Keir Starmer’s Last Stand?

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“Welcome back to Potsay of the world I'm Tommy Tutor.”

I'm Ben Rutt. Dan congrats on your New York Knickerbockers. It's unreal to me. This is the best that they've played in my entire life. Usually when they're good, it is still agonizing.

I don't know what it feels like to have your team just like pace to shit out of everybody they play. This is a crush and be fun and cool and have our fans take over Philadelphia. Youngsing manga people? Yeah, it was, it was, you know, it was, let's put it this way like a four game destruction of Philadelphia. It was more fun than what would have been probably an agonizing, next Celtic series for six or seven games.

It would have been tough. I've been similar out there to eat in a way, so bang, twin towers. A lot of tweets are going to take a couple different ways. Yeah, well, you know, still there's, like I said, he's just living my text read online. Does he sit on the wood?

Is he sit like a corset? He's the courts idea. That's awesome. What do you think those cost? I got to go.

We're on the wood. Yes. That's for the first time this year.

“And it's weird because you look kind of look down this row and there's like,”

Spike Lee. Shell man. Ben still there. Shell man wasn't there that day. Tracy Morgan.

And it's, you know, I, I actually like our celebrities, like sometimes that's kind of nauseating, but like, Spike Lee come on. It means Spike's been going forever through thick and thin. He's a fan. He's a fan.

He's talk mostly. Yeah. Yeah. He's absolutely deserve to enjoy this. Shellime is prove it himself to be a real sports fan, teaming me a pretty cool guy.

I will say that they have the X players there, which is cool to see too. I won't name names, but one of them walked by me and the, the whiff of marijuana was like, one was powerful smells. I, I got like a contact eye on the court side, but it's good. That's good.

That's good. And then Jim Dolan is like, using AI facial recognition to kick out any critics. All right. Just to give a wreck here. Publicatory did find great about Dolan.

Dolan's the owner of the next thing. He literally, like, has his friggin security goons run around the stadium and chase people

that chant things critical of him.

He's that petty of a settlement. Monitors people in the bathroom. It's really creepy. That is really kind of palantyrous. That's very palantyrous.

Okay. Enough about the next congrats. I'm happy for you. We have a great, great show today. We're going to lead with something new.

We're going to talk about the recent elections in the UK, which were a disaster for the labor party.

and allow leadership election.

“I will debate whether that's a good idea or not.”

Then we're going to walk you through the last disastrous week in the disastrous war with Iran. We've got abandoned missions. Ben, ceasefires on life support. We had ballooning economic consequences.

All of it. Then we watched Israeli Prime Minister BVDent Yahu's interview in 60 minutes. So that you don't have to. We're going to let you know about all the hard hitting questions from the new. And improved.

Very wise CBS. We'll put you Trump's trip to China. It's going to use actually things in there right now. He's going to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. We'll tell you what both sides.

One out of the visit. What it means for Iran. What it means for Taiwan. We'll talk a little bit about some jockying for the future of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. We'll bitch about coverage of Marco Rubio.

Because that's all we have left. We're just wine and little babies. Cry about stuff. And then we're going to tell you about cash but tell us recent testimony in the US. And then you did our interview.

I talked to Susie Hansen, who's a really great journalist. He's written for like the New York Times magazine among other places. She lived in Turkey for 10 years. And she wrote a book essentially about one neighborhood. But it's really about the transformation of Turkey under Type Erdogan.

Both inside of Turkey, but also this role. It's played in welcoming millions of Syrian refugees in the Arab Spring. And the rise of authoritarianism that Erdogan's been a part of. So it's both a conversation about Erdogan and Turkey. But also about understanding what's happened in the world through this place that all the trends converge in.

I mean, like, there's not one thing that hasn't happened in the world in the last 15 years. It hasn't run through Turkey. So it's a great conversation, great book. Cool. I was thinking about the day that there was that attempted coup.

We talked about that for fighter jets. Yeah. We were just UK man and we were still talking about it after the interview. Because I have so many questions. Thanks roll and down the street and then just disappeared.

And yet, Erdogan seemed to know about it. But did he? It's like the face timing from his phone on the way. And the whole thing was very strange.

Finally, after that, our friends of the pod subscribers will hear Ben and I take some questions from the friend of the pod.

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So, all right, Ben. Let's talk with, let's leave with the UK. Because we've been doing a run stuff for like too much straight now. There've been some major political machinations in the UK. Okay.

Prime Minister Keerstarmor is 10 years prime minister. Could be over soon or not. We just don't know yet. The backstory here is that last week there were local elections in England. And elections to the Scottish and Welsh Parliament.

These were not elections to Parliament itself. It was not like directly impacting a stormer standing. But these council elections are seen as bellwethers to assess the political mood in the UK. And the mood is pissed. Photers are pissed.

The results were really, really bad for the Labor Party. The Labor One and historic landslide in 2024. But in the selection, just two years later, Labor lost 1,400 council seats. So, it's just a drumming. And Labor lost votes from both directions.

They lost to the Greens and they left. They lost a reform weekend. They're right. Now reform is the right wing xenophobic party run by Nigel Farage. The cameo star Nigel Farage.

So reform, they made big gains in England to reform also did really well in Wales in Scotland. In Wales, the Welsh National is party.

One of the most seats, but reform came in second in Labor and the Tories lost ground.

This came after Labor was literally the leading party in Wales for 100 years over 100 years. And then in Scotland, the SNP of the Scottish National Party. They're going to stay in control of Parliament. And Labor had its worst ever result in Scotland. It is now tied with reform.

The Greens also did quite well in Scotland. So, what does it all mean?

“I think first, we're seeing the total collapse of the traditional two-party system.”

And it's really becoming a five-party system. You've got Labor in the Tories cratering. The Lib Dems are doing better. The Greens reform UK. They're getting ground.

And then in Scotland and Wales, you also have like nationalists local parties. Second, you have voters just furious about the cost of living in a bunch of economic issues. And Labor has not made their lives better. They're getting punished for it. And there's lots of reports that Labor campaigners were on the doors.

And they were talking to voters, and the voters were like, "We hate Care Starmer." Like visceral hate for that man, which is interesting.

On Monday, he gave it a defiant speech, taking responsibility for the loss,

but rejecting calls for resign. Let's listen to a bit of that. The election results last week. What tough? Very tough.

“We lost some brilliant Labor representatives.”

That hurts. And it should hurt. I get it. I feel it. And I take responsibility.

We are not just facing dangerous times. But dangerous opponents. Very dangerous opponents. This hurts not just because Labor has done badly. But because if we don't get this right, our country will go down.

A very dark path. It seems like he's not feeling emotions. I was just saying, yeah. So Tuesday, he also had the cabinet meeting. He was again defying.

He told his team, he's not going anywhere. But it's not entirely up to him. There are reports that more than 90 Labor MPs want Starmer to step aside. That includes four ministers in his government. But crucially, Ben, no alternative candidate has gotten the support of 81 sitting

“Labor MPs, which is what you need to formally challenge Starmer and trick or leadership”

election. So Ben, I'll pause there. Your thoughts on these results. And then after that, you want to make the case that it's time for a cure Starmer to step aside.

And I'll make the Starmer should stay case. Yeah. Strong end, just for fun. Yeah. Yeah.

I would definitely tell them the direction I'm going to argue for. Look, the problem here is that Labor won this massive majority in large part because the Tories had self-imulated as we covered meticulously on this podcast. Over the course of a decade with Brexit and Liz Trust and all the chaos. Boris Johnson having COVID parties, all the rest of it.

And so they get this huge mandate and have done fuck all with it. Um, I mean, like, what was their program? Like what, what is giving? They got jobs for Jeffrey Epstein friends. Yeah.

What is care Starmer's, well, this is part of the problem. Is it their, their theory, Starmer's theory of the case was I got a purged Jeremy Corbyn, the left wing previously of Labor and all of his supporters. And move this party to the center to make it an acceptable alternative to the Tories and win.

And that worked.

But the problem is they had no program for when they won.

And this is a country that has an identity crisis. That has an identity crisis. That's after Brexit. This is a country that is desperately need of growth. This is a country that has xenophobic rising far right politics.

But desperately needs immigrants to sustain their care economy and their NHS. Um, so there's a lot of work to be done. And he's not offering any vision or any big ideas about what the UK is or what their economic future is. Um, and, and that's showing up in the polls, you know, and I know some of these, you know, one of my, uh, someone I know,

Payment on Assad actually won by 30 votes. But, you know, that 30 votes. It's tough, you know, and here I'll pivot to the case against Starmer. I know what he said, which is that we can't be as chaotic as the Tories and Change of Leaders, you know, in the Marigran.

Let me, let me have five years to have that my full mandate. The problem with that is he has not shown any other gear.

“You know, you know, when you see a politician, I mean, first of all, does he get it?”

No, he looks like he's reading talking points. He was told to say, I feel it. He did 10 speech perhaps where they said show passion. And he just can't really show motion or passion. He's like a well-meaning, perhaps guy, but like he doesn't.

