Keeping Up With the Korruption in Kazakhstan

job pain and clenching and I realized I need one of those nightguard thingies, but you know what go into the dentist sucks. I hate it

Didn't want to do it, so I put it off and I put it off until I found Remi, which is a better at home solution. Here's how it works. You sign up after you purchase it, your impression kit comes straight to your door. You follow their little instructions You make the impression at your house. You send it back. They make your unique guard. They ship it back to you for a custom fit

“And then you have one and it's way cheaper and so much better, and that's why Remi has been used to protect the teeth of like 350,000 Americans”

They're remi-nightguard you're me soon, too. They just I just gotta do one. They're great. I now just sends you a new one every six months because they get a little gross after time You want to I do want to refresh that thing, but Remi-nightcards are the only FDA cleared and clinically tested at home impression kit Nightguard kits on the market not only do they help prevent teeth from getting damaged and from grinding they also help reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain and improve sleep quality

You get the same professional quality and comfort as a nightguard from a dentist, but 80% less of the cost by taking your own impression from the convenience of your home Remi saves your impressions, so you can join the Remi Club and then they just ship you a new one whenever you need it every six months. It's great

So here's what you do you go to shop remi.com/pstw. That's shop REMI.com/pstw

You can protect your teeth at home by using the code psw and you get 55% off your new nightguard from now until the end of August If you join the Remi Club subscribe and save that's their club to get it refresh and sent to you again That's shop REMI.com/pstw with code psw. Thank you Remi for sponsoring this episode Welcome to pod save the world. I'm Tommy Titor. I'm Ben Roads. Good to see you buddy Ben is overseas. We're going to reveal where later in the show. This is how we make you take her out until the very end

“But it's one of our what I think we have one more remote”

How many of this is it? This is it next time I am on with you I will be sitting across the table for you. I'll be very happy to be there in the US today I feel like I've been on the road for five weeks. You're so crazy. We miss you. We miss you We have a great show for the last four weeks in the bestseller list thanks to all the world Hey, so thank you for there. We go well those that's directly because of you guys because you bought the book

You recommended the blood. It is Yeah, good people. So keep showing up. We got a great show for you guys We're gonna talk about the agreement signed between the Lebanese government in Israel And what it means for the fight against Hezbollah and hopes for peace on this 11 on front of the US Iran is real war Then we're in a recap the latest fighting between the US and Iran and then today's peace talks in Doha to the extent that we know it happened yet

We are going to fill you in on the latest shocking report about the Trump family's corruption this time via Kazakhstan Exactly, kind of exactly where I'd expect frankly for this kind of corruption. Yes, we'll talk about some Supreme Court decisions That will greatly impact US foreign policy the devastating earthquake that hit Venezuela and the potential political fallout Then we're gonna go for her this pitched like cultural Existential political battle in France about air conditioning that up by the way also is about people dying because it's so hot over there

And then we're gonna do some more will-cup fun including These drag we talked about at the top about where Ben is and how that World cup result is affecting his trip So I think you might want to

You might have hunkered down for a little bit buddy, and then you're gonna hear my conversation with Nicholas Christoff in the New York Times Where we talk about Ben, I'm sure you've seen this too. Elon Musk like insane Claims that USAID is destruction the dosing of USAID did lead to a single death cutting off AIDS drugs from countless people no death Not funding malaria nets for babies no deaths. Everything's just totally fine

Yeah, big balls. New exactly what he's doing. Yeah, Mr. Balls was all over it So I talked to Nick about a couple things

First of all, he went to South Sudan recently. He's been to Uganda. He's been to a bunch of places that were directly impacted by USAID cuts

He met caregivers that cared for children that died. He met caregivers who themselves We're going to die because their access to AIDS drugs for example We're about to be cut off. We also talked about kind of the big picture projections about the impact of the USAID cuts And then we and the interview with with a question about his reporting on allegations of like systematic rape of

“Palestinians in Israeli prisons and other places. So an important interview and you know what I think we want to do out of this Ben”

Is take that conversation with Christoff try to cut it down into like the tightest Social media video we can for Instagram and Twitter or whatever else and just use it to rebut these claims from Musk Because this is like the most nineteen eighty four shit. I have ever seen in my life, and he just cannot get away with this

But to try to evade responsibility

By essentially you know gaslighting people just lying Just cannot be allowed to stand we have to kind of keep reminding people of the consequences of what he's doing and just because he bought a Social media platform doesn't mean he gets to control what's true in what's false. Yeah, it's it's it's truly disgusting And it clearly bothers him that people are stating what happened and that reporters like Nick Christoff and a tool go on day and many others are Reporting on the impact of his decision to quote feed USAID into the woodchipper. That was what he tweeted

Could have gone to some great parties decided to spend a week in feeding USAID into the woodchipper. He bragged about this shit

“So he will have to own it going forward and we're gonna help him with that and by the way if you want to support a news organization”

That will gladly call out you on Musk for killing people via one of his you know ketamine fueled Rage moments what what I don't even want to call the destruction of USAID and with doge Please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscriber You'll get ad free episodes you've got bonus content like bonus positive America's You'll get great newsletters. You got a deep dive into polling from Dan Fyfer and you help us

You know grow and build a progressive independent media organization That is immune from the corporate forces of Barry Weiss in Paramount and Elon Musk and can actually you know Speak the truth. So it's crooked calm slash friends if you want to consider becoming a paid subscriber Please check it out there. All right, Ben, so it's been Kind of confusing and unsettling week of news when it comes to this fragile piece between the US and Iran

So over the weekend the US and the Iranian military is the exchange fire several times And then there was this flurry of diplomatic activity last week regarding Lebanon so let's start there On Friday is rarely in Lebanese officials signed this 14 point agreement at a ceremony in Washington

The goal of the agreement is basically to create a pathway for the Lebanese armed forces and the government of Lebanon to take control of their own country

And for Israel to withdraw from it

“Although the time frame is not stipulated. I think the words with the word withdraw is not in this agreement”

But the just the way this thing would work I propose that a phase approach Lebanese forces take control of these two pilot zones first Lebas on pledges to reject any security role for Hezbole and Lebanon going forward They commit to preventing Hezbole from getting funding or support and then he's really troops are supposed to withdraw from like two pilot zones to start the process

Of transferring security control with the ultimate goal of having the idea fully withdraw

The agreement calls on the US and Arab countries to help support the deal so far that means like a hundred million dollars in humanitarian aid from the US

And the state department said the Pentagon is ready to provide another 30 million dollars to the Lebanese military and like direct military support Now This all kind of sounds fine in theory, Ben, but I think there's more than a few reasons to be skeptical that the plan will ever work

“First of all, Hezbole is not a party to a peace agreement that involves Hezbole”

That's a problem. They have responded about as well as you'd expect the prospect of losing their power There was also pushback and skepticism in Israel that starts in the far right Israeli National Security Minister It's my urban governor called the called the deal quote a historic mistake a terrible missed opportunity and a lament for generations Israeli prime minister BB net Yahoo and his own team they also didn't sound all that bullish on the agreement working Defense minister Israel cats it quote people should not hold their breath wondering where the next place will be from which Israel will withdraw from Lebanon

Because it will not happen until Hezbole is disarmed We have no territorial ambitions in Lebanon, but until Hezbole is disarmed we will not not withdraw a millimeter Then there was a bunch of backlash in Lebanon where you had a bunch of senior officials some of them would ties to Hezbole some of them not Criticizing the deal one called it a humiliation there was the suggestion that it would force the Lebanese military to confront Hezbole on the battlefield and lead to a civil war It could legitimize Israel's occupation of Lebanon for many years to come. That's another concern

There's also concern that some of the terms the deal could prevent efforts to prosecute war crimes in the future or like accountability So this is a deal a separate from the MOU that reopened the strait or removes in the result of a bunch of weeks of talks Between Israeli and Lebanese officials at U.S. pressure. So Ben The fighting has not stopped on Sunday. Hezbole killed an idea of soldier these Israelis have been conducting a bunch of air strikes What did you make of this agreement the U.S. role in pushing for it and in some of the very strong

Responses You're seeing that it could actually lead to civil war not peace it doesn't feel like a deal that's actually going to solve the problem if you define the problem as His blood needs to disarm and Israel needs to withdraw from Lebanon It feels like a deal that's designed to be a fig leaf to facilitate the U.S. Iran MOU to go forward Because at the end of the day

The only deal that could lead to some form of disarming his blood is between his blood and the Lebanese government You fundamentally can't have a deal that

But like if they're not a party to the agreement

Well sure the Lebanese government and Lebanese armed forces is willing to sign a piece of paper saying the hezbole needs to disarm

“But that's not going to get you there and so I think where it's going to leave you is you may have this kind of”

