Pope Warns of AI Apocalypse

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Check it out. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Podsafe the world on Tommy Vitor. - I'm Ben Rhodes, and Ben happens to be in New York when the next corner of the NBA finals.

Congratulations, buddy. - I got here yesterday 'cause I did my book launch here today and I was able to watch the next win in New York City. The buzz was palpable.

- Did you rip down like a street light or anything? - I considered it. I considered some looting, but I think we had to win the championship before we can properly tear things up. So, we'll see.

- One trash can through a Starbucks window, maybe. - Yeah, there were some dudes like, there were some great footage of dudes like, standing in top of subway stations and I think I got real last night in a few neighborhoods,

but we still got one more series to go. - Yeah, well, I'm happy for you. Ben, did you see that President Trump today was scheduled to go to Walter Reed

for his third in-person visit

for like a medical and dental evaluation?

“I think this year or since an auguration last year?”

- You're a feel like there's a massive cover-up of his health problems that like don't ever really docks. - I will just say that for eight years, I don't think I ever went to a doctor that wasn't the White House medical unit on the campus.

- Right. - I mean, you can get, you know, you can get procedures done, you can get prescriptions, you can get check-ups, like you don't have to go to Walter Reed for like routine medical care, it's like--

- It's some sort of specialize equipment. - Yeah. - Dr. Ronnie was right in terms of-- - For many where, but you need some sort of luck, you know. - Yeah, there's a big thing or a big problem.

You're going to Walter Reed, it's all just very weird. - It is weird, and every now and then you wonder whether some of the more resistency people are on to something here. - Yeah, I don't think we need to give them any credit

for shit in this case.

It's just like, you know, the third time the guy goes,

you're like, interesting, but I digress here. We've got a lot to go for today. Congratulations on your book. We're going to talk about that at the end of this show. But first, we're going to start with trying to explain

where the health of U.S. and Iran are, where it comes to a possible peace deal

After this weekend of furious social media diplomacy

from Donald Trump, there were like announcements and background briefings that the deal was almost done, then there were walkbacks of those announcements, and then we woke up to eight airstrikes. So all of it's very confusing.

Maybe it's all just a excuse to skip Donald Trump Jr's wedding. We don't know, maybe it's a both hand there, Ben. - Quite plausible, actually. Quite plausible.

- I mean, consider the links you would go to to skip down Jr's. - Almost anything. - Yeah, I might start a war with Iran. - Just skip down Jr's wedding.

They're going to bid farewell to the now former director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. I don't know if she's resigned yet, but she put her letter out. We'll reflect on her time as the nation's top spy.

They're going to walk through Pope Leo's treatise on artificial intelligence. It's a very interesting document, very long interesting document. I will update you on U.S. Armed Sales to Taiwan, this growing Ebola outbreak in Central and Eastern Africa.

And then our guest today, like I said, is Ben. We're going to talk about his new book. All we say, the battle for American identity, a history in 15 speeches. It is available right now, right Ben?

You can go right now to any store by your book. You can walk out of your house after this podcast. And by it, you can order it. It's a great, I desperately want people to pay it because I worked on for four years

and you are the audience world those for everything I do. And today, Wednesday, the day this podcast comes out, I'll be at politics and pros and DC. I'll be in Miami, at books and books on Friday night and Coral Gables.

And I will be in Nashville at Parnas's House on Monday night. And I'll be at the Cleveland Public Library on Tuesday night. So, right on. If you're in any of those places, come check it out. Go see Ben for there.

Also, pause the podcast right now by a book. We're going to also, at the end of the episode, focus on two chapters in the book. There's two major speeches, Foreign Policy speeches, one by FDR, one by Reagan.

So, we'll talk about those. We'll talk about the art of speeches and leaders moving people or nation through their words in this day and age. But either way, congrats on this sucker coming out then. And I'm excited to read your book on AI Lego Remix

in their role in history and about a decade from now. It's, you know, that's the next one. I think that's where it's going. Things are moving fast. Also, thank you all for listening to Potsay of the world.

Please subscribe or follow to Potsay of the world, wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. It helps us grow the show, it helps us reach more people.

“Ben, I think that our growth on YouTube is 90% responsible”

for the demise of the daily wire. I've no evidence for that claim. But I think correlation is causation

isn't that the third thing they always say.

Yes, I mean, we're clearly part of it. And it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy than Ben Shapiro in his audience, include. Lovely young man. Another casualty of the Iran War, by the way.

Yeah, by the way. If you want more cricket media, consider becoming a paid subscriber in our friend of the podcast community. It's just 99, 99 a month. Get ad free episodes, bonus episodes,

Potsay of America. Get Dan 5 for doing deep dives on polling data in much, much more. So go to crooked.com/friends for more information. All right, we'll start with Iran

because it was a very confusing weekend. Then and I were both at John Love its wedding. Every other couple of hours, I was like, I have to do a goddamn bonus episode from fucking Santa Barbara. This is a pain in the ass.

But no, nothing has been accomplished. So Trump spent the weekend like teasing some sort of announcement that would create like a memorandum understanding for a ceasefire or a ceasefire extension that would begin a process to permanently end the world

with Iran and reopen the street or who moves. But again, like I said, we woke up Tuesday morning to reports of US air strikes in Southern Iran that sent calm described as self-defense strikes on Iranian boats laying mines, such as perfectly incoherent.

On Saturday, Trump said the deal will be announced shortly in that the quote final aspects were being negotiated. Then on Monday, Ben, he said he was in no rush to get a deal, but if he did, it would either be great and meaningful or there would be no deal.

So like, guys, just all over the place.

“I think trying to walk through all of the back and forth”

is a waste of everybody's time and just confusing. But the gist of what this deal is supposedly might entail is an end to the war on all fronts, including a Lebanon, unfreezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

The Iranians apparently want 24 billion.

Then Iran would open the street or her moves. The US would end its blockade on the street or her moves. US troops would withdraw from the immediate vicinity of Iran, and then the two sides would have 30 to 60 days to negotiate some sort of agreement on the nuclear issue.

So they'd be kicking the can down the road on all the really hard stuff. Now, the optimistic case on why this gets done is Trump is desperate for a deal. He knows that high gas prices are basically killing his presidency

in all the Gulf countries are begging him to get a deal done, right? So that's optimistic reason. The list of reasons to be pessimistic is a little longer.

Ben, tell me if I'm missing anything. First of all, just again, on the nuclear front, there have been so much disagreement over what happens with Iran's highly enrich uranium stockpile. Trump does seem to be softening their tweeted something,

“I think on Monday or Tuesday, about maybe the HU”

getting destroyed in place under IAEA safeguards in Iran,

The Israelis have been intensifying and not winding down the war. With Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel hit more than 70 targets over the last few days, and NetYahu said, we're not removing our foot from the pedal on the contrary.

I said, no press on the pedal even more.

“Ben, I think we all assume that Iran will”

want to charge some sort of toll or fee on ships going forward, and that's going to be a problem for a lot of parties here. Trump decided to randomly complicate everything by announcing that he's requiring, or he said, I made it totally requesting that all countries

signed the Abraham Accords, whatever that means, because why not upend fraught negotiations with that 11th hour ask that no one had. There's no mention in what's been discussed about caps on Iranian ballistic missiles.

