Trump Begs Allies to Clean Up Iran Mess

Let me tell you, if there's a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh after drink to the friends, it is pre-Alcohol.

Zibiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink alcohol, it's converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a build-up of this byproduct, not dehydration. That's to blame for your rough days after drinking.

Pre-Alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down.

“Just remember to make pre-Alcohol your first drink of the night drink responsibly and you'll”

feel your best tomorrow. You guys probably know by now I will not have a drink without taking Zibiotics. I had one glass of wine at the house the other night and I had a Zibiotics for exactly here. You know what?

I risk it. I like feeling the rough next morning the next day after drinking, but you were pretty happy with yourself. I was happy with myself. I felt great.

From the fairways and a gust of the first pitch of baseball season and the start of festival

circuits, April is a sprint of outdoor celebrations, so excited for the festival circuit. Don't let a rough next day keep you on the sidelines drink pre-Alcohol to stay ahead of the game and make the most of every sunny Saturday, go to zibiotics.com/psw to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use PSTW at checkout. The Zibiotics is back with 100% money back guarantees so if you're unsatisfied for any reason,

they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember head to zibiotics.com/pstw and use the code PSTW at checkout for 15% off. Christiana Figures was the chief negotiator of the Paris Agreement. This is her advice about the current state of the climate movement. The first thing I would say is, "Nankeba, so where do we go from here?"

I'm Zaynab Selby, join us for the hidden economics of remarkable women, a show from foreign policy, where we tell stories about women creating change and refusing to accept the status quo.

“Your question, are you politically engaged and spiritually exhausted?”

If you said yes to both, welcome home, I'm Erin Ryan, and I'm Alyssa Mastermonico. And we're the host of hysteria, the podcast for women who care about democracy culture and not losing their minds in the process. We break down the news, call out the nonsense, and spotlight the women actually fighting back on Capitol Hill in classrooms and everywhere the stakes are high.

It's sharp, honest analysis, featuring women's voices, with humor and zero handholding. Listen to hysteria wherever you get your podcasts and watch full episodes on YouTube. And the fact that I can't answer that, I can't answer it. For all of you, in the boxtomb. Welcome to Parts of the World, I'm a low-dimincafsky.

And I'm done, Ron's. I hope you have a great time. No one works harder than Tommy, so I'm happy with some people work harder than Tommy. You know, it's far more because of Dave. Oh, how can I forget?

We're men and we're a Carter, but we love Tommy. We love Tommy, we miss you, but I'm going to fill in today in his absence. And Ben, you were remote last week for the show because you were a band with your family. That was my swim break. I went to Mammoth this past weekend with my family.

“And so I remember last week you were like, I just went skiing in a t-shirt, you had this glow.”

Yeah. I saw a little, I saw a woman skiing in a bikini. I saw that. You did too? Okay, I saw a guy no shirt, just only bib.

Yeah. It's a little weird up there. I mean, the funny thing about Mammoth for people who aren't Californians is it's kind of only accessible from like LA and Southern California. Yeah.

So you kind of feel like you're in Los Angeles on a mountain, including the people wearing a few clothes. It's a very like laid-back Southern California vibe. I'll say that. This is not like your Hoidee Toidee.

There's a lot of edible skiing happening. I think, you know. The party scene afterwards with like the DJ and everything, I saw people in like burning man, you know, at the time. It's a little burning in us.

Yeah. That vibe is so interesting. You know what? It was fun. It's fun.

I loved it. All right. We do have more serious business to discuss. We have a great show for you guys today. We will get into all of the latest with the Warren Iran.

They continue to mix messages from the administration. The military buildup in the Middle East, the very scary normalization of targeting civilian infrastructure. And we'll talk about Pete Heggseth personally interfering in military promotions. The Russian government attempts to block the messaging app telegram.

And basically, the internet all together.

The latest in Cuba and a little special treat from former French president Nicholas Sarcozi.

I spoke to Nika Kovach, who's been on before she's a Slovenian-based activist, who's done a lot of work. She's done work on behalf of reproductive rights across Europe. But most recently in Slovenia, they had an election. We talked about it last week, where the kind of far right authoritarian candidate Yansa was

why they expected to win. A week before the election, Nika was one of a small group of people who didn't investigation and revealed that the Israeli intelligence firm, Black Cube, which is made to perform on massade officials, had essentially contracted with Yansa to interfere in the Slovenian election. That kind of rocked things.

And ultimately, the progressive incumbent closed very strong and eat data victory.

So we talked about that story. It's a great story of just how did they reveal this Black Cube interference? Why is a group of former Israeli spies intervening in Slovenian politics? They've also done it in Hungary. They've also spied on me.

Then we talked about kind of where things are in Slovenia with the election result. What it might say about the election in Hungary, with Viktor Orban, who's coming up, Viktor Orban is very close to Yansa. And then I think really importantly, and I hope people listen to this, I asked Nika, who's been involved in a lot of campaigns and lots of different parts of the world, kind of what

“her lessons learned are about the best way to fight authoritarianism, and she had a very”

good summary, I think, of key lessons learned from not just Slovenia, but a lot of work she's done. So people should check it out. And I mean, you actually have such a great network internationally. I feel like a pro-democracy activist, and those are people that you aren't checked with

all the time. You speak to all the time. So if you want more of Ben's insight from speaking with these people, I just want to also highlight that friends of the pod is something everyone should be. That's where we bring you bonus content drops every single week.

Bonus insight from our incredible hosts.

Last week, we dropped a new episode of Podsive America Only Friends with Loved in Fabro. And as a subscriber, you get access to tons of content. There's Polar Coaster with Dan Fyfer, Open Tabs, which is the behind-the-scenes news letter from PSA out of their re-churlin, terminally online, Crickest looses show where hosts and staff reveal the unhinged rabbit holes that their algorithms drag them into this week.

I think a lot of -- I would argue maybe our YouTube specials get a little looser sometimes, only because I -- Are YouTube stories -- I guess really awkward questions.

“And that if you need any more reasons to subscribe, just remember that doing so directly”

supports independent, progressive media that helps Cricket reduce their dependence on tech platforms. You get ad-free episodes of your favorite Cricket Pods, and of course, you have a great

community of fellow Cricket listeners from across the country.

So hit pause, subscribe to Friends with the Pod right now, cricket.com/Frame. Across the country and around the world. There you go. There you go. We have quite a global audience here at Ponce of the World.

Okay. Now, let's get to Iran. So it's truly impossible to make sense of all the various statements, the threats, the backing off, the contradictions that are coming from the President and his administration on this.