The near of diplomacy that you know gives people enough face saving to move forward with You know moving the MOU between Iran and the U.S. for right because the U.S. can tell Israel look We're getting you know his blood disarmed and the U.S. can say it Iran sea like you know Israel's pulling back from these parts of Lebanon and hopefully he's not bombing you know Beirut anymore and so we can move forward with our deal

But this is like what we've seen this time and again the Trump diplomacy that they don't solve underlying problems They kind of paper over them have big ceremonies

And lavish signing ceremonies announced things and you don't solve the problem and the problem is this will

Fester like Israel will continue to occupy parts of southern Lebanon his global continued to be armed They they live in southern Lebanon and and I see this thing flaring up Time and again, and if Israeli politics is also pushing from the right then BB Netanyahu has an incentive to

“Occasionally bomb Lebanon just show that you know, he's not going to be bound by a piece of paper either”

So I guess it's better than not having it, but it's not in any way solving the problem Yeah, and like the problem has been really bad. I mean 4,000 people have died in Lebanon since the March 2nd war started To the extent there was a ceasefire in Iran itself. There just was not one in any way in Lebanon And so the people are really suffered there

Like I mentioned at the top of the bend so the the 60 day ceasefire deal between the US and Israel It's been a light on ceasing heavy on firing so last week The run there was a bunch of activity a run fired an attack drone at a tanker because it was based it was using a route Out of the straightaway moves that was closer to the coast of Oman than to the coast of Iran in Iran is said that they want only ships Going in and out of the straightaway moves via their pre-approved route only those ones will be insured safe passage

So they fire this drone at a ship then on Friday the US retaliates by hitting Iranian missile and drone sites On Saturday Iran attacked another tanker So the US military retaliated again hitting Iranian military infrastructure Then of course Trump has to pop off on social media. He said that the US and Iran may have to go back to war and quote If that happens the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist. We're back to the kind of genocidal threats

Then on Sunday the RGC fired at Bahrain in Kuwait where the US has troops Those missiles were intercepted by missile defense systems But one damaged residential building in Bahrain and the there's reports that a Katar National was killed by falling Shrapnel on Monday Trump tried to put a lid on the thing at least temporarily tweeted that the US and Iran would meet in Doha on Tuesday that they were recording

It's always funny, Ben, to me how all the fighting happens

weekends when markets are closed. Yeah, convenient Steve Wikoff, Jared Kushner, Trump's golf buddy, and his son-in-law They were dispatch for the talks Here's Trump talking earlier this week about what he expects from these Doha talks but the meeting in Doha is going to be

Perhaps a board perhaps not would have find out but we're winning Military it's almost one military. I would say seems bullish So for what it's worth the Iranians basically said that they're not gonna meet with Kushner They're not gonna meet with Wikoff while they're there. They're saying that the sole reason they're going to Doha

“is to talk about the six billion in Iranian assets they want unfrozen. I believe this is money”

That was promised to Iran in 2023 as part of this Biden era hostage release deal That was then frozen after the October 7th attacks So Ben, we don't know how the talks went yet. I think my concern isn't outside of observer is that Iran is just trying to constantly normalize this new normal where they control the street or her moves. They tell ships where they can go. They fire at the ones who

Don't do what they're told and they'll demand fees in the future and they just assume the Trump As we saw in that clip is ready to move on and just want to be done with it all. I think that's exactly right. I think the thing that the Iranians have showed is their priority Is that they control the street of our moves that they've not only demonstrated that they can shut it down as a deterrent against future US military action against them right who needs a nuclear weapon when you

Can control 20% of the world's energy but they intend to profit off the street. There's no question about that. They want to control the route the ships take. They can put some kind of Fiona that they can call an insurance fee. They can call whatever they want but if they can establish that they can make money out the street of our moves they have a whole new revenue source in an open-ended way for many years to come and that clearly is worth more to them than even just some temporary sanctions release right

nature of it all right the the wars happen on the weekends and not during the week. Is that

Trump's threats? I mean look I'm glad he's not acting on them. I don't want him to try to end discivilization or end a country but the Iranians clearly don't believe them. No you know

“nobody else anymore. Whatever happened to red lines you know and I think what the Iranians”

understand is that those true social posts are no longer even intended for Iran. It's just kind of intended for Trump's dumbest base you know the same people that believe that we somehow have won militarily or that we've destroyed Iran's military capabilities which oh by the way we have to periodically keep bombing because they're still there. Trump is just issuing these posts just for his own dead enders you know to throw a stop to Ben Shapiro and you know Mark 11 or

whomever you know and so I think we're in this state where clearly they want to deal of some sort but the Iranians are signaling I mean to watch what they do as well as what they say. They're signaling controlling the straight is our top priority. It's even more important than this deal and even if this deal goes forward we want to enter into the deal making it very clear that we're still going to control this trait. Even if we allow traffic to pass through there again it's our

decision to allow it and and Trump can trial he wants to make it look like no it's not we're forcing and open the straight because we just bombed a few missile sites but that's not what the rest of the world seeing the rest of the world is seeing the Iranians they want to decide whether they're not the tankers get through. Yeah and just on this you know Trump claim we were defeated militarily I mean Jennifer Griffin it Fox News asked a defense official why they had to bomb

and re-strike these sites because I guess we hit them before and she was told that Iran had re-constituted its air defenses and its missile systems along the straight-al-form moves

“since the ceasefire and now that's why we're having to hit them again so clearly this”

clearly they have lots of reserves and they're going to be able to rebuild their missile defense infrastructure and have enough missiles and drones to be positioned in a way that they can close the straight and then one of their interesting thing then I mean so the the weekend's events I think they demonstrate how fragile the ceasefire deal such that it is is and continues to be the good news on that front is that the the tanker traffic through the straight is way up week

over week but it's still only about 70% of what it was before the war started according to the

Kepler data and we're always just kind of like one drone straight you know one Iranian one-way

attack drone or missile away from the thing being closed again for god knows how long but one interesting question I've had then is why didn't the oil price of oil go up further because you you and I were reading the same energy experts who were predicting like 150 dollar per barrel oil and those people were very wrong and I think political took an interesting crack at this question and they ended up essentially pinning it on a couple factors like one was a weaker than expected

Chinese economy and then China cut oil imports by about three million barrels a day so that took a lot of demand offline and helped sort of even things out and then they just noted like Trump's ability to bully the oil markets and mess with oil features and you know convince those

you know oil analysts just never like fully priced in the worst like kind of downside risk case

piece I guess they all assumed the Trump would taco as we were just talking about there and then you had countries trapping their strategic reserves at a greater level than expected and I guess more tankers were just kind of wheeling to sneak through the straight even despite the risk of getting fired at then we'd expected so you know now that the deals in place around has been able to flood the market with oil because the US gave them that sanctions relief but it was I thought

it interesting attempts kind of close the loop on why those worst case scenarios in terms of price never quite came to be. I thought that was good and actually both of the jardels you point to the Jennifer Griffin report and we should say for Fox News reporter she's often been in like a very really good reporter and pretty straight reporter it's really important because

“this war was clearly a catastrophic mistake the best thing that anybody could try to spin about it”

and I've seen some of the wars defenders spin this as well you know maybe we didn't achieve all as objective and the regime still in place and they still have a nuclear program but we really set back their military capabilities and I think what their report shows is we didn't because even if we destroyed things they rebuilt those things pretty quickly you know that they're going to be back to their status quo anti of their ballistic missile capabilities or drone capabilities within

like weeks maybe months of this kind of pointless tens of billions of dollars for not hundreds of billions of dollars war right and and so it kind of speaks to kind of the futility of military action to achieve your objectives because you know your adversary can just rebuild it is the case though that in addition to higher prices I mean we all know their higher prices like Americans paid them the shortages around the world have been very real yeah and and so part of the reason that

staying home you had you know power grids operating at less than what they normally would you

“had shortages in other areas of things that went through the street as well we're going to probably”

have a tale of agricultural impacts because of the shortages of things like fertilizer as well so all this effort was put into kind of mitigating what was a shitty situation and just preventing it from being an even shidier situation I also think we were clearly approaching the danger zone and part of the reason that Trump is tacoing so hard on this deal is that he knew that another couple months of this thing and you would have that spiral but last thing I just say Tommy is like

I'm not a investor you know there's a pyramid scheme field of the markets these days in general okay I mean just look at the eye it's just specular it's so such speculation it's just trading in futures and and putting them most often it's been on the same level a lot of it's a lever to you have people taking out loans to invest in stuff and a lot of you know a lot of times they're investing in these like they're like called like triple bull like directional funds that are using

lever to count to bet even more I'm trying to explain this without being too wonky but basically

a lot of people are borrowing money to bet on the stock market in ways that create a lot of

