Is Trump Planning to Invade Cuba?

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watching the DCs. They have a massive drone capacity. Not only is it drone proof, the drone engine it bounces off to won't have any effect. But it's also meant that they drone for attacks all of why she did the roof has developed. Ben, do you think that that's how he thinks that counter-drone systems work that is just like a strong roof? Does he think

iron dome is a literal thing? So first of all, it feels like a wonderful space for a coup.

“For the if you need to launch a military coup, what better place to launch the putt from”

within your own ballroom? It's a good point. Where you can have a bunker under the ballroom and you can send drones out. So good dual use to use a national security term. I also just love how did you see him at some Trump or ex event talk about how great it is for medical? You can't talk. Same thing like this is great for military. Just like skips, parts of sentences. It's just, you know, it's all. I also love their innovative ways. They

try to hold press conferences at the locations with the worst audio possible. Like how do we beat this marine one jet engine? Oh, I know. Dude with a hammer. Yeah, it reminds me whenever I have to do like a podcast from home or something and like it's a lot more. There's some dude with a leaf flower outside. But Trump likes that. Yeah, he loves it. Apparently. He's like, how can we make this as annoying as humanly possible for everybody? Also, did you see the Wall Street Journal story the

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It just feels like every life is blinking red. This would be red or green. I guess green that the Trump administration is planning some sort of imminent regime change operation. Yeah. Cuba, which is great. We need another one of those. So we need. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about what those, you know, what those indications are. We'll talk about the humanitarian situation on the ground there.

We'll also touch on this growing political crisis in Bolivia, which is kind of exploded on social media over the weekend. Then we're going to up you guys on all things around. The bad, the worse, the dumb will explain what was and what was not accomplished during Trump's China trip. Why folks in Taiwan are feeling a little more nervous these days. And they were before the trip. And then Ben and I are going to get to see some highlights from the annual Eurovision context for

the first time. I look forward to this every year, every year. Michael's curation of your

vision from every year. Once a year, Michael tries to force us to care about your vision. And we say, all right. I don't, yeah, I got on a better pitch. Yeah. And then you're going to hear my conversation with Nishkumar from Potsay of the UK. We talk about what the hell is happening with Prime Minister Kier-Starmer, the Labor Party, Nigel Farage, the Rise of Reform UK, the right wing party over there. And then we just laugh a lot because Nish is so funny. Does Nish have a

“favored horse in this type? Is he an Andy Burnham guy, is he an Angela Rainer guy?”

My guess is he didn't say, but my guess is, you know, he would sort of tack a little further to left.

I'm green curious. Potsay of the UK is a hilarious fantastic show. You should subscribe. Also,

check out Nish's Comedy Special. It's on YouTube right now. It's called Nish. Don't kill my butt. Which is a great title. It's funny, okay. Also, speaking of YouTube, please subscribe to

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trying to make this country a better place. The midterm flow just to happen. Hopefully, they're good. Trump endorsing Ken Paxton and Texas today. Yes. Makes me a little more curious. What the fuck? Yeah. That guy is a creep. Walking creep. It's hard to design a magnet creep more effectively than Ken Paxton. Have you seen story about Ken Paxton? It's going through a security gate again into a like a courtroom or something, any stole some guys like $1,000. Yeah. I mean, it's just like a

crook. If you ever wanted to test the proposition that maybe right wing politics in this country or not about earnest religiosity, a James Talereco versus Ken Paxton race is definitely going to put that to the test. Yeah. That's not hard one. More info at CrookedCon.com. And also the friends of the pod subscribers get a discounted price. So another reason to subscribe. All right, Ben, should we start with Cuba? Yes. I know you care deeply about this one. Let's go. Again,

seems like all these warning lies are flashing. The most recent data point was this Axios report more for the weekend that said Cuba has obtained 300 military drones and is considering using them to attack targets at the US military base in Quantano Bay if they are attacked. I feel like the if they are attacked retaliation part of this was kind of under-emphasized in the reporting. But there were a lot of background quotes kind of hyping the threat from Cuba to the US. It's like

all these people quoted just figured out it's nine miles away. Yeah. Oh, I love that. So there's your pretext for why the US has to take a preemptive action in Cuba, right? Because if they're invaded, they might fight back. So we got to preempt the retaliation. Okay. Got it. So we're trying to find a lot. Listen, I appreciate that. There's also been reports that the US is planning to indict 94-year-old Raul Castro for a crime that occurred in 1996 as is normal.

You might be thinking that seems strange. He seems like he's about to die. But it's not strange when you consider how central the indictment of Nicholas Maduro was to the rationale for the Venezuela operation that deposed him earlier this year. Then there were CIA director John Radcliffe's

“visit to Cuba last week. Sometimes those trips happen. They're usually secret. That's why you send”

the CIA director. But instead the CIA put out a statement about it. They said Radcliffe was there to personally deliver a message from Trump that sounded like an ultimatum to me then. And then

finally, the time has been reporting that there's been an increase in U.S. surveillance flights

over Cuba in recent weeks. And the broader context as listeners probably know is that the U.S. has had the full blockade on Cuba since January. The entire island is just rocked by this humanitarian crisis. There is no fuel. So there's no power. Hospitals can't function. People can't cook food. Families are starving. It is an absolute nightmare. Children are starving to death. Children are starving to death. And here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about Cuba last week.

I think this is like on the way to China while they're in China. Let's watch. There is no economy in Cuba. To the extent there's any wealth in Cuba, it doesn't go. It doesn't forget about it and go to the people. It doesn't even go to the government. The wealth is controlled by a private, by a company owned by military generals. They take all the money. They're sitting on billions of dollars. Okay. This is a country where people are literally now eating garbage from the

streets. But they have a company that controls all of the money making there that's sitting on

15, 16 billion dollars. So it's a broken non-functional economy. And it's impossible to change it.

I wish it were different. But I believe it's my personal opinion. You cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it.

“That's what's going to have to change because these people are proven incapable. I hope I'm wrong.”

Well, give them a chance. But I don't think it's going to happen. Okay. So Ben, I'm curious how you're reading on these T-Leaves. And like, I don't know if there isn't a regime change operation. Are they just going to starve this entire island full of people and perpetuities? Like a medieval siege happening here? Yes. And in first of all, Rubio, if you kind of look hard enough in news eyes, it's hard to identify like the soul underneath. Especially on this issue. Because what he's talking

about is it's so far-sickle because is there corruption and repression in the Cuban government? Yes. But the reason people are reading garbage is because on top of the embargo that has been placed for 60 plus years, there's a full blockade of the island. If they wanted tomorrow to have a market

When we were in office and did the engagement of policy with the Cubans,

“they wanted to open up their economy to foreign investment and they created a private sector.”

And literally we couldn't get any bank to do any business in Cuba because of US sanctions, even though we were trying to lift those sanctions. And we actually had to kind of give direct permission to one bank just to facilitate some transactions. So these guys like Rubio like to get up there and make it seem like the entire just travesty of human suffering that is happening there is somehow because of a handful of corrupt communist party officials or generals when far and away.

And I'm tired of just this one and on the other and thing. Far and away, the reason that Cubans

are suffering is because of the US blockade. You could have Adam Smith and John Maynard Caine's

running the economy and if you have a total US embargo that cuts the country off from accessing the US dollar, which is needed for transactions and then a blockade of oil coming into the country,

“you'd still have people eating garbage in the street. Right, you can't refrigerate anything.”