So I'm going to do my best here to give you a play by play. So I guess just hold on. Hold on, you're seen. So as of Tuesday, which is the day that we record this show, their reports saying that President Trump doesn't care about the Strait of Hormuz anymore.

We could just walk away from the war before the Strait gets reopened. But as you and Tommy discussed last week, Trump initially gave Iran 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz. Then last Monday, he extended that deadline by five days. The last Thursday, he said that he was pausing the period of energy plant destruction

by 10 days to Monday, April 6. And I have to point out, too, that all along, we're getting these messages from Trump right that the talks are ongoing, that the talks are going very well. At the same time, he will write on true social threats to obliterate Iranian power plants. He also re-stated his plan to take Carg Island in an interview with the Financial Times.

And I have not been in high stakes international negotiations. Ben, I know that you have that seems to me like a little bit of a counterproductive strategy. Yes. If you're trying to negotiate with someone, but the Iranians, meanwhile, they still don't acknowledge that any talks are even happening.

A bus, our Gachi runs foreign minister, said to day in an interview with Al Jazeera that he had received a direct message from Steve Wittkopf. That's President Trump's special envoy, but he denied that the countries were negotiating at all.

“And so then, that's how we come back to this week.”

Trump wrote on truth social on Monday at the talks with the new and the more reasonable regime we're going great, but that if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be. I'm reading verbatim here from his truth. And if the harm we straight is not immediately, quote-unquote, "open for business," we will

conclude our lovely quote-unquote stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating

plants, which we have purposefully not yet touched.

“And then, as we previewed at the top of this section by Tuesday morning, the story changed,”

the straight-of-war moves is apparently not our problem anymore. President Trump truths all of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the straight-of-war moves like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran. I have a suggestion for you.

Number one, five from the U.S., we have plenty. And number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the straight, and just take it. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. I'm going to end that very long tie rate I just gave with a little clip from Pete Hugseth,

the Secretary of War. He gave his first press conference in 12 days today, a little bit of a little more. Yeah, we're he basically just followed up on what we've been hearing from the President.

“I think the President was clear this morning and his truth that there are countries around”

the world who ought to be prepared to step up on this critical waterway as well.

It's not just the United States Navy. Last time I checked there was supposed to be a big, bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like that as well. So he's pointing out, this is an international waterway that we use less than most, in fact, dramatically less than most.

So the world ought pay attention to be prepared to stand up. President Trump's been willing to do the heavy lifting on behalf of the free world, to address this threat of Iran. It's not just our problem set going forward, even though we have done the lie and share of preparation to ensure that that straight will be open, which is an outcome.

The President's been very clear on. I don't know, Van. If you were just to sit back and think like, my wildest dreams, I'm going to write this fictional story, would you ever have considered that it would be for us to start a war, create a global economic crisis, and then just walk away until everyone that it's their problem.

I mean, the problem with so many problems with this, but is it, I have no idea what the hell they're doing, and neither do they. I mean, let's just kind of break this into pieces. You've got the negotiations, the straight, and the Hexethian demands made on other countries. On these negotiations, it is quite clear that there are no really active bilateral negotiations

between the United States and Iran. There's a lot of diplomatic activity. Today, the Chinese and the Pakistanis met to come up with a formula in front of the war. We know everybody from Egypt, to Turkey, to Saudi, and involved in diplomatic efforts, really, probably back-channel and happening, but what's very clear is that nobody can believe

anything the Trump says, and that most of what he posts on social media has the single-minded intention of trying to calm markets, and keep oil prices from going up to high, or keep the stock market from going down too much. But every single time he says that these negotiations, Iranians come out and say that there are not negotiations happening, or, yeah, maybe a Rachi, the Foreign Minister might have

gotten like a U.P. text from Whitkoff, but like that, there's no formula that anybody is aware of about how to end this war, and part because there's no clarity on what the U.S. objectives are, right? And that leads to the straight, because when the war started, we were told it was because Iran's nuclear program was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon, which is complete bullshit.

Now we don't even hear anything about the nuclear program. Then Marco Rubio has been out there saying that the purpose of the war is to destroy the Iranian Navy and Air Force. Yeah, that's a new one.

First of all, I'm not, I don't like the Iranian regime, but I don't know how many Americans

are like, you know what I'd really like my government to be doing, like destroying the Iranian Air Force, you know, that can't fly to the United States, it's like, it has nothing to the nuclear program, and it has nothing to do with, oh, I forgot, the Iranian people were supposed to rise up, and there was a democracy, and the former Shah's son was going to go, what happened to that?

That's not the window. So no nuclear ambitions anymore, no ambitions to change the regime to democracy and not saying that would have worked, but we don't hear about that anymore. We hear about the Navy and the Air Force of Iran, but the fundamental issue for the United States is that things are much worse today than when the war started.

The main reason for that is that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, and therefore 20% of the world's fossil fuel energy is not getting out, creating a potentially economic

“catastrophe that I think people have not yet gotten their minds around, because it's”

coming one way or another, even if the war ended tomorrow, we're going to be dealing with

So I as an American citizen have no idea what the purpose of this war is. Importantly, the Iranians who were supposed to be the ones that Trump has not been negotiating with, how could the Iranians have any idea what they're being asked to do when these things keep changing? How can the Iranians trust a negotiation when they've been bombed twice in the previous

negotiations? How can they trust a negotiation when Israel keeps assassinating people, including some of the

“people that would be engaged in those negotiations?”

So it's just totally incoherent, and now for him to say, we will walk away from this without the Strait of Hormuz being opened up, and in fact the Strait of Hormuz is being run like

a fucking toll road by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was not the case before

the war. So Iran's gotten a stronger position, because we literally just made everything work. Yeah, we made the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps like hold 20% of the world's energy hostage, if we walk away from that, and our only solution is to ask the Royal Navy, as Peter excesses.

We've got big battles. We've got British Navy, like as if it's, you know, the 19th century, like those countries are not going to bail Trump out, because he's treated them like shit, because he's terrified them. He's insulted them.

He's humiliated them. He's threatened to invade Greenland, why would they come bail Trump out by opening up the Strait? And by the way, even if they decided that they want to do that, Genoa Wong would take the Europeans to put together some naval armada to then go down to the Strait of our

moves and escort tankers, like months. So none of this makes any sense. And meanwhile, while it's happening, Trump is deploying the 82nd Airborne and all the special forces to the region. So maybe he's just saying all these things about peace to calm markets, but we're going

to have the ground troops. We just don't know at this point. And that it is terrifying, given the scale of the crisis that we're in, that people that follow this as closely as we do can make no sense of what the house is going on. Yeah.

And well, and it's something we'll discuss more in terms of the ground troops in terms of the impacts for people. In the region, there's a projection from the UN development program.