But then beyond that, he hasn't shown that he has any new vision or any new program. It's all political positioning intact. And should I tack a little bit more to the right as they've done on immigration, which doesn't make sense because if you're anti-immigrant, you'll just vote for a form. Should I tack to the left and look, the green parties done a lot to differentiate

itself and actually stand on principle. That's why they're winning voters. I just don't think he knows what he wants to do is Prime Minister. Other than state Prime Minister. And there's a kind of, you know, this is kind of a younger Joe Biden vibe here, too.

I just want to stick around. And look, he's the guy that he's at office. Yep, boys, too. To be fair. But he's not wrong about reform UK being scary.

I mean, this is a xenophobic, far right party led by Nigel Farrah. She should be a punchline, not a Prime Minister. But precisely because of that threat, I just don't see him rehabilitating labor to be able to compete with Nigel Farrah. And so, and look, there's the biggest problem is there's not an alternative.

Part of the problem is not an alternative.

Who's a very popular mayor.

But who would have to come into the parliament to become Prime Minister. He was blocked from coming into parliament by Cure Sterner and his allies. And so they prevented there from being alternatives. Again, Ecos of the Democratic Party, we've done primers. And so, I just don't know that Cure Sterner showed us that he can govern any different than he already has.

And we see what the results are of how he governs. And I just therefore think that, and look, take some time. If you're not ready today to find an alternative, you know, figure out a timeline to find one. But if they're running three years from now into the next election with Cure Sterner,

I just think that's a recipe for disaster. So, let me, let me strum in the case for why Starmer should stay. Because I actually think it's, then we'll talk about our own personal views. I've fairly strong view, but it is, it's complicated. So, it's complicated.

So, the case for why Starmer should stay is, like I said at the top. Like this was not a landslide for reform or total wipeout for labor.

It was the political system really fracturing into this new reality of multi-party,

not just a two-party system.

“And I think we do adjust our expectations accordingly.”

Yes, Cure Sterner is unpopular. His polling is terrible. There's all these reports about, you know, visceral hatred of him on the doorsteps. But every single leader in Europe is unpopular now, right? In April, you have did a big tracking poll.

Cure Sterner is 44 point underwater. French president in the middle of Macron is 49 point underwater. German chancellor Friedrich Merz is 52 points underwater. Even leaders, I think that you and I think of as more depth politically or less more. Interesting or struggling, like Georgia, Maloney is negative 22, her approval.

Pedro Sanchez is 21 points underwater. So, everyone's getting fucked. People are pissed everywhere. And then, again, like getting rid of Starmer is the easy part. Figuring out who comes next is much harder.

Have you heard of Westreading Angela Rainer or Andy Burnham? Me neither. And those are the leading candidates to replace the sky, right? And like, if Westreading wants to run, he needs to man up and do it. No one's man up yet.

“And so, to your point, Ben, like about Starmer and his, what do you want to do with the job?”

I don't get the sense for anybody really what they want to do within labor. Like, it's not about who comes next is about what comes next. Like, what are you going to do with the mandate? And like, no one's laying out in alternative vision. I know that's complicated when you're still in government.

But no one's done it yet. And then, in that speech, we didn't play all of it. But like, Starmer did try to lay out a bit of a path forward. He has, like, more direct intervention in the economy. Talks about, like, nationalizing steel plants, more partnership with the U.

He takes a more head on fight with Nigel Farage. He blames the Iran war for a lot of his troubles. So we're going to wish, you know. But one thing this will do is, it will mean that Starmer helps Nigel Farage. Deliver on his big election promise.

Let's watch a clip of Farage ranting away after the election that already happened about the result. We thought this election campaign on a big national slogan. You might remember it. It said vote reform.

And it's all around.

“And I tell you what, he'll be gone, but the middle of the summer.”

The most unpatriotic worst least prepared prime minister. We've ever seen in this country, and we will have seen the back of him. We are directly taking votes from patriotic old Labour in areas that, frankly, they've been pretty much able to take the granted since the end of World War One. It all goes to show that over the course of the last two years.

Since we made that breakthrough in the general election,

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We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate. We've done it at a very fast rate.

“We get that. They guarantee no weapons for a very long period of time.”

A couple of other minor things, but they just can't get that. They think that, well, I'll get tired of this. So I'll get bored or I'll have some pressure. There's no pressure at all. I love that, like, this sir construct for a story that he's totally making.

I'm supporting now. And now is how the doctor talks to you. You're like, you are with a mom. Some random people have to stand there all the time. There's one lady been who literally someone told her to smile.

She did this the whole time. Anyway, things are going good. Things are going great.

First of all, I'm just going to keep going back to this as we have to.

Because our media doesn't do it either. This is why we have to support independent progressive media. Thank you sir. The same things, like, well, they're already defeated. At what? Like soccer?

Like the regime is in place. They have all the nuclear material. They control the straight-up from movies. They're not defeated. Like, let's just, like, not even let him just keep saying something that isn't true. Because he wants to repeat it until it becomes true.

The fact that the Iranians aren't even offering the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal terms, shows you that they believe that they have all this leverage. Like, they control the straight-up from movies. They've got, and when the way he talks about,

I can wait here all day. Well, no board. I don't care what other board it all.

“Person outside is paying fucking $7 a gallon for gas, right?”

I've got to the people in the UK who have shortages. Are the people in South Korea who have shortages or people in Bangladesh who, you know, have to ration energy. Like, everybody is suffering. And Donald Trump's is sitting there on his fat ass,

being like, "Oh, I got all the time in the world." Well, and then he acts like-- She's asked about his red line for negotiations. He's like, "I don't know where to think about it on the flight to China."

Yeah, and here's the thing.

I've often, again, they will, they will be willing to ship that stock pile out. Because they know that's not their nuclear program. That's just the product of the nuclear program. And so I just don't get why these--

You know, he needs in the war. He needs to show he got something. I just don't get why he doesn't make a deal where it's like, they're going to open the Strait of Hormuz and they're going to ship out their stock pile

and they're going to get some sanctions to leave in a bunch of money. Because that's how this thing ends. And otherwise, it's like a frozen conflict. But it's a frozen conflict where the strain for a moose coast,

“you know, and the global economy will collapse”

within a matter of months, if that's case. The cost is unbelievable. The Pentagon says the direct cost is 29 billion dollars. Now, double that, right? They asked for 200 billion dollars.

The real numbers weigh more. Oil prices are still way up. So JP Morgan said it's analysts think that the oil prices will remain over $100 a barrel through this year. That's bad.

A Brown University study found that as of last week,

American consumers had paid an extra $35 billion

in gas and diesel costs. And so we're began. That's about $268 per household. Jet fuel prices are up 70 percent. Fertilizer prices are up 30 percent.

By the way, us in California, we get especially screwed. Yes. These were more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than other states. And then the financial times

was looking at the total cost of the war. And they found that a reasonable estimate based on the Fed's own models is that the war is going to cost the economy. It's $200 billion in a loss of a million jobs in the US

for a bunch of factors, including interest rates. And the Fed's monthly gauge of global supply chain pressures is now at the highest level since the pandemic. So like everything, the economy is like feeling like a balloon and something is going to pop very soon.

And he's just like, "I'm not bored, I don't care." That's the thing. And because everybody can feel it, right? So there's already this discordance between the quote-unquote markets and the lived reality of everybody

that has to pay for anything on earth

And I guess he thinks that when the bubble burst he'll just blame Barack Obama or Joe Biden or something. But like this is one where everybody knows that things were one way and then this war happened in another way.

“And I think it's going to take the rest of the world.”

You know, Xi Jinping and the next couple days, all these Europeans, they're going to have to go to Trump and be like, "Look, man." And the Iranians for that matter and just be like, just take the minimalist deal you're going to agree to. Trump, his willingness to spin anything

should allow him to just get the hell out of this thing. I mean, he's going to say he defeated them anyway. His morons who watch Fox all day and listen to like Mark Levin will swallow that 70% in the country. Well, I think this is a mistake.

They already think it's a mistake. And the right wingers, the FDD think tanks and stuff, like they'll hate it. But eventually they'll shut up. Like the Hugh Hewitts, you know, because they're actually

disobeyed in propaganda. They will hate this deal. They're saying as much. But yes, I think that's where he's going to end up. And also, and there's been all these reports

about the way the war is kind of metastasizing and spreading across the Middle East. So the Wall Street Journal reported that the United Arab Emirates, UAE had been carrying out military strikes on Iran directly. They were a direct combat in the war.

They had a refinery back in April, for example. They had been targeted by, you know, 20, 100 vessels and drones from Iran. So it was a response to that. But still, we didn't know that.

There was also a Waders report today that Saudi Arabia carried out a bunch of secret air strikes during the war, too. So again, this wasn't just the US and Israel. It was a bunch of countries bombing Iran. And then the journal had this wild story about how

Israel built a base in the middle of the Iraqi desert to support the military operation in Iran.

