work. We want things to improve for people living in Gaza and for Hamas threat from Hamas to not exist for Israelis. But it just feels like this entire kind of board of peace process is distracting everyone from doing the actual work that is needed to make life better for people or push the process forward and then say we're just kind of stuck. I mean, this announcement kind of came out of nowhere and look, it's just a factual

point that I, I, I would not state anything on this happening. I mean, immediately you have Hamas in Israel backtracking from this announcement that they didn't really make, like Trump announced it on true social and like the board of peace put out a statement. And so, if, if neither party that actually has to take action says that they're willing to take that action, then what the fuck are we actually announcing here? And like what's the point of doing it now? Other than the

fact that the board of peace has done precisely nothing since it was inaugurated. So I'd be very unfortunately skeptical that this is going to happen because Hamas is not going to disarm if Israel doesn't withdraw and Israel's not going to withdraw. And so I don't really know what we're talking about here. I will say something interesting, Tommy, which is people are on to this now. You know,

if you think about it, the first time there's an announcement of a Gaza ceasefire, like everybody in

the world showed up for the photo op with Trump in Egypt. Remember, and you add all these European leaders there, sucking up the Trump for some reason, I think you had in Fentino that a FIFA was there.

“I think you was actually odd. And you know, credulous press coverage, just, remember the 60 minutes,”

puff peace on Jared and what caused diplomatic death through, well, what have people seen? They've seen that there've been like thousands of Israeli air strikes on Gaza. There's been no disarmament of Hamas. There's been not the amount of aid getting in that was supposed to get in. We've all seen Netanyahu tell the idea, you have to take more territory in Gaza to take over 70 percent. So I do think there's something interesting about the fact that nobody took this seriously.

I mean, except I saw a pack put out a statement demanding that we all welcome it. But I mean, there's not like a credulous media or international diplomatic response to this. And I do think that shows that Trump's kind of smoke and mirrors true social announced something before anything is agreed and get all the credit. It doesn't work anymore. Like we are, we were one place in, because I think that Gaza ceasefire was about one year ago. It was like political standards plummeted.

Yeah, his political standing in the world is plummeted. And that's important. Like this, this game doesn't work. It may be works on Fox News. Maybe works with Jesse Waters and the Five or whatever, but like it no longer travels in the world. And and as much as I wish

“that what he's posting was true, I think that's healthy. That like he can no longer be this”

kind of Wizard of Oz, like conducting however he acts and every is pretending like he saw a problem that he has. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace gives you the tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand, facilitate payments, all-in-one place. With Squarespace's collection of cutting-edge design tools, anyone can build a

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You will, it'll improve your relationship at home. Give it a shot. See the reviews. See what stands out and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit BetterHelp.com/PricotWorld. That's BetterHELP.com/PricotWorld. Let's talk about Japan and the Japanese Yen for a bit. We can talk about Fallout from the Iran War here. You guys might have seen a Reuters photo from last week of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessons unusual to do list. This is from Friday. It's said to do,

by Japanese Yen 5 to 10 Bill Billion. It's a little different than my to do list pen. It turns out

that what this was referencing is the US and Tokyo worked together to buy tens of billions of dollars worth of Japanese currency. The Yen, which recently hit its weakest level against the dollars since the mid 1980s. Now, you might be wondering why and why in Earth with the United States do that? A couple of reasons. First of all, Japan owns nearly $1.2 trillion worth of US Treasury

“bills. They also own like some billions of stocks in other US assets. If Japan started dumping”

U.S. Treasury bills to raise money to buy Yen, then it would increase the yield on U.S. Treasuries and make it more expensive for the US government to borrow money. That's one reason. There would be other ripple effects too. Japan recently had to increase its interest rates because they were worried about inflation. Thanks to the war in Iran. Japan increased rates to 1% which is very low, but is still the highest they've been at in 31 years. Japan has had

nearly zero interest rates for decades now because it had been stuck in its deflationary cycle where prices just won't go up, which Iranically is actually a very bad thing. It can lead to a spiral where people stop spending, because you're like, "Well, the price might go down so wide by now. You'll have businesses cutting back and stopping to grow, and you'll have debts become harder to pay off because of deflation."

So, one side effect of Japan's low interest rates were it also popularized in investment strategy called the Yen Carey Trade. That was when investors were borrowing money in Yen because it's cheap right, the industry was really low, and then you used that money to invest in something else of the better return. So, the safest version is you borrow Yen, you buy treasury bills, and you pocket the difference in the yield, but you could also buy something riskier like stocks.

But when Yen prices go up or the interest rates in Japan go up, Japanese banks ask for more collateral, which can force those investors to dump assets to buy more Yen and it can trigger this like vicious economic crisis that can spiral. So, long story short, it is very much in the US interest for Japan's economy to stabilize, which is why you saw this weird thing where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sold a bunch of its holdings of euros

to buy Yen on behalf of the Treasury Department. So, this intervention seems to have worked for now, it's sort of stabilized things for now, but some smart kind of Wall Street folks I know

said to me, the fact that the Treasury is involved in the first place and is this worried should

make you very worried, right, because they know, I mean, the systemic risk here. This isn't like America doing this out of the goodness of our hearts. This is America intervening to prevent the fourth biggest economy in the world, and the largest holder of US Treasury bills from going to some sort of like financial doom spiral and pulling the world down with it. The other thing to worry about is that high oil prices or energy prices have been

really hurting Japanese consumers lately and kind of creating all this friction in the Japanese economy, leading to inflation and leading to their banks to raise interest rates. There's central bank to raise interest rates. And obviously, as we discussed earlier, there is no end-in-site to the war. So, you know, they're all kind of like spinning plates trying to like manage the economy in Japan and the global fallout from interest rates and the war and

everything else, but like every action you take has other consequences and you just sort of don't know where we're going to end up. So, then, very interesting story, pretty worrisome story, I kind of feel like it's not the end of this one, but what did you make of this? And, you know, fucking best sense to do this. I feel like you could have been a little more vague on that thing buddy, unless maybe the goal was for everyone to see that to do this and that to become the

story, because the Treasury Department didn't really buy that much in aggregate of yen, but like the symbol of us doing it with Japan was a big deal, big message to the markets.