It said one month of this war, a complaint, 4 million more people across the Arab world

into poverty and shave off up to 6% of the region's economic output during that time. And that's just one month of the war, we're in week five of this war. And that's not including all the other global economic impacts that we've talked about in the show.

“And especially last week in our interview, obviously something is happening, right?”

Like there were 20 Pakistani oil tankers that were let through. So somebody's talking to the Iranians, but as you mentioned, maybe it's not bilateral talks. I can see how it's also not, you know, the Iranians would want to project an image of strength probably to their people and not say that they're negotiating with the US, even if they were.

But either way, it's just, it's so demoralizing to see that nobody really has an idea of what's happening who's in charge. And so another thing that I want to bring up, though, is the notion of regime change used to be focused on bringing some kind of democracy right to the Iranian people. First of all, much to have a harmony, the former, I told a son who's now been put in charge.

She hasn't been seen or heard from the Russian ambassador to Iran, did say that rumors that he was being treated in Russia are untrue and that he's in Iran, but obviously avoiding public appearances, but I don't know if you noticed Ben suddenly the line from the administration is that regime changes, it's already happened, yeah, yeah, we have a clip of that, let's take a listen.

We're doing extremely well in that negotiation, but you never know with Iran, because we

negotiate with them, and then we always have to blow them up, but we've had regime change, we look already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed, and wrong then, the next regime is also dead, and the third regime would tell you a different people than anybody stopped with me before, it's a whole different group of people, so I would consider that regime change, and frankly, they've been very reasonable.

If there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us for them for the entire world, but we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case. There's a little mark, it goes not in the loop, apparently, but are we on regime number three?

I was under the impression that regime is a system, it's not just about what individual might be at the top that you're talking to. And first of all, I do want to say on the 20 tankers, like because Trump also went out and said that Iran made this tribute to us, of letting us. Right, it was a gift.

There were eight tankers before the war, a hundred to 135 tankers were going to the straight for us every day, so this is such Trumpian logic. You launch an illegal and unnecessary war, create a giant fucking problem, and then when

“eight tankers get through, you treat it like an achievement, like you should have 135 tankers”

getting through there potentially in the day, so like just bear that in mind, look, on

way to turn to spin his way out of it.

“He's so accustomed to bullshitting his way through things and lying about things in ways”

that he knows will be repeated on Fox News, but just take the regime issue. We assassinated, or Israel assassinated, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader. The 86-year-old Supreme Leader was replaced by his younger and more hard-line son. The regime is not Ayatollah Ali Hananeh, who's been killed. The regime is called the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It's a system of governance that has clerics that has the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

as the most extreme and hardcore version of their sturdy forces that has Basij militia, that has a military that has government officials across that country, just because you kill a bunch of those people, does not mean that there's regime change. I don't think Americans thought there was regime change, God forbid, when JFK was assassinated. The regime is fully in place, and the regime is in some ways weaker, because they've

lost a lot of people in capabilities, but in some ways actually stronger, because they are now controlling the straight-of-horror news, and holding the entire global economy hostage. They have now demonstrated that they can regionalize this war, and impose such a cost in the United States, that the President of the United States is self-evidently trying to talk himself out of this war, and so this is utter bullshit, and there's the problem

with it, Alona, is that you cannot make policy based on lies. He wants us to believe that the regime has changed. He wants us to believe that everything has been obliterated. He wants us to believe that Iran is paying tribute with ships that are going through the straight-of-horror news, which is closed, like these things aren't happening, and if you're

trying to suit policy to the lies being told by the President, and something as big and complex as a war when Iran gets a vote, how and when this war ends, Israel, which we get, you know, gets a vote on how and when this war ends, the fact that even if this war ended tomorrow, it would take years, I think, to rehabilitate all of that energy infrastructure that's been damaged and to restart the full supply of energy through the

straight-of-horror news, these are all facts that Trump cannot contend with, and so we're living in this crazy reality where we can all see from the price of gas in this country to the shit that has blown up across the Middle East, to the tankers that aren't getting to the straight-of-horror news, what is actually happening, and you have Trump out there

saying there's regime change, we're on the third regime, we're winning, we've already

won, we've obliterated everything, we're none of those things are true. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes.

“Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid, all-in-one”

place, and consultations to events and experiences showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. With Squarespace's collection of cutting-edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online present that perfectly fits their brand or business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI and hands-sweb site builder to get a fully custom

website and just a few steps, using basic information about your industry, goals and personality to generate premium quality content and personalize design recommendations. Every dream deserves a domain, Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price, no hidden fees or add-ons required. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life, whether

that means building a website or adding a professional email service, don't wait to claim your name, invest in your dream domain today. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/world to save 10% off your first purchase for website or domain that's squarespace.com/world. Positive world is brought to you by Helix. It's text refund season, John.

You know what I think of? This mattress company wants me to remind you of that. Here's two things you could do with your refund. One, use it to buy a new mattress. That's a great idea. Why is that the same thing?

And then you're investing in your best sleep.

“Oh, and not, but what about putting it under your mattress?”

I don't think you want to do that. In this context, maybe, though. I don't know. Here's the thing.

Sleep's the most important thing in my life.

When I sleep well, I feel great when I don't. I feel terrible. It's basically binary, and Helix makes buying a mattress easy. Take the Helix sleep quiz, and I'll match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences.

And sleep needs. Get free shipping and seamless delivery. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience, designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress, so you can rest easy with seamless returns

and exchanges. Helix offers a 120-night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes

Go to HelixSleep.com/World for 20% off-site-wide at HelixSleep.com/World for 20% off-site-wide. Make sure you enter our show name after check out so they know we sent you HelixSleep.com/World. It's interesting. You bring all that up, but you can't win a war or run a war based on lies. I have a lot of people who are supporters of Trump or who maybe think that this war is

happening for the right reasons, because they're afraid of Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

And always just trying to think of how do I have a reasonable conversation where I'm really

trying to put myself into their shoes, see their perspective, come back with what I think are rational arguments to express my own. And I think pre-Trump, the American people were also got really fed up too, feeling like they were lied to by their government when it came to wars with Iraq or with Afghanistan. I'm sorry, but for 20 years, we have being told that we were winning hearts and minds

and that things were working, you know, realistically, no, they weren't at all. But now, it's just the lies seem so much more in your face. But this is such an important point, and you're right, let us try to inhabit someone who might support this or support tougher policy of the Iran. In the last operation at midnight hammer, the last war of the run, the 12 day war, whatever

you want to call out. When we bombed Iran's nuclear program last year, I could have a sincere policy difference.

“I could say, okay, I guess I understand, even if I totally disagree, that the best way”

to deal with Iran's nuclear program is to bomb it.