“And then I think it was like search and rescue,”

and some sort of air force logistics. Then the story says at a one point the Iraqi military tried to investigate what was going on there, because I'm like, you know, she purter tip them off to it. And the idea fired on them a couple of times

and killed two Iraqi soldiers. And like just nobody said that. What is their basis for being there? It's not their territory. Like I think that's even beyond Mike Huckabee's definition of Israel,

which ends somewhere around the Euphrates in Kansas. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, look, first of all on the regional side,

we just, again, we have no idea. The damage it's been done to our bases, to our facilities, to these Gulf countries. We, you know, people still can't like post pictures of Dubai. The Emirates are the biggest losers.

I don't know, there are a lot of losers. But they're one of the biggest losers in this war. First, they threw all their chips in with the Abraham Accords, with Israel, with this idea that we're, you know, former United Front and stand up to the Iranians.

And here they are. They just got, you know, showered with drones. And they're Dubai model got wrecked. And, you know, they're carrying out air strikes. And, and look, if you're feeling sorry for them,

they fund the RSF and Sudan that is, like, committing war crimes on a regular basis. But, but all this is going to, I'm very interested to see how the backstory of all these things comes out in addition to the damage assessments.

Yeah. One thing in particular, that base in Iraq clearly seemed tied and it was reported to the Kurds, right, to the idea that these rallies wanted to use the Iranian and Iraqi Kurds to be a ground force to do things inside of Iran.

“I think what probably happened there is,”

you know, the Kurds have partnered with Israel in the past some Kurds, not all Kurds. And they were probably waiting to see, like, okay, can Iran take this punch. We kill the supreme leader and drop all these bombs

and the regime loan behold is not always still standing.

They're capable of closing straightaway moves. And it seems like the Kurds are like, thanks, but no thanks. We're not, like, going to war against the regime. I think the Kurdish play was,

if the regime collapses, you know, maybe, well, or the regime is, like, literally on its last legs, maybe we'll get involved here. But it should be pointed out that failed. Like, these really pitch as reported in the New York Times,

in the situation where it was, the Kurds are going to rise up. There's going to be all these ground forces on our side. It rest of Polavi, the sun of the Shazan come in. None of those things happened. And we never hold BBN in now accountable.

Not just for the fact that he convinced Trump to do this stupid fucking thing, but that his analysis, he was either lying, or he was completely wrong that the regime would fall, that the Kurds would rise up, that the Iranians would rise up, that Resa Polavi was somehow a credible leader of Iran.

Do you see Trump directly bitching about the Kurds? He was like, we gave them weapons, and they just stole them, and they didn't do it. He was complaining about it. That's a covert action for him.

And it sits bull, first of all, like,

it sits bull, the Kurds have done so much. You know, they were the ground force against ISIS for the United States, and the Obama years and under Trump.

like this idea that they're obligated to be our fight our wars.

To fight all of our wars, and they never get what they want,

which is a state. And for reasons that I can understand, given the complexity of that, but why would they fucking fight our war? It's crazy. It's also him just like crying about a clear,

like covert action program in a whole lot of this press. It's funny. Also, the New York Times is posted a piece. It's a new, like, leaked assessment of the impact of the war in Iran.

Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the street of war moves. But Pete Hegs had told me that there was a strike, which could threaten America's budget.

And so did Dan King. And oil tankers. Iran still feels about 70% of its mobile launchers across the country,

and it has retained roughly 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile.

That is bad news. So they got a lot. A lot of kit left to fire at us in a lot of ways to do it. Also, Ben, do you see that DOD wants to apparently rename their run-war operations sledgehammer if it restarts?

And they're thinking that that means they get to restart the 60 day war powers box. So they can just do another end-ground around Congress by giving it a new name.

“Well, that's what little Marko is doing.”

When he's, like, epic theory's over. I mean, they think that a war is like the name that you give to something and not to be paid for. I mean, I would argue that we've been at war with Iran since at least the so-called 12 day war.

1947 was the Tom Cotton timeline. That was crazy. But I mean, remember the 12 day war? Like, this is all been one war.

I mean, that's the point.

These guys count on our attention spans being so destroyed by social media and technology that we like forget that we're still in a war or something. Because as a new name, what do we children? I mean, just rebranding. It's like a restaurant that closed down to reopen in the same spot

in LA every six months. Which is the new name. My favorite talk-up place in Venice, Teddy's Red Talkers. It suddenly was different, different name. And I was terrified, but the menu is exactly the same.

Kind of like they run more except the talkers are good. Same to the same spot. I already mentioned that Yahoo, Trump, the IRGC, they're not the only arsonist in this conflict. It's been in Yahoo. He was on CBS's 60 minutes over the weekend.

As Netanyahu watchers know, Netanyahu avoids speaking with his really journalists because they are actually knowledgeable about all of his failings and failures and ask him about them. And so he instead wanders his message through the US media who tend to be softer than a baby skin and easily manipulated by him.

And unfortunately, the new and improved 60 minutes under Barry Weiss's leadership was no exception. I want to play one example. There's just a no way to shit out of me, Ben. Then we'll talk about some more substance stuff.

So this is CBS's major Garrett. Who, by the way, is a nice guy. He's a good reporter. Not knocking him as a human, but this was not his finest hour or finest interview. I don't think. And it sounds like Weiss steered the interview to him as opposed to Leslie Saul.

It probably would have been a little rougher. But by the way, major, as you know, is capable of asking tough questions. So that tells you a lot about Barry Weiss's leadership. To give major, even further past, although I would prefer people to go on with Barry Weiss, like I've seen major Garrett do tough interview.

Be artists. So this is probably a direction from on that. Yeah, that's very weird. So here's a question. You've part of a question he asked about Israeli intelligence that I thought was instructive.

Mr Prime Minister, the capabilities of Israeli intelligence within Iran would you to pinpoint the location of supreme leader and others. That is a kind of granular intelligence that is borderline miraculous in the modern world.

“Why wasn't it sufficient to also ferment a revolution?”

So Ben, the -- He was in his office. He was in his office. He was in his office. It was on his house.

He was working above ground. The home office. On his own house. So that would be a mere miraculous intelligence to bomb the White House to kill Trump or drone, you know, the Gold Gym in Venice to take out RFK Junior.

The heavy breathing was good. Mr Prime Minister. The granular intelligence is so remarkable. It's like bomb in the pool room. It's like a cash potential.

You're not watching fucking Munich here. It's crazy. We're talking about a guy in 86-girl man who's killed in his house. It's crazy. And look, this is a bigger deal.

I mean, then I know that it gets online attention, but I mean, you know, that doesn't count for anything these days. I mean, this is 60 minutes. This is CBS News.

“This is, like, literally, like, the catalogue of American journalism, right?”

And it gets purchased by David Ellison, who's kind of qualification for running anything. Is it his father's Larry Ellison, and you went to like USC Film School, and wants to play with the movies.

And they're super proesural and super pro Trump.

who's only qualification is running a blog where she tells rich billionaires

“that their wonderful Israel's wonderful and DI's bad.”

And essentially the fields you get when you watch Bill Mar are all right. And we're going to bring those feelings over to CBS News. And then you have the Prime Minister of a country that literally convinced the President of the United States to do the dumbest things since the Iraq War

and launching an attack on a country. None of the things that Netanyahu said were going to happen happened. We're in an economic catastrophe. Major Garrett and CBS News's own viewers are like not being able to afford their gas. And he's sitting on there like blowing smoke up BB's butt

about how wonderful and granular the intelligence is. What is going on here? This is our job. This is Putin level propaganda. And also CBS didn't ask about Netanyahu's responsibility for October 7 until an hour and seven minutes into the conversation.

It feels like that'd be something that'd be front center. And then he just brushed it off. There was lots of talk about Hamas violating the ceasefire in Gaza. There was none. No conversation about our questions about Israel violating the ceasefire

as far as I could tell. You had Netanyahu vomiting out the same talking points about all the ways the IDF avoids civilian casualties and text people. All the same shit we heard two years ago.

And then we watched 70,000 people get slaughtered. And it's just demonstrably false. And you didn't get pushed on any of it. And also Trump sued CBS right for editing out a 60 minutes interview like a Kamala Harris answer.

CBS cut from the broadcast version. Netanyahu was saying, we'll play this clip in a minute. He was asked about social media. And you know, in BB claims social media for all of Israel's woes.

And he said, basically he says, like, we're not going to fight the battle

on social media. But that guy cut out. And I wonder why. They also cut Netanyahu saying that Americans turning against Israel also hate America again.

Like why? It seems like those are things that are relevant for American viewers. And so like the whole thing, you're right, it's frustrating because the debate, like the Barry Weiss's bad Twitter debate is like kind of boring and reductive.

And like I'm not interested in it. But like I do think like when there's a products like this that shows the fruits of that labor. It's worth kind of like highlighting. That's the point.

The harm it did to us as viewers. We're trying to get information. It's much bigger than just the kind of Barry Weiss discourse. Because it's about the fact that the premium brand in American journalism, 60 minutes, like when it comes to Israel,

it's like it makes RT look like a hearted and news source. You know, it is in the problem with it is that it's not like there's a significant market for this. Like the problem, I mean, to be specific and complaint here, is they constantly come back to this idea that social media is bad

“and that's why people are turning against Israel.”

No, it's what people are seeing on social media. Right. There's another story. Nick Christoff had a powerful story in the time about the sexual assault of Palestinian prisoners.