Yeah, there's no electricity for 20 hours at a time. And that means that hospitals are shutting down and people are dying who are on things like ventilators because of Marco Rubio. He's killing the people that he claims to be trying to help. And I wish that there was more of a kind of moral outcry against this from the Democrats, from the media, but it is what it is. In terms of what's happening,

my sense is that the Cubans have been willing to make lots of concessions. You know, they've been

trying to make signals that they're releasing certain political prisoners. They're probably willing to open up some real estate for development from Trump's rich Cuban-American friends in South Florida or they're willing to make changes in their economic model. But you just heard Rubio give up the game, which is he thinks that the whole government has to change. And no government, whether you like that government or not is going to go shade its own regime change. And so we're in

this kind of, you know, Mexican standoff where essentially they're saying you guys all have to leave or else what. And the or else now seems to be that they, you know, Diaz can now use the actual president of Cuba. It's not a big enough fish probably for Trump and Rubio. So they're looking at Raul Castro, who's like literally 94 years old. It's not like he's, you know, he may be the final decision maker, but he's not running the country day to day. But he's a name. You know,

Fidel's dead, Raul's left. We're going to indict him over something. It's like literally a scalp for all these hard-lying humans in Miami who have hated the cast. And by the way, if we're re-litigating, you know, things that happened 30 years ago. I mean, the CIA has shot down Cuban airliners and killed civilians. Like there was something called the Bay of Pigs invasion. I mean, like the point is that the history runs in both directions in this relationship. And the idea that

you're going to charge Castro for the shoot down of an airplane in the mid 90s, that's not serious. I mean, why would the justice system waited 30 years until Donald Trump wanted to play Emperor of Latin America to all of the sudden decide to hold Raul Castro accountable for this? And I think what they'll probably try to do is, you know, regime change on the cheap a bunch of Delta Force guys are going to go grab a 94 year old man. And then what we'll put a gun to the rest of the Cuban

government said and say, let the Miami Cubans develop the real estate down here. I mean, it's the only on oil for us to deal. I mean, it's not even a clear play. It's just, it's like a political project for Rubio and Florida. And by the way, just a hammer home, this humanitarian point, because I'm with you. Like it does feel like there's just a bizarre lack of concern. Interest concern. We're doing right. Yeah, the US is doing this. We reach out to a reporter on the

“ground in Cuba, named Ed Augustin, to get his sense from his reporting what life is like on the ground”

to the Cuban people. Let's listen to that. Hunger is growing by the day in Cuba because there's no diesel to get food to market. Tomatoes, milk, meat is rotting in the countryside because it can simply not be transported to the city. In Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's main city in the east, I was reporting from 18th story, high rises, where the rich, and I was cooking with carbon, with coal, and the poor are cooking either with firewood. They have to walk miles to chop

with machetes or with cardboard that they find in grain piles of rubbish. We're seeing informatality rates shoot up an increase in the lack of drinking water. Over 80% of the water pumps in Cuba to get water from reservoirs to people's homes and hospitals relies on electricity. So these sanctions are killing. They're killing the civilian population. It's the most vulnerable that are suffering

And that is really significant because here until recently in Cuba, the notion of a U.S. military

attack was seen as a bit of a cliché, right? The government's been warning of it for 2,000 years. Now the feeling changed. I spoke to a guy whose dream he said was to leave Cuba and to go to the United States. But when I asked him what he'd do in the case of military intervention, he said, "Well, I'm a trained sniper and what I have to do is I have to go and be on duty." Another family I spoke to got told that they have a contingency plan. State organised contingency

plan to go and live in the tunnel. What I'd point to here is Cuban nationalism. Many people I speak to say, "If Donald Trump's America invades, I fight." So President Diaz can now say that any military action by the U.S. would result in a quote bloodbath and up-and-regional

“civility. I think it's fair to doubt their capacity as a fighting force. But guerrilla army could”

do some damage and kill some U.S. service members and again it's like to what end. And then you saw Bob Gates, former CIA director, former Secretary of Defense, under multiple administrations on I think CBS over the weekend who is saying that he thinks the biggest risk is we just start this island to death and lead to a mass migration at tens of thousands of Cubans to the U.S. again, which puts them at risk. But also, I was told by Maga, that was the thing they hated

the most was mass migrations. What are we doing here? If they go forward with this, there's several ways to go. And look, the bad messy scenarios are that there's actually some kind of insurgency that drags on that. There's state collapse and mass migration. But let's even, and also, by the way, the Cubans have networks across Latin America, this is kind of scenario where they could kind of wreak havoc in different places, you know, most like a terrorist type of tactics. I'm not

sure that they do that, but it's possible. However, like, let's say this goes Venezuela style, right? We some delta force guys and some cinematic operation, grab, roll and they maybe they grab Diaz Canal and Mark Rubio gives the press conference and says he's in charge and puts on a sweatsuit again and puts on a sweatsuit and then where I guess responsible for the governance of the poorest nation in the hemisphere because of our sanctions.

“Because I honestly think that one of the reasons why some Democrats are more vocal about this”

is they're like, "Well, what if it goes well?" First of all, that's wrong, imperialism should have

gone out a long time ago in the idea that we just like randomly, you know, starve and then invade and regime change a country just because we can is the most dangerous form of politics that there is. And also, like, really importantly, you mentioned Maga, like, who wants this? Like, why is this happening? Rich, cute. Like, this doesn't exactly, this is nothing for anybody in America. Like, there's not even some weird bangshot, like with Venezuela if they could talk about oil, although

the gas prices are up, it doesn't seem like getting the Venezuelan oil. Yeah, but they didn't that one. So, like, a very small number of people will get rich, right? Some like, you know, Miami Cubans might get some beachfront property, like some corrupt, you know, Eric Prince will probably get hired to get their questioner role runs some new board of peace offshoot for Cuba. Builds, Trump properties and golf courses. And like, our tax dollars will probably spend billions of

dollars on the operation. I mean, we have to start, like, it can't just be the, the wars that are catastrophically consequential like Iran that people are against. Like, all of this is connected.

“It's all about imperialism and corruption and power and grift. And you should care as much about Cuba”

as you care about Iran in the same way that, frankly, the decent feedback with Trump gone on Venezuela probably contributed to the war in Iran. 100%. And so this Cuban operation is probably a gateway to Greenland or Panama Canal, like whatever. This is what history tells us happens with

autocrats. You know, they keep going. They never stop when they get the territorial expansion regime

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better help dot com slash cricket world that's better at glp dot com slash cricket world. We're going

to talk about it around in a second. But before we do, we wanted to flag this growing crisis

in Bolivia where supporters of former president Avo Morales have blocked roads for a couple of weeks. They've created all these shortages of fuel and medical supplies and food. It's a really growing crisis. And I'm Monday, some of these protesters clashed with police in La Paz, the Bolivia's capital. And so the protests are over economic conditions, which are very bad and prices going up in inflation and in law and gas lines. But also the treatment of Morales who has been

hold up in the jungle surrounded literally by like an army of supporters who say they will fight the death to protect him. The protesters are now calling on the current president president Paz to resign. There have been reports that the government is order the arrest of leaders of like indigenous rights and groups and unions. And there was also a report that I've not seen corroborated anywhere else been that the U.S. military was preparing some operation with the Bolivian police

to capture Avo Morales. Again, that was not confirmed. But like posts, close to then as well, it feels a lot more believable. And I can understand why like any leftist leader in Latin America would think that the Trump administration is angling to take them out and is ready and willing to intervene militarily in their affairs at any time. So I don't this sort of like exploded

“my feeds over the weekend. We wanted to talk about it. What do you make of this happening?”