But I could see that someone else might think that, you know what, like diplomacy is not working well enough, and you know, this is a threat, you know, we don't want to run a nuclear weapon, and so I, you know, I can inhabit the perspective of somebody who thought that bombing the Iranian nuclear program was a good policy, and then we have a difference of opinion about that.

The problem with this wars, I don't know what it's about. So I actually can't even inhabit the position of a war supporter, because nobody can tell me what the purpose of the wars is, is it the nuclear program? Is it to install Resapalavi as the leader of Iran? Is it to destroy the Iranian navy?

Is it to change the regime? Is it, what is it? It's all of the above. Isn't it? Right?

Yeah. Because we felt like it.

Well, yeah, essentially, what it comes down to.

Yeah, or Israel felt like it. And so how can you even inhabit the position of people that are supportive of this, when you don't even know what this is? Yeah. You don't even know, like what, even in Afghanistan, or any of these other, actually, I knew

with the Bush administration said it was trying to set up a new government in Iraq. And Afghanistan, we were trying to keep the Taliban out of power. Like, I don't know what we're doing in Iran. And I don't even know if the President of the United States knows what we're doing in Iran.

“And that's what makes it impossible to even try to understand it from their perspective.”

Well, I think the part that really upsets me is that, you know, it's people's lives they're at stake. It's a lot of work. Yeah, war is not a game. There are already 13 U.S. service members who have been killed around 300 last

I checked to have been injured. And now the New York Times reported that we have over 50,000 troops currently in the Middle East. That's because that's 10,000 more than we usually have in the region. That's because we've sent more there in addition to the 2000 paratroopers in the 82nd

Air Board Division that were sent last week, several hundred special operations forces. That's Army Rangers and Navy SEALs have been deployed. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is considering sending another 10,000 troops, which would likely include infantry armored vehicles and logistics support. I mean, you and Tommy have spoken about some of this already on the show.

I just want to go over some of it again, right? Some of the potential ground operations that are on the table, which are the invasion of cargo island, which is where most of Iran's oil experts go through, exports go through. That island is only 16 miles from Iran's coast. So drones, missiles, those would be a constant threat if we were to invade cargo island.

And then there's operations along the coastline of the stretch, or on strategic islands to secure the Strait of Hormuz, but we don't care about the Strait of Hormuz anymore. And then there's an operation to seize Iran's enriched uranium, which would be a massive multi-day undertaking involving, for the Wall Street Journal combat troops to secure perimeter as engineers with excavating equipment to search through debris and check

for mines and movie traps. Special operations forces with expertise and handling nuclear material, and unless an airfield was available, a makeshift one would need to be set up to bring equipment in and take the nuclear material out.

“I just want to play you a clip here because I think you have, you know, some unlikely”

people who normally would be war cheerleaders who've been coming out and we've talked about them, but just in reference to all of this potential military action you have Eric Prince, right? The founder of the infamous military contractor, Blackwater, formerly known as Blackwater,

So this was at a panel at Sea Pack last week, and I kid you not the name of this panel was called Breaking Stuff and killing bad guys, the case for Western military dominance,

but here's what he had to say.

I counseled as loud as possible against doing this in the first place, I don't share the optimism of the administration that there's going to be a peaceful stop to this. They will burn it down, and my real concern is that if they try to put boots on the ground, force the Straits of Formus, you will see imagery of burning American warships in the next couple of weeks, and I don't think people are really prepared for that.

“I take everything Eric Prince says with a grain of salt, right?”

I mean, the guy he's, he's profited plenty off of American military endeavors, but what does that tell you? I was trying to figure out how to not say I agree with your friends, but he's got a point, and look, he tends to like to operate in places where it's kind of chaos, and there's not like a military force like the Iranians.

You summed up well these potential operations.

I just make a few points to build on it. In any event where the American military is put onto the ground and Iran, they will face fierce resistance, either from drones and missiles or from some kind of direct combat. The thing that concerns me is that Trump might want to continually be looking for some win, some event that allows them to say we won.

We have cargo island, or we won, we got the stuff out of Isfahan, where the nuclear material is in the center of Iran, and it is entirely in Iran's interest to deny Trump the illusion or the narrative that he won, right?

“And so therefore they're not just going to say, "Oh, you got us, you won cargo island,”

we surrender." You know, no. They're going to try to kill as many Americans as they can in cargo island, to take out warships, to bomb our facilities across the region.

And this is a country of 90 plus million people.

This is a civilization that has survived for 5,000 years. This is a regime in the Islamic Republic that went through nearly a decade of the Iran Iraq war, losing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people and continued to fight. Like this is not a statement that the Iranian regime is a bunch of good guys. It's a statement that they're not going to capitulate and Trump just doesn't seem to understand

that. And what I worry about with these deployments as we saw and the run-up to the war or as we saw with the deployments to the Caribbean, they take on a logic and a momentum of their own. You don't send all these people to the Middle East without doing something, you know.

“I just feels ominously like he's going to pick from this menu of like season island or”

open the street or try to get the nuclear material. But that's escalation and if you boots touch Iranian ground, the Iranians are going to fight like hell and then we're going to feel like we have to hit them again because they killed some more of our guys and we just stay in this escalation loop that actually over time benefits the Iranians in some ways because they know that they've looked at Afghanistan.

They've looked at Iraq. They've looked at Libya. They know that the United States is not going to stay invested in a multi-year groundwater and Iran. They know that there's no public support for that and they're just going to want to try

to cause as much damage to us as they can so that we don't do it again. And so this is the fundamental problem. There's not like a Trump keeps wanting like the video game victory, you know, like the, like this island can become the objective. You know, when that's not how the Iranians are going to respond.

And in the meantime, Americans, I've said this to you alone offline but we're not seeing the full damage picture either. The Pentagon is not being transparent. Like we've had facilities hit in Bahrain. We've had facilities hit in Saudi.

We've had embassies hit in Rio and Baghdad. We are taking on huge damage. We don't know how seriously these injuries are. I keep learning about injuries from like leaked reports, official say. There was, let me just say.

So there were 12 troops who were injured on Friday when Iranian missiles and drones hit the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, which is interesting too because it's like we don't have a military base in Saudi Arabia. Unlike some of the other Gulf countries, but then clearly there's a U.S. troop presence there.

And can I say one thing about that? Yeah. They destroyed an AWACS, which is one of the most expensive planes at the United States has as a radar aircraft. And, you know, there were reports that they knew exactly where to shoot and that, you know,

the Russian intelligence that the Iranians may be getting could be improving their capacity to hit things like very, to hit an AWAC, a single airplane on a tarmac.

Iranians were a month ago.