One day, sir. And all these people are, you know, this is how rages. How could the times print this?

As if the problem is the story, not the underlying conduct,

the story is about. Well, there's some question about the veracity of some of the sourcing, but still like there's a lot of well-documented evidence of rape and sexual assault of Palestinians and Israeli persons. This is not the first coverage of this.

This is, I've been to this radio. What you have is, let's say there's a hundred instances, and this is not that story, but it's just a hypothetical. Let's say there are hundred instances of sexual assault. And 97 of them are true, but they find the three that have

some holes in the story and they're like, there's whole thing is liable. Or, you know, the, or the, you know, they go after, you know, sort of one of the victims who's, you know, does that. This cousin is in Hamas or something. I mean, but this, this major, Garrett thing,

if the Americans want to know, I had this long conversation with John Stuart today at his podcast, and we had pretty interesting conversation about why we keep doing these dumb things, and we talked about all the reasons, but one of the reasons why is that we don't have a media that tells us

the truth, you know, like, it, like, it makes it so much easier to give weapons to Israel or to go to war and Iran. If we don't have media, that will, like, 60 minutes viewers, those should, should be some of the more informed people in the country that can't be told the truth about what's happening.

Yep.

“For the, for the record, I think that Hamas raped and sexually assaulted victims”

on October 7th and that Palestinians are being raped and sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons, and both are true. And I, I wish there was, like, less attacking a reporter for talking about these things and more concern, like you said, about the other language.

So the first is Netanyahu saying basically it's time for

Israel to wean itself off of U.S. military support. Let's watch that. I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military, cooperation that we have.

We've come to age. We have a booming economy after three years of war. You know, our currency is as strong as it's ever been in the last 50 years, maybe more. We have a lot of talent here, which we share with our American friends

and we're going to share it with our Arab friends too.

“And I think that it's time that we weaned ourselves from the”

remaining military support and go from aid to partnership. And then let's listen to the clip of him blaming Israel's image problems that social media and then talk about both of them. The proportion of civilian casualties, non-combatants to combatants, is one of the lowest in the history of modern urban warfare.

So Israel has given a bum wrap. I'll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with the platforms, with fake addresses, to break the American sympathy to Israel, to break the American Israeli alliance

because they think it's in their interests. And they do it in a clever way. So that on the military support part, like I mean, first of all, I'll just I'll believe it when I see it. And also he sights like the $3.8 billion a year stat.

That's just the beginning of the support that U.S. provides Israel.

There's always supplemental funding requests and emergency,

I and dome transfers, et cetera. Then there's the direct support when the U.S. is literally shooting down missiles. How much did we just spend on that? Right. So again, I just don't believe.

“Ben Shapiro has been saying this kind of thing too.”

I just don't believe it. I'd like to see it happen. I just don't believe it's going to happen. And then the social media stuff, though, this is a it's delusional and worry some on a couple different levels. Like the suggestion is always that those of us who are worried

about civilian casualties or the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, were just stupid groups getting manipulated by algorithms who are not couldn't possibly just be like sincerely horrified by day after day of these horrifying images of like children suffering.

Yeah. Right. So there's like there's an eighth front in the war on fucking social media. Like, first of all, Israel is famously active on social media. Oh, yeah.

I've been on the receiving end of it. Yeah, there was reports that they're paying influencers like $7,000 to post positive stuff about Israel. Like, what what does this mean? It's kind of ominous.

I don't think social media is a war. Well, first of all on the military stuff. I mean, what that tells you is he's no,

“he's losing the political argument in the United States.”

But importantly, that ship is sales. They're not going to get further financing. Now, what they do is a couple of questions remain. One that you highlighted, which is whenever they're in a war, which is seemingly all the time.

They're these supplemental requests that APAC pushes hard. And so it's not in the ten-year memory of understanding where it's like they get a set amount every year. They've gotten way more than that in, you know, quote unquote emergency situations.

But beyond that, the debate is shifted so much that last week, or maybe two weeks ago, 40 Democratic senators voted against arms sales to Israel. This is the next front. The financing thing is over, I think.

And that he's just acknowledging that. You've got 40 Democrats, including everyone who might run for president, voting against even selling them weapons, which I think is the right position.

And just to highlight one of those systems that was being sold to these rallies was bulldozers. What do you need armor bulldozers for? You need armor bulldozers to technically cleanse southern Lebanon, or to demolish whatever remaining structure

exists in Gaza. Like that's where this is moving. And people should be aware that they're going to want to say, okay, fine, we don't need the financing. They're still going to be able to buy all the weapons.

The partnership is some real, uh, we's a link with you. What does that mean exactly? It means we sell them whatever they want. And the thing is if they're committing war crimes as they have, we shouldn't be selling them anything.

You shouldn't be providing weapons either financed by the American taxpayer or sold full stop. The social media thing is rich and ominous. It's rich because these rallies have done exactly what he says for a long time.

They've got troll farms. They've got paid influencers. They're not new to this game. They're not just people that we just use social media to post government statements.

And there's some other governments. I'm sure it's talking about like Qatar or something.

They always, you know, hype this.

I mean, if you have an Instagram account, you know that like most of the content you get related to Gaza is not like state sponsored. You can see that in a mile away. It's like somebody you know, like reposing a video.

And by the way, you don't even need to, to, to, to, to aggregate whether this or that video is accurate. You can look at just a picture of Gaza.

Right? It's completely flattened.

“Now, going forward, I think what is kind of worsen.”

It ties into the conversation. We just said about very wise because lo and behold, Larry Elson has also bought TikTok, right? And so that's where the fights are. I'm, I'm less worried about.

Sure. They can pay all the influencers they want. It doesn't really make a difference. Just look at Ben Shapiro's audience.

The problem is if they start to leverage their friends

who bought TikTok or, you know, you're not asking that. It seems pretty committed to his version of free speech. Which is, you know, kind of a cesspool. But, and start, manipulate now with them.

Start shadow banning accounts. Start censoring content. That's, I think, where this is going. And that's pretty scary. Yeah, that's just, that is the scary stuff.

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Alright, so let's talk about China's because of the censoring. Trump's on his way to China for his big summit meeting. He was supposed to go to Beijing and late March. The trip got delayed because Trump wanted to wrap up

the whole war with Iran thing. So glad we got that all handled. He arrives in Beijing Wednesday night. There's a welcome ceremony Thursday morning. There's a one-on-one the she.

There's a tour of the Temple of Heaven, which is just like an amazing Temple of Complex. The dates back to the Ming dynasty.

“I think it was built in like fourteen twenty.”

Then he attends a state banquet Thursday evening. Then he has tea and lunch with she again on Friday. And then he goes home. It's a lot of meetings. So let's just speculate on what they want out of this trip.

And so for Trump, first and foremost, he wants to feel like the biggest boy on the biggest stage and special in the Pop and Circumstance. Then I think he wants to trade deal or something to sell back home as having some sort of economic benefit.

Third, I'm sure he would enjoy some help re-opening the straight or homoos or getting Iran to chill out. We could talk about what that might entail.

And then fourth, I think we should just always assume

that there's a big fat corruption bucket sit there that we'll learn about down the road some day. Well, it's crypto or you know. Don't you just do some invested in Chinese? Yeah, Chinese drones.

Yeah, Chinese are a lot of companies. He is a down junior. For she, she's a paying. I would imagine he wants to get rid of US tariffs on stuff. He wants to show the world that he can manipulate Trump

I bet he'll try to ring some concessions at a Trump on Taiwan. Maybe try to get rid of some restrictions on AI chips. Who knows? So Trump on this trip is going to be flanked by a bunch of American CEOs. Elon Musk will be there.

Tim Cook will be there. Remember they almost briefed Elon Musk on the secret China war points. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good idea.

Great idea. Yeah. Here's Trump talking about the China trip from Monday in the old office. He's a great gentleman.

I find him to be an amazing, an amazing man.

And I want to say that the press ocean is out. That's terrible that he called him. And he runs one point four minute people with a pretty iron fist. He's a, he loves his country. I can tell you that President Xi, I look forward to being there.

And if he thought that anything, we wouldn't, we wouldn't be doing it. But a lot of good things can happen. No, we'll be talking about, I mean, you'll bring up Taiwan. I think more than I will. I have a great relationship with the President Xi.

We're doing a lot of business, but it's my business. We used to be taking advantage of for years. With our previous president. And so now we're doing great with China. We make a lot of money with China.

I have a great relationship with the President Xi.

“And I think you can see that with the fact that in harm moves, they get a big percentage.”

40% of their oil from harm moves. There's been no ships coming in, no nasty ships coming in. That we end up in skirmishes with. There's been. He'd like to see it get done.

He doesn't want to see. Look, I respect him a lot. And hopefully he respects me. He didn't respect our previous government. That I can tell you.

Oh, all those clips are from. The same women rolling out of moms.gov. He's for women. It's true. It's true.

It's true. It's true. It's true. It's true. I mean, this is completely insane.

What do you think? What's on the agenda for the meeting? Like what's the best case? You think? It's a accomplishment.