Yeah, I'll do this call back to another Trump first term thing. It's like when John Bolton had

like that briefing. Yes. And he's Trump's now pretty faster. And he had like 5,000 troops to Colombia, like a Tudor list. Yeah. He's like showing, well, it's very strange. Anyway, a couple, this is a

“really important story. I implore world those to pay attention to this because it's going to matter”

to you. And there are a couple of things that jumped at me. Like first on the impact of the war,

They import almost 100% of their fossil fuel energy, almost all of that from the Middle East.

And to be specific, there are some estimates, when I was like looking into this, that they get up to like, you know, 90% as a crude oil through the straight-of-war moves, right? And so you can imagine what the disruptions of the Iran War are doing to an already-strained Japanese economy that has depended on these low interest rates, but is now obviously dealing with inflation because of the diminished supply. And so one, it's just a case in point, we've heard about how

this is impacting poorer economies that are having to ration energy. Well, this is like a rich country that is like on teetering on the edge of a financial crisis in part because of the one run.

“I think the second thing that is even more worrying is the reason the U.S. did this as you point”

out Tommy is because they own over a trillion dollars in U.S. treasuries. And again, people may not follow this, but the basic reason that you're allowed to have the standard of living that you do if you're American is that we can just borrow infinite amounts of money set against the value of U.S. treasuries. It essentially, you know, our debt, our treasuries are worth it for people to go to a stable financial instrument. They're by allowing us to spend far more money than we have here in the United

States. And if the bottom starts to fall out of that, you know, if there starts to be instability in treasuries, like the whole system under which our economy operates and the global economy operates could be pretty fucked. And the thing that worries me about this, Tommy, and like why I think it's important to read cover stuff like this is that there's like a lot of, you know, I remember when I was in the Obama campaign in 2007, I drew the short straw in like, I don't know when it was.

“It was like the spring of Actors O.A. It was beginning to wait. I had to write this speech about”

financial regulation. That's awful. I had to talk to all these nerds like Austin Ghouls being who's advising. He's a great nerd. We're like, got to talk to him. There are these warning signs of funny. Yeah. And it's a very funny nerd, great guy. And they're like, well, yeah, they're all these warning signs, you know, like the housing markets, like showing some bubble and the number is going to don't add up and and nobody's minding the store. And it kind of stuck in my head because I didn't

pay much attention to those things. And a few months later, we had like the financial crisis with the bottom fell out. Well, between like bailing out the Japanese yen, this kind of AI bubble that the stock market exists on where essentially a few companies are spending extraordinary amounts of capital building like data centers. And that's like cropping up the economy. But who's really getting enriched? It's kind of like a few people who run those companies and maybe some shareholders.

But like none of that wealth is actually reaching people. It feels a pyramid schemey-ish, you know, like we're betting that this technology is going to make all this growth without knowing how it's going to do that. That seems kind of worrisome to me. Like inflation, you know, the need to use interest rates to tame inflation, set against the imperative of maintaining growth. Like the numbers, I'm not like some financial wizard here. As a relative, you know, novice at this stuff,

I can tell you that there's a lot of numbers that aren't adding up and there are a lot of warning signs

out there. Yeah, look, I mean, the ten-year yield is now at 4.64 percent, which is pretty high

for the ten-year. Like the Fed can try to control rates, but ultimately they don't control interest rates. They control treasury bills, but then the markets take over and they control the price and the yield on these things. And so yeah, you're right, there's like a lot of warning signs. There's this, there's what's happening in Japan. And Japan is coming at the end of like a 30-year experiment experiment in financial engineering in zero interest rates to deal with, you know,

the fact that their population is shrinking and all these sort of systemic issues. You have this AI bubble that kind of keeps partly popping, but then getting re-inflated because of all this enthusiasm around a couple of companies. You have just the instability of the war. And I'm with you, like, who knows, maybe we'll bump along for another five, six years in, you know, America doesn't care about bubbles anymore, and it is what it is. But there's just, you know, we've seen,

“you know, real small things. Like, remember Silicon Valley Bank? Remember, you know, this bank,”

like one bank, and Silicon Valley starts to unwind and it presents a systemic risk, the entire economy to the point where the Biden administration had to step in and rescue it. And so God knows what will happen as a result of these pretty remarkable steps to step in by the you know, the New York Fed and the Treasury to rescue Japan. Like, there is going to be some sort

of second order, third order, fourth order reaction to this step, and it's going to be unpredictable,

and, you know, hopefully nothing bad, but we just don't know. Yeah, and, and last thing I'll say

like, file away the war is one of the things that was like, you know, that last piece of strain

on a global economy, it was already running on a bunch of fumes. But then the other thing, I just

“tell people is it, if you've watched since the beginning, I remember Trump did liberation day,”

right? The markets kind of dealt with it like a crash and it came back. It's the people dealing in treasuries. It's the long-term yields people that have been more the reality check on some of the Trump economic moves or some of the seeming, you know, contradictions in the global economy. So the people in the, like, the markets or the futures, like, they're, they're the people at the casino. Like, they're the people just trying to, like, win one more hand, like, I'm on a roll at the tables,

and I'm going to keep playing until I lose, keep you around these more structural pieces of the global economy, including treasuries. Yeah, watch the bottom markets rates. That's that sometimes you're, they're, they're, they're kind of the, canary in the cold mind for the stuff while the everyone over on Wall Street is a punch trunk. And also worry similarly, a lot of them are buying with leveraged, you know, they're, they're working with leveraged. Yeah. Yeah, taking a loan.