“systemic risk yeah and and again unfortunately I think we're probably going to be talking about this”

at some point in the coming months this whole thing just feels like a bit of a house of cards it feels like we're living in the economy that's kind of a pyramid scheme and and obviously a eyes at the center of that but energy has some eerie characteristics that are similar and you just summed it up well it's a lot of borrowing betting you know betting currencies like speculating and and I'm not sure that this thing is going to sustain itself it's like yeah it's good that

prices came down quickly it doesn't change the fact that we all I think spend collectively like

60 70 billion extra on energy yes no additional yeah for no additional like value you know it's just

it's terrible yeah to oil and gas companies profited 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 tool to claim your domain build a professional website and expand your brand and facilitate payments all in one place with Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their

business start with blueprint AI to get fully custom websites in just a few minutes using basic information by your industry your goals and personality to generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations every dream needs a domain Squarespace domain takes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair all inclusive price no hidden fees are add-ons required

“Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life whether that means”

building a website or adding a professional email service don't wait to claim your name invest in your dream domain today head to squarespace.com for free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com/world to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain that squarespace.com/world this episode is brought to you by power plays an audio documentary series from the human rights foundation if you've watched in this year's world cup unfold and wonder how

we ended up with a global sporting juggernaut full of corruption scandals, price gouging and political theater look no further than power plays. Power plays is a five episode journey through the little known authoritarian history of the feeful world cup. For Moosellini's Italy in 1934 through the military Hutin are Dintina in 1978, Putin's Russia in 2018 in Qatar in 2022. The series also examines the present 2026 world cup hosted by the US and looks ahead of geopolitics influencing

future host countries like Morocco in 2030 and Saudi Arabia in 2034. If you've been watching this year's world cup and wondering how we ended up here, the corruption scandals, the price gouging, the political theater, this show gives you the full picture into the history that allowed this to happen. It goes back a lot further than Trump or Gianni and Fentino. This show is made for football lovers, by football lovers, it's for anyone who thinks the intersection of history,

geopolitical drama, dark money, and sports sounds like a good time. Five episodes all streaming now, search power plays wherever you get your podcasts. Ben, so keeping up with the Trump family's corruption scandals is basically a full-time job and one we are proud to do for our listeners. The latest story has to do with tungsten metal, Kazakhstan, and then the dumbass kids of both Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Letnik. So here's the gist of this story.

President Trump convinces the President of Kazakhstan to let a small American company that's now called Kaz resources have access to the world's largest untapped reserve of tungsten

to metal. And then in just an amazing stroke of luck, a firm called Dominarie Securities,

stake in that project. And then Howard Letnik's kids, who now run cancer Fitzgeralds, uh, that's their dad's old company, so they're running out while dad's off playing government. They helped raise over $210 million as part of that deal, which will make them with, assume, millions of dollars in fees. And then if that wasn't enough, Ben, the Trump administration has preliminarily approved $1.6 billion in federal financing for the project. Now, that is a

shocking amount of grift and corruption. But the time says that this deal is hardly an outlier, and the Trump and the canter kids, I'm sorry, the Latinic kids have, quote, financial ties to at least

14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals. So this

is just one of many mining projects where the Trump family is benefiting financially. So I highly recommend reading this whole article because it is long and it's complicated and they did a really great job kind of reporting it all out and laying out all the details, including with infographics. But it's also such a great example. I think for us, Ben, of Trump's family corruption directly impacting US national security, because the military needs tungsten because it is the highest

melting point of any metal. It's extremely dense. It's nearly as hard as a diamond. So it ends up getting used in lots of military things like large caliber armor piercing shells, armor for

“things like tanks, jet engines and components, stuff that you need to get really hot that we'll”

withstand really high heat. And so this is very important. And so if the Trump kids screw this up and we aren't able to get this metal, our troops will be able to use it and just generally speaking

like if the Trump kids are involved in all these critical mineral deals or rare earth deals

and they fail or they skim a bunch off the top and we're not prepared, it means we're going to get creamed in the next trade war with China again. So it's just one of those stories where before the Trump administration, this is like the only thing anyone talks about. And now, you know, we live in a reality where JD pants is breaking about how water gate wouldn't be a big deal anymore. Yeah, I actually think this is an incredibly important story for our times because

it says everything about how the world works right now. So bear with me for one second. These central Asian countries like Kazakhstan were literally reborn out of corruption. So when the Soviet Union broke up, what you had is all these vast natural resources that were once controlled by the Soviet state kind of got sold off and given away to the oligarchs who took over countries like Kazakhstan and they set it up as kind of a family business. We are rich. We control the political

power in this country. We control the resources. These are the billionaires that were starting shadow companies in London. These were the original oligarchs of the global economy that we're currently living in. So this is how they know how to do business, right? You pay off somebody's son, somebody's son in law. You give them access to resources. Everybody makes a bunch of money except for the people who get screwed in the process. Let's fast forward Tommy. I want to take you back

“and time. Crooked con, right? Remember last year? Do you remember the hotel we were staying at?”

Oh yeah. Was also hosting the delegates to the Central Asian summit? Yes. Trump was having that be. And I remember walking by the northern of Lafayette Park and I could see in the distance like a cocktail party in the North Portico, right? Trump literally threw a huge summit for these Central Asian countries. And I can tell you that the reason was not, you know, normal foreign policy times, you might say, well, this is an interesting strategy to try to counter

Russian influence in Central Asia or Chinese influence. That is clearly not their interest at all in Central Asia because Trump likes Putin, Trump likes Xi Jinping. The whole purpose of that summit was to set up, I think, deals like this. And so you fast forward to now. And what's super dark about this is it's kind of perfect that just like you had the Trump family in business with the Wittka family on crypto, you've got the Trump family in business with the Latinx

family on these mining deals. Two people, by the way, down Trump and Howard Latinx, who are pretty close to Jeff Epstein. So let's just say this is the Epstein class in miniature that you've got the Trump family in the Latinx family cutting mining deals with Central Asian countries like

“Kazakhstan. And the reality is these inputs are essential to the military technologies of the future.”

Everything from drones to armored vehicles, all the kinds of things that we're going to need to compete and, you know, potentially hopefully not have to fight wars is dependent on these. But that's

just another vehicle to make a buck for these people. So you basically have like the Epstein class

running our country, working hand in glove and concert with oligarchs and autocratic leaders in places like Kazakhstan to mind the materials that are necessary to then sell to the Pentagon for defense contracts so that we can maintain some advantage in the military hardware of the future.

Yeah, and I can't remember we talked about it in this show or if it's another show, but like there's another company that's just like this Donald Trump Jr's VC firm takes an undisclosed stake in a company called Vulcan Elements as part of the like series A. I think at the time it was

valued at 200 million fast forward a couple of months. They get a massive injection of capital

from the US government. I think it was like a $600 million from the Pentagon and then another 50 million from like what was left of the Chips Act. And wouldn't you know it been pretty soon after the valuation of Vulcan Elements is now $2 billion. So Don Jr. just 10 acts his investment in a couple months. And it's just clear that like Pete, I think Peter Navarro called in a favor and said to

“the Pentagon like you have to do this loan for Vulcan Elements. So this corruption, it's just”

it's so pervasive. And like the Howard Lutnic of it all getting his kids like kissed into the graph in a Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, regime change. There's an anecdote in there that apparently Lutnic's kids created some bad headlines from doing some sketchy shit. I think you don't kind of like

corrupt stuff like this basically. Yeah. The pissed off Trump. And so Lutnic made a $25 million donation

to the Trump presidential library to modify him. And now it's a thing like Trump likes to make fun of him about and brag him about it. I mean, that's just like how pervasive all of this corruption is. Yeah. And what's so dumb about? Well, everything's so dumb. But the two things off what you said, the first is they again are using the trillion dollar that they want to make a trillion half dollar Pentagon budget as a giant piggy bank that they can loot because if they can

kind of corner the access to some of these inputs or they can get drone companies and then basically have what amount to no bid contracts. They can make an unlimited speakative money off of that. That's gross enough. And that leads the second thing, which is the $25 million gift to the Trump library. That's like a loose change in the couch compared to the money that the Lutnic

family stands to make from doing these deals. I'm not not suggesting there's a virtuous $25 million

dollar, Lutnic gift to the Trump library. But it just shows you that our system is so broken and we're talking on day when the Supreme Court further gutted campaign finance laws that Elon Musk and that Howard Lutnic's of the world for for minimal investment, you know, tens of millions of dollars on a campaign here, tens of millions of dollars on a library here. They can make hundreds of