Remember, we were all told that if they got enough ballistic missiles, they could then just proliferate nuclear material without anyone stopping them.

And then finally, Ben, we're seeing all the war mongers

in the hawks attack what has been floated, the FDD folks, the right-wing senators, Lindsey Graham's of the world. All the idiots that push Trump into war in the first place are now mad at him for trying to end it. So, sorry for the long wind up there.

What are you seeing in terms of the odds of success at this point? And what are the key kind of pros and cons in favor of this getting done that you're

“kind of evaluating if you try to figure out what's going on?”

I think, first of all, we've seen a repeat of something we've talked about before, which is, they probably do get close to some kind of understanding, but there's still a lot of sending questions, and I'll get to what those might be in a minute.

But then Trump goes out on true social, and he spikes the football in the end zone when he's still on like the 25-yard line. And he does it by spinning the best possible deal, you know?

And then the IRGC says, well, wait a second, you know,

we didn't agree to that. And they kind of yank back the negotiators. And then there's an effort to describe what we put things together. That's also connected to the fact

that Trump is desperate to get some wind, some credible accomplishment that will not justify or come close to the objectives he set for the war at the beginning, but that feels different than he fought an entire war and spent hundreds of billions of dollars

in pulverized U.S. standing in the global economy to get some that looks kind of like a Ron nuclear deal light.

“And so that's why he then introduces things like,”

oh, the pro-Israel people are mad at me. I'll just demand that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan join the Abraham Accords, you know? - They didn't even do this on a conference call. All those leaders were like, yeah, what?

What are you talking about? - What the fuck, you know, if they're not gonna do that, that's how it happens. So he keeps, he cannot come to terms with the fact that the only way to end this war is quite clear,

which is you give a Ron a significant amount of revenue upfront and lift the blockade in exchange for opening the straight-of-war moves. And then you have a separate negotiation in which you get JCPOA light.

They ship the HEU out. There's some inspections and some promises when the Ronians to not enrich uranium for some period of time. Again, JCPOA light.

And by the way, the Ronians get another tranche of revenue at that point. Either from sanctions relief and/or, they're gonna tell the straight going forward. I think that probably the hang up in the negotiations

put aside the kind of performative disruption of Trump is the sequencing of this. Trump probably does not want to be seen to be giving the Ronians money upfront to open up the straight.

He probably wants him to open the straight first.

But the Ronians are sitting there and thinking, well, why would we do that? We have all the leverage. And so I think there are probably sequencing questions that are the actual substantive hang up in the negotiation.

But look, this is what a deal will be because Trump doesn't have to use his phrase really any cards. I mean, tell me, I was even thinking today, like, let's say they do this where the Ronians get some money,

they open up the straight, the blockade is lifted. And then we're negotiating the terms of a nuclear side of the agreement. That expires in 60 days which takes you to, I don't know, Labor Day before a midterm election campaign.

Do they Ronians really think he's going to start bombing them again in September? He just, he's walked himself into a dead end and he's not going to get out without being humiliated. And that's it.

The choice is perpetuate the war, escalate the war, or accept the humiliating reality that you lost the war and the best you're going to get out of it is JCPOA Ron deal life. But before we go forward on this conversation,

did you and I even talk about the fact that the New York Times reported that these railies and the US wanted to install former president, Mark Moot, octopus and a child as president of Ron, but he has railies bombed his fucking house.

And like, he really killed it. It's a crazy story, crazy plan I've ever, like this guy is an awful person like in 2009.

you know, Trump coming to the rescue of the Iranian protesters. This guy who crushed a protest movement when he stole an election in 2009, who used to talk about eradicating his real,

is like a horrible bloodthirsty nationalist. And they wanted to install this dude as president of Iran. What on earth is happening? - Yeah, that was one of the weirdest stories I've read.

There've been two crazy Israeli plans that we've read about in the New York Times, including from Ron and Bergman,

“who is, I think, by-line on both, who's--”

- Yeah. - And it's like the best source.

- Yeah, very source. - And the first is,

in that situation, we're meeting where Netanyahu sold Trump on the war, the plan was apparently that Reza Palavi, the Shahzqid, was going to parachute in and run around, which is insane that a guy in Northern Virginia

wasn't been in Iran since about the time I was born, is going to take the country over. And then the second is this idea that Akmininejad was going to be sprung from House arrest by targeted air strikes on like his front door.

- The guards are somewhere there. - Some IRGC guns were hanging out. And then, somehow, miraculously, take over the country. Look, either this is the dumbest, I mean, either of these realies

are dumber about Iranian politics and then anyone who could have ever imagined. Or these are kind of weird disinformation things where they're trying to actually ice Akmininejad

inside of Iran by putting this out.

Either way, it's just bizarre. - I mean, can you explain, Tommy? Like, what is the sequence of events that would take Akmininejad from House arrest to running the country via Israeli air strikes?

- Right, where does he like rustle up an army on the way to like downtown from his house when he is not in another, to make any sense. So yeah, look, I mean, that just speaks to the absolutely embarrassing ridiculous planning

and the things that were sold. The ideas that were sold to Trump and the Trump administration to get them into this war. And also just the wish casting span that you were talking about from over the weekend.

I mean, my favorite tweet from over the weekend then was by Akmininejad for folks who don't know who he is. He's like a famous kind of like focus group, polling, research guy in the Republican Party.

He tweeted, I still don't know if this is a bit or not.

Inside a reporting from an unnamed White House official says the Iran deal is 95% done. The remaining 5% in negotiations are focused on Iran opening this trade or her moves and turning over all nuclear materials.

Like, yeah, the hard stuff, he was quote tweeting Scott Jennings, who's the asshole who yells at 21 year olds

“and curses at the month CNN, who remember early on in the war”

said he quoted, he said that I quote senior Trump administration official telling me that credible intel indicated that Ron planned preemptive missile strikes against U.S. military targets in the region and against civilian targets as well.

So he was trying to sell it's on the idea that the war was a preventative one to be at the U.S. was going to get attacked by Iran, which is a total lie. Look, either way, if this gets done, like they're getting energy flowing will take months and months.

There will be like a bunch, there are a couple of hundred ships that flow out of the Strait of Hormuz right away because those people are desperate to leave. But like ships will have to start coming back in to pick up more oil. And those are tankers that are on to other jobs now.

They could be halfway across the world. They might still be concerned about the increase political risk that the war restarting. So they're going to think twice about just running right back to the U.A. or wherever they're picking up oil and gas.

It's going to take time to get oil and gas. If the structure flowing again, an energy to actually transit toward needs to go. So this is not over in terms of the energy crunch. And then the hardest part to me then is still the Lebanon piece.

I mean, Israeli forces on Tuesday were reportedly moving deeper into Lebanon. And they're already holding up to six point miles of territory into Lebanon. And then Hezbollah is also just continually targeting the idea

if we're thrown. So everyone's still referring to that as a ceasefire. It's just not. They're just killing each other out of daily basis. Netanyahu has an election coming up. Probably in September, October.

The wars in Iran and Lebanon are not seen as completed or successful in any way yet. So he's going to have some real political problems if this thing ends. It looks like a loss for him.

But he also has real political problems if he pisses off Trump in any way. So it just anyway, there's so much churn over the weekend. But it just still feels like the whole thing is completely unsettled and probably trending towards the war just kind of bumping

along for a while. But who knows? It certainly feels that way. And look, I hopefully they pull something out of hat.