There's a bunch of money on that. Yeah. That's pretty scary. A lot of the things on our corruption watch, Ben. So you and I celebrated the hell out of kind of the great side of the international soccer and the, the World Cup tournament, the FIFA World Cup. Now we're going to talk about the dark side of FIFA, the corruption, and the brazen self-dealing. So fans, players, international football associations, we're all outraged last week when FIFA President

Gianni and Fentino announced a plan to privatize, spin off, and sell to private investors, a piece of the kind of the most lucrative financial parts of its tournament. Specifically, you wanted to create a subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise or FFE, that would handle the, the broadcast rights, the sponsorships, the licensing and the ticket operations, all the big money stuff, and then sell shares of it, kind of like a startup raising an investment round.

And the kicker was that the lead investor for this scheme was called Thrive Eternal, which is a big investment company run by, wait for it. Jared Kushner's brother, Josh Kushner, I wonder how we got

access to this deal, Ben. So Thrive's plan was to buy a 20% a 20% stake is like 4.1 or 2 billion

at a 20 billion dollar evaluation. Now, this became public, and most of these like 211 FIFA member nations and like all the football associations that govern them, learned about the deal in the press, and they were fucking pissed. You wafe, which is the association that represents the 55 European clubs, said they would boycott the next world cup. So you would have had the winners of the world cup, Spain, boycotting the world cup. The North American and Asian associations also

voiced opposition. I think only the African football association was sort of like silent on it, because I don't know, they were, they're trying to get more player development money out of

“it. In Ventino also spreads money around. Yes, that's how we got the job. So”

it also was clear that like this was just in Ventino's pet project. He had not really read anybody into it. There was no buy in on it. It was just like a thing he cooked up on his own and just announced.

And the times the newspaper in the UK, the times reported that in Ventino wanted a 30 million dollar

salary and bonuses to run this new entity. So this was just a cash grab for him. So within days, this thing is getting pilloried in Ventino retreats. He kills this plan. But now his blood is in the water. And Wales, England, Serbia, and Sweden say they no longer support in Ventino's reelection for a new term as president of FIFA. So this guy just went from riding high, like everyone's saying this is the best world cup of all time. I think it made $9 billion, some crazy amount like that,

to a bunch of really important member states saying we want you out of here. The New York Post reported that Ventino had tried to call Trump in Marco Rubio to get some sort of public backing. I get why he would do that. Those are his, you know, probably the highest profile people in his call log or his contact book. But also like in Ventino's relationship with Trump and the flow balligan red card situation is probably part of what got in Ventino in such hot water with these

European clubs. So the the next election to be head of FIFA is until 2027. Currently in Ventino doesn't have any real competition. But I think the hope is to use this moment, the backlash, the outrage to get new candidates to enter and declare their candidacy before the November 18th

“deadline. It's just crazy band that FIFA is a nonprofit. Like why would you need to get”

investment capital after you just have the most profitable world cup of all time? It's just like it's so brazen and shameless the level of grief. And the fact that, you know, there was literally a Kushner involved on the other side of the transaction is just like it just shows you these people have no shame. Yeah. This is a really important story I think because it ties into like your interview too in the sense that like in Ventino is like a walking advertisement for the corruption

in the world today, right? Like he doesn't try to hide it. You know, everything that guy does

like Trump and you know golf monarchs and you know people like that and has no time for, you know, democratically elected leaders other than Donald Trump, you know. And you could just sense the corruption like it just oozes off the guy, you know. And and if you look at what's happened here, this is clearly pissed off the Europeans for some time now. If you're the Europeans, if you're a UEFA, the European Football Association, you're also probably thinking, what

way to second? So we saw this guy in the middle of the World Cup potentially affect the play,

and I'm going to go there by like reinstating Balagu and the U.S. striker who had a red card because Trump asked him to, and then on the back end of that he's giving Jared Kushner's brother like the stake in this investment was monetizing, you know, the global game for his own personal benefit. Like those things connect, you know, to if you're a European that like we're being cut out of this for this own guy's self-aggrandizement and who knows this guy end up impacting the play.

I need inspector Feluso to do the connection to there. It's literally a Kushner getting paid here. You know, Jared's getting fucked off. Yeah. And so how can we trust that our teams are going to you know, be on the level playing field. You know, he's putting his thumb on the scale for

“different teams like that. That's how corrupt this guy is. And so they're pretty, I think they're like,”

this is the blood in the water. We got to get rid of this guy now. And the way in which