“billions of dollars off stuff like this. Yeah, it's just a down payment. And by the way, I believe”

that the aggregate budget for Trump's future library is $2 billion because he just needed to like double the Obama amount as if Obama's costing $1 billion is like a good thing that you'd want to top and not just like a sign that maybe these things have got a little too expensive. You mentioned the Supreme Court there Ben. So there've been a bunch of major Supreme Court decisions this week that I've national security implications for policy implications. We're going to walk you through

just a couple of them. The first is what counts as good news these days, which is that on Tuesday the Supreme Court upheld the principle of birthright citizenship, which means that anyone born on US soil automatically becomes a US citizen. Trump had tried to end it via executive order that should have been thrown out, laughed out of court because of the text of the 14th Amendment reads, quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction

there of our citizens of the United States. It seems pretty clear for the textualists on the Supreme Court, but still the outcome is way too close. The margin was six to three, really is more like five to four, the opinion given that Brett Kavanaugh said he agreed with the result, but he didn't join the majority opinion for reasons that we won't dig into. If you want to learn more, listen to strict scrutiny, they are much better on this stuff. And then Ben,

last Thursday, the court cited six three with the Trump administration to give the department of Homeland Security the authority to remove temporary protected status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. TPS, the TPS program was established in 1990. It allows people experiencing humanitarian or natural disasters to legally live or work in the US. The Trump administration, they've been trying to end TPS status for 13 of 17 countries that's currently have it. The suit to fight it brought

by these Haitian and Syrian TPS holders argued that the administration's policy was driven by

“racism. I think listeners probably remember that whole, the Haitians are eating your pets thing”

from the campaign seems pretty self-evidently racist, but Justice Alito said that none of Trump's statements were overtly racial. Okay, not discussed what were the shocking levels of violence in insecurity in both countries. So Haiti has been gripped by warzone-like levels of violence ever since 2021 when Haitian President Jovat Almoise was assassinated, gangs control, major swass of the country, millions of people have been displaced. The World Food Program

says half the population is facing acute hunger in the State Departmentless Haiti is a do-not-travel

under a sod that, as we remember, ended in December of 2024. The State Department's Syria page says, quote, "Do not travel to Syria for any reason. US citizens are at risk due to terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, hostage taking in armed conflict." But remember, under this new

alito approved, not at all racist immigration policy, then white South Africans are basically the

only refugees allowed in the country. I've sure you saw that your times report that the Trump administration was planning like special Afro-Connor welcome bags that had, it's like you're arriving at like an anti-welcome wedding. It had like weird revisionists, like white nationalist history books and shit in it. So Ben, I just like fucking par for the course when it comes to the country shockingly cruel and racist immigration policies, there is something like, I'm used to it from

Stephen Miller, there's something harder for me to stomach though when it gets kind of like blessed by the Supreme Court. Yeah, and it just goes to show you like what it, out of control, radical, far-right enterprise, the Supreme Court has become. I mean, yeah, first of all, like quicks we're on the birthright citizenship here, like we're celebrating essentially a five-four decision,

“because Cabin always kind of being like, "Here's a better way to get a birthright citizenship," right?”

But we're celebrating that the same way we celebrated them, like not overturning the 2020 election. Meanwhile, every other decision is racist, every other decision is oligarchic, every other decision is undermining democracy. On this one, if this state department doesn't believe it's safe to go to these countries, then by definition, it meets the threshold for people who are here, not being safe to return to those countries. Like it's not exactly a leap to figure that out.

And we should just call this what it is, which is racist. Obviously it's racist if you're opening the doors to, I mean, let's just do a thought exercise, Tommy. What is a more dangerous place to be? Haiti for any Haitian or South Africa for a rich Afro-Connor, you know? Many people will come over here and then gone back, by the way. There's a great reporting to their times about a lot of them, but like, you know, we actually didn't like as much as we thought,

so we went home to South Africa. Like there are high levels of violence in South Africa. At times that violence has been directed at white farmers, but there's just no evidence that it was systemic and based on race. It's more likely that they have resources and stuff to steal, so they got an attack and robbed and some instances killed, which is horrible and unacceptable. But it's like, again, the notion that there's some like pogrom against white farmers, it's just

it's a fever dream on the right. No, and yet it's not akin to the kind of systematic political violence that you see in a place like Haiti, right? Or that we've seen in a place like Syria. And these are human lives. These are thousands upon thousands of people whose lives are upended by this ruling. I mean, I hate how thin-skinned, Alito and Thomas get about this stuff. If they're challenged on it, like fuck you guys,

like how do you like to be a Haitian who's going to be deported back to a country that is riven by gang violence, where you're fundamentally not safe, and you've been contributing to an American community, and just because the Supreme Court decides that they're on board with like Stephen Miller's fever dream of a white nationalist constitution in this country, which doesn't

“exist, by the way. You have to get deported back. We even saw, and we'll get to the earthquake”

of Venezuela, but I saw a horrible thing earlier today, Tommy, like potentially well over 100 people died in earthquake, had just been deported back by the United States. We're just sending

people, in some cases, not even to their home country, to third countries, right? And this will be

like a lasting kind of stain on us, too. It's not like precisely because these are human lives, precisely because we're breaking a promise. TPS is a promise. The promise of the United States government makes that we're going to give you protected status. And by the way, a lot of these diaspora populations, like not so much of a Haitians, but like, you know, Venezuela, for instance, like some of them, you know, support kind of right-wing politics in this country, so that they've

gone along with, you know, Republican policies, because they wanted, you know, something like the Maduro operation, but when you rescind TPS, it tells you what they really think about you, you know, and so do not believe for a second, just because the Trump administration or some Republican administration kind of doesn't like the same leaders that you don't like that they actually give us shit about you. This Supreme Court decision, this revocation of TPS tells you everything

about how they feel about you, and it's fundamentally racist. And by the way, it's worth mentioning for folks who don't know that the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War, specifically to

overturn the dread Scott decision, which basically said that black American Americans, including

“freed slaves, could never be citizen. It's, it's the worst thing the Supreme Court has ever done”

in many scholars view. And the 14th Amendment was designed to fix that, and these guys came this close to thrown the whole thing out. I mean, it's just, it's shocking. Yeah, and just, because I like, and you know, my, my book is about this question, like who's an

across and writing the book, which is, how is it that these originalists, if they were originalist back in the 19th century, or like, we need to divine the intention of the founding fathers, but we totally know the intention of the authors of the 14th Amendment. They had an original intent, too, which is every person who's born in this country is a fucking citizen, you know. And like you, you messed with that, you messed with the core idea of what being an American is.

Including one of the best players on the U.S. men's national scene, and we'll get there in a minute. So another country impacted by these TPS decisions has been Venezuela, as you mentioned. The listeners have probably seen the reports of these, there's a pair of just catastrophic earthquakes in Venezuela last week. As of this recording, there are at least 1700 known casualties, but that number is going to go up dramatically. 700 buildings were at least partially collapsed. 50,000 people

have reportedly missing. So there's, you know, we're now at the point where eight workers from around the world have descended on the country trying to help. The U.S. has pledged 300 million in aid, which is nowhere near enough, but they also sent more than 300 search and rescue personnel from the U.S. those search and rescue teams, they're often called dark teams. They are incredible human beings. They, um, I met a bunch of them in Haiti in 2010. They work around the clock,

just like searching through rubble, trying to rescue anyone they can. And, you know, it's like

some of the stories have been surfaced, and it's always incredible. But, um, they're not

“going to be able to meet the need. They're not going to find everyone. And I think just by comparison”

then, I mean, I was looking back at the 2010 response to what happened in Haiti. And within like two weeks, I think the U.S. had nearly 17,000 U.S. military personnel kind of in and around Haiti. Uh, there was an aircraft carrier. There was a hospital ship. All this infrastructure. Hopefully the Trump administration will continue to increase its support. I know they've had some military on the ground, but I think they're mostly just like reopening runways and

stuff like that to facilitate the, you know, aid transfers or fixing ports, but like they just feels like they could use more. Um, and the context is obviously different. I mean, this happened about six months after Trump launched this military operation that, uh, deposed Nicholas Maduro and saw his vice president, Thelsea Rodriguez's interim leader. Before the earthquake, there was kind of like growing reporting about frustration and discontent in the Venezuelan population because

“their lives were not getting better. There's like a lack of improvement or change. Um, I think this”

is obviously going to be a severe test of her leadership and kind of the status quo because, you know, you're already seeing these reports benefit like Venezuelans who are furious that their own military was not helping with search and rescue efforts. They were like, these guys just kind of sitting around while average citizens are digging through piles of rubble trying to find their loved ones. Um, crowds, jeer, Delsea Rodriguez when she went to one site, they were chanting, get out, get out.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Venezuelans were also mad at U.S. officials who were praising their response. Um, and then Maria Machado is the opposition party. She said that her, they tried to,

like, basically do a charity drive and it got shut down by the police in some places. So there's

a lot of anger brewing. And so again, then you and I were in government during that 2010 earthquake, the death tolls weigh higher. I mean, the estimates were as high as like 310,000 people. It was horrifying that like the government basically collapsed from the presidential palace to like all the infrastructure and services. I was in port of Prince for like a week to work on it.