And the New York Times said that many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable. So, you know, yeah, this is what we've done.

“And I think like just to your point earlier too, that you do one thing, it's going to lead”

to continue descalation, continue descalation, you know, you and I were talking about this early before the show that it just, it just feels like mission creep, you know, becomes an inevitable thing. When you think that some type of military operation is just going to be quick, one and done, it never is.

And so, I just want to, you know, hit one more aspect of this, where that we haven't

gotten to, but which is incredibly important, which is, of course, the civilian harm that's

being caused the normalization of the targeting of civilian infrastructure from both sides to, I mean, the list of non-military targets that have been hit is very, very long. We spoke a lot about the girl's elementary school, the start of the war, Iran's ministry of science says that 21 universities in the country have been damaged by strikes. And Iran has, by the way, threatened to retaliate by hitting American affiliated universities

in the Middle East. Then, of course, we've spoken about all of the attacks on energy infrastructure, and we've seen hits on water desalination plants, Amazon data centers, airports, ports, steel, chemical, and aluminum factories. I mean, this is both sides too, right?

It's not just like only one side doing it, but we also then were able to speak with somebody who is in Tehran currently, because, you know, one of the big problems is we've been hearing so little from people, we see so little from people who are living through this in Iran,

“who understandably I think have very complex feelings about it.”

And so this is Marti Iván Ramzdonk, she is the Iran country director for the Norwegian refugee council, and here's just a little bit of what she told us life in Tehran is like right now. My colleagues are working in the extreme difficult and dangerous conditions to scale up our relief for families that are displaced by the war.

We have over 108 workers, which many have been displaced themselves with their families. We nearly every neighborhood buildings are destroyed with surrounding damages. Desperate families taped their windows to prevent shattered glass after a blow, civilians are paying the highest price for this war. I also lie awake at night and listen to the heavy explosions in Tehran.

I am worried about my colleagues and their families, some are living so close to locations under attack, and colleagues have been telling me that the sounds are becoming too much, but even small cities are under attack and nowhere seems to be safe. Yet even in this situation, people try to help each other, conversations now start with and crying if the other person is okay and still safe.

Despite all this doom and gloom, Iranians are still living, we are living in a sure real balance of war and everyday life. And the latest estimates that we've seen by the way do show that at least 1,500 Iranians have been killed so far? Yeah.

This is incredibly worrying, and part of what we've seen, and we talked about this for years with Gaza, right, is that these really defense forces had a view of fighting wars that ignores the laws of wars, right? We saw them bomb hospitals, we saw them bomb schools, we saw them drop 2,000 pound bombs on a parliament blocks to kill one terrorists and got us how many other people got killed.

We saw refugee camps bombed, and basically we saw the laws of war tossed out the window. We saw a serial commission of war crimes by the IDF in Gaza, and if you pointed that

“out, you've got attacked, or called names, or what I have you, but that's what happened.”

And what's worrying me is that the United States military, which has always held itself

to a tribe, I'm not saying it perfectly, but tried to abide by standards, it first you saw a targeting error, I would like to believe that, and I do believe that that Iranian girl school that got bombed, were over 100 children were killed, that was a targeting mistake. But when Donald Trump goes out and threatens to blow up desalination plans and threatens to blow up electricity generation, he is threatening to

commit war crimes. The same thing that if Vladimir Putin doesn't Ukraine, we're all appalled and up and arms about it. The same thing that the IDF has been doing in Lebanon and in Gaza, and if we are now in a world in which this is what it's like when nobody plays by, if you want to know why

they're laws of war, this is why, because it becomes a race to the bottom, because everybody starts committing war crimes, everybody starts targeting civilian targets, everybody starts targeting infrastructure that will have an economic impact and a human impact.

including from Republicans that if the American military starts to act like the IDF has been acting and blowing up desalination plans and bombing and don't, the universities really pisses me off, because then they'll say, well, there was some IRGC research going under that standard, you know how many American universities do research for the defense department,

“are they credible military targets now, because that's what the Iranians are going to”

say, it doesn't make the Iranians right, it makes them wrong, but it means that there's a reason why we follow rules, because we want other people to follow rules too. And the other thing I'd say is whatever the objectives of this war are, there are, we talked about the thousand plus killed, millions of Iranians are displaced, a fifth of Lebanon is displaced, is anything that is trying to be accomplished right now worth that?

We are shattering millions of lives in the United States in Israel. Do you know Americans are inconvenienced, because you're paying more at the pump? Imagine if you and your family were living in a fucking tent in southern Lebanon or, you know, in the outskirts of Tehran, that's what we're doing to families. For what purpose, so Donald Trump can get a new cycle win or so BB Netanyahu can annex

southern Lebanon? Like this is, this is, I'm sorry, like I, I told you I don't respect your fashion because it's true. What I would like to happen is for this word and it can end diplomatically. And so if people say what's your solution, my solution is probably a multilateral, probably

not the US, even leading the negotiations, but some agreement in which the straight-of-armour is reopened. Israel and the US stop bombing. Iran is going to have to get something, sanctions relief, and we can all just, everybody can move on with their lives because the longer this goes on, the more individuals are

going to suffer, and the more global economic task free is going to be deeper.

Well, I, but I also think that's just always the problem with a lot of our military exploits

as a country, right? As we just tend to be geographically physically and anyway, economically isolated and removed from it. This is my very awkward segue, and into the next cliff, I was going to play for you because I didn't expect for you to go on such an impassionary, and before no, I'm really

glad you did it because I've been thinking, feeling the same thing all the time.

“And it's why I think that hearing firsthand accounts are so important, right?”

And it's one of the things that we talk about this all the time with press not allowed into God, that we miss, right, without a lot of more reporters in Iran. It's the thing that you're missing, which is seeing people who are just living absolutely normal lives a month ago. Just like you're in me, yeah, who are now are completely uprooted, and I was listening

to a report on BBC just this morning, and they were talking about, like, there's these newborns who are four or five days old, and these people used to have the homes with all the toys for their kids, and now as you mentioned, you know, they're living in a tent, and it's not the environment you would want to bring kids into. I want to play this clip for you, which was actually done for the Jesse Waters show on

Fox News of American Spring Breakers, yeah, so let's just, I guess for a little levity, let's check it out. Spring Break, 2021, what is the game plan? My mom is watching, I'm sorry, mom, but I've been getting pretty drunk, almost every day.

What issue facing America is the most important to you?

What the Kini, I'm going to wear an axe, obesity is terrible, and it's hand on the beach. That's the most important thing in my life right now.

“What have you heard that Donald Trump has been doing recently?”

We're going to war with Iraq, that's been crazy. What are you doing, Columbia? You got him on your own. Yeah, you told us, Dad. What?