Infantino operates, it's like a page out of the Ken Martin DNC book where like he spreads money around. And can I bring together the PSA and PSGW? You can, although the only way I'd poke holes in this is a Mr. Infantino can raise money, Mr. Martin cannot. But point. But like in the same way that it was kind of weird that like Ken Martin was like, as someone who's just a passive observer of that. And that is deep in as you guys. I saw he was like giving like far more money like per capita to

like Guam. And you know, places like no offense to the territories. But he felt like he was, you know, making click damage. Yeah. Who could vote for him. Happy. Well, Infantino's done that with some of these smaller countries and some of these smaller football federations. At the same time that he has a lot of goodwill with like Qatar who got his back. They're one of the few people that got his back. Because, you know, when people were doing podcasts with names like road corrupt

around the World Cup in Qatar, memory gave that speech like today. I'm a Qatari and another guy. So like he has like his his base, but his base is shrinking. It's like the the federations of smaller countries where he's tried to spread some money around. It's like, you know, the golf that he's rewarded with the Qatari World Cup and the Saudis have one coming. But the Europeans realized in a way like this is what's interesting. Is this going to be a predicate for

geopolitics too? Because the Europeans realized, well, if we all get together and we act as one. And we say, we're not playing in the World Cup. There's no World Cup. You kind of a World Cup

“without European football teams. So I think the like question one is, do they succeed in essentially”

throwing them overboard? Feels like that's possible. And I really mean this, like, are they going to draw a lesson from this? Like, maybe we should apply this theory to other realms of geopolitics. And all of Europe acts together. Wow, we actually have some power. Yeah, one would hope. I mean, FIFA is just a hopelessly corrupt organization. I mean, the last president was prosecuted, banned from football for, you know, they're however many years. Infantino is a guy brought in this

supposed to clean up the place. Obviously, he is not. But God, whether it's just this much money sloshing around. I think it attracts some terrible people and it really does. It just sucks. There's all these fans, there's all these players to have to watch this terrible parent organization that no one should have to know about or give a shit about, kind of ruin the reputation of the sport. It's so mad. I mean, you're watching these World Cup games and they're like,

contractually obligated to cut to Gianni and Fentino's ugly face with some, you know, annoying VIP three times a game. You know, it's like, what are we doing here? This is stupid. Imagine, can we just have like better run institutions? I mean, I know. Imagine there is like just some good person running FIFA that you felt good about. I mean,

“like, please, like, just anywhere. Can we just put someone good in charge of an institution somewhere?”

Yeah, that would be nice. Like, a ricker now at the Kennedy Center. You know, like,

that I think is the most, exactly. Good job. That's a good model. Finally, Ben.

I'm not sure how this one got on the run down. Um, a Spider-Man screening in Cartagena, Colombia. It ended abruptly after what the New York Post described as an uncontrollable bout of rotten flatulence. Have you heard about the story? No. Are you a Spider-Man guy? Are you a fan of Marvel, Marvel films? Interesting thing to tell me about me is that as a kid, as a huge Spider-Man, I collected the comic books.

the Tom Holland era. Like, I like, it's not a knock on Tom Holland. Um, I just kind of,

“I lost interest in the Marvel versus a certain point. The big sum for Tom Holland that we say,”

maybe it ended in Cartagena. I don't know. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, what, this is, you know, this is your classic New York Post story. It has great captions on the photos. Like, an agast audience member covers her mouth and nose. Another one I liked was filmgoers, including a Spider-Man cosplayer, standing in the lobby following the midfilm fart attack. So what happened was, all these fans had to flee the theater into the hallway.

I check out this footage that someone took of an absolutely jacked Spider-Man, or man dressed in a Spider-Man costume, who himself had to flee from the odor. The idea of wearing a Spider-Man outfit to a movie is, um, not things in adult.

Now, there's some debate ban over whether this was a stink bomb, or someone in some,

mean, a dire gastro intestinal states. Uh, many couldn't take the stench and left. Some true Marvel heads headed back into the film to the theater to finish out the movie. The real hero here is journalist Ben Cost, uh, the New York Post to manage to make this into a 350-world word article about a story, about a fart that smelled bad and got us to cover it. Uh, to paraphrase Michelle Obama. When we go high, we also go low and usually it's the last story.

Of the segment, which I guess we fit in, because it happened to brought. Just to come on farther to brought. And it got it and see this on the outline. No, it wasn't on there. Uh, but just, just to, um, once again, try to cross stories, is Bobby Kennedy now in charge of the, uh, you know, food, uh, management, letters management in Plumbia.

He's talking about his, like, only chemistry and diet. Oh, no, you're talking about the explosive diarrhea that's infected our country. Yeah. Maybe that's become contagious. I don't know. Maybe the serving lettuce of this film. Anyway, uh, that's all we have to say about that. I guess, go see, I don't really care if you see Spider-Man on. I guess Michael got us to talk about it. So that's it. Yep. Yep. He wins something. We lose our words. We are going to take a quick break. And when you come back, you're going to hear my interview with, uh, Casey Michelle about his new book.

“You know, it says it's a oligarchy. Stick around for that. It's a very important conversation about,”

like, all the American oligarchs, the way they're providing our democracy. And then what the hell, uh, Democrats in Congress could actually do about it. So check it out. Pot to have the world is brought to you by Select Quote with endless information that are fingertips 24 hours a day. It's easy to go down a research rabbit hole, but early anything restaurants hotels, home appliances, and even something is boring as your bath towels. You can spend days pouring over reviews if you're

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pocket each month. Get your free quote at select Quote dot com slash world that select quote dot com slash world, they shop you safe. My guest today is the author of the excellent new book, United States of oligarchy, how America's wealthiest ally with dictators weak in the U.S. and destroy democracy. It seems like you have a take on this oligarchy thing. Case comes show. Welcome to the show.

Welcome back to the show, I should say. Tom, thank you so much for having me. It is great to see you.