“And like I just again, I told talked about this on the show before, but I'll never forget how”

proud and inspired I felt by the kind of immediate term relief efforts, the ability of the U.S. government to rescue people, like get infrastructure fixed, get relief effort to and distribute aid. And then just how catastrophically wrong it went in the kind of medium and

long term, like the donor money never materialized. The projects took longer than expected to

get done. There was not enough money going to Haitians and Haitian organizations, too much once like American NGOs housing they ever got built. And then in like the cruelest development of all like 10 months into it, a UN peacekeeping base created as cholera outbreak that killed 10,000 people and then they denied it for years and years and years. So that's how badly things can go when you have an administration that cared when you had USAID intact and like

functioning. And now then as well, it went into this with a healthcare infrastructure that had been decimated and you know a Trump administration that seemingly just wants to loop their resources and it just makes me very nervous for the people there. Well, yeah, I was going to say first of all, those dark teams in Haiti as you'll remember were run by USAID. So once again, you know, we are seeing that that is the kind of organization that is necessary to run a complex assistance response

that has an immediate surge of disaster response or dark teams, but then I estimate all these basic needs are going to be really acute in Venezuela. And look, I think your point about the long term

deal with the scale of challenge and they lost the confidence of the people whatever they had left.

“And I think one thing to watch for in Venezuela is just because Maduro was removed doesn't mean that”

really anything about the nature of that government changed. It continued to be corrupt. It continued to be repressive. It continued to not deliver for the needs of its citizens. All it did differently is offer a little bit of tribute to the Trump administration, to the tune of some like world tankers and kind of let all these Trump people down there like Mauricio Kleber who's kind of Trump's vice-roy down there who are just doing deals. They're not changing the political system to be

more responsive. They're doing energy deals or real estate deals. The probably want to get in on the reconstruction down there now too. But I think something to watch is, man, I don't know that that there's anything that Delce Rodriguez's government can do, particularly why it's constituted, to kind of win back the trust of the people that has been shattered over a long time, but has been really shattered in this earthquake response. And so this, you know, quote unquote success

stories of Trump, this like equally repressive regime that's just a little bit more responsive to him, you know, this place could become a mess. It already is obviously a human tragedy, but also you could

“see kind of unrest and political instability because of this. My hope is, if you want to what”

should happen is, ideally, you know, I saw a lot of other countries in the region providing assistance, providing a certain rescue, you would hope that there's some capacity to kind of internationalize response to help kind of clean the rubble, obviously try to identify anybody you can save and then also like people are going to want to remain there. Love ones tragically, but then some international

response to help rebuild the problem is, you know, not only is USAID decimated, so is the international

community. There's not money for that anywhere the UN system doesn't really work. And so I really do worry about the people that is where I've already been through a lot, their capacity to come out from under this. Yeah, I'm extremely worried too. Yeah, I mean, it's on the board of peas down there, maybe they can make it solve this one. Yeah. Potite the world is brought to you by incognito, if you ever wondered how a random company you've never heard of got your personal self. Every day,

yes, like literally five times a day. It's because data brokers are constantly collecting and selling our details behind the scenes. It's invasive. And honestly, it's exhausting to manage. While you have the legal right to opt out, the process is intentionally designed to be a bureaucratic

“nightmare. That's why I'm a fan of incognito. Instead of you spending dozens of hours chasing down”

these companies and cognitive acts as your personal privacy advocate, they handle the request to get your info deleted, so you don't have to. Once you create an account and give them permission incognito automatically reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and demands they remove your data. In 2086, this is really the important thing to do. If you have not tried incognito highly recommend it, all of us have way too much information available on the web. It can be bought by hackers or scammers,

or people that are just trying to annoy the **** out of you and sell you stuff and send you fake job applications. Oh, annoying. It's just constant. Incognito can help you get your personal information off the internet and get these people to leave you the hell alone. What's even better is that in Cognito doesn't just do this once they continuously monitor the sites and make sure your info stays off the market. And for those seeking total control, they're unlimited plan features custom data

removals. If you see your info somewhere, it shouldn't be just sending Cognito link in their team of actual humans will step in to take it down for you. Take your personal data back with incognito. It's even independently verified by Deloitte, so you know they're the real deal. Go to incognito.com/psttw and use the code pstw to get 60% off an annual plan. That's code [email protected]/psttw for 60% off plus try it. Risk free for 30 days with their money back guarantee. Ponteva world is part of

my ridge. We've all had that big ridiculous customs wall in our lives, like a big crusty leather brick that was falling apart full of cards. You don't need kind of hurt your back when you sit and just look stupid. It's terrible. You've got to get that at the hole at the bottom of your pants and your pockets. Ridge wall is at the opposite of that. They have a unique slam and modern design that holds up to 12 cards plus your cash. They're made with premium materials like aluminum,

titanium, and carbon fiber. All ridge products have a lifetime warranty. This is literally the last wallet you'll ever have to buy. Losing your wallet is the worst feeling, but with a ridge tracker

card, you'll always know exactly where it is before panic mode kicks in. Ridge isn't just about

while it's a premium everyday carry essentials like power banks, keycases, suitcases, and rings, all built with the same sleek durable design. Plus, Ridge has free shipping in a 99 day, risk free trial, and lifetime warranty on all of their products. For a limited time, our listeners can get 10% off at ridge by using code PSTW at checkout. Just head to ridge.com and use code PSTW

please support our show and tell them we sent you. A couple more things. So the listeners might have heard that there's this massive heat dome across Europe. There have been record brick and temperatures in England, Spain, Poland, Germany to check the public, France, and record temperatures for a record number of days, which is really dangerous. So in France alone, the health ministry said that more than 1,000 unexpected deaths have happened, including 70 poor people, 74 people who have drowned

to or just try to escape the heat. This sort of heat dome challenge has kicked up a huge French media and political debate about air conditioning and how to cool people down. Check out this Instagram video from a French influencer named Olivier Hude. I'm probably saying that wrong, but it's a good video, I was watching.

So for those listening and not watching a YouTube, first of all, please subscribe to

the podcast for all the YouTube. We're trying to be back on the right wing, crap that's all over this fucking platform. The pro war propaganda Fox News and Ben Shapiro and everybody else. But for those, we didn't see it. This guy put a pan outside of the window and he did it in the sun and then grilled a burger, popped popcorn, cooked bacon and fried and egg using just the sun.

“So that's how hot it is in France right now. So Ben, I've been to Paris in the summer,”

France in the summer. I've sweated through my shirt and restaurants and bars and hotels. But until I dug into this latest debate over air conditioning, I just didn't realize how like deep-seated and cultural this fight was. So currently for just a level set for folks, about 25% of French households have air conditioning. And I'm going to try to summarize the

arguments you hear in French media or from French elected officials against AC first. So they say,

you know, it's bad for the environment. It's going to contribute to climate change. There's easier solutions out there that we should do first, like putting up shades and shutters on buildings, changing roofing materials as another one. They say that are greener solutions, like planting more trees. And they argue that universal AC adoption would actually heat up the city itself because you're unit when it pumps cool air into your house, it pumps out warm air that can heat up

the city and aggregate. There's also concern about thermal shock when you go from hot to cold

“or vice versa. I think that's really overstated, but it's a thing you hear in the media.”

And then there's this broader concern that's really about French identity and that if everyone gets an AC unit, they're just going to sit inside all day and that France will stop having this like outdoor culture. And so the pushback on those arguments are, yes, it would be great to have more greener spaces in less asphalt, but that's a long-term project and the need is now.

Yes, changes should be made to buildings first to make them kind of naturally cooler. But

Parisians are often just as a verse to putting up shutters on the facades of buildings that kind of change the appearance or getting rid of their zinc rooftops that are standard in Paris and give it the look we all know and love, but absorb heat and can be as hot as 150 degrees. You know, there's a verse to that stuff as they are doing selling AC. And then in terms of the climate impact, in 2025 about 95% of the energy generated in mainland France was low carbon so it's mostly

nuclear and then some renewables. So the climate impact of more energy usage in France is not going to mean nearly as bad as it might be in other places. Of course, increased demand will mean higher prices. It could mean to more fossil fuel use, especially night, they'll put strain on the grid and power lines and on days when it's too hot and nuclear plants can't necessarily run it full capacity. But that's sort of like the policy debate, but then we get into this

political fight then. So Marine Le Pen in the far right national rally party are running on air conditioning for all. It's like Bernie Sanders, like Medicare for all. She's putting forward a national air conditioning plan. Where is the leftist candidate, Jean-Luc Melanchone says France says France installing AC will make the situation worse worse. And he wants to create heat resistant buildings first. Then I talk, you know, Macron's Minister of Ecological Transmission said she was

“horrified. It was the word she used by calls for AC in public buildings. And this is where I think”

the debate just gets insane. Then because we're not just talking about AC in homes, it's also schools, retirement homes, and hospitals. I saw a report about a Parisian hospital. We're only three of 30 words had air conditioning. So the other 27 sections of the hospital, temperatures reach 95 degrees, and people were being told to bring fans from home, including like maternity wards. And then I was talking about buddy, whose French his grandfather lives in a home where the only

they're common room has AC everywhere else. They're just like burning up. And it's genuinely unsafe.

love to hear your view as your experience, your lived experience, as they say. But that also just

like a political matter. Like I just can't believe the left is taking such an insane like kind of stride in position on this issue when like there's a thousand additional deaths because of this most recent heat wave. Like it seems insane. Yes. So I'll start with my lived experience,

“because I think I actually does contribute to this conversation, because we could go always in London.”