“But to do that, they'll have to, I think,”

concede to some of these surrounding terms about getting money upfront, et cetera. The Netanyahu point is really, really important because this is absolutely humiliating to him. All the reporting is that he's panicked, furious,

whatever adjective you want to use about it. You can tell he is, because all of his buddies in the United States are the ones that are posting stuff

So it's not a shock that FDD types in Lindsey Graham

“and all the people the Netanyahu talks to are raising”

the armbells. And the problem for Netanyahu is he cannot run for reelection without some war going on. Because that's how he sells himself. I'm this tough guy.

And none of the objectives are met, by the way. His bull is still in Lebanon. They run in regime still in place. They run nuclear programs still in place. And so the scary thing is that if Trump does do some deal,

and they run wars over, any tells BB under no circumstances are you allowed to bomb Iran. We won't defend you if you do that. Well, then Lebanon and or Gaza, or the West Bank, heat up. So watch that space because if there is an Iran deal

of some sort, I worry that actually that's bad for either Lebanon or Gaza for that matter, where there's some reporting that Netanyahu may want the Gaza peace board to find that Hamas is violated that ceasefire,

because they haven't disarmed. Nevermind that Israel is violated it. Hundreds of thousands of times. And I will say that the phrase fragile ceasefire is doing a lot of work in Lebanon.

“I don't know, one party can say they're putting their foot”

to the gas and doing dozens of air strikes, and it's not a ceasefire. And that makes it harder for Iran to concede things that Trump wants. - Yeah, I mean, for what it's worth,

like in my view, the best case outcome for the world is just this war ending as soon as humanly possible. And I understand why people are out there of criticizing Trump for accomplishing none of his goals. I will be too.

But I don't think a lot of those goals are accomplishable at this point. And I think I would just rather not see people in Southeast Asia, starve to death, or have their economies shut down

because they can't get away their gas. I mean, that has to be a part of the calculus going into what you want here at the Alka. - Yeah, I've seen a couple of Democrats like take this bait of like they're now going to send

tough and hawkish. And no, I want the word to end. And you know, if the minimalist thing where the Iranians get a bunch of money and they open the straight and then they got a bunch more money

and they ship the HU out, that's good. You can welcome that as a good outcome for the world relative to where we are now, while still being able to make a case that the war was catastrophically and historically stupid

and set us way back. I mean, two things can be true that the best possible outcome right now is just getting out of this thing. - No need to kind of put on your 2002 tough guy

Democratic talking points head.

“Like, you should be able to make the case without it.”

- Yeah, that's where I am, too. We'll keep watching this one and update you guys if anything changes. (upbeat music) This show is sponsored by strawberry.me.

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In different news, so it's a sad day for anybody who felt comforted knowing that unqualified weirdos

because, as we said at the top,

Director of National Intelligence Telsi Gabbard announced a resignation last week. The stated reason in her letter is very sad and very personal to her. Telsi said her husband was diagnosed with a rare form

of bone cancer. Obviously, that is awful. We wish her the best. We wish her husband the best. However, Trump's staff in Trump's allies

were eager to brief the press that they in fact

“fired her, and that's why she was leaving.”

One source told Reuters that Gabbard had been forced out by the White House. Back in April, there were sources telling Reuters that Gabbard could get pushed out in a broader cabin shake up in a White House official told Reuters

in a bunch of other outlets that Trump had expressed displeasure with Gabbard, and it had been asking around about potential replacements. But let's set that aside, the reasons for departure. We wanted to celebrate Telsi's career

and tenure in the DNI role in her own voice. Let's watch this little montage of some of her greatest hits. As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and more mongers

are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. I was at Fulton County, sir, at the request of the president and to work with the FBI to observe this action that had long been awaited.

President Obama directed an intelligence community assessment to be created to further this contrived, false narrative

that ultimately led to a year's long coup

“to try to undermine President Trump's presidency.”

The I.C. continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and supreme leader, Khmeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. Also, Gabbard testified at March that the intelligence community

said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon. I don't care what you said. I think they were very close to happen. Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat

posed by the Iranian regime, yes or no? Senator, the only person who can determine and what is and is not an imminent threat is the president. So it's up to us, the people, to speak up

and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust. (laughs)

Beautifully done. Beautiful montage there. For those listening and not watching YouTube, please, again, subscribe to Pottaith World on YouTube. So the montage starts and ends with this bizarre video

that tells you released out of nowhere about the threat of nuclear annihilation that apparently pissed Trump off and no one knew what she was talking about. Then it was followed by Tulsi,

testifying about a little election interference here here in the States. It was her accusing Obama of treason, or they hit the Obama did treason but at the height of the Epstein stuff.

Followed by Trump humiliating Tulsi over speaking the truth about Iran's intelligence and then Tulsi subsequently covering up for Trump's lies about the threat from Iran. And then finally, it ended with his image

of a tweet, Tulsi, for herself, doing yoga on the beach with the caption. My heart is filled with gratitude, a low-hot in peace, hashtag 26, prayer emoji. She sent that issue as being cut out of the planning process

around the Venezuelan operation. So wonderful stuff there. And it is very hard for me to decide what part of her tenure is most impressive. Was it hitting the Obama did treason button

at the heart of the Epstein files Fiasco? Was it firing officials who produced intelligence products she didn't like? Or was it generally just Tulsi building her career around opposing regime change wars in the Middle East

and then helping Trump start and spin one? Did you have a favorite moment or part of her over a quite a legacy?

But I do think actually the last one is the most important one

“because why is Tulsi gathered in that job in the first place?”

You know, one because she endorsed Trump and maybe she brought, I don't know, some number of votes his way in close election. But I think more fundamentally, Tulsi was put at DNI and Joe Kent was put at NCTC,

the National Counterterrorism Center. Those are kind of together with the CIA, the two most kind of high profile intelligence community officials. And that was the signal from Trump to MAGA

to kind of the Tucker Carlson, we're going to party. Hey, look, I know you don't trust these IC people. Well, I'm putting your people, you know, Tulsi and Joe Kent in charge of these agencies is a signal that I'm going to make good on my promises.

And like almost immediately, he turns around. I mean, honestly, my favorite moment, Tommy, is the whiplash between her saying, Iran wasn't close to a nuclear weapon, then being forced to walk that back,

then being forced to say that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated and then having to go along and justify a war to destroy the nuclear program

So she completely sold herself out, sold her principles out

for a whiplash of misinformation and to justify whatever is a Trump either did or said he accomplished.

“And look, I think what's consequential about it though”

is that this move from Trump away from MAGA, core MAGA, anti-interventionous MAGA, is now cemented. I mean, they're dunking on her on the way at the door, but without Tulsi without Joe Kent,

who's left over there? It's Marco Rubio, noted Neocon. It's Pete Hegez, who likes to do Dr. Seuss-Rimes about bombing other countries. It's John Ratcliffe, who's going down to Cuba,

trying to force a regime change like that. There's no MAGA people left, you know? - Yeah, she also fired people who released assessments about Venezuela that contradicted the Trump administration's political claims at the government of Venezuela

was controlling trendy Iraq was. So she really covered herself in glory. She also reportedly thinks that she can use the DNI platform to run for president someday in the future. So good luck with that, I guess.