“This is a subject near and dear to my heart to the show's heart and I think honestly one of the”

most important things that we should be talking about because corruption is so endemic to this administration

and harming our government and harming our democracy that we need to put more focus on it. Some glad you wrote the book. I want to start with the hobby horse of mine, a person in the Trump administration sort of who annoys me the most Jared Kushner you might have heard of him. Jared is folks know and the first time fancy to himself the shadow secretary of state used that position to build relationships in the Middle East and then left and cashed out hard

getting billions from the Saudis and others in the Gulf. Now he's back is sort of this outside advisor, unofficial advisor, ostensibly working on Gaza, but also Iran, but also the war in Ukraine. He's solving a lot of conflicts, things that are going really well like Iran and Ukraine. Can you talk about how the Gulf states cultivated their relationships with Kushner and how you believe they now have a leverage over him? Yeah look I mean Tommy I mean I'll

I'll begin by saying I frankly can't imagine what it's been like for you watching the rise of

you know certain my advantage about concerns about corruption it's impacting on foreign policy etc etc but for someone like you who is you know right there in the thick of it to see someone like Kushner then come in and be the center of everything from Israel and Gaza to Ukraine and Russia to Iran. I'm sure you have some thoughts probably very similar to that. He's earned it. You know

“that's what I think "meritocracy" that's why I've written so extensively about him in the”

new book to applaud all of these well-earned positions and now billions of dollars that he has

attached to his name. I mean look the cultivation of Kushner goes back to the first term goes

back to Donald Trump's first term when Kushner was brought in again with no regional expertise, no familiarity with local histories or dynamics so it didn't speak any of the local languages and yet was nonetheless appointed to oversee Donald Trump's Middle Eastern portfolio in Trump's very first term which of course now seems like a thousand years ago and it was almost there from the the very beginning that regime to place like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar were at least interested

in seeing what they could do to bring Kushner over to their side and they did not have to wait long. They're in Trump's very first term as well. First the year is President back in 2017. You already had Jared building up relationships with Muhammad bin Salman and B.S. over in Saudi Arabia. Frankly, it even goes to right after the election in late 2024 even before he was in the White House. You had figures like NBC, the still ruler of the United Arab Emirates, canceling lunch plans

with President Obama to secretly meet with Jared Kushner again because he and B.S. and a number of other figures in the region and later eventually around the world realized just how easy it would be to buy favors effectively from Jared Kushner to invest in either his properties or pledge things down the road and of course, when Jared Kushner left to the White House in early 2021, it was in a matter of days that he was not only setting up his new investment organization

affinity partners, but of course going around kind of hat and hand to the Saudis and Emirates to the Qataris and others and saying hey I'd love to see what kind of arrangements we can set up if you help finance new affinity partners and you know some people looked at it and said hmm maybe not now, there are some Saudi officials who actually declined to to invest but MBS came and overruled

them saying we need to maintain this relationship. You never know where it's going to go and of course

here we are watching where it's going. And the first term Jared had to disclose his finances, right there's financial documents, there's ethical restrictions on him. Now that he's an outside advisor with that an official role does he have to disclose anything? What do we know about his business relationships, his finances, et cetera? So as he would say no he doesn't have to disclose any of it as he has said he's just doing his patriotic duty representing the United States of America

again in what just so happened to be the most inflamed geopolitical hotspots around the world is

“real Gaza, Ukraine, Russia and of course it run. That's what he says. So he has not disclosed”

how much money he or his firm or are taking in, what they're doing with that money, what is bringing them the greatest amounts of profit? You know there were some figures like Senator Ron Widen, Jamie Raskin in the house who tried to get some insights into Kushner's finances even before Trump's reelection in 2024 and they they got some information but not all we know that there's a whole world of details and financial arrangement that we still do not have insight into. Now the trick is

though Trump has some declarations as a special envoy. I believe on the way for peace if I remember correctly, which should theoretically require him to make those disclosures within either a 30 or a 60 day window and we're long past that. So again this is a I think a ripe question for let's say congressional Democrats. If they take the house and potentially the Senate, Jared Kushner is sitting there front and center for some potential hearings down the line to get more insight.

Yeah I mean I can't overstate how important that is to me in this show and I will scream at anyone who does not prioritize it as well. So let's say Democrats take the house in Godwill and we take the Senate too but we they could what they could subpoena documents directly from Jared. They could

“get them from banks could they subpoena from affinity like they're we need to get on this fast right?”

As long as they are the the ranking member of the or the ranking members of a committee then yes they have subpoena power. Of course if you're in the minority you can still try to subpoena but don't know. They have to comply with that but yes if they get the house and potentially the Senate we're talking about what could look at either high level or maybe even select committee

hearings into Jared Kushner. I want that to be the first thing some of these committees do. I

hope staffers for members of Congress or listening. I also want to ask you about Steve Whitcoff who's Jared's kind of dumb partner in crime. He's the Whitcoff is the golf buddy turned on boy for everything. Whitcoff is now this roving diplomat. He meets with Putin all the time sometimes he goes by himself. He doesn't even bring a note taker. He doesn't bring anyone from state department. He doesn't get briefing from the CIA. He just kind of wings it. He's doing

stuff in Gaza. He's just sort of everywhere. Whitcoff's son is running the Trump family crypto business.

us your sense of how crypto fits into all of this? Well look Whitcoff is only credentials again

“for any of this, whether it's in the Middle East, whether it's in Ukraine and Russia. The only”

credential he has is because of his close ties to Donald Trump. Of course, they go back years and years in the New York real estate scene. He doesn't have any expertise. He doesn't have any other kind of credentials for this. And by all appearances, he is perhaps the single most gullible figure American diplomacy or an American president has ever produced. I just imagine him going into these meetings with Putin and some of these others with, you know, wide eyes and he's kind of this puppy dog look

and willing to lap up anything and everything Putin is saying because that's by all appearances, everything that has happened. And look, there's plenty to criticize Whitcoff for, and there's certainly plenty that I've criticized him before, but it is. I'm very happy brought up the role of his, his, his son Zach, who is in many ways very similar to the Trump children, writing on the coat tails of his father and by all appearances more than happy to monetize as many of these relationships.