Who? What is that? Who the f*ck is Iowa? I've never heard that word in my life. Lewis?

What's Iowa, it's Iowa? He was a supreme leader of Iran. He's dead. Oh, I don't know. We killed him.

Oh, you did? You killed him? What have you heard about, then is Waylaw? Then is Waylaw? That they beat us in the world, baseball, classic?

Have you heard anything else? No. Okay, so by the way, that went on for a lot longer, and that was just Anisha, cut it down to a nice little bite-sized chunk. Before we hear from you, I just want to say that my first instinct when I saw this video

was to like, to be in defense of our youth, because I'm like, you know, they're young. They're young. You're allowed to be dumb. You're on spring break. You're allowed to be getting like drunk, and like, you know, I certainly, if you

would ask me about geopolitical events when I was like a freshman in college, I probably wouldn't have given you a very, like, salient response as to things, you know, and then people evolve, and they get wiser, and they get older. But man, when we just compare that to what we were talking about, you know, in terms of our isolation as a nation, it's not such a good look.

Oh, God, um, yeah, I'm not a, I'm not a scolding, you know, asshole, and I went on spring break. I, you know, went to Jamaica and, you know, had a good time or whatever.

Um, I, I would say, um, the, the, there's something, here's what I would ask people,

to be following the intricacies of, you know, a war and a run. But we are bombing this country, and the two things I would ask are, what is the grace you extend to a 19 year old Iranian or Lebanese college student, right? Like, what, why is it okay that, you know, we can go around and just break countries and bomb people and kill their leaders and blow up their universities, um, and just think

it's charming and wonderful that, you know, people are thinking about their bikini tan or how drunk they're going to get tonight. Like, there's, there's something grotesque about that.

But the second thing is, how does that clip look to anyone else in the world who's not

American?

“Like, that's what I just think we really need to consider here because we, we cannot simultaneously”

want to be the superpower that runs the world and that, you know, launches all these wars. And the reason we can do that is because of what we just saw. Like, the reason we can continue to do stupid things. And by the way, I'd be pissed if I was a 19 year old American who just got deployed

to the fucking Middle East, right, because it's not, so now let's, let's defend the military. Like, we keep asking 19 year olds to go fight in South Asia in North Africa in the Middle East. So what? So that these people can get drunk and you see, what are just going to have a laugh about

it? You know? So I don't know. I don't know. I feel, I don't want to be like a...

No, I don't want to try them either, but I, I feel like actually, it's like a dull... It's a failure of all of us. It's a failure of all of us. Yeah, like the adults. It's actually not their fault.

Yeah. It's their parents, their politicians, all of us. It's actually not their fault.

“We're the ones who are supposed to educate the younger generation, so that's what I was”

thinking too.

They feel like these shows always love to make fun of college students and be like, oh,

this is what, like, a liberal arts education is going to get you and this is what happens, you know, with all the universities, but it's on everybody, you know, like, the way that you parent, the way that you are raised and educated by your community, you know, all of that is, it's all, it's, it's everything that builds up over time. And so if this is the way that, you know, are you through looking at the world or rather, like,

you know, not looking or thinking about the world is on all this. And now this is a toll swirv and we can come back, but like, there is a longer conversation we had about the systematic dismantling of public education in this country, since Ronald Reagan was president, the systematic delegitimizing of being smart, you know, like, elites or intellectuals or, you know, the starving of funds for, you know, state university

systems and some cases, if I'm cynical, I would say some of that is by design, because, like, autocratic, right-wing parties would like to have summer populations so that they're easier to control, and that's not even getting into what social media is done, unregulated social media is done. Yeah.

It's too.

“So I truly, truly, truly don't blame young people.”

I blame the last 40 years of post Reagan policies that have starved public education and deregulated

the kind of technology platforms that kind of lock people into, you know, or even with this current administration, just in terms of, like, the books that are being banned, right, that dismantling of DEI means also taking out, like rewriting history, making all kinds of people, all of that is connected. I couldn't agree with you more, and it's just, it's so deeply upsetting and frustrating,

because it's, it's also, it's what happens in other countries. And the world, when they try to just erase dirty histories so that you have an uneducated population, and then you just, a war like this could not have happened. Only with it all. 30 years ago, the, a lot of prep work had to be done to make Americans like be able to tolerate this.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Pottape the world is brought to you by Simply Safe. You shouldn't feel locked in just to keep your home safe. While traditional providers rely on fine print and massive cancellation fees, Simply Safe believes in earned loyalty.

Get the 24/7 production you need today with a freedom to change your mind tomorrow. Simply Safe. Easily customize a system that's right for your home at SimplySafe.com, and it ships to your door in a few days, with AppGuided Setup and No Drilling Required, you can install an armure system in under an hour.

No need to wait for a technician or appointment. It's not just a camera, it's a comprehensive ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and out in 24/7 professional monitoring, in the event of a break in fire or flood, the SimplySafe agents are there to take action. Did you see the, the Afro Man trial, but no, I keep, everyone is treating about a child.

It's so funny, but I wonder if he had a SimplySafe system because he had all this footage of the cops broken into his house and took his stuff. Anyway, go deep on it. You know, you know who's a loyalty they've earned at SimplySafe. John Love had set up a SimplySafe system himself and it worked great.

He could turn it on and off from your phone.

It was also over 5 million people trust SimplySafe every day.

U.S. News and World Report rank them the best home security system of 20/26, that's because you can get 24/7 monitoring for a fraction of what the traditional brands charge. We want you to experience the same piece of mind that millions of other SimplySafe customers do, which is why we've partnered with SimplySafe to offer an exclusive discount to our listeners.

Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting SimplySafe.com/cricutworld. That's half off at SimplySafe.com/cricutworld. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Pot tape the world is brought to you by Sundays when it comes to dog food.

“It seems like you have to make a choice so you can either have fresh and healthy or you can”

that easy to store and serve. But never both. You don't have to choose anymore, thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by Veterinarian and Mom at Dr. Torrey Waxman who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics, so she designed Sundays.

Air-dried real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you used to cook for yourself and your family. Every bite of Sundays is clean and made from real meat fruits and veggies with no kibble. That means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers.

Remember to kibble or other brands out there Sundays and does 50 times more in its ingredients to ensure premium quality because your dog deserves food made with care not in the best interest of cost-cutting. In the best part, you can just scoop and serve. There's no freezer, no thong or prep, no mess, just nutrient-rich, clean food that feels

they're happiest, healthiest days, you get more of them to share together. Look, Luca loves Sundays, I know, Leo loves Sundays too. They literally sprints to the bowl when you take it out and you feed them. They can be here because it's dry dog foods and when it goes into the bowl, it's suddenly they run to the bowl.