You remember the Don Road doctrine? Yeah. So there's a lot of smoke around some of these reports, right? So we have this idea that there might be some special operation to grab Avo Morales in Bolivia. We also had, you see this like weird Honduras thing that the Trump administration was working

together with like have your melee and the right wing leaders to you know, basically

target, you know, Shane Bam and Mexico and Petro and Columbia like metal in their politics and undermine the Latin American left. We've had these reports of kind of CIA presence in Mexico that we've talked about. Yeah. I think when you take this all together, there really does seem to be a pretty comprehensive and coordinated playbook to essentially treat all of Latin America like literally imperial possessions of the United States where we either pick the leaders we,

you know, remember Trump intervenes in Argentina with the massive bailout for Milay or if

seize them and Avo Morales just points to how kind of weirdly personal this is because Avo Morales

“isn't even powerful anymore. You know, like he's literally like you thought a good guy. He's no, he's not”

that's true, right? But he's out to pasture like he's not like, like, it's not even like some election coming up that he's running in like he's like some guy like on a compound somewhere and it feels like there's this, you know, a lot of people are using the Trump administration. I heard you describe it as like smashing grab and that's exactly right. And it's also like, oh, I can use this moment to settle my scores. You know, a lot of people are mad at Avo Morales about things he did 10, 20 years ago

and it's like, I can talk the Trump administration to like running a special opt to grab like some corporate interest. It really feels like 1950s, 60s like a dullest brother in charge of the CIA just like rampaging through Latin America on behalf of, you know, a fruit company or whatever. And by the way, these things can feel cost-free when you do them, but they tend to have a tail, you know, like meddling in Central America in the 80s led to death squads and left-wing revolutionaries and

mass migration in the United States. You know, so it might feel clean when you decapitated the Cuban government or grab Avo Morales, but like other people don't forget. And then they kill people and then they get massacred. And so this all this stuff, it can set in motion, dominoes that lead to pretty dark places. Yeah, agreed. And something we're watching closely. Okay. So let's turn to Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Just doesn't seem like the

US and Iran are anywhere close to a deal to actually end the conflict. Last week, Trump said the ceasefire was on life support. Then on Sunday, he posted quote, "For Iran, the clock is ticking and they better get moving fast or there won't be anything left of them. Time is of the essence." Another adorable, like, you know, mass casualty, truth, social post of, you know, extermination. But a day later, Trump announced that he would not attack Iran this week because of a request from

leaders in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He always says to like, "Name check."

The Field Marshal. Field Marshal has some new year. Did you know that the cops in London have an arrest warrant out for him for a short term. Yeah, he's a kidding man. Yeah, he's a kidding man. It's a terrible creep. Yeah. The horrible guy. So the New York Times reported that the delay and the resumption of hostilities could also be related to fears within the Pentagon that Iran has been studying, you know, US tactics, US flight patterns, baby conjunction with Russian intelligence

“and can now better target US planes. And maybe that's why that F-15 went down.”

Regardless, ship in the Gulf keep blowing up, then drones keep flying from places. So last week, a drone hit the UAE's sole nuclear power plant. Not good. Luckily, the damage is limited to a generator on the edge of the facility, but still nuclear power plant. The UAE says the drone was fired by she and militia groups in Iraq. Saudi Arabia also said they intercepted a bunch of drones coming from Iraq, just another example of how the war has been tasked to size the entire region.

Again, like we said at the top, US and Iran have seen quite far apart when it comes to a possible

nuclear deal. We can take through all of that if you want this second. But here's what President

Trump had to say about Iran in the last few days. This is sort of a hodgepodge of all the very coherent thoughts of you. They've been holding up the world for many, many years with the straight. You know, they've used this many, many times. They said we'll close the straight. They've closed it in the past. They use it as a weapon. They're not using it as a weapon with me. We really did the ceasefire at the request of other nations. I wouldn't have really been

in turn. But we did it as a favor to Pakistan or terrific people, the Field Marshal, the Prime Minister. Well, I mean, I'm saying two or three days. Maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week. I limited period of time. Because we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. There are 40 years that's not enough for you. It's got to be a program. 20 years to set up. But the level of guaranteed them is not enough. For otherwise, it's got to be a

real 20 years. It's not a big easy thing that I can fucking over fuel now and no more production.

“You have to get everything. But we're not even talking about it. The nuclear dust”

came up with a terrible ceasefire. There's been people that have, in general, that I was spoken to, that think you have to get the dust, which is the rich uranium. I don't think it's necessary except from a public relations standpoint. I think it's important for the fake news that we get it. Until then, Yahoo, that. Did you see Trump sort of ranting at David Sanger from New York? Yeah, I was accusing him of treason on the flame. What the fuck? What do you make

of all that? I mean, like, I don't know, man. It's just, it feels like they are just absolutely treading water. I mean, I have no plan. Here's the, there's a baseline that we need to name again,

right before the war, when Whitkoff and Jared were tabling these proposals. At the time, their demands were dismantled the entire nuclear program, dismantled the entire ballistic missile program, or except limit some ballistic missiles to a certain serious limits. A number of miles IE, you can hit it. And talk about missiles. Yeah. And then also cut all support for proxies. In no enrichment. So, in no enrichment. So, the fact that even on their best case scenario, they've gone from

those demands before the war to nothing about support for proxies, nothing about the ballistic missile program, and just trying to get the dust. It's like, give me your dust or just let me

watch your dust. And open. Yeah. So, first of all, by their own negotiating positions, they are in a much

weaker position than they were before the war, and Iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war, because they controlled the straight-of-war moves, which they didn't before. Right. Trump is nuts when he's talking, that they had not closed the straight-war, like, literally the opposite of what he was saying. That's just the opposite of the truth, that he usually lies, but that's just, you know, upside down lie. And by the way, the Iran's just

did their offer, according to Iranian state news, was like asserting their right to enrich uranium in peaceful nuclear development, lift US and UN Security Council sanctions with draw US troops from areas around Iran, and to the war in Lebanon, and to the US blockade of the straight-of-war

moves, release Iranian assets and compensation for damage caused during the war. So, an expansive list.

“Because that tells you everything you need to know about, who actually has the leverage here.”

The Iranians are sitting there. They can absorb economic pain. They're controlling the straight. They have a revenue source from that. If there's no deal, and if there's a deal, they get all the sanctions really. So either way, they're going to come out with a lot of revenue coming in. And Trump is completely cornered, and he doesn't want to restart the war, but he feels like he has to threaten to restart the war, but the Iranians don't blink when he threatens

it. The Gulf countries are pissed. They too would like to see Iran weakened and but they're afraid that if the full-scale war ramps up again, that they're going to get hit harder again. And so here we are. And everybody can see like it's only people in this country that you know, feel the need to believe that we accomplished something or they watch Fox News. Everybody else around the world is like shit. The Iranians have them pretty check-mated.

Yeah. And I love that he's like, the dust caught on. We say dust to make fun of you. Yes. Yes. But like the reason is that dust, it is highly enriched uranium nuclear

“fuel. Yeah. It's not dust. When you say dust. And we know that you say dust because you have to”

cling to the lie that only 65 and over white people who watch Fox News believe that you obliterate of the nuclear program in the so-called 12-day war that still hasn't ended. So yeah, this is just a guy who has no idea what he's doing. No way out of the mess he's created. And the only way out

is to basically accept a feat. And hopefully the Iranians let to get the dust out and exchange for a

bunch of revenue. Yeah. And it's just a question of if and when he'll move on some of his positions. Because again, the conflict is metastasizing. It's spreading to other countries like we're learning about the UAE and Saudi Arabia taking direct strikes on not only Iran, but also targets within Iraq, Shia militia groups within Iraq. And I saw today that the Wall Street Journal said that over half of the 1,000 drone attacks on Saudi Arabia came from within Iraq.

So like clearly like they've been feeding drones to these Shia militia groups. So again, it's just like a regional war now. And then last week Ben Israel and Lebanon announced a 45-day extension to the ceasefire there. But Israeli strike killed seven people in Lebanon on Monday alone. So it's a hardly a ceasefire. People are still getting killed. A couple of months ago, remember when the Trump administration announced that they would like had this plan to provide

insurance to ships that wanted to go through the straight-of-home moves? You know when people talk them up on this offer? Zero. Zero. Worked about as well as Operation Freedom. Yeah, Operation Freedom. Freedom. The FT is now reported that 76 countries have had to take emergency measures to deal with the economic fallout from fuel shortages. So that ranges from Australia, France and India to like poor and developing countries. And then energy traders are warning that like prices

are high now. But we are going to eventually reach a tipping point where there's like a freezing up of the markets that you can see oil prices jump to like 180 a barrel. And a bunch of countries have already released their emergency supplies. And those are going to run out by July. So it's like,

“this is fucking bad, man. Wait, doesn't it? Five Siren emoji Axios report changed those shortages?”

That's the war's ending because that's worked seemingly with the markets before. That does work with the markets. I think what you're, yeah, like the point is that there's what is so interesting about watching this war play out is Trump is still operating in spin world, but there's a physical

They're just our shortages. They're just our higher prices. And you can't like talk your way through

“that. And Trump seems think he can just kind of talk his way through that. And the irony of it all is”

it, you know, the straightest clothes because he launched the war and he really needs to straight open. Like he can't just accept the permanent reality in which the straight-of-war moves is closed. No. So at some point, he really does have to make concessions to run here or else the whole global economy is going to collapse this year because we just can't endure this level shortage for several more months. No, it's crazy. It's crazy. I just feel like the stock market and the oil markets.