And actually, the day that I did my podcast, it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit in London. So just about as hot as in Paris, I will say, I care so much about this podcast, Tommy, that in my unear conditioned Airbnb is crazy. I podcasted through the heat. But look, I notice the same thing. London has a lot of the same issues, right? It does not have AC anywhere. I mean, I rode the tube,

built on an underground. And it was fucking hot. And the train stopped in the tunnel. And I was like,

if this thing doesn't move, like I didn't know what the fucking thing is. And you go into public buildings, you're going to restaurants are not air conditioned. Nothing is air conditioned. And this is, I think, as an American, what really struck me is, yes, maybe you were aware that homes, apartments, you know, don't have air conditioning. But like public buildings, restaurants, stores, like nobody has air conditioning. And people have to go to work in that. People riding on buses.

They're not air conditioned. People riding on trains. They're not air conditioned. It's dangerous because you get no respite anywhere. You know, it's not like, well, I don't know if air conditioning at home, but I can like go ride the bus and get a little AC or go to my work space. My work has air conditioned. You just can't escape the heat all day. And I felt that. And that was kind of scary to be honest, you know, which leads me to actually just to get to the policy

of this all. There was also like a perfect timing thing in London when I was there. A conference dedicated to extreme heat had to be canceled because of the extreme heat. You know, perfect. And so look, the thing to the left, that says this, absolutely make the argument that, you know, Europe is actually heating up faster than any other region. This is proving man-made climate change. Just as happening because of climate change. This proves that we can't turn our back on a clean

energy transition. We need to be moving to cleaner sources of energy. By all means, use the heat to make your case. This is not the hell that I am. And at a minimum. And by the way, because it all, yes, they should be greeting these cities. They should be growing more trees. They should be doing all these things to try to make these European cities not like these heat capturing,

“you know, hellish places when it gets hot. But at a minimum, right, like you need to air”

condition these public spaces. It is that leftist idea to say, the worker that has to ride the bus, like should be able to have AC or public buildings, should have air conditioning. You know, like does that mean that every single, you know, apartment in these European cities is going to have AC no. But start somewhere like in the public good space. Because I believe me, if you care about climate change and you choose to hold the day on as we don't want air conditioning,

you're not going to be able to implement your climate agenda because you're going to lose.

And that's that's a long short of it. That's the key point. I think sometimes on the left,

we like personalize an individualize the solution to problems that actually require government action. And we act like if all the progresses in the world like don't use clutter, whatever, or like AI that somehow it's going to like, you know, save enough water or like, you know, impact the climate materially. And like that's, I'm not like trying to absolve people of making smart choices. We all should do our best and like think about climate mitigation in our own lives.

But what you're talking about air conditioning, a hospital, like maternity, exactly. This is blockers. What are you talking about? You actually are punishing people that like, historically, like, you know, social, democratic movements are supposed to help the elderly, children, kids in school. Like, it's insane. It is a death sentence as a party. Like,

“I think Marine Le Pen is going to ride this into the Elisa if they're not careful.”

Yeah, no, I mean, I, again, workers, right? I was talking to one guy who had a 40-minute commute. And he was like, I was going to pass that by time I got to work. And then I'm working somewhere that's not air conditioning. I want to say one thing about that video, Tommy. I do love the French. I love that the guy salted. Like, like, like, like, he wasn't just showing, you know, it's not a nut because I, I saw a good video in Poland when someone was like frying egg like that.

But the French are still seasoning the food, you know, like, you're not going to put a little garlic in there. I talked about, yeah, it was great. I love the French. I still makes it does make one go to Paris. All right, bad last thing. So, for us, at least. So, last week, we talked

melding of cultures and fan bases. And today, we want to talk a bit about the agony of defeats because teams are starting to go home. So, there have been some huge upsets. Germany lost a paraguay on penalty kicks. Amazing game. The Netherlands lost to Morocco. Also in penalty kicks. I don't know if you caught this one. I don't know what time it is there. But it was like,

I've just never seen the missome any penalty kicks in a row or somebody gets saved. Uruguay lost.

And the expectations were quite high for the team. They completely flamed out. And apparently, their soccer federation was so pissed off that they canceled their charter flight home from Mexico. And they told the players to book commercial flights. So, I really like that paddiness. A couple more headlines for you Ben. So, the New York Times had this one quote, "World Cup

“lost dominates German news, displacing even a mass shooting." That's how seriously they're taking”

this over there. This was supposed to be a lighter fun segment. So, I'm going to spare you got the details of a mass shooting, but it was awful. Here's another headline from the athletic that you should speak to then. The Netherlands World Cup exit sparks identity crisis in nation of total football, another very, you know, deeply felt one there, pretty intense. And then Ben, I think maybe the worst fallout might have been in South Korea because the expectations for this team

going into this World Cup was really high. You have a lot of great players playing for major

international clubs. They won their first game. They lost their second game. They just needed to tie

their third game against South Africa, who's ranked way lower than South Korea, but then they lost. And I think the team looked so bad that the coach was asked to the press conference after where it's if they had food poisoning. They were geared at the airport when they arrived home. And then South Korea's president has since called for an investigation into the team's performance because it was so fast. That was very fucking good. There's a lot of story,

like I went out of YouTube, rabbit hole. There's story about corruption within the KFA, their soccer association that I won't get into, but fascinating stuff. So again, you've been in

“Europe, you've been kind of living this from that side of the pond. What have you been seeing?”

So I'm in Amsterdam, I'm on vacation after my book tour. And I will say, so I watched like the Germany game last night, props to Paraguay, by the way. Did you see that the president Paraguay had a national holiday for the day after? Just so people could, you know, get hammered all night, like sleep it off the next day. By the way, like great, fuck you to Uruguay to the Paraguay's advancing, you know, like an old rivalry there.

But I will say, like I went to sleep because the Dutch game started at 3 a.m. Amsterdam time. I want to say that I was walking around late last night because it's light here to like 11 o'clock night. And people were setting up the coolest, you know, like they had boats with like big screen TV's like fully stock bars, like people were getting ready to do it right out here. And at about five in the morning, maybe it's 530, I just started to be awoken by all these horns honking and people

shouting and said, okay, wake up, like what the fuck is going on, you know? And I started, I look

“at my phone and they're reacting to each penalty shot. Like there was so much like pent up anxiety”

in the city that like good or bad, there's just like noise accompanying each penalty kick and horns and like, I mean, I can't, it was like the whole city was making noise in the middle of the fucking night. And then when it lost, like it was dark man, I just heard people shouting, I heard a lot of drunk people making very unpleasant noises. Like I was like, I was like, I'm not going out of this hotel for a little while. I did tell my kids like, we had to be really

nice to any Dutch people that we see today because they're going to be in a really shit mood. It'll tell me. I went out this morning. There was like trash everywhere. Like there's trash cans kicked out. Like it was not a good scene here. Like these people really like their football here. And it didn't end well. Flipside, like the Moroccans are, I mean, the Moroccans made the semis last time. They're the new spoiler. They're like, this is like the biggest, you know,

anti-colonial movement that we've seen in decades, you know, the Moroccan soccer team, you know. And the African deeps in general, it's been a great supply to this world cup, like how well they African teams have been doing. Yeah, it's been really fun. I loved every minute of it. A lot of big games coming up. I'm going to watch. I'm all like preemptively sad about it being over to be totally honest with you. That's like, it's crazy. They're just going nuts at five in the morning.

My only experience that comes close to that is when I was in college. I got to Rome in Roma.

The professional soccer team had just won the cereal off at the first time in like a couple of decades.

And they literally drove around and honked their horns for three days straight. I'm not exaggerating when I said all day in all night, people were honking their horns. It was insane. But I had this experience, I studied abroad in Paris. And I got there right after they French had won the first World Cup in 1998. And it was, it was bonkers for days. I was like, is this what Paris is like, this is awesome. You know, people like marching down the shams these A and

not turn on the podcast because when you come back, you're near my interview with Nick Christoff

about Elon Musk being the worst liar in the world and trying to claim that no one died at a result of dozing USAID. He walks through in great detail what he found on his reporting in places like South Sudan. What the, you know, sort of the projections and analysis say about the impact of

“USAID cuts and much more. So please stick around for that. It's a very important conversation.”