I see possibly can, you know, Zach Whitcoff, you know, he was a relative unknown even more than Steve

“coming into Trump's second administration. But because of the crypto industry, the Whitcoff,”

the younger Whitcoff was able to catapult himself to significant, well, then again, this is a broader story about how crypto has enmeshed itself with Trump, with the Trump family, with the Trump administration. On the one hand, it's kind of a story as old as, you know, industry versus regulation, the industry wants to see any and all regulation demolished. But of course with crypto, you have what we're talking about is the ease of financial maneuvering and financial movement with a click of a button.

Well, any kind of regulation, any kind of transparency, which is, in many ways, a money launders dream or maybe even the dream of a foreign regime that is looking to directly bankroll a sitting American

president and his family. We have never seen a tool like this in terms of the ease of access,

the speed and, of course, just how high up it goes in the administration, which is, again, why the crypto industry has been so happy with President Trump, those he's appointed around him. Yeah, it goes a couple different ways. I mean, there's the money they're making off of the crypto industry and the products and the way they're kind of building investors. There's a great piece in New York Magazine last week about Justin's son. He's just kind of like sketchy crypto billionaire

who bought into World Liberty Financial and got screwed by them and is now taking them to court. It's worth reading. It's interesting. But then there's also the fact that half of the Trump family crypto business was secretly purchased by this Emirati backed firm investment firm.

“I think was it before the Trump administration even started? It was either right before or right”

at the beginning and again, as you said, it was secret. No one knew about this for months and months afterward. Unbelievable. And look, I mean, this is, again, a case study not only in terms of how easy it was to set up something like this, but now we're talking about real national security concerns because all this was happening simultaneously is to Trump overruling all of his national security experts. That he still does have a few of them at least around and saying, while we are receiving millions,

tens of millions, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars from Emirati sources via crypto, we're also going to be sending them all of these high-end chips that only the closest American allies have access to despite all of the concerns about the Emirates than doing whatever they want with those chips, whether it's domestic, using it with their own Chinese partners, the list goes on and on. I mean, look, this is, what's the phrase? There's so much smoke around this, you could choke on it.

This is, in any other administration, the single biggest scandal that we're talking about. And you and I, Tommy, we talked about whether it's the Qatari jet. In this case, with the Emirates, this is kind of outbitting of regimes for Trump's affection one after another after another. And I have no idea where it's going to end because it's already been a disaster where we are right now. God only knows what we don't know. Before we go on to some other American

oligarchs, can you give us your definition of what an oligarch is and talk about sort of oligarchs through history? Because a lot of listeners might be aware of Russian oligarchs because they had been talked about a lot in the media. But not aware of others in other countries, either today and historically speaking. So look, one of the reasons that I wrote the book is because, as I discovered, the term oligarchy, it's a pretty contested term. It's a little slippery.

We have Aristotle to thank for that. He was the first one to popularize the term thousands of

years ago. So shout out to what to Aristotle for that. As he said, I mean, look, the root of the term literally means the rule of the few. And he said, yes, that's all fine and true. It is the rule of the few. It's when just a few number of individuals are overseeing a country or a state or an empire. But again, it's not just, as he said, about the number of people, tell me if it was you and the rest of the pod save crew running the United States of America someday, that is not necessarily an oligarch.

And you're lip to God's ears, my friend. At some point, 20, 20 years right around the corner, but as Aristotle pointed out, you also had to have those few be the wealthiest of any given nation and given state and given empire. So again, what Aristotle laid out, it's not just the literal

certainly in my end, helped clarify things because again, you know, oligarchy think,

“as it is a couple of people here and there running something, no, they have to be the wealthiest.”

So in the American context, the thing that comes to my most clearly is going back to the Gilded Age. When you had all these so-called tycoons or robber barons, who were by any other name, oligarchs themselves, the Vanderbilt's and the carnities and the Rockefellers and so on. And that was perfectly true. They used their wealth to, again, they weren't president themselves, but steer presidency, steer American politics for their own personal benefit. And of course,

that is the era that most resembles what we are going through right now. The thing that really came through and putting this book together is yes, even though it is the Gilded Age and the Rockefellers Carnities Vanderbilt's that most resemble the the musks, the Zuckerbergs, the baseless, is the trumps of now. We're really talking about magnitude's difference in terms of total wealth for those oligarchs in the 21st century compared to what those oligarchs in the late 19th

“century had and the total amount of wealth in equality. So yes, there was an oligarchy in the Gilded”

Age, but right now it makes it look like pocket change. Right Rockefeller died with the equivalent of

30 billion dollars to his name, which is, I mean, look, that's plenty of money. I'm not going to

sell enough books to make that money. Not yet at least, but we're talking about musk, just a few weeks ago, the world's first trillion air, which is, again, magnitude's more. So yes, we've seen oligarchs in the past, including the United States of America, but right now there has been nothing like what we're going through in the 2020s. Yeah, from the Gilded Age to the Gilded Age with how reliant he is on the Chinese manufacturing and how that might color his decision making.