It's deliverable. Don Junior gets a robotics. Yeah. There's a deliverable for him. Here's what I would.

So first of all, there's a problem, which is normally these are huge summits.

They usually happen like every two years. You spend two or three days. You know, we use this for instance in the Obama to come up with a bilateral agreement on reducing carbon emissions. It became the Paris agreement.

You know, like we worked on that for a year. So first of all, the fact that there's a war in Iran and horror movies is still closed for business means that they're going to spend a big chunk of time just talking about that. And Trump is probably going to be asking the Chinese to pressure the Iranians to open the

straight and make a deal.

“Chinese, you need to pressure us to, you know, just bat the thing up.”

I was talking to a Iran expert friend of both of ours who suspects that the Taiwan conversation will be like, Mr. President, how do you expect me to help you with the Iranians and to not sell my good friends and Iran weapons when you're selling weapons to Taiwan and giving them all this help. China is very good at what about us.

And by the way, we get to do what you did to Iran and Taiwan. I think, and yeah, Trump may want, you know, I think for him a win is like, you know, they agreed to buy a bunch of the soybeans or something, right? You know, like he can just say, he loves these deals where it's like the Chinese said they're going to spend X amount of money on American products.

By the way, they're probably going to buy anyway or something, you know, and the Chinese looks tracks and says, or there's a lie about it. Or there's a lie about it. Everybody's done. I mean, I mean, if you add up the money, people claim that they're going to spend

and these photo ops trumpets like trillions of dollars in the middle of its year. I would use what I would be doing on Taiwan, what you want to do is you want to create like some diplomatic track that just kind of puts this thing on a back burner and like slow rules it. You know, I don't think Trump is deaf enough to do that.

The Chinese will say, don't sell the marms. We'll say, don't conduct military exercises. And most likely it's just going to be what it is. Well, interestingly, there's been some big headlines. Announcements of arm sales to Taiwan.

But I didn't realize that there are those have been very slow in getting delivered.

There's like a $20 billion backlog on the delivery of US arms to Taiwan.

So that's kind of the rub there if you're. Yeah. Well, and much notable about that is that the Congress votes for these things. And then the executive branch has to deliver them and they're probably slow rolling them to create positive atmospherics as she.

“In terms of what I think they should be doing and I'm not sure they're going to do is they”

should be talking about artificial intelligence because we are the two AI superpowers. We have all these frontier companies like anthropic and open AI and Microsoft Google, etc. They have their own AI models that like and here we should say this is actually kind of a.

The Chinese figured out how to build the technology anyway. Yeah, we slow that we didn't stop them.

“So whether who's ahead, you know, someone might be ahead by six months, it almost doesn't matter because Chinese have AI we have AI.”

In normal times, we would be sitting down and saying, let's negotiate some norms and some guardrails around this new technology before it's fully deployed out in the world. We want to make sure that nuclear weapons and command and control systems have human beings in the loop. We want to make sure that job displacement is cushioned by testing models. We have huge cybersecurity, you know, you saw this incident with mythos, the next generation of anthropics AI model that when they shared it with some of the customers was like nobody was ready to deal with this.

It could literally launch a cyber attack and shut down, you know, the power grid of the country, you know. Do you see the time sorry about how AI bots were telling these scientists how to make biological weapons? Exactly. You know, here's the recipe for biological weapons. Here's another pandemic strain, right? And so what should be happening is we should be getting off this idea that there's some like AI race like foot race and whoever wins gets the technology. No, everybody's going to get this technology.

We should be putting strict guardrails starting with nuclear biological and chemical weapons dealing with job displacement, dealing with cyber security risks. The Chinese aren't going to want to negotiate around just information or information operations, but that's part of this. I just don't think Trump's going to do that. If anything, he's gone the other direction. If Biden was building export controls, Trump is for whatever reason, probably some crop reason, is greasing the skids. So, Jensen Wong and in video can sell him and send me conductors to the Chinese.

So, the Chinese would love that. I'm sure what the Chinese are going to do is buy a bunch of chips, you know. So, I'd love to see how AI is dealt with out of this thing. It's just the idea of Trump sitting down for tea and like the forbidden city with Xi Jinping and having a good deep substantive conversation about AI. So, yeah. It's so impossible to imagine.

Yeah. It's like the test models and set guardrails. It's just not how Trump thinks.

Yeah, but it's what's the first person.

“I mean, it's what you should be talking about.”

For sure. No doubt. There's no doubt. Or human rights, remember that? Climate change?

Yeah, a few things. Okay, we got a couple more things. So, we'll get to those now. Obviously, next week we'll talk about how the trip actually went to these that we know. But first we're going to be petty for a second because there was an article in the Atlantic last week with the headline.

Is Marco Rubio the happiest cabinet member that we wanted to discuss here? So, this was almost entirely based off. This one press briefing Rubio did at the White House. It was like his only appearance at the White House briefing room since the war and Iran started. Here are some excerpts from that briefing.

I mean, the top people in that government are to say the least. You know, they're insane in the brain. I wish I knew your name. I think I thought it was malicious. Can you put a name tags on?

Can I ask you a Spanish shirt? Yeah, you can answer a Spanish shirt. You can ask me. Do I have to translate for them when you ask? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. Do I have to translate for them when you ask? I don't know. I don't know.

If you don't have a black-y up blue one. I'm colorblind. I know blue one. Yes, ma'am. No, no.

The first one I called on.

Thank you. Thank you. This is chaos, guys. I wish I had like a dice. Go ahead.

Yeah. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Right there. I'm going to Italy.

Where is Alia? I don't know. Okay. He's Italian. I know him.

He's the cover capital hill. Hello, Terry. How are you? Many people want to know what is your D.J. name? My D.J. name?

Your D.J. name? You're not ready for my D.J. name. They are facing real catastrophic destruction. To their economy. Generational destruction, to their economy.

Generational destruction, to their wealth of their country. And post on themselves by the actions that they're taking. They should check themselves before they wreck themselves in the direction that they're going. What a cool cat. There's also this video of Rubio like stepping into the D.J.

Booth and Marilago Trump's fucking catty turned deputy chief of the staff. Dan's could be in a post to that. And then this whole conversation kind of folds into this broader debate of Willoughby Rubio or Willoughby J.D. events who takes like kind of the mantle of Baga and becomes Republican nominee in 2028.

So this is petty media criticism then.

“But I did just want to ask reporters like what are we doing here guys?”

Yeah.

Because first of all, Rubio, I don't know if he's happier or not.

I don't wish him any personal unhappiness. But like he should not be happy about how his job is going. If he's doing a briefing when the U.S. is stuck in a catastrophic world with Iran. And just like regarding that press briefing itself,

Rubio was rolling out project freedom that straightaway removed his escort mission that we just talked about. Which Trump unwinds like a day later. So that is that is humiliating. Any other any other senior foreign policy official would be judged.

According, like that would be seen as a humiliating moment and defeat for them, possibly a like career ending thing.

It was one of his on Capitol Hill that one day.

And he basically ran up to the sticks and was like,

"The Jews made us do it in a ran away." And he hid the fucking up in a cave for a month. So I was like, "What is this article?"

“My daughter, I remember she did AYSO soccer.”

And I think she was six or seven. And at the end of the year, it was really nice. Even though the team didn't want a single game. It was kind of a bad newsbearers kind of team. They all got trophies.

Nice. Participation trophies. Literally. The eagerness with which most of the Washington press corps is intent on giving Marco Rubio a participation trophy is so embarrassing.

I mean, let's just to just build on what you said. The man is Secretary of State, a national security advisor for a country that just lost an mounted one of the dumbest wars in recorded human history.

He announced an operation that lasted 24 hours.

Let's just dig in his responsibilities. One of the reasons that that operation shut down is because the Saudis hadn't been notified about it. And we wanted to use there. Who would do that normal?

The Secretary of State. I mean, he's failing utterly at his job.

“The national security advisor is supposed to be coordinating policy making.”

So it's smart. Did anyone ask Marco Rubio? Why they didn't know that the Iranians were closed to straight foreign moves? Because it's his job as a national security advisor

to war game how the war is going to go. And they clearly do not know anything about Iran or the straight of foreign moves did not consult allies, which is also his responsibility. So he's directly responsible.

More even than Pete Higgs at for the catastrophic failure

of this policy. And the fact that the whole world is suffering because of it. And they're all sitting there like having a grand old time chuckling about what he says. Second.

These. Sure. He doesn't do like Dr. Su's rhyme. Weird Pete Higgs at voice. But this check yourself for a registered name.

It's like not cool. Is he more charming than JD Vance? Sure.

“But like talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

I mean, that's not cool. Check your like the. I cannot believe the extent in this foreshadow as a cash pretell segment to which we are run. Our countries run in apparently a significant

less for media by by people that. Just could not get anyone to sit next to them at lunch in high school. You know, and sit now like years later. He's like check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Like that that that's that like what what is going on here. It like look. Rubio is like seen as politically ascendant within the Republican party like Sarah Longwell from the bulwark talks about out his names coming up in our focus groups all the time now.