We cannot let Elon get away with these less. Pot tape in the world is brought to you by simply safe. When you imagine a traditional home security system, you're probably thinking of it alarm that players after someone breaks in. But if your system doesn't trigger into a break in starts, it's already too late.

That's where simply safe comes in. Simply saves AI powered cameras.

Identify threats on your property and alert US-based live agents to take action to deter them before the break in even begins. Simply saves home security systems are fast and easy to set up on your own. No drilling required. No waiting around for a technician to show up. The app guided installation walks you through the process so you can get your system armed in less than an hour. And best of all, simply safe. It's actually affordable with monitoring plans, starting

“and around a dollar a day. No long-term contracts or cancellation fees. So you guys know John”

Love it at a simply safe system. Set it up himself. It was easy to do. It took like just a hour or two. No drilling involved. No drilling. You can turn it on and off from your phone. Got top of the line sensors. It keeps you safe inside the house when you're gone. Highly recommended. We want you to experience the peace of mind of real home security, which is why we've partnered with simply safe to offer an exclusive discount to our listeners.

Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplysafe.com/cricketworld. That's half off. It's simplysafe.com/cricketworld. There's no safe like simplysafe. The what-a-day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know the five days a week. I, Jane Koston, bring you the need to know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today in tomorrow. Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world

and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time that it takes to roast a chicken. And now, what-a-day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what-a-day. Now, dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. My guest today is a columnist at the New York Times. He is written and reported extensively on the

effects of Elon Musk and Donald Trump's destruction of USAID. Nicholas Christophe, welcome to the show. Great to be with you. Thank you so much for doing this. So, as you know, Elon Musk has spent the last couple of weeks really just attacking in the most personal terms. Anyone who criticizes what he and Trump and the Doge team did to USAID. Musk has denied that medical funding was stopped. He claimed that no one has died.

As the result of Doge cuts to USAID, he even threatened to sue Congressman Rokana for some of his comments. Specifically, Musk says no one can name a single person who died quote not a single name and he also tried to claim that USAID is responsible for COVID and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, he's been on one lots to unpack here. Let's start with the basics. Can you just remind us what exactly Musk and Doge and Trump did to

USAID? Yeah, well, in Musk's own words, he fed it into the woodchipper and he, you know, he did it over a weekend. And so, there was a perfectly legitimate argument to have about reforming aid policies about programs. It could be redeveloped, even about the levels of aid. But that's not what happened. He actually tossed it into the woodchipper. And while some programs were revived, there was a freeze on funding. People who would actually disperse funds were suddenly

no longer in office. And so, the role kind of programs, even those that they said that they valued, that were abruptly cut. And so, you know, instead of nobody dying, lots of people died and there's a, there's, you know, a lot of debate about the numbers. And we can talk about that. But, you know, I, as somebody who reported the aftermath and walked through villages, I saw people dying and fam, talked to bereave families of kids who had died. And that's just, is ludicrous

to propose that nobody died as a consequence. Yeah, it is. I want to ask you about that reporting.

“Yeah, I think all, all total, like 83% of USAID programs are canceled, 94% of the staff were”

laid off. Some were rehired by the State Department, but that was after a long independent process. So, the suggestion that, you know, they destroyed it. They fed into the woodchipper. Exactly what Elon said. That's right. And so, I want to start with this, some of the specific examples you

just mentioned, and then ask you about the broader long-term impact of the cuts. Let's first

questions about it. But many, many times over with USAID and other organizations, when they said,

“oh, well, this is going to help, you know, children or it's going to help some disease eradication,”

or something like that. And then when we ask for any evidence whatsoever, I say, well, please connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about their issue. We get nothing. We don't, well, they're even tried to prevent show, come up with a, with a show often, meaning like this sort of like, well, can we at least see a few kids, like where are they, if they're in trouble, we'd like to talk to them and talk to their caregivers.

And then we get things as a response because it's, what we find is a normal amount of,

of fraud and graph. A show orphan, that's a term he used. So Elon is a repeatedly made claims more recently, like, quote, they cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the millions, they falsely claim that died, not a single name. You responded to him on Twitter with evidence, you saw with your own eyes from your reporting trips to places like South Sudan,

“Uganda, the list goes on. Can you tell us about those trips and what you saw?”

Yeah, so I traveled to South Sudan, for example, and found kids who had died very early on because they were HIV positive. They had been kept alive by the pet far program,

that President Bush had started in 2003, that it saved 26 million live so far. And I think that

Musk and Trump did intend to keep much of those HIV AIDS programs alive, but they fired the health workers who had been the connector between the system and the kids who were receiving these often AIDS orphans who were receiving the benefits. And so if you've got a, you know, eight-year-old kid, for example, who is on ARVs to prevent AIDS and, you know, how is that kid possibly going to navigate the system to manage to get those medicines? And so, you know, one boy called Peter Donde

died, another Evan Anzu died. There were a number of, you know, these kids who had died that health workers told me about. Then in Liberia, for example, you know, dropped in one village in a childhood, just died of malaria because the malaria medications, they had been supplied, in some

“case, supported by the US, but maybe more important. The US had supported the pipeline, the transported”

them from the warehouses in the capital to the individual clinics and without that pipeline, all of a sudden, you know, things collapsed. And if this had happened over time, if the US had said, "Look, a year from now, we're going to stop that pipeline," you know, you've gone to might have been able to adjust, but it happened right in the middle of a fiscal year. And there was no time to make these adjustments, so that little child died. A woman that Yama Freeman, mother of

two, she, in another village in Uganda, she was in labor, she was hemorrhaging, and the US had provided ambulances precisely to reduce maternal mortality in an area that had very high levels of it. And those ambulances remained there, but Dose cut the fuel, the diesel that had gone to power those ambulances. And so when Yama Freeman was hemorrhaging, the villagers called the ambulance and said, "You know, this woman is dying," and they said, "Well, you know, send some fuel over

and we will come and rescue her," but of course, they can't do that. A bunch of the strong men in the village put her in a hammock, put her on their shoulders, and they raced down this path toward the hospital. I'm no shouting encouragement or her. But she led to death on the way, and, you know, that would not have happened if, you know, for the cost of just maintaining diesel to ambulances we had already provided. And I could go, you know, on and on and on and when you go through

these village, it's a little girl called Jibyad. You know, everything went wrong in her case. The US had provided bednets to prevent mosquito bites in malaria, bednets cost $2. It's incredibly cost effective. So Jibyad's family, their bednet, had holes. They couldn't get a new bednet. She got malaria. Normally, there would be a community health worker who would connect her to the system, get her medication. The community health workers had been fired. The clinic

no longer had had anti-malarie medicine. She got very, very sick and needed to be rushed to the

she was almost dead. And she died shortly after, you know, a fourth grade girl ranking number three in her very large class dead because of the reckless way in which Musk took apart aid. Yeah, I mean, the reporting, it folks should read all of your reporting on this. I mean, it's got wrenching. You know, you're talking to kids, caregivers. You care givers who have HIV who will die because they will no longer get access to the drugs they need. And, you know, when you see Musk,

it's hard sometimes to determine whether this is malevolence or ignorance. I also interviewed a former USAID staffer turned whistleblower named Nicholas Enrich. He wrote a book called Into the Woodchipper about his experience at USAID. And he talks about finally getting to brief the sort of Trump administration officials were sent over to USAID as part of this leadership team about the work

“they've been doing. I think you got like five minutes. He focused on public health. And one of the”

Trump staffers said to him, wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew. This is the

story that needs to get out there. And then another said, I had no idea you did all this as a Republican when I think of what USAID doesn't global health. I assumed it was just, you know, abortion. So it's like profound ignorance and lack of interest. And then the other part of Musk Defense is like, well, if all these people died, if all these kids died, it would be a huge story. It would be front page news, which like the suggestion that mass death in Africa is necessarily a

huge story in the US media just demonstrates such a profound ignorance of how the press works in the US that it's kind of, it's hard to wrap your your head around that. This is like one of the world's smartest men. You just, does he really think this? Yeah, you know, I've, I've wondered about Musk's motivations. And you know, he had been so successful in the business world by disrupting things and blowing it up. And, you know, SpaceX succeeded in a way that Boeing and Lockheed did not.

And he made mistakes along the way, but then he was able to correct them. But when you're dealing with an aid agency, when you make mistakes, then the result is dead kids. And the result is Ebola.

“Now, in Congo, raging out of control. And I think that that kind of recklessness was paired with”

a lack of empathy, a lack of an indifference to to kids on a different continent. And that combination of recklessness and indifference has just been enormously lethal. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned a bull as the Democratic Republic of Congo has had this horrible, a bull outbreak. I think there's been 1,200 plus cases well over 300 deaths. How do you think the USAID's absence and the actions of

the Trump administration have made that crisis worse? So, with Ebola, the most important thing you

can do is get an early warning, just tackle it immediately when they're just a few cases on the ground. So, this began in Italy and northeastern Congo. It's an area that I've traveled through. It's a difficult area to work in because there is conflict there. But the US did have had previously funded a lot of work in eastern Congo and had a network on the ground. But that was all defunded. And so, all of a sudden, doctors or nurses are not staffing local clinics to the same degree.