You are kind of like failed and ineffectual

and then ultimately seeming sounds like you were pushed out,

but I don't know whatever. But to your point about the who's left, I mean, the principal deputy director of National Intelligence is a person named Aaron Lucas. He will serve as the acting director.

He's a former CIA guy who served on the MSU during Trump's

“first term, but also I think was chief of staff to Rick”

for now, who was the sentient Twitter troll who served in a bunch of positions before getting fired from the Kennedy Center. So things are going great. - Well, I mean, yeah, there is a serious point here too,

which is that job is actually not a policy-making job. It's supposed to be about managing the intelligence community effectively. Can you imagine what a complete and utter fucking mess the intelligence community is?

'Cause I can promise you there's no way that Tulsy Gabbard or Rick Grinnell's former chief of staff have been doing anything but driving people out who provided assessments that they didn't like. And probably alienating career operatives

who are out trying to run networks that are being put at risk by this kind of reckless, modern policy. So it will take us a long time to figure out the state of the actual intelligence community.

Never mind, by the way, Tulsy,

to further and furtherance of Trump's conspiracy theories, crapping all over the Russian investigation, which was not, no matter what they say, something that came out of Barack Obama said, it was something that emerged from within the intelligence

community itself because they saw intelligence about what Russia was doing. So she's probably done significant harm just to the functionality of the intelligence community while not achieving any of her policy objectives,

including, by the way, I should say, not even the kind of participation in the conspiracy theory stuff, right? Like, so much fanfare, I mean, maybe I'm tempting faith here, but to much fanfare, she launched that, you know,

height of the Epstein panic inquiry into Obama, we haven't really heard much about that. - Yeah, it hasn't really heard from since. - I mean, Trump did post the same AI image of someone who doesn't look like me

in an orange jumpsuit the other day, but we're literally reprising the same true social AI slot. And, you know, that full-toned county thing, where she went down to, you know, get the ballots in 2020,

I guess find out whether Hugo Chavez who was dead,

“you know, manipulated them, I mean, where'd that go?”

So, not a lot of competence emanating from television. - Yeah, those have not delivered yet. Let's hope not on what that remains a case. But, you know, the big thing that she sort of pledged to be her whole existence built around avoiding

terrible regime change wars in the Middle East and here we are, so a great work to see. She's shifting gears again, so there's a new spicy AI take that just dropped what we wanted to talk about. But this was not like your typical kind of

add-or-all fuel, the AI generated swap from your high school acquaintance on LinkedIn about using Claude for his side hustle. We were talking about Pope Leo's 42,300 word in cyclical on artificial intelligence.

So, a papal in cyclical is a formal letter written by the Pope about some major issue. Pope Leo's treatist, it's fascinating. It covered the morality and ethics of AI. It's used in war, it's in fact on democracy

in the labor market and really like AI's impact on humanity itself. Here's the little bit of what Pope Leo had to say and then we'll talk about some more elements. Let's watch.

- Artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed. Freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death. That's not fear artificial intelligence, but constantly keep the question of the human in play.

The person bears within him or herself a freedom, an interiority, and the vocation to love and worship that no machine can replace or block.

a free and intelligent subject with a conscience capable

of seeking God, serving one another, and caring for our common home.

“- My therefore invite all members of the church”

and of the human family. Let us learn to listen to one another, face the present challenge of a courage and cooperate in building a more human and fraternal society.

- Okay, so so if I need to hear a pope speaking and like slightly Chicago accented, yeah, English, you know, I'm just not over yet. So again, this is a huge document, 42,000 plus words. Covered a lot of stuff,

but just a few things that jump out of me, Ben, then I wanna love to hear what you heard about it. I mean, first of all, it was just, it was so rare and interesting to hear someone talk about artificial intelligence from a truly global perspective,

and only about its impact on humanity.

There's almost always some element

of economic competition from the companies or like nationalism and competition from political leaders, like we gotta beat China. We gotta do this. There was none of that here.

It was just about like the impact on us as humans, and that was frankly nice.

“One of the key phrases he used was he talked about”

the need to disarm AI, but it was an expansive definition of disarming, so he wrote, disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of armed competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon.

This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger data sets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance, to disarm does not mean rejecting technology, preventing it from dominating humanity,

very important idea there.

He was adamant that artificial intelligence is not a live or human. He said, so-called artificial intelligence do not undergo experiences. They do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain.

Nort of they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good or evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations or bare responsibility for consequences. He was pushing hard for moral standards for AI,

“saying, we cannot be satisfied with merely calling”

for the moralization of machines without also having the courage to insist on further condition the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice.

And then again, when it comes to war, he wrote, "No algorithm can make war morally acceptable. AI does not remove the intrinsic inhumanity of conflict. Indeed, it can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal, lowering the threshold

for resorting to violence, transforming defense into threat, prediction and thus reducing victims to data." And he seems to argue that the use of AI and war is even greater atrocity than standard war. So one of the founders of Anthropic, Chris Ola also spoke.

The timing of all this was interesting. This was released on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo, the 13th in cyclical about the industrial revolution more recently comes after Anthropics fight with a pedagon about the use of its technology and war.

And then there was all these reports. Like a week or two ago, that the Trump administration was going to release an AI executive order that might have started to regulate the industry a little bit, but apparently David Sachs and the bunch of industry

douchebags got it spiked because of concerns about the economic race. So Ben, huge document, super interesting stuff. What do you make of what you read? - Yeah, no, I actually spent a lot of time with this.

I think it's very important. And it's also very appropriate. There were talking about it on this podcast. Because AI is going to be globally transformative and put aside the opportunities of industrial efficiency

and robotics and a chatbot who can do your PowerPoint presentation and all the rest of it. The risks are extraordinary. And Pope Leo goes through some of them to include obviously the societal impacts

of job dislocation, the kind of societal and psychological impacts on children. Some of these security risks, he highlighted the risk of militarized AI. And he spoke about something that was in that

and Thropic fight with the Pentagon, that need to have human beings in the loop on the use of any lethal weaponry. So in other words, AI is not making decisions about killing people.

You can add to that from a national security perspective, the risks of AI generating recipes for biological weapons and new pandemics or being somehow involved in nuclear command and control. So there are all these risks.

And the reason I found this so interesting, Tommy, is that in normal times, right? As recently as 15 years ago, this would have been a subject of massive global convening. You probably would have had summits taking place

with world leaders. You probably would have had United Nations

at least the development of standards.

You probably would have had some effort to standardize AI safety regulations across the globe. The kinds of things, for instance, that Rishi Sunak actually is only person who had, like an AI safety summit towards the end of his tenure.

But the kinds of things were being discussed and that were being discussed in the latest anthropic model. Governments testing AI models before they released and testing them on some agreed upon set of standards. But you're looking out for it.