They sprint to the bowl, it's not the mushy crust crap. Make this switch to Sundays, go right now to Sundays4dogs.com/world50 and get 50% off

your first order or you can use the code world-fifty at checkout, it's 50% off your

first order at Sundays4dogs.com/world50. Or use code world-fifty at checkout. All right, well, let's segue into the products of 40 years of post-rigging policy in our secretary of war, Pete Heggs. When it comes to foreeducation, by the way, I was thinking about that, well, I wrote this

because I was like, oh, am I going to have to say secretary of war? The writing was on the wall when they changed it from Department of Defense to Department of War. Last September, we all should have known some shit was coming down. Heggs at this better suited to be the idiot interviewing those kids on the beach, you know,

“like that's what he actually is on that note.”

I'm actually not bringing him Heggs at the talking better run, but just because you said that there was a CNN report today that was talking about how Pete Heggs at this apparently like was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the war in Iran with Trump cabinet. And according to one source familiar with Heggs as current mindset told CNN, he's very trigger-happy. He believes blowing shit up is the best way for him to keep his job.

Well, you know, okay, to your point, the warning sentence had been there, though, because he said he wanted to get rid of rules of engagement. He wanted to be warriors again. He wanted to, you know, like, like this has been building for a year. Yeah.

All right, but so I want to talk to him about a different talk about him for a different reason though. We spoken before in the show about how he's undergone this firing spree at the Pentagon, right? He fired the Joint Chiefs Chairman, C. C. Brown, he fired Lisa Frenchetti, the first woman to be the chief of naval operations.

Now he has reportedly personally intervened to stop the promotions of four army officers who were on track to become one-star generals. It just so happens that they were two women and two black men. And then MPR reported that a black colonel and a female colonel were both taken off of a promotion list as well. You know, P. Hexeth, of course, former Fox News weekend host knows

a thing or two about being promoted to powerful positions without being qualified.

“I think, but what I think is really worth bringing up here, Ben, is that not only is”

it unprecedented for the Secretary of War to personally intervene, these people were on these promotion lists because they've been selected by the people that actually work with them. You know, like you're selected by your peers based on your performance and all of that to be promoted. So I don't know, you know, it's just mind-blowing to me. And what unnamed officials keep telling the press because now I think that there's just

environment of fear among the Pentagon based on just all of the unnamed anonymous sources that are talking to all the different media organizations is that, you know, they're saying it's just waiting out the people who aren't ideologically compatible. Yeah, but what's even worse about it is they seem to think that just because you're a black and a woman, you won't be ideologically compatible, right? There was no right

of this. There was no reason to get rid of Seeky Brown as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Infectious Black and made an eloquent video once about racism, right? And we saw him get rid of a lot of senior women too. So this is a pattern here of getting

understand this, the promotion to a one-star general would normally like the Secretary of

“Defense would not even be involved in any way shape or form of that. You know, I mean, keep”

in mind, one-star-two-star-three-star-four stars, like you're climbing a ladder there. And maybe when you get to the four stars, you know, like the- Well, he already cleaned house with the four-star-star, so don't forget. And so the fact that he's reaching all the way down there is clearly sending a message. And if you look at the upper echelons of the military, they're getting more white and more male, and presumably more manga. And you and I actually did a YouTube

bet this a while ago, but they're all these warning signs. And they are connected to what we've been talking about with Iran, because tag set this come in, and at Trump's direction, the military is far less transparent. Like they've got the My Pillow Guy media in the Pentagon press people from the room, they try to kick everybody else out. It's wider, it's more ideologically in line with Trump's agenda. It's not being transparent. I hate to say this, I wish I could just

“pick on headset, but I usually, there'd be these kind of professional briefings by uniform military”

about everything that are factual. And we'd see much less of that, too. And you know, something

like 40 percent of the military is not white. And so this isn't like some crazy, you know,

DEI initiative. It's just a point that like it's something deeply fucked up about saying, we're only going to have a bunch of white men running an institution that looks like America, and they should look like America. I mean, it's just pure racism and misogyny. Like there's no other explanation for why pdexet is reaching down and denying people a promotion to a one-star general. Well, not to mention, it just goes against everything that we think the military is supposed to

represent, too. Right? It's, it's, it's meant to represent all of us and all Americans and defend. It's one of the Americans that admire about them, right? Yeah, exactly. It's meant to be a political which, I mean, that reminds me too. Like I want to bring up another bit about headset, which is that there has been all this reporting that he is injecting so much of his personal faith, Christianity, you know, into the Pentagon, too. Like the Washington Post said that every month at the

Pentagon, headset host, the evangelical worship services that legal experts say are unprecedented. His social media profile and public comments routinely espouse his understanding of Christianity. He's brought clergy from his small Christian denomination to preach at the Pentagon, including a prominent pastor who says women shouldn't have the right to vote. And then last Wednesday at the Pentagon, headset prayed for US troops to inflict, quote, "overwhelming violence

of action against those who deserve no mercy." We ask these things with bold confidence in the

mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ. And then, sorry, this is still from the Washington Post.

Later that day, his department announced military chaplains would no longer wear their rank on their uniform and instead would wear religious insignia. You know, even that part, like the military is also supposed to be highly representative of everybody who serves in it, people who come from all different backgrounds and all different religions. And, you know, if now, if you have a very clear prioritization for Christianity, you know, like you're again dividing, weeding out people.

“Well, I mean, how would you feel if you were a black and the, like, how would you feel if you're a woman?”

How would you feel if you're a woman? How would you feel if you're Jewish? How would you feel if you're Jewish? Like, like, the message being sent to what is really the majority of the mill, if you add up the people of the military that are not white Christian men, it's probably a majority of the military. How do they feel? So this will harm the cohesion of the military, it will harm the way recruitment, because do you want to sign up for that kind of military? So this is, you could have

long-lasting impacts. I'll also just say, you know, I'm not the Christian of the year over here. Last year, you're not here for just two really bad Jews. Yes, but last I checked Jesus Christ wasn't like a bloodthirsty warlord. Like, I thought, you know, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Like, but this is such a bastardization of Christianity, like Christianity is supposed to value civilian life. What is Christian about threatening to

blow up desalination plans? What is Christian about bombing a girl school? So this is just bullshit, performative Christianity that I, doesn't comport with any Christianity I'm familiar with. Yeah, I just want to use this moment since you brought up our old YouTube video to, you know, tell everybody, remind everybody to subscribe to Potset of the World on YouTube because we do additional videos there, Ben and I do stuff every now and then, Ben and Tommy Hop-On whenever there's

big breaking news and we do responses. So don't forget that that goes a long way for Potset of the World. We got to, we got to get more subscribers because we're trying to fight the good fight here for progressive media. All right, I want to do an update on Russia, naturally, but specifically, I want to talk about the way that the Russian government is kind of waging a war on

its own people and their access to information. Now, there's two major stories there. So the first