They're off-growing their cassava. And then even if they find something, they're no longer reporting to NGOs which are reporting to the US. And so, the Ebola outbreak happened and grew before anybody was there to blow the whistle. And it was also, it was a different species of the virus. So, it was harder to know vaccine for this version. So, this would have been a challenge. But everybody there in the ground tells me that unmistakably it would have been caught earlier

than it was. And that there are many more cases as a result, which means it's harder to contact trace and it's harder to contain it. So, let's zoom out a bit. So, there have been efforts to track the total impact of the USAID cuts in terms of mortality. There's some researchers at

“Boston University who created a tracker. I think they estimated that over 780,000 people have died.”

As a result of those cuts, the medical journal, the Lansit published a study,

estimating that 9.4 million additional deaths could occur by 2030.

Could you help us give us your sense of how you make sense of these studies because including their limitations? Because it is challenging to project the impact of USAID cuts into the future. But I'm curious what you make of the methodology, how accurate these claims are,

programs? I think the methodology is actually reasonably sound, but that we have to be very

skeptical of these numbers because we don't have good mortality data. And one of the things that it cuts did is it also decimated the data collection process. So, that makes it harder to actually figure out the impact. Early on in my reporting in Africa, I thought that some of these numbers were exaggerated because local health systems had actually managed to reallocate money in ways that somewhat softened the blow. And also, people have reserves. They don't

die immediately. So, I'm getting ARVs and it's not that you drop dead right away.

But over time, it seemed to me that mortality was increasing precisely for that reason. It was

catching up with people. If they're malnourished and also get malaria, then they're more likely

“to die. And so, I think that mortality, for example, is going to be higher as a consequence of the”

USAID demolition in 2026 that was in 2025 because it is to some degree, you know, cumulative. And so, I think we should be very wary of the numbers, but the kind of general order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands of deaths a year, I think is fundamentally right. But the exact toll is going to be, I think, a no-able until we resume data collection. Yeah. You mentioned this example in Congo, a minute ago, you know, these sort of like front

line workers who went from, you know, warning USAID about Ebola outbreaks to farming, essentially, right? So that we kind of lost this global health infrastructure in a lot of places. I'm curious how hard you think it will be to build that back because we got a bunch of Democrats who are going to run for president in 2028. Hopefully one of them wins. Hopefully that individual

“will want to build back USAID. But I think you've seen the good parts of USAID, you've also seen”

the programs that don't work as well. I'm curious what you think of how to build it back and what reforms, you know, could or should be implemented. So one of the astonishing things about this is that humanitarian aid is actually pretty popular among Republicans and Democrats alike. And the Rockefeller Foundation just did some polling about this. And Americans think that about 20% of the federal budget goes to this kind of foreign assistance. In fact, it traditionally was

about 1%. It's, you know, it's a 20, it's 22 cents of every hundred dollars of national income in the US that is going to this kind of aid. And so I, you know, I certainly hope that Democrats will try to revive it. I don't think that it was a fatal decision to move it to the state department.

You know, there are, I mean, there are arguments either way moving things is always a little chaotic,

“but I think one could reasonably keep it in the state department, but it has to have support within”

the state department, and it has to have funding. I do think that periodically Democrats and Republicans alike have invested in, you know, projects that are a little on the ideological side and Democrats tended to invest in women's empowerment programs that sometimes were well-grounded, but sometimes were kind of touching feeling. It wasn't obvious that they had good evidence behind them. Meanwhile, Republicans invested in abstinence only programs that did not seem to

help fight HIV/AIDS, for example. So, you know, I think a starting point is to really look at evidence-based programs that have randomized control trials behind them, given the limitations on resources, make sure that you're investing in the places that need it most, and in the programs that need it most, you know, Sudan and Sudan as the world's worst humanitarian crisis right now. Yes, desperately needs assistance, and it's not getting it. Somalia is a catastrophe right now,

and likewise, it's not getting it. I mean, it's one of the problems with the Trump assistance that it's being, it's now dished out in a sense, in exchange for other benefits. So, okay,

So, I, boy, I mean, I, I hope it'll be revived, and then we can turn that trajectory,

“some of these doctors and nurses can, you know, move from, to solve the farming,”

back to saving lives, and it will all be better off if they do that. Yeah, I hope there's a widespread commitment among all the Democrats running in 2028. In Republicans, too, by the way, to restore a lot of this funding, especially the life-saving humanitarian aid to starving people in places like Sudan. That also has to be coupled with a commitment, by the way, to go after bad actors like the United Arab Emirates who are helping feeding the conflict in Sudan.

Well, the list gets on the line, but you know, it's just, it's just so obvious to me that

we can help avoid future conflicts if we take care of people in some of these places. And instead,

President Trump took all the savings he might have gotten from Doge and put it into a catastrophic war with Iran. So, don't we all feel safer because of that? Yeah, I mean, you know, we'll spend far, far more on the Iran war than we were ever spending on these life-saving programs. And, you know, one of the things I hear a lot on X's that look, you know, it's not our job to save all these people that we can't do everything. And we can't do everything. But if any of us

were next to a woman in an ambulance that had run out of gas and she was hemorrhaging and dying in that ambulance for one of 10 bucks worth of gas, of course we would reach into our pockets and help. And, you know, this is the chance for the country to do that in ways that advance American interests as well as American values. And we have failed on that because of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

“Yeah, and, and relatedly, I think, of course, if, you know, if I were to see someone like Elon”

Musk or anyone else take medicine, life-saving medicine away from a child and then that child died, then of course they deserve to be blamed for the outcome of that move in that decision.

Finally, I just wanted to ask you about a separate piece you wrote back in May about what you

call they quote, "pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women, and even children by soldiers, settlers, interrogators, and the shin-bat internal security agency and above all prison guards." This is a really, you know, a deeply reported piece that was met with fierce pushback from Israeli Prime Minister Bebine and Yahoo, these really foreign ministry called it, quote, "one of the worst blood libel's ever to appear in the modern press."

I think they have threatened legal action. I just want to give you one, could describe sort of how you reported out that piece and what your reaction was to the reaction and the pushback from Israel. Yeah, given the threat of legal action, which Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised, I shouldn't say much, but let me say that this actually, the roots of this came two years ago, when I was speaking to a piece activist in a Palestinian in the West Bank who had been

arrested and told me that he had been sexually assaulted by his jailers, and he told me this was he thought, you know, quite widespread, but because of shame, people didn't talk about it. And so

“that's what sort of seated the idea, and I began to ask around, and then this year I took that on”

seriously. And I wasn't sure it would be possible to report that people would be willing to talk about rape and assault, but it turns out that if you ask the question and spread the networks, then people will have found 14 people, 14 different people who independently unaware of each other, told me about having been sexually assaulted. And, you know, that pattern in prisons, by settlers, by shin that it, I think it's what happens when you get a combination of dehumanization

of Palestinians and anger at them and complete impunity in the in the prison process. And, you know, I wish the, I knew that there would be a very harsh reaction, of course, I expected that we, it's one reason why we fact-checked it out the gazoo, but it was certainly more hostile than I had expected. And I just wish that the response were more long lines of, well, let's investigate and prove Christophe Rahm. Yeah, let's let the red cross in and talk to these prisoners. Let's

let lawyers back in to the prison system. And, you know, so far there hasn't been much inclination to do that. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately Netanyahu has one speed, right, which is a tack, demagogue, you know, deflect from whatever responsibility. I'm with you that I wish the

There is, you know, we've all seen video evidence of Israeli prison guards, you know,

“allegedly raping a Palestinian prison rights, so this should not have surprised anyone,”

even though the reporting that what you reported was shocking should shock the conscience.

So, well, this, and thank you so much, Netanyahu, for doing the show today. It's not easy to

get to South Sudan. It's not easy to get to the places you're reporting from. It takes a lot of time,

“and money, and you do it at personal risks to yourself, and to the people who travel with you. So,”

we're very grateful to you for the work you're doing, and thanks for joining the show.

Thanks for shining your light on this topic. Thanks again, a Nick Christophe for joining the show. And, uh, talk to you guys next week. Positive world is a cooking media production.

“Our show is produced by Elona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Bonerci. Our team includes”

Matt Degrope and Hethcote, Jordan Canter, Kimima Fit, David Toll's, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proud of the unionized, with the writer-skilled of America East. The "What a Day" podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know the five days a week. I, Jane Coston, bring you the need to know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today in tomorrow. Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world,

on the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time that it takes to roast a chicken. And now, what a day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what a day. Now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.