There's this meme of like Marco Rubio on the couch and the old old house getting every job. Apparently that's like genuinely helping him because he seen as competent. But again, it's like, you know, the land of the, you know,

the one I'd man is king and the land of the blind kind of situation where it's like, yeah, he's the most competent of a bunch of morons. But what is, what is his a comp of like huge what huge or drives me nuts.

That as well as seeing this is one accomplishment. But again, that that is not a finished story. Yeah, and even if you just like accept the premise. The premise being that he's capable of standing at a podium and being reasonably articulate for an extended

period of time, which by the way, it should be like the bar for like the deputy press secretary, not the future president or the secretary of state, even if that's some bar he clears, judge him on his results. Like what is he like this way?

Our politics, I mean, just say his media criticism day. Like don't the results matter? Like just the optics, just the fact that this guy manages and now like vomit on himself, or it's like, or appear to be on accurately politically Trump's approval ratings in the

toilet. Yeah, 37. What are you doing here? What's creating? Building this guy up for nothing.

Like for being responsible for this policy. It is in raging. It's made of losers in high school ban. FBI director Trash Patel. Oh, sorry, Cash Patel.

He's up on Capitol Hill this morning on Tuesday. As our listeners know, Cash has gotten a little bit of unwanted attention lately because he's because he drank. He was guzzling beers on camera at the Olympics. The Atlantic reported that his boozing is a source of

concern within the bureau. And the cash was once so drunk that a security detail couldn't wake him up and considered calling a SWAT team to get the equivalent use like bust on the door, then he sued the Atlantic and this reporter in particular.

And apparently the FBI might be investigating her. And then she drops another banger on his head. And we learned that cash is created and distributes his own signature bourbon bottles.

Go logo on it.

There's Eagle Talon's his name on.

It's all very cute. And as a dollar sign. Cash. Yeah. Yeah.

That's his name. Cash. Yeah. Yeah.

“And presumably, you would think that given all this”

context, cash would want to deliver a calm sober performance at front of the Senate to silence his critics. Let's see how it went. There have been no occasions when your security detail at difficulty waking or locating you.

Is that right? No. It's a total force. I don't even know where you get this stuff. But it doesn't make it credible because he says so.

I'm not saying it director Patel. It's been written and documented. You are literally saying it. No. I'm saying that these are reports director Patel.

I'm like. I'm like. I will say reports. You're the only person that was sling in Margaritas and now Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gang

banging rapist was you.

You know, the only person that ran up a $1,000 bar tab in

Washington, DC. This is a lobbyist. What was you? Okay. Yeah.

That was with us. Senator Kristen Holland. So that exchange actually goes on. By the way, like a while. Chris Ben Allen didn't strike me as some guys, like,

really a big blizzard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just that.

Not a credible attack. Well, for like, I, I, yeah. I have no idea about the part. I have to think. But like, remember, the Kilmarra break up been Holland

went down to El Salvador. It's probably the biggest gang man to meet with. Yeah. So you been Holland went to El Salvador to meet with Kilmarra. A break up Garcia.

They, they had a conversation at the embassy. Diabocalee's goons put these drinks in front of them to stage a photo up that made it look like they were drinking together. It was just like, it was completely propaganda bullshit. Of course.

Caspo tells repeating that.

The second, as you noted, Kilmarra.

Garcia is absolutely not a convicted gang-banger rapist. Yeah. Yeah. I directed a lot of that. Purgent himself.

It's crazy. Purgent himself. I learned it down. And then finally, but he, like, button the top button. He looked like a groom's man who'd been at a wedding.

Since, you know, the bar opened to five. He looks like he tied one on last night. Yeah. He's got like a bottle on his face. He's slouching forward.

Yeah. Like, I know they all think that this is what Trump wants, which is like, fight back, throw a punch up. How'd that work for Pambandi? Did that look good?

Yeah. That looks great to me.

“I mean, first of all, we just have to remember that the FBI director”

is supposed to be a non-partisan official. Yeah. So it's just insane that anybody would be special. Yeah. And he's supposed to like, yeah, civil servant, essentially.

And so, like, I get the audience of one. But this makes him look ridiculous. Like, if his problem is he looks ridiculous. The point that the whole country's making fun of him. He's like, he's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know. He kind of wounded animal who knows he's not up for the job who would do exactly what you're saying there.

They're going to be used the enormous power of the FBI to go after critics.

“I like, yes, whoever comes next will be terrible, but I think it would be good for the”

world to get that asshole out of there. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would. Well, miss him.

I guess we can cover. I'm sure we'll go back to podcasting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to be great.

Okay. That's it for our boy cash. Drinks on us next time you're in LA. Pretty order of my book. It's out two weeks from today.

Pretty order. And I'm actually going to be doing my virtual book launch event next Monday. So I'll throw that link on my social channel. Awesome. There we go.

But also stick around for Ben's interview with Susie Hansen about Prime Minister Erdogan, Life and Turkey. Lots of big, important geopolitical issues. So don't miss that. Potsie of the world is brought to you by Remi.

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Open tabs and tons more great content. So, stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Cricket.com/Friends. Check it out. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend. Susie Hansen, who is a journalist who lived in Istanbul for over a decade.

She's written for the New York Times magazine. Her first book, which I also recommend, notes on a foreign country, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Her new book, which everybody needs to buy. If you like politics, geopolitics, literary journalism.

Great writing, amazing personalities, it's called From Life itself.

Turkey, Istanbul, and a neighborhood in the age of Erdogan. Susie, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, though. Okay, so this really is a unique book because you started and you are reading the story of a neighborhood in Istanbul. Then you realized you're reading about the city of Istanbul.

Then you realized you're reading about Turkey. Then you realized you're reading about Erdogan. You realized, and this is all within the first, probably, you know, 40 pages. That you're reading a book about everything that's happened to the world. And so I want to begin by asking where you begin the book, which is you describe how the forces that we've all become familiar with now.

They're kind of cocktail of nationalism, authoritarianism, corruption, chaos. How those things that we feel as Americans arrived in Turkey first. And in particular, in this neighborhood that you profile. You write the dissolution of nations and borders and peoples and seemingly civilization itself was transforming how many of us felt about our individual lives in our future.

That sense that we are in history here and not the good kind.

“Can you describe how these forces became manifest in Turkey in this neighborhood first?”

And it's really around 2015 or Arab Spring to 2015 that you begin. And why do you choose to write about those forces through this neighborhood? So it was 2015 I had been witnessing. I moved to Turkey in 2007. So I'd been there for seven or eight years.

And then I was there as all of these Syrian refugees were fleeing this Syrian civil war into Turkey. And you know, I'm sure you're aware of this. This was a kind of laissez-faire refugee management situation where Erdogan was just allowing people to come in, millions of people. And they sort of had to figure out their lives on their own. I mean, they had to find, they had to rent a place, they had to put their kids in school all of that.

And there were at that point, 2015, 500,000 Syrians in Istanbul. And one evening I went to a friends for dinner and they said, you know, after dinner,

“you have to take a walk down the main street of Kargam Rook.”

All of the shops have become Syrian. And that was I knew enough about Kargam Rook to know why that was surprising. Kargam Rook was a nationalist neighborhood. It was famous for them for Mafia, for thieves. It was the famous for this right-wing party that may hit pay.

And so I knew that they were not going to be welcoming to Arabs. And I saw the opportunity to tell this larger story through how these people were getting along. Because when I started talking to them, they started talking about how the presence of the Arabs was challenging their Turkish national identity. And then as I was there for the next few years, all of these major events were happening. So you had the Syrian Civil War.

Obviously, you had ISIS had appeared in Turkey. And they were flying into Istanbul. And then just switching to airplanes and going down to the southern border. You had a new war with the PKK, the Kurdish militant group. And you had Erdogan steadily becoming more repressive.

And suddenly recognized, okay, maybe I can see all of these events through these characters. But understand how they're seeing it from the street level, not from the headlines, and not from, you know, the point of view of the West. So you shift back and forth between some of these incredible characters you find in this neighborhood. And Erdogan is a huge character in your book. And I want to focus a bit on him.

Because I'd never read a book that I learned as much about him from.

He's a fascinating character. And one place I wanted to start, I did not fully understand this. You write about his kind of dual love of Islam and capitalism. And we in the West think of him as an Islamist. But you know, you write about how much he embraced capitalism and kind of, you know, development, real estate development for like a better way of putting it in kind of the corruption.

The playbook we've seen, right, where you're building things, but you're skimming money at the top and all the rest of it. It also got me thinking that as much as we don't associate Islamists with capitalism. I mean, in our country, the religious zealots, the Christian evangelicals, or similarly Polish on capitalism and deregulation and explain where this ideology of Erdogan came from. And how would you describe this melding of Islamist politics and kind of Uber, 21st century capitalism? I mean, this goes deep into Turkish, Islamist history.

It goes way back to the first Islamist parties and movements in the 1960s and 70s.

“But I think you have to put it in the context of, you know, turkeys, founding party was autoturics party.”