- He said you're the opposite. The United States, like JDVans running around the world, like lecturing anyone that tried to slow down the advancements of the technology. It's like we were just completely,

we're just arsonous in this whole conversation. - That's right. And so what I found so refreshing about what the Pope did once again, good Pope, we've got here, is he's kind of speaking, obviously, for the church,

which is going to be interacting with this,

with their perishes. But he's also kind of speaking to everybody,

“'cause I think people everywhere are like,”

what the fuck is going on? This is moving way too fast. It feels really risky. We're not asking for this. And he's one of the few people

in the absence of an international community, in the absence of leaders meeting in the absence of the United Nations playing a functional role, who is left who can step into this gap and fill this void

and speak with some kind of moral authority and institutional authority as a leader of the Vatican. And so I thought it was very interesting to see how much this broke through. It speaks to the desire, I think people feel,

for moral and global leadership on this issue. - Yeah, and how much people just don't trust the technology companies. We're obviously like, I feel like, I feel this backlash brewing within myself then,

which is like so many of the same people that did grave damage to our society, to young people, to our economy, through social media, and consolidation of technology power around advertising are now running it back

than in charge of artificial intelligence with even fewer safeguards.

“And it's like, well, why are we letting this happen?”

It's nice to hear the Pope come out and like talk about all of this, it's a holistic way. - I think, yeah, what's really notable is look anthropic play to roll in this. And anthropic is coming out with kind of their hands up

and saying, please, please regulate us, you know? Like, we know how to build this technology, we need somebody else to control it. Because if not, it's gonna be race to the bottom. And if you look at Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg,

you know, these kinds of guys that build other platforms like you said that had caused huge destruction in the world, I mean, they advertising models in social media that fuel polarization. Those are not the people that you want self regulating.

That's who JD Vance once in charge because JD Vance is backed by Peter Teele and you know, Mark and Dreson and people like that who are just pouring money in day eye and want it to be totally unregulated.

But I think what you're seeing, the AI populism is here and whoever steps into fill the void and offering ideas for both regulation and constraints and guardrails and also just frankly a conversation

about what the hell is going on,

“there's gonna be a little few chapter for that.”

And so the Pope's done it, message to any Democrat who's thinking of run for president like get to where the Pope is on this thing. - Yeah, exactly. And yet, credit to you atthropic founder

who's there, the Chris Olup for saying, you know, the conversation about AI has gotta go beyond just kind of like computer coders and technology experts that has to include religious leaders, civil society scholars,

governments, it's just so frustrating to have that fall on deaf ears at least here in the United States and just see, you know, all these companies are American for the most part

in our countries, just the least helpful of all of them. - Yeah. - Good, more of this from the Pope. (upbeat music) - Ponte of World is brought to you by Helix.

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It's simplysafe.com/cricutworld. There's no safe like simplysafe. [MUSIC PLAYING] Then last week, we dug into Trump's visit with China. And frankly, at the time, say we

hoped that AI, coordination, and safeguards, we part of that conversation. But all science coming out of it, it was as kind of just a dud of a meeting, except for that the White House was preparing

to sell out Taiwan or at least signaling that, specifically, Trump was making comments to the press about using Taiwan Armed Sales as a negotiating chip. That was a quote. The sell out is now official.

So last Thursday, Trump's acting secretary of the Navy told the US Senate that the US had paused a recent $14 billion arm sale that Taiwan to make sure that, quote, "We have the munitions we need for Epic Fury, which we have plenty, we're just making sure we have everything.

But then the foreign military sales will continue with the administration, deems necessary." So it's funny to watch these guys get stuck in their own kind of lies, right?

Because he's saying, we're not running short of these critical

munitions because of the war with Iran. But we need to pause the arm sales to Taiwan, in case we are. But we'll be fine. We'll get back to it, right?

So they're just like tied up and not. Either way, it sounds like this $14 billion sale is paused. We don't know exactly what's in it. Reuters said it includes air defense interceptor missiles

and other big ticket items that Taiwan needs. But that pause comes on top of the nearly $30 billion for backlog of US weapons to deliver east of Taiwan. So Ben, as we discussed, the US got pretty much nothing out of this Trump visit.

Like there was some egg sales. There was a Boeing airplane announcement. There was pretty underwhelming. But it seems like Xi Jinping got a huge concession of the Trump when it comes to Taiwan.

And then you're seeing a lot of people point out that they're going to meet three more times this year.

“Xi has been invited to Washington, I think, in September,”

and there's an APAC meeting, and there's a G20 meeting. And the question I think is what happens if Xi uses all of those meetings to signal to Trump, that hey, it would be a really good idea for you to delay or pause or get rid of the arm sales and not piss me off

before we get together. Like, what do you think that means if they're just this constant pushing out of these arm sales for Taiwan security?

- First of all, what's extraordinary about this

is he's describing it as a negotiating chip, but he's not getting anything in return. - Right. - So he's basically negotiating a way the US commitment to Taiwan in exchange

for having nice photo ops with Xi Jinping. And to people who are skeptical of arm sales as we often are on this podcast, bear in mind that this is actually under the Taiwan Relations Act, which dates back to the time

when the United States formally established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, China, and de-recognized Taiwan that they pass a law that said that the United States will commit to helping Taiwan defend itself.

And so it was up front with China and Taiwan. Part of what we're gonna do to kind of maintain peace across the Taiwan state is make sure that Taiwan can sufficiently defend itself against an invasion.

Nobody on Earth thinks Taiwan is gonna like, use those weapons to attack China. It's purely for their defense. - As a means of preventing a war, right? The more Taiwan is got a capable and competent arm forces

the less likely it is that China invades them. So if that gets taken away, if Xi Jinping was able over the course of the year to essentially invalidate the Taiwan Relations Act and the United States is just holding those weapons systems

but also Trump is signaling, I don't really care about this.

I don't know, some Boeing plans and some agdeals.

It leads to a very dangerous last two years of the Trump administration during which Xi Jinping might think to himself well look. Not only do the Taiwanese not have defense capabilities who are promising but Trump is clearly not interested

in defending them in any way. So this is my window, 2027 and 2028 to do something. And that something could be everything from an invasion of Taiwan to like a blockade of Taiwan, which is another scenario where they're just squeezing

and squeezing and trying to force them to capitulate. That's clearly the play of the China's running and it's not clear what Trump is trying to get and exchange for this huge gift to the Chinese. - Yeah, that's the part I'm really struggling with

because there's just no, nothing's even been floating, floated that what we might get in return and yet at the same time, Trump is just kind of like casually upending decades of diplomacy with Taiwan.

“I mean, we played, I think we played last week.”

The clip of Trump not only threatening that David Sanger of the New York Times reporter and accusing him of committing treason, but also Sanger was like, hey, you said that you negotiated over arm sales with Taiwan, Rashige, and Ping,

but as part of like the kind of six assurances that the US made to Taiwan in 1982, that's not supposed to be a part of it. And Trump's response was like, what am I supposed to give a shit about some document

from 1982? And it's like, yeah, you know, like that, those six assurances were kind of like the foundation of the modern US Taiwan relationship. And a lot of that has been codified into diplomatic agreements

in Congress and the Taiwan Relations Act. So it's like, but he's just kind of up into the table and seemingly either doesn't know or doesn't care what he's doing. And those agreements and that law,

the Taiwan Relations Act and all those agreements are designed again to prevent the war because it's meant to make the war seem costly enough to China that they won't do it. If you stack up the Iran war, the legal war,

that we launched an Iran, the Ukraine war, well, she's sitting there in Beijing and thinking, nobody else is following any rules and these guys are rug pulling Taiwan and maybe this is the moment to make a move.