So look, you're exactly right. He's kind of a, you know, he's typifying what oligarchy looks like right now. And because of his wealth, he's kind of standing head and shoulders above the rest of them. And there's been some absolutely fantastic reporting on musk. There was that recent muskism book that came out a few weeks ago. And of course, some phenomenal work from reporters and scholars on wealth inequality. So I didn't really want to necessarily reinvent the wheel there.

What I tried to do with this book is look at the intersection of American oligarchy and national security. Because it's not just that these oligarchs and wealth inequalities are threat to American democracy right now. It's now increasingly a threat to wealth. And now it's increasingly a threat to national security itself. And musk enters the picture because of one thing that has been under reported in his career. And now he has built out a reliance on

not just domestic sources of his wealth, but even foreign sources of his wealth, most especially in China, his relationship with Beijing and most especially with his company. Tesla is something that I don't think, even then, or even now, has seen enough scrutiny and has seen enough concern. And there's there's plenty more details in the book itself about how we set up this joint venture with the Chinese Communist Party, how he built out the world's biggest Tesla production

plants in China itself. And of course, what that meant for his relationship and the kind of leverage that Beijing was able to build over him and how they saw there was some reporting about this in 2025. How they saw him and that leverage in the White House after Donald Trump returned to the presidency. And look, this isn't even talking about all the truly horrible things he said about what Beijing is doing to weegers in Xinjiang and trying to play down the ongoing human rights abuses and

even genocide. That's happening there. But it really is all about the kind of economic leverage that foreign countries, whether it's the Saudis and the Emirati's with Kushner, whether it's a number of others with Trump or in this case, China with Musk, what that means for those foreign regimes that CDs oligarchs as their way into implementing and affecting American policy, including American foreign policy.

In this this leverage China had was really hammered home one. There was this moment early

and it was the beginning of the Trump second term. When all of a sudden there was this breaking

news report that the Pentagon was preparing to for some reason read Elon Musk into the secret war

“plan against China. And I think Trump actually himself freaked out and was like, what the”

fuck are we doing here and put a stop to it. But Pete Hackseth was just preparing to do this for some reason despite all this anxiety that was well known within the intelligence community in government for people like you who focus on this stuff that China controls Elon Musk's future in a lot of ways because of their ability to mess with his manufacturing. Yeah, and this is already after the reporting that we saw of Musk having these back channel

conversations with Putin as well, right? Putin doesn't have as much economic leverage over over Musk, but Musk was granting Russians access to Starlink for years. It was only in the last few

months that he finally cut that off, right? This is not like these relationships that Musk had with

ever give Trump any more credit than I ever have to. But yes, even Trump looked at this and said absolutely not, why would we give a businessman with these kinds of ties to China access to these secrets? So as far as we know, he didn't gain access to this, but he still did, of course, the book was in a more detailed about the still did plenty that aided Beijing, not least through Doge and cutting off all of these, the pro democracy worked that the United States was supporting

in and around China as well. Bakers, the Wall Street Journal recently ran a report on Trump's fundraising operation and really it's just like old school bribery. It's kind of like a mob shake down.

I want to read you a couple of details. So soft bank donated $50 million to the Trump presidential

library, Apple gave 25 million to the ballroom, Microsoft gave 10 million to the ballroom, Amazon gave 5 million to the ballroom, made a gave 10 million to a Trump-aligned pack, a multi-million dollar ballroom donation and then there was a 22 million dollar payment to the Trump presidential library. Which of those tech oligarchs have most thoroughly bent the knee in European Union? I mean, how can I choose? How can I select just one?

It's so funny. Let me hop off my little moral high horse for a second and say if I was in their shoes and looking at the incentive structure, the way that this administration has set things up, it's so clear. It's clear as day that it is an open air bribery racket. It's an open air auction for it in policy. And if you're not willing to pay, that's fine. That's okay. Maybe there'll be an investigation, maybe there'll be an prosecution. Who's to say what the

“future holds? You can make that choice. But if you, you should know, doing that, that your competitor”

down the street is going to make a different choice. There're going to be the ones,

funding $10 million dollars for the library, for the inauguration, whatever it might be.

So yes, you can choose to not play the game, but you are only in the long run losing out because of the way that Trump, and of course, the kind of legal architecture of American campaign finance in this country is set up, right? The phrase that keeps coming to mind is legalized bribery because, again, the question is, are any of these companies actually committing any crimes? And if so, of course, who's going to be enforcing and who's going to be prosecuting it,

no one in this current administration? But I think that the beauty and the curse of the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself is that he just makes all of this indescapable, right? He puts it all, that you've talked about, isn't it? He puts it all front and center and forces you to look at it and stare at it day in and day out. And look, the opportunity is there for Democrats to also put this front and center and all this anti-corruption, of course, anti-Alegarchy,

as well, for the midterms and ideally for the president's scene in 2028, the opportunity is there, they just have to take it. He literally has a model of the Katari jet bribe sitting on the coffee table next to the couch in the awful office. You're right, like it's quite literally front and center, Casey. Let's talk about solutions. You write in the book about some good things the Biden administration did to deal with all of our key, to deal with corruption. Can you give us

“kind of like the just of what they did and then what has been rolled back by the Trump administration?”