They're all just kind of like whistling past the graveyard and that'll work until it doesn't. You know, like interest rates are shooting up over five percent. Like something is going to break and it's going to be sudden and it's going to be devastating. People are going to lose a lot of money except for the Trump people who will front-run the trip. Yeah, yeah, tons. Before we move on from around Ben, I just did want to give a shout out to some really great reporting. There's a piece

by Sky News's Dominic Waghorn. Hope I say his name right. He got into Iran, uh, traveled to Manab, took like a four-day drive to Manab to speak with people there who were impacted by the U.S.

“Airstrike on the school that killed 150 people. I think 120 of them were children, mostly school girls.”

He interviewed some men who were first responders on the scene who had to like try to dig through

that fucking grizzly setting. He talked, you know, to a mom, uh, by her son's grave side who was grieving him, um, and, you know, it was, it's like gut-wrenching stuff. And it just, um, it's worth watching. It's really important in a reminder that Trump and all the lackeys of the Pentagon, including like combat commanders like the head of San Tom from the Hill yesterday, they still will not take responsibility for this mistake, and it is, um, it is shameful.

It's truly shameful. I have a problem with, first of all, that this is not like a bigger story. We killed like 120 girls. I mean, I have two daughters. Like, this, this should be, like the biggest story in many ways about this war. Um, but I also like I'm just going to grab on to the third rail, timing hold on to it because the uniform military has basically gone along with a whole bunch of bullshit from Donald Trump. Now, not down to the pilots and the service members.

I'm talking about Dan K in the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Sencom kind of- I don't know if Brad Cooper was up on the Hill today and, um, Adam Smith, Congressman Adam Smith, was trying to push him on, like, hey, what's up with the investigation? This should not be hard.

“Yeah. Right. Like, remember, there was a map that they'd like to, whatever. Dan K came to have”

a map up in one of his headset briefing that showed all the places the US was bombing, and Minob was on that list, and he has railies were bombing in the north. Like, it only could have been

us. They know it was us. They never liked. Everybody's done exhaustive investigations.

And so what you've seen is a complete failure to take responsibility for this horrific incident, a complete obfuscation of the damage caused. I mean, we saw Dan K kind of standing next speed exit when he was saying that we like decimated their ballistic missile capability. And then we had to learn in the New York Times that 75% of their ballistic missile launchers are still there. So some, uh, there was like 70-75%. Yeah. Then we don't know the damage done to the bases

across the region that we taxpayers pay for. The Congressional Research Service CRS had to issue report about all the aircraft that we lost because they won't be transparent about that. Just because you're wearing a uniform doesn't mean you're infallible. And I don't think those guys are lying like Trump is, but they're standing right there, not telling us to fool truth either, including on this incident. They know they're lying about it. They know that they know what,

the idea that the SENTCOM commander has no idea what happened in Minob. They see the next fucking day. If that was a US Tomlock missile or not. And they're, they're, they're, they're, I guess, afraid that Trump will be mad at them if they acknowledge it. In that, it's worth it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's kind of like the Republican thing. Is this really, like, is your job that cool that you go along with this, you know? Someday he's just going to endorse Ken Paxton.

So yeah. Yeah. Might as well keep your honor. Pasey, the world is brought to you by built. Whether you're renting or paying a mortgage, one of your biggest monthly expenses should be working harder for you. That's where built comes in, built is the membership for where you live that matches you with points in every housing payment, wherever you live. Built started out rewarding members on their rent. As the 2026,

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to visit. And there was just like a huge build-up to it. And then ultimately, it was quite a dud in less you live in Taiwan. We'll get to that. So Trump got nothing from China with respect to Iran or reopening this trader, who is literally nothing. Trump claims that Xi Jinping promised not to sell weapons to the Iranians, but there's all these reports. Yes, right. You just official told the New York Times that Chinese firms have been plotting

secret arms sales to Iran through other countries. So I don't know, seems like there's place to move polls in there, guys. Trump did not secure a trade deal, nothing. There was no trade deal. He instead announced some pretty small potatoes, economic deliverables, economic

“deliverals like a purchases of Ag, like $70 billion with the Ag purchases, I think, which”

will never come to be. And then a commitment from the Chinese to buy a bunch of Boeing planes,

which was so underwhelming that Boeing stock price went down. It's a great work there. He also apparently agreed to a vehicle for Chinese investment in the U.S. including Chinese investment in the U.S. farmland, which is just weird. He's out of the big maga thing that they're really mad about. They don't want the Chinese to farmland. That was back to the organic plug. I learned a lot about the American pop-less movement started in the 19th century around one or two issues,

one of which was farmland or ship of land. And the other was tariffs. There we go. So like Trump did like Trump is, you know, fucking over, you know, he's a row back. OG populist. Well, it also he explicitly in his campaign, he explicitly promised to ban Chinese ownership of farms, whatever. It's like, just like crazy. You wouldn't go to war. Yeah. So then there's Taiwan. Here are some examples of how Trump has described the U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan since his visit. Let's listen.

It should be true that the people of Taiwan feel more or less secure. After the U.S. has had a big farm decisions here. So what am I going to do is say, I want to talk about it. Because I have an agreement with the West, I didn't think it would be that. Now, with the U.S. defend Taiwan, if it came to the United States, I don't want to say that. The only one person that knows that, you know, it is the only person that quite she was asked to be today by President

of the U.S. I don't talk about the U.S. Should the people of Taiwan feel more or less secure after your meetings with President Xi? No, no, this is the policy change at all. No, nothing.

independent and, you know, which was to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I'm not looking for that.

“I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down. But you're waiting on approving billions of”

dollars of weapons for Taiwan. That's right. I'm moving forward. Well, I haven't approved it yet. We're going to see what happens. What do you look like? I may do it. I may not do it. Yeah, what's your your hinge? Well, I'm not going to say that. But I may do it. I may not do it. I'm holding that in a bay and Senate depends on China, depends. It's a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly. Back to the point earlier about how you doesn't know English. Don't

feel neutral. It's like it doesn't make sense. Well, and then in the next breath, change the policy. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, also he's really hunchbacked. It's not looking to there. And also, can I just say, like, as we know, Brett bear watching a guy like that that's been on the, like, the Taiwan Hawk cocktail circuit in DC. Um, have to, like, choose his Trump master over his own personal politics on Taiwan. Not just his Trump master. Brett bear was doing, like, straight up,

pro CCP propaganda while he was there. He, like, went into some convenience store and ordered a

“sausage from a robot. It's like Tucker with the Moscow Metro. Brett, what are you doing? Like,”

don't have to do this. Anyway, then, I feel pretty confident that the answer to Brett bear's question about whether, you know, the Taiwanese people feel less secure after this visit is, yeah, they feel pretty freaked out. But I, what did you make of, you know, all the Taiwan

elements here? First of all, it just goes to saying, like, we got nothing out of the summit.

I mean, no trade deal. Like, I was going to watch the AI stuff. And there's giant nothing. We agreed to talk about it. And then Scott Bessie went out and like dunked on the Chinese about how we had better AI. But like, it just, there's nothing of substance. I mean, the idea of the Africa, a carefully planned multi-day summit with the President China and let it, like, have nothing to announce except some Boeing planes got sold. And, you know, they pretend they're going to

want to probably, you know, did some side deals on some chips that helps the Chinese. That was something like they, they, they re-op the offer to provide or sell the Chinese, the H200 in video chip, which is not the top of the line, but it's like the pretty good. And the Chinese said,

“no, I think, because they're probably just getting all the best chips they want through, like,”

carve outs and Vietnam and other places and then developing their own indigenous chips. And they were, yeah, like, the whole thing is so upside down that they were like kind of preparing to frame the Chinese buying high-end chips is like a Chinese concession. When, in fact, it's what is going to help the Chinese pass us on AI. So, if you go into this as an American, the reason I say that, too, is if you go into this summit as an American President, the last thing that you want

dominating the competition's Taiwan. You want that under the radar. You want to not touch that. You want to talk about the things you want to talk about. Like, Xi Jinping wants to talk about Taiwan and how we have to not sell the marms and let them basically do it to the fuck they want. You want to talk about trade and all these things. Trump, like, just kept tripping over himself, talking about Taiwan and, and look, what, and Xi was like, this is our top issue and he was,

like, referencing, like, the two-stitidies trap, like, suggesting there would be war over Taiwan.