And Trump doesn't seem to be in the slightest bit considering that likelihood. - Yeah, it's bonkers. Also, there was a report in the financial times that apparently one of the most heated part

of the Xi Trump meeting was Xi talking about Japan remiliterizing. I don't know if you caught this Ben. So it's just an interesting if that's gonna be another flashpoint soon or suggest it might be.

That may be the next one up, but the reality is,

“I think Japan's gonna rearm no matter what.”

Could you describe what Trump's vision of this very volatile region where you have Japan, Taiwan, North and South Korea and China all in close proximity? - No. - Right, the goal there is to keep a lid on that.

And I think Trump doesn't understand that by walking away from all of America's commitments, by pulling military hardware out of South Korea. And clearly not giving a shit about the South Koreans. He's making them vulnerable to North Korean aggression

in the same way that he's doing that to Taiwan and then potentially Japan next. I see why Xi Jinping's doing it. Dead America out of my neighborhood and I want freedom of action.

It doesn't mean he's gonna invade Japan necessarily, but it does mean that he wants to be the dominant military power there which could lead to military actions early in Taiwan. - Yeah, and then it just them constantly bullying random

other countries in the region about islands and access to China, South China Sea, South China Sea, yeah, it's that good. It's nothing good. All right, Ben, so this next story is one we hoped we didn't have to cover, but this Ebola outbreak

in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has really gotten big and out of control

“and it does feel like it's important to update everyone on it.”

So the World Health Organization has now classified the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern. That's a notch below a pandemic in their UN alert system. In the international rescue committee said on Tuesday that the outbreak could become the deadly

as outbreak on record without urgent international action. So far, there's been more than 900 suspected cases in 222 deaths. There's a few factors making this outbreak worse than normal. The first is that it was just caught pretty late

so the response is likely weeks behind the spread of the virus to at best. Second, there's no vaccine or effective treatment for this particular strain of Ebola.

That's usually a critical tool of sort of putting a ring

around an outbreak and stop in the spread and protecting frontline health care workers. Third, these cases are mostly in eastern Congo, which is an active conflict zone, where there's very limited health infrastructure.

Wait, wait, wait, I thought he ended that war. Oh yeah, we did end that war, you're right, my bad.

have definitely not been displaced there.

“And then fourth, you know, you have these health care workers”

who are trying to battle the virus itself, but they're also dealing with traditional customs. Like, for example, there's a tradition in the region of like touching the corpse one last time at a funeral. And that is just the worst possible thing you could do

to spread the disease. Then there's also local distrust of foreigners and health care workers who are often blamed for the virus and attacked by individuals, even though they're trying to treat them.

And then fifth, we have Trump in Elon Musk, dismantling USAID and just destroying global health response infrastructure and preparedness and Trump with through the U.S. from the World Health Organization. So there's less coordination and communication.

So great work all around gang. Who could have seen this coming, everybody? The U.S. is already restricted travel to the U.S.

from people who have been to the affected areas.

There's increased screening and airports. So the risk of a bullet outbreak coming to the U.S. and spreading in the U.S. is still quite low. But it's very likely to get worse in Congo, in Uganda, and to spread other countries

in the region like South Sudan, where it's probably spread already. So Ben, you were around in the Obama administration in 2014 when there was another very serious scary bullet outbreak. Any lessons from that time worth sharing

and kind of things you're watching here? - Yeah, I mean, that was one of the scariest times I was in government because we looked at projections where if the Ebola outbreak wasn't contained, essentially the cases of Ebola went straight up,

like a hockey stick spreading around the world, because these are countries that do not have public health infrastructure. So in addition to the kind of cultural norms

you're talking about, they just don't have

the infrastructure to deal with it. Now, here's how we dealt with it at the time and that speaks to the problems now. Because those West African countries at the time did not have that public health infrastructure,

the United States worked through the World Health Organization to build literal public health infrastructure in the affected countries. It used, we used USAID in conjunction with the United States military to help facilitate the construction

of logistics hubs, hospitals, mobile health units to transport healthcare workers from around the world to the affected region to get other countries through the WHO to contribute everything from healthcare workers to money to equipment.

“I think you can see where I'm going with this, Tommy.”

The World Health Organization is the vehicle through which the international community responds to an outbreak like this. And the United States is no longer in the World Health Organization.

USAID was the funding mechanism to provide public health assistance to countries that need to build public health infrastructure. USAID does not exist anymore. The diplomacy required to galvanize collective action

from all these different countries. Both in terms of surging resources to Africa, but also in terms of concordinating how are we dealing with flights, how are we dealing with quarantine policies.

That requires very careful diplomacy at a time when the United States doesn't even have an ambassador in, I think, over 100 countries. So, I mean, this is not us gratuitously with swirving to knock Trump. I mean, this is literally

a perfect storm of the precise capabilities are needed to contain and deal with an Ebola outbreak have actually been systematically dismantled by Trump intentionally. And we're kind of just going to have to hope that, I don't know,

other countries are able to deal with this, because I don't really see any credible blueprint for how the Trump administration's going to do it. I mean, there's no permanent CDC head. There's no permanent director of the National Institute

of allergy and infectious diseases. Bobby Kennedy is a clown and he's running around. Dr. Oz's porch, like catching snakes with his hands and filming it for TikTok, like this is, yeah, do we have a bunch of idiots running public health

infrastructure in Syria? Is that what that was? I saw that. Why is he picking up a snake? What are you doing, dude?

It's like biting him. He's like, look, look, Cheryl, look, I did. It's a disaster. All right, we're going to do one more dumb thing, and we're going to talk about Ben's book.

So, Ben, we wanted to play you a clip. You have not seen yet. You have no for warning about this.

“And then we want you to try and guess what is happening and why?”

All right, you game? I'm ready. So we're going to roll the clip and you tell us what's happening and why. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Who do you want to talk? Oh, my God. No, my God. It's going to go out again. Any thoughts?

Your wildest guess is happening. Is a woman seems to be pulling a car walking backwards while being on fire? That's a gentleman named John Stevenson.

He's pulling a Reynolds Clio RS car with his penis.

And then someone lights him on fire. See that twist. Yeah, yeah. For some reason, Ben, this is how this gentleman decided he would quote, "raise awareness about prostate cancer

and bullying in schools." So we slaughtered this into the pot, save the world, run down, because it happened in England, I guess. [LAUGHTER] Where does Michael find this?

I have the New York Posts. Is actually the answer on this one.

“What does that have to do with bullying in schools?”

And how are those linked? Can I just recommend that there are alternative ways of generating awareness? That would be my take. Don't involve being lit on fire or using that particular part

of your body to pull a car. Yeah, he said I pulled a car with my testicles before and I pulled a car on fire. So I thought why not can mine both. But this time I'll do it with my penis.

I won't lie, I did hurt quite a bit. But my mind was focused on being on fire. Actually, here's actually what he had to say about the experience when he was asked about it by TMZ. I don't plan on having any more kids, guys.

And we're just hanging the bounce off of it. What? What did the work? Well, maybe I will say, labor is looking for a new prime minister.

Yeah. We wear this man's politics because he's clearly willing to engage in the attention economy in a way that, you know, current labor leadership doesn't seem to be. It's put in on the line.

Yeah, no, that's more of a lib demo of pulling a car with your flaming dick. Anyway, we thought that would be fun. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear

my conversation with Ben about his new book in some incredibly important foreign policy speeches in history and the artist's speech writing generally. So stick around for that. (upbeat music)

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So, stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at crick-a-dot-com/friends. Check it out. All right, Ben and Lou, our standard interview this week. We wanted to talk about your new book.