And the only way, and they had shunned religious people to some degree, they had forced religious brotherhoods to go underground. They had wanted Turkey to be a Western looking secularist country. And so the people of the countryside and the religious people were very much shut out from the halls of power, right? And so there were a number of old families that got a lot of the contracts from the government and were rebuilding Turkey after World War I and World War II. But the religious people were shut out of this.

And so slowly, slowly, over time, they did see business and starting their own businesses as a way to build their own power in the country, because they were shut out of the state and shut out of most of the business activities. Erdogan was the mentee of a man named Nejmetin Erdogan, who also saw the union of Islam and capitalism as a way of restoring, Turkish pride, because these were people who were very nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire and for this more grandiose sense of Turkey than what the Turkish Republic became.

Erdogan learned from him.

“But also, I think it was sort of deep in his blood in the sense that he came to power as the mayor of Istanbul.”

And Istanbul was a wreck at that time. It was very poor, people were suffering, and what he recognized he could do, even though most of the secularist elites did not want him to be in office, was he could actually improve the lives of the people, which seems like an obvious thing for a politician to do. But it's a little bit shades of Mamdan either, but he saw that, "Oh, I can clean up the garbage of the city, I can improve the water supply, I can improve." But he needed to, obviously, to ally with business groups and other businessmen in order to make a lot of these things happen.

And so I think it happened naturally, but I think a really crucial thing here also is when he finally becomes prime minister.

And so he quickly had to build up his crony class, his businessmen class. And that was the way he saw that he could solidify his power in the country. So one of the things that listeners has shown, hopefully knows it, over the years I've kind of really had to reprogram myself around or away from some of the assumptions that are kind of baked into American farm policy or baked into kind of the commentary class about the world. And you go right at some of those assumptions about Erdogan, and I want to go through a couple of them.

“The first one is, I remember when we came into office in 2009, and we went to, you know, Ankara in Istanbul in 2009.”

You know, from that period kind of through the Arab Spring, the trendy thing was Erdogan is a mediator between Islam and the West. It's a potential bridge because he has creed with these Islamists, you know, Muslim brotherhood guys and places like Egypt, and yet he's modern and capitalist amongst the European Union. I kind of now see how like orientalist that was, you know, to just kind of, well he's Muslim, and so therefore he, you know, he can be a bridge. Yet at the same time, he's clearly an intermediary in other ways.

And I, they can navigate between the US and Russia, between Europe and the Arab world, between, you know, the bricks countries in NATO.

Why is it, you know, I mean Turkey historically has always been this kind of bridge country between Islam and the West and the rest of it.

So there's some of that history, but what, what is it about him that has allowed him to play this kind of mediator role or this guy that can kind of live in one block for a few months and then shift to another one.

“I think, I think in the beginning, first of all, that was how they were marketing themselves to the world, right?”

And it was not only Erdogan, but it was also this other Islamic brotherhood that you lend movement, which was already very international. This is this global Islamic movement that was in the United States, new lots of people on the hill had schools in every country. And so he, these two allied together, and I think again, you know, their fundamental fear was about the Turkish state, right? So they want to create a sense of them as big on the global stage in order to fortify their own power and counter some of the national forces that were against them.

I mean, it's amazing because he came to power in the 2000s.

It's like really globalization is firing all cylinders, and he becomes this kind of globally minded leader. And so I think he was very different from other Turkish leaders who were much more inward looking in much more almost defensive. And so I don't think it was all incorrect. But now what he has managed to do is something even more extraordinary because over these 20 years, what we have seen him do is extend himself in Libya, in Syria, and Azerbaijan. But also to stand up on the world stage with his rhetoric and say, no, you know, we take care of our own country, we are regional leaders, we own our own Syrian refugee crisis.

We are not going to let the NGOs in and tell us what to do. He has over time steadily made this into, you know, his position in the world. But with those refugees, if you remember, he was essentially able to say to Europe in the West. You can no longer tell me what to do, you cannot criticize me in terms of human rights and everything else. He's putting leaders like Selahat and Demeratosh, the pro-Curdish leader in jail.

And all of these were pressing thousands of people after the 2016 military coup, but he had 4 million Syrian refugees. And it gave him a card to play with the Europeans. So as to say, you know, I can just let them into Europe any time I want and look at us. We are actually taking care of these people and you can't deal with them. I mean, in all of these different ways he was able to assert himself, it's unprecedented.

And now he's, yeah, see, advertises himself, I'm the middle man for everybody.

Hey, you crane, hey, Russia, hey, you know, Israel, I mean, he's always projecting this sense that you need him.

“That all of the, but I think in some ways they do simply because of Turkey's geography.”

I mean, look, Europe is now speaking to him in these very kind terms because they might need him against Russia. You know, I mean, so he somehow manages to bounce back and reposition himself always. Yeah, and I mean, among many good things about, there are all these waters of history that I found myself asking one of which was, you know, there was still this idea that they're going to join the European Union, which seems impossible now. In 2009 to 2010, and you rightly point out that Syracuse is one who, you know, truly tube that, although I think probably other Europeans supported that.

That's a great one of what if, you know, they're in the EU. One other DC thing that you, you kind of take aim at is, you know, and I've been guilty of this, which is it, you know, he gets put in the creep club, you know,

Putin, Modi, Erdogan, Orban, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Netanyahu, now Trump, you kind of push back against that. And I was really curious to kind of pursue that with you because on the one hand, you know, the way you describe it, you know, really meticulously, you know, I see a familiar playbook, you know, you kind of enrich people through corruption and you build these power blocks and you slowly change it, you just share it and then you, you know, you're starting to intimidate the media and make it pro government and,

and then lo and behold, you know, we're changing the constitution and, you know, Erdogan is, you know, going to be president after being Prime Minister or whatever. And you kind of push back against him being the same or kind of in a group with those guys and they're all guys.

“I think I get why in the sense that Turkey has such an eccentric political system, but, but, but how would you position him relative to the,”

the autocrats who kind of defined our age? Well, it just never, when they, when he was lumped in in that category, it just never rang true to me.

And I thought it was a little bit lazy. I think now from the point of view of 2026, I'm seeing more and more of the similarities with the United States. So when I wrote the book, I finished it in 2025. I never would have compared the US and Turkey, but now since 2025 and 2026, I, it actually, this current time period echoes the book a lot. Like there's a whole chapter about a university and the impression of universities, but I think a few things are different. Number one, you know, he wasn't, we weren't really referring to him as a populist in the beginning.

“I think that's the first 10 years that is different about that are different about Turkey and that you want to look at.”

He was not just praying on people's sense of victimhood or grievances the way that say Donald Trump does. The people who he appealed to actually had legitimate grievances. They were actually left behind. They were not folded into the system properly. They were people who felt that they had been looked down upon and left behind in terms of the economy and education and many other things.

And so I think, and then the second part is he actually did improve the lives of people. This, this wasn't, this isn't a superficial, you know, ruler.

This is someone who actually everyone can talk about when he got the natural gas, you know, people's natural gas accounts hooked up to the internet or when he made water supply. Um, easier or better when he improved the electricity, all of these services. When he improved the healthcare, when he, you know, and then of course just what he did for people's self-esteem, which was all very real. So it was because of this genuine popularity that, that, that that's the basis for why he has sustained a lot of his role today.

I think it's more interesting to consider, again, as you said, yes, the EU, what would have happened, but also all of these other regional and global events that were going on and how they affected some of these regimes. He had, okay, the Syrian Civil War played a huge role in radicalizing Erdogan. I think that's worth looking at.

“But I think at the end, which I'm sure you remember, I do think we have to consider how for a regime in the Middle East, how the war on terror also.”

Oh, yeah, just the, that environment led to this increasing radicalization. It's not to let him off the hook because we can talk about the second 10 years.

Very happy to do that. But I think that it is just worthwhile to, to consider that there are other reasons why the world is going in this direction. Yeah, well, let's talk about the second 10 years and, and maybe, can I bring in a little bit of my history here? It might be interesting. So, so, and you write in part one, we kind of work up to 2015 and Erdogan's consolidated power, the Syrian refugees are there, like these changes are in motion. Then you have this coup, where I still don't, you know, people think when you're in the US government in a role like mine, you know what happened.

I have no idea what happened. I know that something fundamental shifted in Erdogan and you obviously get in this in the book. I will tell you my experience, which is he used to be a fascinating guy to meet with, because he would actually debate Obama and they liked each other and they, they'd go back and forth and he was nimble, flexible even. He might change his mind on something in the meeting. After that coup, Obama only overlapped for what, like a year, every meeting. He would literally show up with files about Goulin. This is the Islamist that he fell out with who he blamed for the coup. And demand his extradition and, and just didn't want to hear about anything else.

And that was my experience of him. I mean, I mean, you write about this transformation in him. I mean, what was your impression at the time that you obviously reflect on about what happened, you know, something happened. There was some attempt to, you know, bomb the parliament. And yet I also noticed Turks who think like that was all false flag, you know, you know, you hear a million different things, but something clearly did happen.

How did he change? Because of this event that also, by the way, coincided with the year that Brexit and Trump happened. So the world is taking a pretty dark turn.

“I think he genuinely felt threatened. And then I think that he made use of a glorious opportunity, which echoed, you know, what happened after many military coups in Turkish history, which is that they sort of remake everything.”