He, the language that the Chinese put out, which is always, like, very carefully calibrated.

First of all, there's some hilarious things where, like, they, we were reading out, like, Xi Jinping said he would be helpful on the straight-of-war moves. It's like, no, crickets in the Chinese read out, right? There's, like, making shit up in the readouts. Yeah. Yeah. And then the Chinese part of this, like, bloodthirsty statement about Taiwan, like, there will be, like, conflict, like, and, for them, it was bloodthirsty. And, and, and look, the, the thing you want is you

want there to not be a war or a Chinese invasion. And so you're just trying to kick this can. The arm sales are actually part of kicking the can because you're trying to show the Chinese, hey, look, this might be a tough operation. You know, like, just full-on in favor of the invasion of the Zeiland, it would not be simple, especially if they have arms. And so, again, this is one of those weird situations where you're trying to deter conflict by not cutting the court on the Taiwanese.

Because if you cut the court on them, then they are vulnerable, and the Chinese do a blockade, and they squeeze and squeeze. And, and he just kind of kept stepping on rakes, you know, because he would say something that made it seem like he wouldn't care at all about Taiwan. And then he would say, like, nothing has changed in the policy. And yet, now I'm going to say a word salad that is totally different than what the policy would be. But then he'd be like, hey, but I'm going to call the

president of Taiwan, which is something that would up end 50 years of US government policy, because we don't have literally to contact with them. Yeah, because it has, and in fact, the last guy who did that was Trump, after he won in 2016, like, some lobbyists talked him into calling, saying, when the president at the time, so look, if I'm in Taiwan right now, I'm just thinking, like, I got to get through the next two and a half years that being invaded. And I'm not saying that

because I want the next president to go to war ever, Taiwan, I want the next president to have a more effective strategy of avoiding war in Taiwan. And so I'd be trying to kind of keep my head down

really try to play the Trump game, because he is no interest in Taiwan, and the more he gets dragged into it, the more he's going to signal how little he cares. And the more that might make Xi Jinping think, you know, and be a really good time to debate Taiwan, like the last year of the Trump administration. Right. And, but if you're listening and thinking, like, look, I just don't want any conflict, I don't want the US telling the Chinese what to do. Like, okay, well, if you don't like the

economic disruption that's coming from a two month long street of whom was closure, wait until there's no chips for any of the computers and phones and everything's coming out of Taiwan, right? Like, that would be a big problem. And then just, you know, so Trump, there had been at $14 billion arm sale that had been approved and was pending from the administration that they held off to try to like make Xi happy and advance of this trip.

It's not at all clear that Trump is going to go through with it. But on top of that, there is $32 billion worth of aid to Taiwan that has been promised as part of foreign military sales that is still being held up, drones, air defenses, like anti-ship missiles, like big ticket

stuff. And it just seals, like people always point to those Trump administration arms packages

Taiwan to be like, "See, look, the hard lineers they're in there, they're committed, like Rubio's doing the right thing, but they're not delivering this." Yeah, I'm still living anything. Look, this is yet another issue where Trump is the one who kind of led this move

“towards like getting tougher on China and being against China, remember the campaign? And by the way,”

all the democratic blob types follow that like heard, because it's like, "Now we're going to be super tough." He's now swirving in the other direction. He's talking up leader to leader for, you know, he's friends with Xi and what a great man. He's going to come to the ballroom and I'm, you know, canceling the trade work, because the Chinese have more leverage with rare earth materials, just like the Iranians have the straight-of-formers. He's tacoying left and right. And so all these

things he, he promised to get tough on the Chinese. He promised no foreign wars. He proud, you know, all these things he just keeps going back on, they were like pretty core to maga. Like,

what a Steve band and think about this visit. We're basically at Trump sucking up to Xi Jinping

like a supplicant. Like, it's the middle kingdom and we're going to like pay tribute to the Chinese emperor and look on on on on and I'm not even, I'm saying that to someone who wants engagement with the Chinese, but engagement for some purpose. Right, what's our goal? Like, Trump's goal is just protocol. It's just that he's like received well and has nice dinners with Xi. Like, I want to negotiate like AI safeguards, you know, like, I want real things. And again,

if you're the Taiwanese, like, you also don't want, he started describing arm sales to Taiwan as a negotiating shit. Well, that means that you also are entertaining negotiating away Taiwan as if, by the way, it's yours to negotiate. And again, well, what you do, I'm not suggesting you want to go to war. I am suggesting you don't want to implicitly green light China going to war, because to your point, even if you don't care about the Taiwanese people and

I do 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors come out of Taiwan, TSMC. That's your car computer. That's all of it. It's everything. That's the entire economy, you know, and that would be bad. Yeah, and these like bloodless ghouls, you know, over the all-in pod or people in the situation are like, well, it just gives us a couple of years. We'll have the technology we need to make that not a problem. It's like, okay, that's it. They've been saying that for a while. I mean,

it's a nice way. I heard that the ship sack was going to do that when Joe Biden was the guy that did the Pacific base and then they unraveled that. Yeah. And by the way, like, you know, RIP and he conversation about religious freedom, human rights, expression for the Chinese people.

“Remember, you are, I'm erasing whether like he might get Jimmy like a prison. Trump brought up”

two political prisoners. There's Ezra Jin, Mingri, Pastor, who was detained last October in Jimmy lie, this media tycoon from Hong Kong. Trump said she said he will strongly consider the pastor, didn't you remember his name? But basically sounded like there was no shot in hell. He would do anything to support Jimmy lie and that Trump didn't really care and wouldn't, you know, do anything about it. And, you know, I don't know what Steve Bannon thinks of this trip, but like

full-time Trump fluffer Hugh Hewitt, who is one of those like pro tywan anti-CCP right when

guys who always talks about Jimmy lie, it's been suspiciously silent on Trump just absolutely

caving on Jimmy lie. Yeah, all these guys, I mean, it does make you wonder what they actually believe. Yeah, like I will say one that credit to Hew and that like when he interviews Trump, he'll ask about these issues, he'll ask Trump about Jimmy lie, but when Trump completely caved the Xi Jinping, he never followed us up. He still just like, well, thank you for you Mr. Joe.

“And they thought this is why, and this is actually an important point that I don't understand,”

you know, we saw John Corne and get rug pulled today. All these people seemingly convince

Epstein fouls, whether it was not getting into forever wars, whether it was being tough on the CCP. Like

“when all, you don't need to be like a genius to see that Trump only cares about himself.”

Yeah, and you know, and frankly, if he likes anybody, it's the field marshal and Xi Jinping because there are fellow autocrats. Yeah, he loves those guys. All right, Ben, final topic for us here. So years of doing the show with you is taught me many things. One of them is that there exists a song competition in Europe called Eurovision. It's one of the longest running TV programs

in the world. Hundreds of millions of people watch it and go bonkers for it. Big deal. There are always

scandals. There are always controversies. Usually they involve Israel. I never really understand why people are boycotting. It's a big thing. It's a certain thing because Israel's not in Europe,

“but right, and then most of all, most importantly for us, they are goofy clips of the performances”

themselves, which Michael curates for us to enjoy. , and that was like, she took acid and was on the ship from the fifth element. And somehow booked an appointment with a Dominatrix for a while. Yeah, and then at the end, it's just the British boy band guy with a teletobe. It's like, the list there was Moldova, Romania with a song called Chokmi. Okay. The Romanian Dominatrix. I would have guessed for

many of them. Yeah, she was Chokin. Ukraine, Serbia, Lithuania, Finland, and then the UK. Who said I was just screaming at South Africa. I don't know. Who was that? Okay, that tracks. The UK song was

called "I'm Zwei Drey." I'm assuming that was German. Finally, this is the Eurovision 2026 winner,

spoiler or tremble. Bulgaria, learned that today. There's song was called "Bangaranga". Bangeranga. Bangeranga. Bangeranga. So we watch the Bangeranga class. Let's watch it. That's the winner. I can see what that was talking about. I mean, it's catchy, and she's, you know,

“but like I, if this is a winner under the state of the culture, what is going on in Europe?”