All we say, the Battle for American Identity, a history in 15 speeches. Again, it is out today as we're recording this Tuesday, May 26. So, go pick one up before they're sold out. Get 'em all you can.

Yes. So, Ben, the book is focused on great speeches in American history. You got examples from Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, FDR, Dolores Huerta, Reagan, Obama, Trump.

a speech is an anacronistic communication's tool, especially when you have a president like Trump, who can barely get a sentence out sometimes, who puts zero effort into writing his own remarks, right, he's a vomit, whatever comes to his mind.

Like he can entertain the audience, but he's not like moving masses per se. But at the same time, it is easier than ever to consume a great speech on YouTube, to share a great speech on TikTok or Twitter

or Instagram or whatever. So, I shouldn't wear you how you think about the speech, the presidential speech, as part of the communications toolbox these days. And whether you think like, you know,

a great future president, a John Ossoffer president, could kind of like bring the speech back.

Yeah, so, first of all, what I did in kind of curating

15 speeches, I wanted to tell the entire story of American history through speeches. And I particularly wanted to focus on speeches that dealt with the matter of American identity. What is American?

Who is an American? How do we decide that question? Because that's essentially the kind of core of the argument that we're having now and that we've been having throughout our history.

Speaches are this venue precisely because the United States is not just like a particular territory. We were 13 states for, for instance, at the beginning, right? We're not a particular ethnic group. But we are a country that is committed to a set of ideas.

So speeches have been this venue where we work out who we are and we work at our differences. And we tell stories about what it means to be American

and what we stand for in the world.

And so each of the speeches starting with Ben Franklin, the constitutional convention, deal with this question of who are we and I dealt with both sides or all sides of that argument. I think the thing I found that was really interesting, Tommy,

that you learned things that you didn't expect to learn, how much technology changed how people engage in that. So in Ben Franklin's day, the audience was in the room. But you knew that the speeches were going to be reprinted in newspaper.

So you wrote these kind of carefully worded arguments. You get to like Frederick Douglass's time. Douglass is hitting the road. He's delivering the same speech hundreds of times, going town to town as a performer and a celebrity, frankly.

“But that's how a lot of reform movements.”

And I deal a lot with each chapter is not just about a speech.

It's about the life of the person who gave it

and the movement that led into that speech. That's how movements got built for things like abolition and women's rights. And that existed through Reagan, right? Because he was giving speeches to like every GE

plants in the country for a while. He's like a paid flag for them. There's an American tradition of that, right? And that's how presidential candidates hit the stump. Then you get radio and you get FDR

and you get this kind of plain spoken explanation of things. You get TV and you get spectacle, right? Charisma, Kennedy and King standing there and delivering a message that everybody can see. Now, to get to where we are today in your question,

with internet and social media, we've been so chopped into algorithmically divided tribes that all we see are like bits and pieces of clips that are designed to kind of either reinforce our views or trigger us to kind of hate the other side.

Right.

“And Trump has been the perfect politician for that medium, right?”

He'll give it one hour rally speech, but he doesn't give it for the full hour, except for the audience in the room. He knows that clips are going to travel around the internet. I actually believe, though, I truly believe this,

that a lot of Democrats, like from Gavin Newsom on down, are trying to mimic elements of Trump's communication, clap back on social media, or they're making pithy social media videos. That's great.

I think people should do those things. But actually, the counter-programm that's needed, and one of the reasons I think people feel like, hey, what are the Democrats actually stand for, is since Obama and Reagan did this very well, too.

We haven't had a politician provide an alternative story to Trump's, like, about the big questions, not just about, like, you know, ACA subsidies, or even the word Iran. But about, like, where is this country going? 'Cause it feels like it's gone out track.

And how can I make you believe that we can get to someplace better? I think we're starting to see, like, our guy John Asaf, who is in our tellsy clip, he's beginning to do this. But I truly believe that the counter-programming to the Trump era is actually to stand up and tell a story to Americans

that can resonate. And as you know, from doing communications, if you get that story right, that's like the trunk of the tree, and then all of your interviews, all your social media videos, all those other, your podcast appearances,

you know, come on, pod say the world presidential candidates, they kind of, they go out from that speech, and see me that Obama would have a stump speech. And then, you know, you're repeating bits and pieces of that when you go out and communicate.

“- Yeah, you need to have a big picture and a vision,”

and usually has to be optimistic, you're right.

shitting on Trump, which, hey, all for that,

“that's what we do, we have to have an alternative.”

- We do it, yeah. One of the speeches you highlight in the book is FDRs, four freedoms, state of the union address, where he's making the case for a vision. It's against American isolationism.

It's advocating to do more to help our allies against Hitler and fascism. And that speech he talks about the four freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

These were like big, you know, radical ideas. - Yes. - And they created this moral argument for helping fight the Nazis. Can you describe the genesis of the speech

in the impact that it had on American public opinion

in that critical year before Pearl Harbor is attacked

and were finally fully pulled into the war? - I thought this was such like a fun chapter to research and write, and it's a deeply world-o-chapter because I'm gonna set the scene for you, Tommy. It is the spring of 1940.

FDR has not decided whether or not he's gonna seek reelection to the presidency. In fact, he's indicated that he's not. He's told some of his associates, he's not gonna run. Nobody's run for a third term before.

And he's giving a press conference at Hyde Park, which is going to be his presidential library. So this guy's already thinking past his presidency and he's literally giving a tour to the assembled press and he's showing them, you know, his book collection,

his memorabilia collection, and here's, you know, where you're gonna be able to come and visit these things. And he is said though that the one thing that would make him run is if the war compels him to run. And at that point, you know, the Nazis are just beginning

to march across Europe, the Japanese are beginning to march across China.

“And someone asks him, hey, what's your national defense strategy?”

And you'll like this 'cause you've been in press conference prep. You know, he gives a kind of road answer. And then at the end, he says, you know, the fascist stand for all these horrible things. And he says, I think, you know, we stand for four freedoms.

And he lists four freedoms, and it's freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom for fear, and freedom of information. And then a reporter says, what about freedom from one? And he says, that's good, five freedoms, right? And then we don't really hear much about that.

He decides to run for reelection. He has a hard fought campaign for him. He wins. And like shit is going south fast. Like the Nazis have conquered France.

The Japanese haven't conquered Pearl Harbor yet, but the democracies are on looking good. And so he has to give a speech to Congress, in which he makes the case for the Lendley's program.

And that's basically writing a blank check

to the Brits to stay in the war. And that actually became a blank check to the Soviets, too. He's facing a very determined isolationist movement that has literally tied his hands.

“Congress had refused to allow him to provide that assistance.”

They had legislated and mandated that Britain had to take ships all the way to the United States, load the ships with weapons, pay for the weapons, and go back. They didn't have the money, they didn't have the ability to do that.

So this is high-stake stuff, Tommy. He gives a great speech about what's wrong with isolationism in the America first movement. So a lot of echoes of today that you would find interesting. Then he kind of makes the case for his policy.

But the night before the speech, he had gathered his speech writers in the Oval Office. And he said, I have an idea for an ending. I want to go back to those four freedoms. And he kind of dictates out this ending.