So look, they did some some great things. You know, I want to make sure to give them there where they're plotted. So one of the things, again, rhetorically is they placed anti-corruption efforts in corruption itself, clearly as a national security prerogative. They declared corruption was now just like, you know, communism during the Cold War. This is a key national security threat. We have to do something about it. So they unveiled this, you know, 3840 page, strategy,

on-combatting corruption, which was fantastic. Had a lot of very good stuff. And then they also set up all these task forces at DOJ and elsewhere, specifically to go after these foreign cleptocrats abroad that we know we're trying to use a wealth to interfere in American politics. And at the IRS, because again, we haven't really talked about it in this conversation, but there is a domestic taxation component to this, right? Republicans have been trying to gut the IRS for years and

years. And the Biden administration said we're going to rectify that. We're going to reverse that. It's going to be a lot of funding going to other IRS. And specifically this anti-Alegarchy task force we're going to put there to investigate ultra high net worth individuals in the US. It was step forward, after step forward, after step forward. And as look, I have a lot of issues with President Biden and certainly the way things ended. But I wanted also right. And then he's closing a dress.

He was the very first one to use the term oligarchy as a president. He's closing message talking

about the threat of these oligarchic forces in the US. It's no surprise to you or to any listener, is that Trump came in and undid all of that. Those task forces have been demolished. The IRS funding has been demolished. All of the enforcement of actual laws on the books, anti-brivory, anti-corruption statutes. Those are just not even being enforced anymore. They haven't been formally repealed. But Trump says we're just not getting the force. Who cares what a law says if I say

it's a bad law, then I'm not going to prosecute anyone. Well, talk away a nice straight shooter.

“There's no filter here. Right, yes. Yes, I believe in future return in general.”

Yes, I'm sure that that's slush fund, as he says, is definitely dead in the water in the United States.

He said, it's like, sir, go along with a lie until we get him confirmed. That's what we're going

“for. Just don't put it in writing. That's what we've learned from from the land.”

Yes, yes, it's verbal. It's the verbal. I mean, look, Trump has been far away the most corrupt. I'm not saying anything new. The most corrupt president we've ever seen in American history and the most corrupt administration we've ever seen. And he hasn't been shy about it, right? He is not hiding any of this. He is not putting any of this on the, you know, the back burner. He is putting all of this front and in center for the kind of the legislative stuff. He's not enforcing. And of course, just

opening him and his family and their pocketbooks up to now make, I don't know what the latest estimate

was. $3 billion for a billion dollars that he and his family have made over the last year and a half.

I just continue climbing and finding new ways to monetize all of this mind boggling sums. Okay, last question for you. So let's say 2028 hopeful is listening to this. They come to you and they say, help us. Help us write our policy platform and help us think about how to talk about it, not only in terms of what will be effective and really like root out the problem, but also what it will be politically persuasive, right? Because we have to convince people that this stuff really matters.

I mean, look, there's all kinds of technical things you can do. Of course, the final chapter, like any good book has all these policy run throughs. You know, you got to go back and reinstate

“everything the Biden administration had. You have to go back and reinstate and reinforce and fund”

all of the investigators and enforcement mechanisms that we have on the Anti-Briordinary Anti-Corruption landscape. We have a lot of great stuff that was still there that took decades to build out. The Trump has tried to demolish, but is still there. And this is including things like the

newer shell company registry that the U.S. finally began implementing in the last year to one of

the things that you have to do is you can't just go back and hope to have the same tools prevent another future Trump administration or vants administration or whatever it might be. You have to expand you have to think creatively. And that includes things like creating a brand new bureau or a brand new agency specifically dedicated toward coordinating anti-corruption efforts. And even beyond that, and again, it's not just DOJ. It's not just Treasury. It's not just IRS or SEC. You also have to

link it to campaign finance reform because you can't tackle corruption in this country without also tackling campaign finance reform. And that's things like citizens united. That's things like beefing up the FEC. And again, making sure to have this kind of overarching coordinating body to make sure that everyone's on the same page. And they're all moving in the same direction. Because at the end of the day, some of these things have been very scattered in the past.

The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The opportunity again is there.

“And you have to have high level investigations. And if the evidence points in that direction,”

you got to have high level prosecutions. And I would say starting with the children, right? Kushner and Trump, Jr and Erica, you know, they haven't been shy about some of these things. And I don't think, maybe I'm wrong. I just, I don't think there are a lot of Americans who are supportive of the kids making all of these billions of dollars off of the backs of their parents, which gets to the messaging. The thing that I have had other conversations with others

about and that have found, at least on my and most persuasive, is that when we're talking about corruption, it's not just these technical elements of what is a, what is a bribe who is an actor, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's about fairness. It is simply unfair that the Trump family, that the Kushners, that the baselessness and Zuckerbergs and musks of the world, as well as all of these other oligarchic and deep pocketed figures have access to all of this wealth and all of this

power simply because of all of their wealth. It is not fair to you or me or anyone else wants

to work for a living that this small number of individuals, and especially that second generation,

the kind of aristocracy in the making is able to use all of their money to gain all of that power, to overtake this democracy, this democratic experiment that we're now 250 years in, that is trying to recreate the kind of aristocracy that we thought we threw off 250 years ago, right? It's about fairness and making sure the American people have a fair deal. That is what anti-corruption efforts are about. Really, really well said. Again, the book is United States of Alligarchie,

how America's wealthiest ally with dictators and weak in the U.S. and destroy democracy. Casey Michelle, everyone buy the book because what would piss Donald Trump off more than this book being on the bestseller lists, right? It feels like that would really send us some analysis. That's right. Great. By the book, thank you for your work on this. It's so, so, so, so important, and I know there's a lot about very rich people who are trying to stop you from being

successful. So, thank you, Casey. Thanks so much, Tommy. Thanks again, Casey Michelle, we're joining the show, and thanks to everyone who's not farting in crowded theaters. We solicit you. Pots of the world is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alonan Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Yenisha Bonnergik. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Canter, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Her staff is probably

unionized with the writer's guild of America East.