I mean, here we know it's going on sucks here. I think it's glass house under acknowledging that. I'm guessing that people not, you know, float in Bulgaria and just muted. It feels like pop music needs like a reset button here because we've reached kind of the end. My musical critic take on this is like, there's like the end of death metal there, like the end of like a kind of Gaga pop, you know, the end of some weird British acid death punk kind of thing going on, like tell

it's up here. We need to start over with some genre bending. I don't know. Yeah, I just think, um, you're out into your PN shit. It's weird sometimes. I will say this. They, they, they seem like they're having fun. They look like they're not having fun. No, we're having a terrible time. So their lives are probably objectively better and more fun than ours. They probably go to clubs and dance that music in a really good time. Yeah, I get to the club at six in the morning. Yeah, I mean, so you're winning at

life, uh, even if I couldn't really see myself listening to any of that. So that was, um, Eurovision until next year Ben, we said out. I got to say it is real compete this year. I did it. Okay,

complete. Yeah. Second place is real good. I feel like they're always in second place. The

clips really do deliver in terms of weirdness. So every year, I'm like, I don't know. This is going to be funny. Yep. That's some weird shit. So, uh, well done that cut. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We come back. You're in here my conversation with Nish Kumar about the weird world of British politics. So stick around for that. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the

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Hey, Cricket listeners. If you haven't become a friend of the pod yet, you are missing out on exclusive bonus content that drops every single week. If you do join, you're helping us grow Cricket Media, which is one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media companies left. In Trump's America, if you join, you also get... Add free episodes of all your favorite pods. Add free episodes of Potsay of America, love it or leave it offline. Potsay of the world.

You also get bonus content like our new extra episode of Potsay of America, called Potsay of America, only friends. Dan, Fight for His Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent sub-stack newsletters like Potsay of America, Open Tabs, and tons more great content. So, stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Cricket.com/Friends. Check it out!

My guest today is a stand-up comedian television presenter, Sex symbol, and the co-host of Potsay of the UK. Mr. Kumar, great to see you. You have a special out. Nish don't kill my vibe on YouTube right now.

“I'll have a stand-up special available right now. And I think now, by getting people”

more opportunity to watch a video of me, they will immediately get to stress test the sex symbol clay. I'm staring at one right now with my own two eyes, so I believe them. Excited to talk with you today. Your co-host on Potsay of the UK, Coco, was going to join us this morning. She had a last minute scheduling thing. So, we don't have her, but we love her. She is um, effortless into all things that she does, but we'll miss her today. So, um, I'm excited to talk

with you because there's a lot of crazy shit happening over in British politics. Last week, Ben and I talked about labor's drumming in these recent local elections in England, Scotland, and Wales. It seemed for a moment like the writing was on the wall for Queer Starmer, and that everyone agreed he could not be Prime Minister anymore, and that he was not cut out to lead labor in this moment. However, it was not clear who would depose him. Um, that kind of weird status quo seems to be

holding, like, what do you think Starmer stands at this moment? And can you give us like kind of your quick and dirty take on how Starmer went from leading labor to this historic landslide,

“you know, nearly two years ago, less than two years ago, to this nest today?”

Okay, well, let's, yeah, let's talk about the why of, perhaps Starmer has got to hear a second, because this, because so much shit has happened. It, uh, this is a little, uh, and it don't into my personal life, but I told my mother that I was doing this show today, and she said it all, it's bad when they ask you to do the show, isn't it? She's like, it's never because something

has going, it's never, to come on to talk about how the UK is functioning too well. Uh, so basically,

NHS is fixed. Yeah, yeah, everything's fixed, we're all fine. So basically, where you guys got to where we got to, in our shows last week, was that, uh, labor had taken a drumming, and then Keistarmer had to go through this sort of ridiculous process called the King speech, where the monarch announces the government's legislative agenda for the year, and the King has to give that as a speech, but it's a speech that's written for him, I've spent most of the last week,

trying to get us to incorporate an element of RuPaul, and have the Prime Minister record the speech, and then the King lip sync it live, because he had that a bit more entertaining for everybody. But obviously, this King speech felt particularly strange and pointless because Starmer was announcing his government's legislative package whilst at the same time, seeming on the precipice of losing his job. So we're treating the health secretary, went in for a meeting with Starmer

that I believe is supposed to have lasted 16 minutes. Uh, he then, uh, left, uh, downing street,

spate of resignations, um, uh, in the aftermath of the local elections, but we're treating obviously

the health secretary is one of what we refer to in the UK as the great officers of state. That's a huge high profile position, treating also has been sort of talented as a potential replacement for Starmer, from Starmer's wing of the party, which is sort of has, has morphed over the course of his life as leader of the Labour Party. But now his constituency is sort of viewed as the right of the Labour Party. I'm treating it been posited as the guy who was going to take over.

“He needed, uh, 81 other MPs to co-sign his bid to be the next Labour leader, and I think just very”

quickly realized that he did not have the support within the Labour Party. But he quit anyway and said

that he wanted, you know, to start a conversation about who the next leader of the Labour Party was

going to be. Real market value, that guy. Don't have the lot's quitting anyway. Just shutting the bed right off the bed. There's a problem that we're treating has, which is that he was sort of widely portrayed as the closest ally of Peter Mandelson, who obviously listeners of this podcast will be well familiar with. He was the man who, uh, kissed Armour appointed as the British Ambassador to America. Despite, I mean, I believe the technical term is a dump trucks worth of shitload of mentions

in the Epstein files. And so some of that was revealed when the latest tranche documents was released. But Mandelson's friendship with Epstein was something that was known in the British media and had been talked about by journalists at the Financial Times and the documentary, "Maker on Channel 4." Yeah. So the idea that one of the biggest things that Keistarmer has done wrong in the public's eyes being the appointment of Peter Mandelson, it's absolutely unfathomable that the only person who

we equally have identified as being close to Peter Mandelson was even considering a run for Prime Minister.

“So I think the streetings bid at that time was dead in the water. So then the, the”

problem, the reason that Starma hasn't gone, uh, already is that there has not been a clear frontrunner to actually challenge him. So Angela Rainer, who was the deputy Prime Minister, had to step down from that position, because last year there was some revelations about her tax affairs that found that she may have underpaid tax whilst buying a flat. Now on Thursday morning, the full investigation concluded that she hadn't done anything wrong and her misdemeanor was the lowest class of mistake

that the UK tax authorities deemed to be even a transgression. So there is, and there is a possibility that she has a clear path to running, but she so far not shown any inclination that she wants to run. So the guy who everybody seems to think is going to run is Andy Burnham, who

“you've talked about on the show. He's the mayor of Manchester, he's a labor MP from the North of England.”

He got a lot of positive headlines in 2020, as a lot of politicians did, because they were immediately on the news after Boris Johnson had said something. So like there were a lot of politicians in this country that came across as being hyper-competent because they had just followed a man who really was giving a press conference, but really thinking about how he was going to bang like that. It's just an epidemic. Yeah, this is due to the pandemic already, it's been

taken around. Yeah, even before we knew about the parties, his press conferences were often garbled, because Johnson is smart in a very specific rich white English manway, which is he's sort of able to recite poetry, but crucially he doesn't understand any of it. And so when he was actually put under pressure in 2020, he would often give these press conferences that were rambling and borderline in coherent. And then it would cut to a different UK politician.

And it's specifically in the case of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, who would by comparison seem incredibly studious and likely to lead. And so Burnham really got a lot of attention in the pandemic. He was already a very high profile figure, because being the mayor of Manchester is a big high profile job. It's a big importance in the UK. Now the problem here is that Andy Burnham is not an MP. Right. And so that's the that's it. So there was all this polling done that suggested

he's the most popular politician. His netfavorability is sort of somewhere in the mid 30s. And sort of seeming everyone else in British politics is in the like low teens or the minus numbers.