They put people in jail. They start all over. But it was much worse with what he did. But I think that, you know, if you look at the number of threats that in his mind, he was, he was facing it was this war with the gulain movement. Most people do believe that gulain movement was involved in that military coup. I think that it's very, they suspect that yes, he might have known about it earlier. He let it happen. Then he knew he could take advantage of it. That war between Erdogan and the gulain movement was absolutely real. And it was, there are a lot of people in the country really resent the gulain movement. So I mean, there have been tons of things written about it.

It's just very difficult to understand and I think get your head. It's a very weird, fascinating movement. Trust me, I tried to sell lots of magazine stories about this many, many years ago, and it was hard because people couldn't really get their head around it. But by now, it's quite well known what they were about.

“But I think also, you know, he saw him a hundred more sea in Egypt opposed in 2013, and he believed that it was possible or turx believed it was possible that the Americans were involved in that as well.”

And this is a Muslim Brotherhood guy. You know, you have a belief in Turkey on the left, on the right, basically across the board, that the Americans have always been involved in military coups.

And Turkey are played some sort of role. So I think that just speaks to a broad fear. And then I think there were also in 2013 the Guisey Park protest, which, you know, might not seem that threatening from the outside. You know, you think, oh, he's a big guy. He's a strong man. Whatever. He can just deploy the military and put them all down. It was deeply threatening to hear. This was like people occupying this green space. It was going to be demolished. It was the last remaining green space. Just so people know. And, and it be grew to thousands of people upset with what had been happening in Istanbul in the country.

I see that. And I guess I've just to pull it up to today and then I want to get to the neighborhood with one more question. You know, you look at Erdogan today and he looked, you know, he's still a key player. And almost an indispensable man on the world stage. He, in Syria, Akban Alshara, a guy he backed is now, you know, in charge of that country instead of Bashar al-Sad. At the same time, you know, Israel's making noises about attacking Turkey next. After Iran, we'll see if that happens, given what happened in Iran.

You know, he's, you know, barely skates through elections, but he does. The Kurdish issues, you know, up and down like there's a peace deal with the PKK, but there's still these concerns about the Kurds in Syria, having autonomy, although Akban Alshara is trying to put an end to that.

“The question I guess when it asks is, is this a man who's realizing what he wants to do in power? Is he have a strategy that he's implementing in Turkey and in the region?”

Or is this a man that is just a survivor who's had to react to a million things in an opportunistic way in some of them work and others don't?

How much do you think he's building something and has this kind of idea of what Turkey is and should be in the region versus he's just a very canny political survivor? No, I think they had a vision for Turkey in the region, and as, if you say, middle power, I don't think they like that term, but as a regional power, I think they've had a vision for a long time. I think they've been building up their defense industry. I think they've obviously, as I said, extending themselves throughout the region. I think they also did that for business interests. I think they did that as a way to just

show up their power. And I think it works in the sense that I think some people in Turkey probably can't imagine who would come after them at this point because he has successfully taken over basically all of the institutions of the country. He has repressed about 40% of the population, and at this point he's now taken to meddling in elections, but I think in terms of the bouncing back and being a sort of canny, flexible,

and then he turned against wherever he saw the mood of the country or his own political fortunes shifting, he would shift also, and he'll do it again. I mean, he has now put the country just in a terrible, terrible economic situation,

“and that is the trap. I don't see the way out of that. I mean, I was just in Turkey in March. The people in my book who loved him for all of these years suddenly are shattered people.”

Including one of my characters who say, "They're self-esteem, they're sense of self, and also they're belief in Turkey's great future, and their children's future is now gone."

And I think that that is very, very new for him, and I think it's, I don't think he has a way out of it, so I think it will be interesting to see where we go.

“I think the question that you have, and I have is, what about the opposition? What happened? And at this point, what exactly can they even do? Given how much he's repressing them?”

Well, the last thing we're to ask you is, the neighborhood itself is fascinating, and one of the things I love about you writing in your journalism is that you don't exclude people. I know we just spent a long time talking about heroin, but we see what it's like for people to live through all these changes. And the question we're asking is, "I love this role of Muitar, so people understand this is kind of like you're not just like you're the kind of mayor of the neighborhood. You literally people come to you with every problem, like from, you know, I don't want my daughter and marry this person to, you know, where can I get this document?" And it's a very old feeling, but it's a form of democracy in a way.

It's just people constantly trying to solve these problems and survive. I hesitate to say resilient because I know a lot of people who hate being called resilient because it makes it seem like it's not hard. But with all this change, like you just see these people working it out, you know, and sometimes they're helping each other, sometimes they present the new Syrians or what have you, but it is human beings just in a somewhat democratic way, just keeping this neighborhood moving. And the question I wanted to ask you is, we just talked about the, you know, the decline of democracy in some ways under one, which is undeniable. I change how I think about democracy. There's no such thing as, this is a democracy and this isn't like everything's a spectrum.

You know, like America right now is very not democratic in tons of ways and kind of democratic in others, right? But did you learn something about democracy itself by just focusing in on this local neighborhood and now human beings experience democracy, you know, that human beings that may not have a stake in, you know, how

“Erdogan's policies going in Syria will be on the refugee, so maybe that's not the right one, but like the, how did, how did that local viewpoint of democracy change, how you think about the concept itself?”

Well, this was why I found this neighborhood interesting because they were a bit on the margins, and no one in my neighborhood was a member of the media that was being oppressed or of the academics or or the Kurds or maybe the judiciary, the judges who were all being fired or transferred. These people were a little bit on the margins and many of them supported Erdogan about 75% of the neighborhood did and then there was 25% that did not, but they weren't their lives were not directly affected. And what I think was the benefit of failing to finish my book in an, in a normal amount of time was that I got to go there for 10 years and I got to see how all of these people changed and evolved over those years. And what I found fascinating and I think would be fascinating to Americans as well is that you might disparage some of these people who vote for the autocrat.

But what you're not really prepared for is how they are actually processing what's happening to them and the moment when it strikes them that their lives have changed and it does. And I think the, the chapter in the book that is somewhat hopeful, although it was, you know, a while ago now is, is 2019 because what happened in my neighborhood was that it was the, the Istanbul mayoral election. There was, uh, AKP was running their candidate. They had run a stumble for 25 years and then there was the opposition candidate at Crem Ema Molo and he won and it was the first time AKP had been defeated in a very important election and the Istanbul mayoral election.

And they, they started saying, you know, we're going to teach him a lesson. We're just going to teach him a lesson this time and then the neighborhood actually voted for the opposition party, which they had not voted for from maybe in all of their lives just to show error to one that they were not going to lose their voice. And an interesting thing about Turkey is that it has always had free elections and this is the one thing everybody has had and they love to vote there. I mean, it's really a great pleasure to witness election day in Turkey.

And so they, they fought back in that in that instance, Imam Olu became mayor. Of course, Imam Olu is in jail. Now he's in jail.

Now he's in jail. But I think that when we think about people's psychologists in the age of authoritarianism, I think, you know, the verdict is that we don't really know what's happening, how people are feeling and what exactly they are going to react to. And you're right in a neighborhood like that in an old Ottoman in these neighborhoods in a stumble, they still work together to figure things out. They're out in the street. They're talking to each other face to face. I mean, this was also what was appealing to me because I was online all the time.

“Yeah. And they're still talking to, they're still passing on information in this face to face way, which I think is is a lesson for all of us as well.”

So, you know, I do, I do have hope for Turkey. I just, I simply do. I think also one thing to consider about characters like Erdogan and this is really an open question.

You know, he loves elections too. So he has put his main rival in jail. This was also an unprecedented move. But will he return the country to some sort of real elections? I think that's of still a possibility. Yeah. Well, let's, you know, it's up. So I mean, you, you convey, like you say, this country's been through everything you can imagine. And yet, Istanbul, this, there are all kinds of people are there, you know, and they, they regenerate. You know, Rome, Armenian, Greek, Syrian, you know, indigenous Turks, all these other people have kind of passed through and some have been expelled and then some have gone.

And, and yet it all kind of keeps, is what I love about cities. Like it just keeps regenerating and becoming something that is similar and different, you know.

“Yeah. And I think that if you look at what Erdogan was brilliant at at the beginning is that he took that creative chaos and he created a new political movement out of it.”

I mean, it was by going into these neighborhoods. That's the whole reason also that I told the store, the books through a neighborhood. But the question is, can the opposition now look at the world as it is. And, and, and the city as it is. And, and actually, and actually say, okay, what is the political movement that needs to be created? Now, well, look, the book is from life itself. It's just so rich with character, detail, history, politics.

“So, people should check it out. Suzy, Hansen, thanks so much for joining us.”

Thank you, Ben. It was really great talking to you. Thanks again. It's Suzy Hansen for doing the show and we'll talk to you next week. Pots of the world is a quick and immediate production. Our show is produced by Elona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Inisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGrope, then Hethko, Jordan Canter, Kenny Muffet, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East. Hey, Cricket listeners. If you haven't become a friend of the pod yet, you are missing out on exclusive bonus content that drops every single week.

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