And freedom of information gets collapsed with freedom of speech. So that's how you get forward. And what I find so interesting about this, Tommy, he said, he intuitively understood as a politician.

I'm about to ask people to do really hard fucking shit. Like not only have to pay for all this arsenal of democracy, but we're probably going to be in this war. People are not to fight for it. And it's not enough for me to just give people

a good policy program. I have to give them a sense of meaning. What is this all about? And he basically makes the purpose of America at home in the world these four freedoms.

And that becomes something that people could take into the trenches with them. That becomes something that was in Norman Rockwell paintings, postage stamps. People got it that this was who we are.

This is what we stand for. Hitler stands for that. We stand for this. And it also informed became the basis of the entire postwar international order.

The four freedoms are embedded in the UN charter. So you don't talk about consequential. He not only kind of spoke America into a new purpose that became the purpose of the postwar order. It just shows you what a politician

a bad caliber can do with words. Yeah.

The meme everyone always posts of the one guy standing up,

kind of looking out, given the speech is a Rockwell four freedoms poster that is repurposed today, too. And boy, people on X, so yeah, enduring. You also did a chapter on Reagan's famous evil empire speech. This was a speech from 1983.

It is like mostly red meat for a bunch of right-wing evangelical

abortion, prayer and schools.

“And then it concludes with this final third about communism,”

the Threffen communism, and in a quarks, this big attack on so-called appeasement of communism. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Reagan's decision to kind of jam all that together into this one speech. But also, there is a section of the speech

that is just genuinely insane to me that I couldn't get over. It's Reagan telling the story where he claims that some prominent man and entertainment industry was talking about communism and said, "I love my little girls more than anything else."

But I would rather see my little girls die now

still believing in God than having them grow up

under communism and have them one day no longer believing in God. That's the end of the quote. As a father of two, as a human being, a normal person, I found that sickening in psychotic and also probably didn't happen, Reagan's a congenital liar.

But the audience applauded it both times in the story that he was recounting and also in that hall where Reagan was speaking. What the hell? So I actually have a very clear explanation for this Tommy. And I was surprised by what that speech actually was,

because I'd only heard about it as the philanthropist speech. But actually, again, it was a speech about American identity. And again, I tell the story of Reagan's whole life in his political journey and the coalition he built. And what Reagan built was the version of the Republican Party

that melded together Christian evangelicals, national security hawks, and small government-free market people. And that speech is in miniature and one container, his whole coalition, because he's giving that speech to the national association of evangelicals. It's a constituent event.

The first two thirds of that speech is just red-meat served up

to that audience. He talks about the need to abolish abortion. He talks about the need to prosecute people that provide reproductive health care to girls without the consent of their parents. All these kinds of things that actually became, unfortunately,

because of Donald Trump, the wall of the land, or at least in some states. So what he does very definitely actually is he pivots out of this religiosity. And by the way, also condemns not just godless communism, but the godless bureaucracy in the United States government.

That's the small government stuff. We don't want these secular bureaucrats

“making decisions for us. You should be making it.”

So that when he gets the Soviet Union, that's his frame. We are a Christian nation. The believes in god and a set of Christian values. They believe not in god, but in man. So the reason they're an evil empire is because they're not Christian like we are in the way that we are. And so it's a red-meat speech that ties

together the whole Reaganite project of Christian conservatism and national security hawkishness and small government. That's an identity for this country that Reagan kind of spoke into a coalition. What I found more positive about Reagan that's interesting is if you fall the story out of the speech, Reagan actually had a pragmatic streak, Mikhail Gorbachev comes along.

He's like, well, I can deal with this guy, and I don't want to have a nuclear war, and he became a dove. And you should see the freak outs of Republicans for having his who's negotiating arms control agreements with Gorbachev. He goes to Moscow in 1988 and has asked, "Do you still believe in the evil empire?" He says, "No, I don't think it's an evil empire."

That was just something I said at that time. He's actual strength as a leader was

“being able to walk away from that. I think the dangerous thing that I took out of that, though,”

is that idea of a godless enemy that is evil after the Cold War, some of those right-wing evangelicals just turned their fire on guys like, "Oh, see? The secular, you know, technocrats, right?" But I mean, I learned so much from taking that journey. Yeah, it's a fascinating story. I mean, I guess my takeaway to wrap this up a little bit was after reading both of those speeches. I mean, it's two presidents coming from totally different

political parties and ideological perspectives, but reading both of their speeches kind of left me feeling ashamed when I thought about the words and the policies they're espousing and their commitments to fighting fascism and promoting freedom is imperfect as those efforts could be. What I now think about how Donald Trump is just hanging Ukraine out to dry and we're watching, you know, Russia pound-queave with, you know, intermediate-range ballistic

missiles that could be fitted with a nuclear warhead if Putin so chose. And like, obviously, like, all these issues are more complicated than Reagan made them out to be, right? It wasn't good versus evil or black versus white. But F.E.R. and Reagan spoke about a commitment to values,

feeling, because even Reagan now, like, I don't, you know, agree with a lot of his approaches and politics,

but I did appreciate that there was a values proposition to foreign policy that we wanted to stand for a set of things in opposition to a totalitarian system. And F.E.R. certainly spoke to me. When Trump talks about Iran, he talks about the nuclear dust, or he talks about, you know, the straight of our moves. We've just drained the values proposition out of everything we do.

“And I think that's one reason, again, why Americans feel so demoralized and disoriented,”

because what is this all about? Because it just, without any values proposition, it's just about

pure power and pure transactionalism. And in Trump's case, like, personal power and transactionalism.

Yeah, and just stealing resources. I mean, we're going around, taking the oil, we're picking who the leaders are. It'll be total surrendered. Give us your dust, give us everything. We can do whatever we want it. But yeah, I mean, at least, I don't know, at least that signal he was trying to send to the world about our ability to just be that global bully is not working out, and maybe it'll rain him in a bit. Yeah. But I think, again, it means that things are ripened for someone to

“come along. And not in, I want to be clear, like, Joe Biden would do the pap, like, you know,”

he would mow the words about indispensable nation, or, but it wasn't like it didn't hang together

as a story, you know. I mean, look, I appreciate, I'm glad Joe Bat Biden brought some values based rhetoric to things. But, but the four freedoms is, is a coherent and potent story about what you can stand for in the world. And we need a new story. It's not as simple as Democrats sending up again and saying, America's the indispensable nation. We stand for freedom, like, like, take the pope. The pope is telling a story in that encyclical about being a human being,

you know, in the 21st century with artificial intelligence. It's that kind of story, right? It's

“one that meets people where they are now. It's not just kind of replaying the hits. The speeches”

that move things forward, like, evil empire. That was new for freedoms. That was new. Like, we need a new story that people can tell in this country and around the world. Yeah, I can't just be nostalgia and looking back and, you know, we were great once. Let's get back to that. It's got to be something new and bigger. Yeah. The book, again, all we say, the battle for American identity, a history in 15 speeches by Ben Rhodes out today, by a copy, by a copy for your friends,

by a copy for your enemies. Spile copies, book by him. Congrats, buddy. It's a great book. Excited for you to watch, I'm just saying in the world. Pots of the world is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alonum and Kovsky, Michael Goldsmith, and Inisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGrope and Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Mothit, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Her staff is proudly unionized with the writer's guild of America East.

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