But the problem is Andy Burnham is not an MP. And our search he can't be Prime Minister. So then on

make a field, was your constituency just outside of Manchester. And that was that he was going to step aside. And therefore force a buy lecture, which is what we call a special election in which Andy Burnham could stand so that he could become the MP for make a field. And therefore run for Prime Minister. It is I feel like I've the word unprecedented, it does lost all meaning in the last decade, both in my country under yours. But this is pretty unprecedented. So now what what what comes

next basically for the labor party is this special election in make a field to determine if Andy Burnham

“is going to become an MP to determine if he can challenge a key storm for Prime Minister in the”

interim. Nobody has shown any appetite to challenge stormer. So stormer is still in post. But he sort of showed him as Prime Minister. Like he sort of is and isn't Prime Minister at the same time. It's quite an unbelievable situation. Because he everybody knows he is kind of he is on the way out. It's I honestly it's sort of baffling. You know, I'm used to the last couple years of which he soon act. Everybody knew he was going to lose the next election. So

every time he announced something everyone would be like, yeah, cool buddy, senior couple years. Yeah, I'll see who I'm McDonald's in a couple years. Like, you know, that's not that it's not particularly born to anybody. So but this is pretty it pretty extraordinary because technically from an electoral basis, stormer just won a huge majority. He doesn't have to call an election

“until 2000 and 29 if he wants to. That's how far he can push it. But he has seemingly no ability”

to run the country in the minute. Yeah, or lead us on party. The anti-Burnum by election is remarkable because as you noted, like he's going to run just it's not a sure thing that will win this seat.

First of all, given the mood music in the country. But also, you're in a situation where you have like

what 30,000, 40,000 people vote to maybe make this guy an MP and if they make him an MP, he's the odds on favorite to be prime minister. So you're kind of voting for the Scottie prime minister, but not because that's not the process. The other name that's been thrown out there recently is Ed Milaband of the Milaband family, but the Sandwich loving variety. He's the energy minister currently. It sounds like he's been doing a lot of plotting behind the scenes. Is he really a

candidate? Do you think for prime minister? So he, I mean, he did, he was late at the library, party. He did run for prime minister. He lost the 2015 election. And then he was sort of slightly

cast out into the political wilderness. But whilst in the wilderness, he sort of threw media appearances

and threw a very successful podcast that he co-hosted for a while. Sort of rehabilitate to this public image. Also, he continued to be an MP in that time. He didn't just immediately quit his job as job in politics completely and go and cash it in in the private sector. But he rebuilt his political capital in this country, which is completely fascinating. And he is a sort of nationally

“popular figure. Now, I think that I don't know what it would be like if he attempted to run for”

prime minister again. I don't know how that would look because a lot of these sort of accusations that were leveled at him in 2015 might come back around again. Now, I will say the 2015 UK election, and this is, there's no need for us to get too far in the weeds of this, was a very strange and peculiar event because it sort of happens. It's the sandwich filling in between two referendums. So there was the Scottish independence referendum, which the pro-independence lobby lost. And then

there was the Brexit referendum the year after. And those two things are the fact to around that election, right? Because the Scottish voters were so incensed by the labor role in helping to deliver a no vote in the independence referendum and then which then led to the Conservative government, essentially sort of disregarding Scotland immediately after it decided to remain a part of the United Kingdom that they switched on mass to the Scottish National Party, the SNP. And so a lot

of progressive voters in Scotland which were a huge part of labor support by switch parties. Also, David Cameron went into the 2015 election, promising a referendum on the Britain's membership of the EU. So he essentially headed off the threat to the Nigel Prorarcha. Labor support collapsed on its left flank and the Conservative sort of electoral split that had dogged the party for most of the 21st century was essentially found a kind of day-toned because Nigel Prorarcha was essentially well,

I guess we don't need to run that hard because these guys are going to give us the Brexit referendum so that you know that he sort of... So, millaband losing that election, there's some wider circumstances that obviously aren't a play at this point. So you can sort of see why,

moment are that he was threatening to run if there was no viable candidate from the soft left of the Labor Party and he was essentially threatening to run on a platform of Jesus fucking

“Christ not a ways. I think for what I can tell that what while Streetig was, like,”

town and his credentials as a candidate, Ed minimum as I listen, if it has to be, it has to be someone other than this fucking guy. Got it, I look, I know that feeling mentioned Brexit a few times there. From an outsider's perspective, it just seems so obvious that Brexit was a mess. It was a disaster. It was sold to the public on all of these lies about funding for the NHS,

stopping the boats, et cetera. And it has harmed the UK. Therefore, it has always been confusing to

me that Labor isn't more full-throated about reversing Brexit or... Like, I don't know, talking it down, running against it. Why is that? Like, what am I missing here? Because of our kind of scruly electoral system that's like, it's scruly in a different way to yours. So, like, obviously the electoral college, what the hell is going on? Not the best. I don't understand. None of us will ever understand why that's allowed to happen. But our first past the post system means that the

same problem essentially occurs, which is there is disproportionate importance to a small group of voters in potentially swing constituencies. And a lot of Labor support collapsed in what they call

the Red Wall. So, constituencies in the North of England that had historically voted Labor,

but then voted Brexit in 2016. Then dessert in the party and part of the thinking around that is

“that is over the Brexit vote. So, that's why the Labor Party essentially, at this point, no one,”

including Nigel Farage, the man who absolutely agitated for Brexit, had been championing and touting it as a political project for really 20 years. No one talks about Brexit anymore, because everybody is afraid to engage with the fact that it has negatively affected our economy. It is making us poorer, but there is no political will to reverse any of the decisions behind it because I think there is. And also, to be honest with you, there is a real fit. It was really, really ugly. And, you know,

a sitting MP in the lead up to the referendum was murdered by man who in court gave his name as freedom for Britain. And there is also a fatigue about rehashing those arguments. But I totally understand that from an outside perspective, it feels completely inexplicable that we don't at least talk about mitigating some of the effects of Brexit. And the big problem was that nobody agreed

“what it was until it had been voted for. So if you go back and look at the campaign,”

they were making all kinds of crazy claims. And they were also very in the short term clever by not fully defining the exact terms of it. So it was able to be this kind of diffuse thing that was going to deliver more money for the public sector. And actually, because of that, we spent, we had kind of three years of just no political movement whatsoever as people tried to work out what it was that they had just asked the country to vote on. So there is so little political appetite,

but I totally understand, people looking at the UK must be totally confused by it. No, I would love to have three more years of debating hard or soft Brexit or Irish tax stops. So I would appreciate what we all had to learn. And some level, I get it. Speaking of, you mentioned not to frauds there, like he's the leader of reform UK, this new far-right party. They gained a lot of ground in these elections. It is objectively bad to have it like right

wings, xenophobic, political party do that well, especially one run by a clown in a charlatan. I guess I could squint that it another way and say, I don't know, maybe they maybe this signals there's a cap on their support sort of in the 20s, low 30% that we've seen across Europe. How worried are you about the rise of reform in the potential for Nigel Farage to be the Prime Minister? There's a lot of people making the case that based on polling projections from

12 months ago reform actually underperformed in these local elections. And there are various statitions that are trying to make the case that reform support may have peaked. Nigel Farage is also sort of embroiled in another scandal at the moment over here, where just before he became an MP,

he got five million pounds from a cryptocurrency available in the school, Christopher Harbournes.

Yeah, he's based in Thailand. Yeah, it is, is five million pounds. And he said initially, it was because he needed that money for security for the rest of his life. He then, when he was pressed on it, said that he, it was a present for doing Brexit.

Regardless of the reasoning for why the money came in, he did not long after landed isn't

“in his account by a house in cash for about 1.4 million pounds. Didn't care,”

Starmer get killed for taking like clothes from supporters like eyeglasses. Like again, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, like I understand why I was an issue, clean that shit up. But like, it just, it feels like the press doesn't cover Farage like a real candidate. They cover him like a pundit or some like, I don't know, the performance artist. Yeah, on parts of the UK, we just talk a little bit about the fact that the leader of the Green

Party, Zack Planski, who is sort of polling very well and taking votes from Labour from the political left, may or may not have paid council tax, which is the tax that you pay on wherever you live in this, like your house tax, essentially, on a narrow boat that he lived on for a period about 10 years ago. And so we were talking about, you know, we're talking about, whenever we talk about politicians like Starmer and Planski, we're talking about scandals that are sometimes in the

hundreds and the thousands. But Nigel Farage, we are talking about 5 million pounds from a crypto,

from a crypto billionaire, reforms platform has pushed the idea that deregulating cryptocurrency would be something that they would push for in government. There are a lot of signs for that. So this is, you know, if it looks like corruption as well as like corruption. But it is, we, we both suffer from this kind of scrutiny deficit in with right-wing politicians. And people like us get ourselves sort of twisted and contoured because we're all trying to do the right thing, like progressive people

want to hold progressive politicians to a moral standard that we have all agreed upon that transcends our political biases and leanings. Right. And that's fine. Unfortunately, in the last 10 years, the other side of the political spectrum has abandoned that, you know, shared moral code. So it means that it creates the scrutiny deficit where if a left-wing politician does something that we consider to be a transgression and everyone piles in on them. If a right-wing politician does it,

the right-wing press and other right-wing politicians kind of shrug their shoulders. And I do think with Farage is, is, is fucking baffling like he, he is treated like now are the politician in my lifetime apart from Boris Johnson. And the really interesting thing about Boris Johnson is that when things really went south for him, when all of those revelations came out about lockdown parties,

“it was the conservative press in this country that went after him. And I think that's a slightly”

under-discussed part of the collapse of Johnson. It was just the first time in a long, long time that a kind of right-wing populist was fully exposed to total scrutiny of their actions and behavior by the entirety of the UK press. And Johnson's political career collapsed on contact with that scrutiny. And it would be really interesting if, you know, conservative papers did pick up on this for our story, but I suspect it won. You know, if you sort of speak in defensive, deregulated capital,

people tend to find a way to excuse whatever behaviours you engage. Oh, God, listen, brother,

you're pushing the choir over here. I mean, Trump just created a $1.776 billion slush fund for

his political allies. And I was watching Fox News before I walked in here. And they were doing a segment about an AOC interview from May 13th. So, like, whatever it takes to keep them talking about dereliter is what they'll do. Final question for you. So, this summer, July 16th through 18th,

“I think I know where you're going to be. CPAC Britain is taking London by stores. Yes, yes, I'm,”

I'm opening full of them. I'm going to take 20 minutes of comedy to open for safety. Let's watch a quick hype video by one of the leading lights of British politics to kind of like get us fired up to talk about this. Here we go. We are launching a British CPAC, which is going to take place this summer, bringing together conservatives of all parties, not just from Britain, but from the United States, from Europe, and from around the world. Two questions, will you be purchasing the

100 pound ticket of the 10,000 pound ticket? And why does she talk at point five X speed? It drives me absolutely insane. I will be purchasing, uh, I will immediately go straight into the 10 grand package. I've got to have front row to CPAC UK to the issue that CPAC UK has is that right now, Liz Tross is so politically radioactive that even Nigel Farage isn't going to turn up to me. Oh, really? I don't know. So, CPAC, so far he's a nagged. Yeah, so far he's a nagged. Because she is so

fascinated to see who turns up. I imagine it's going to be a who's who of British Conservative

Bashar to rate. Like it is really going to be woodstock for red faced men called Christopher. Like it is going to be really like it's really and I listen and I imagine we'll get some like leading

“lights from the European far right as well. Oh, yeah. I believe you picked a robot and has some time on”

his hands. That's right. Oh, yeah, he'll be there. He'll be probably punching tickets at the front. So I'm dragged. Yeah, I believe all by it's got some time. But like the problem with these kind of fringe white jobs is that they are obviously funny to look out. But the ideas that they're propagating do have a way into the British political mainstream. Because you know, as much as

Farage wants the distance himself from them for sort of electoral reasons, he's essentially offering

the same policy platform. You know, he's he's more competitively presenting it. But it's the same shit. See, back went from this thing that would happen. We'd all make fun of it. It was like, you know, the bar scene for Star Wars. To being just like the maga base. Yeah. And the guy who founded CPAC and still runs it, like allegedly runs around bars when he gets drunk and just like grabs guys, cocks. That doesn't matter for whatever reason. It's going to match slap. And so yeah,

I mean, like it is, um, it's a pernicious thing. It managed to seep into the politics. There's a lot

“of money behind it. I think there's some question about, I'd love to know who's funding, you know,”

CPAC UK, because there's some question now whether the CPAC Hungary was getting funded by the Russians, right? There's a lot more learning now that Orban is out in the records are open. But we will watch it. We will make fun of it. But also your rights to say it's a problem. I think it's really important to tread a line between saying this is a real problem. It presents some dangerous ideas for us. But it is also important to say, fuck me, these these lads are weird. Like it's a really

important that we don't lose sight of the basic strangeness of a lot of these people. Yeah, because they are so strange. So strange. Oh, this is why we need comedy and stand-up comedians because, you know, you guys are like fun bullies. You know, we can not take big towns as losers. Well, that's, well, this is honestly dismissal of my whole profession. I wish I could do stand-up movies.

Every time we walk out on stage to do like a live podcast or something, I always think to myself,

man, imagine if I was doing something actually cool like comedy or music. I'm looking at your guitar back behind you, see a nice amp in the corner. Yeah, I've got a lot of, listen, I got, I got started with my midlife crisis about 10 years early. Okay. In fact, actually, to be honest, my whole career as a stand-up comedian is a midlife crisis. It just began when I was 22. So like, I've always been ahead of the curve. I'm proud of you. Well, I got into podcasting as a

grown adult. Nish, thank you so much for joining the show. Everyone should listen to parts of the UK. And check out your special Nish Don't Come My Vive on YouTube now. Perfect. Beautiful. That's why I write it right away. Now watch right now. Thanks again, Nish Kumar for joining the show. And now you are going to hear more exclusive information about Ben's book. All we say,

“which you should have already bought by now. And if you haven't, this audio book is going to”

put you at the top. Yeah. I'm disappointed in you if you don't. We live in a cynical time. We are surrounded by forces designed to make us feel like we lack control. Whether it's an algorithm that shapes what we see, an oligarchy that controls wealth and power, a world untethered from old notions of order, a climate that is changing or artificial intelligence, which mimics human functions and thought. Corruption abounds. The existence of truth itself

is distorted and contested. Yet history shows us that the words we speak can matter. They've started wars and forged peace, sparked movements and elected presidents, changed minds, and foretold the future. The greatest speeches are the ones that tell hard truths. That forces us to confront the world as it is, while demanding that we pursue the world as we want it to be. We begin this journey with Benjamin Franklin's closing argument at the

Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Constitution was a profoundly imperfect document filled with the compromises of a union and a system of government agreed upon by people with different beliefs, backgrounds and interests. We still do not know the end of the story that Franklin and his cohort began.

custody of the American story. American identity is about having obligations to a common

“creed rather than a shared heritage or peace of territory. It is not their story. It is ours.”

And by learning from these words spoken in the past, we are reminded that history is a living thing

and that we have the capacity to change it. Pots of the world is a crooked media production.

“Our show is produced by Elona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Inisha Bonnergy.”

Our team includes Matt Degrope, then Hefko, Jordan Cantor, Kenymoffit, David Tolles, and Ryan Young.

The staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East.

“Hey, Cricket listeners. If you haven't become a friend of the pod yet, you are missing out.”

On exclusive bonus content that drops every single week. If you do join, you're helping us grow Cricket Media, which is one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media companies left in Trump's America. If you join, you also get at free episodes of all your favorite pods at free episodes of Pots of America, love it or leave it offline. Pots of the world, you also get bonus content like

our new extra episode of Pots of America, called Pots of America Only Friends, Dan Fight for his Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent sub-stack newsletters like Pots of America Open Tabs, and tons more great content. So, stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Cricket.com/Friends. Check it out.