They're trying to get everybody to switch over to a government-created app called Macs, but no one really wants to use it because obviously it's literally the same. It's literally the same. The Russian and the conversation, Ben. And I just have to point out that telegram is incredibly popular within Russia. I've seen statistics that more than 76% of the population uses it. Also, the government uses it. They have their social media channels on there to put out information. The military uses it to

communicate with each other. It's also a way for all kinds of influencers and bloggers to make money, like a lot of pro-warmants. Exactly. It's a huge economy. And so, yeah, just think about the impacts of that if you're going to take telegram away from people. And then the second thing that's going on is the Russian government has been increasingly just blocking the internet all together. People are complaining that there's no Wi-Fi around that there's no cell service, VPNs are getting blocked.

It's less so impacting people who work for really big companies that have their own servers, but it's inflicting damage on just the way people go about their daily lives. Like Russia's

“a plugged-in society. If you want to order food, you want to order a taxi, you want to pay for”

something with your phone. You need the internet to do all that. And according to Commitassand,

which is a newspaper each day of no service, cost-resistant businesses as much as 1 billion rubles,

which is $12 million. I also just want to point out, you know, personally, I've been impacted by this because it's just getting harder and harder to communicate with my family than Russia. How do you communicate with them? We, I don't want to give all my secrets. It's not Max, but, you know, like, we, you know, we, you know, we communicate, we use video, we use the internet. And increasingly, there is just like really bad service. Sometimes like, you know, we can't really see each other

here each other. It's just a horrible connection. Or the colleges don't go through it all. And, you know, all of that obviously is upsetting and terrifying, not just for me, but I think for anybody who has, you know, family and loved ones and people that they need to communicate with in the country. But the thing that they're doing is, you know, the Russian government is claiming this is all done under the guise of security. They tell people it's to protect, protect against Ukrainian drones.

I also think though it's interesting because there's a lot of speculation that it's really just Putin becoming completely paranoid after reports that, you know, the Israelis and the Americans like hacked into the street cameras. Yeah. And that's how traffic cameras and that's how they

monitor the Iranian leadership's moves there. So, I don't know, first before I go a little further,

what do you think of the paranoia angle? I think it feels right to me. I mean, and I saw a crazy, you know, the near-time bureau chief and, and Moscow to the great report on this. And her, one of her points was that increasingly the internet alges are in Moscow. Yes, and that's what's a very important point. The reason I'm important, as you know, that's me alone is that if the internet's out Moscow, what the hell is going on in the rest of Russia? Because Moscow is supposed to be the

question. Well, the rest of Russia, they've been dealing with this for a long time. They've been firsthand feeling the impacts of the war a lot more because it's their men that are going to the front. And so, Moscow has been the America. And so, it's been the isolated, you know, a little

“island where life is pretty much gone on as normal. And then now the last like month, I think this”

is really interesting. And we should say, you know, already the major, you know, Facebook is banned, YouTube is banned. Yeah. What's app is banned. And what's interesting to me about this is that okay, Putin has now moved in the company of like North Korea and a some extent China. But the

point is that North Korea never had internet access. The Chinese built this firewall. So they kind of

built the system to be controllable and accessible the mass surveillance. And it's been there all along. It's been there all along. So where's Russia had an open internet-based society, right? Like they, they were connected, you know, to all the same things we are. And to just, I ask people to imagine all that being taken away. And not just again, your ability to kind of go to, you know, and mytimes.com or something, your ability to like order food online, your ability to do any

e-commerce, your ability to communicate like you said, I just have to wonder whether this kind of Putin paranoia and desire to kind of walloff Russia entirely and create a total police state there. It's some point. There's a combination of that. Casualties, you know, disabled people coming home, like when does this start to tip against him? A lot is going in Putin's favor right now. I'm clicking the one around, including higher oil prices, including, uh, getting sanctions to leave

from the US. So this is more a three or five year question to me, but like this has got to be

“pissing people off. Yeah. Well, so I mean, I think that's a really interesting point, right?”

Because at the moment, people are still too scared for any kind of mass action. I mean,

unless they're sanctions, like, like, like, basically allowed and approved by the government.

“Then people choose not to do it because then, like, it gets a little too risky, but the associated”

press actually wrote about this. And, you know, it's just, like, so classically Russian in terms of

the bureaucratic approach, always making no sense. So they talked about how in one Russian city

officials blocked a rally due to a tree inspection. And others, they blamed snow removal problems or still existing COVID-19 restrictions. And in one location, administrators argue that the reason for the protest didn't exist. Yeah. And then there was this incredible feast. You know, I didn't have, well, the team cut a clip today because it's in Russian, but it was produced by channel one, which is, like, a state, you know, run news channel there in Russia. And it was, like,

man on the street interviews and it's just talking about, like, the novel ways people are getting around the internet not being available and Wi-Fi sucking. And it was, like, you know, wave down a cab, the old fashioned way, like, always carry cash on you, download the virus and advance.

Yeah. Or it's like, you know, go into a cafe and ask if you can use their internet, you know,

until, like, call your mom. It's just, it's so pathetic. What did you do under how long that can go on? But just to your point, right? So there were a couple. There was a recent poll by Levada, which is a polling organization there. And the way guys, the news paper, they found that three quarters of respondents said that tiredness of war described the mood in the country. And there was a survey that was done. This was, like, a government sanctioned survey. So it's

interesting. But they said that internet restrictions triggered anger in 46% of teenagers, crying in 15% confusion or irritation in 14% is probably like bad translations and I didn't read the Russian version. But so overall 83% of respondents reacted negatively. And that's amongst, you know,

teenagers. They didn't ask the adults understandably because I think it's easy to be like,

“go, the teens can't live without their web. But if you have to wonder, you know, eventually,”

this is the, like, one that could kind of backfire. I think what it reminds you of is like, you know, we, we talk a lot about, you know, the war in Ukraine's been trending well for Putin in a lot of ways, right? Like, but that doesn't mean it's trending well for Russians, you know, and in a common thread in all these autocratic societies is what may be good for the strongman or even for like a cabal of people on top of the system is not benefiting anybody else. One thing we all share in common

these days in most countries is that we're all getting screwed by a bunch of corrupt strongmen who are like hijacked power, you know? And so Putin's success is not the Russian people's success, absolutely not. And you would hope that at a certain point that leads to some change there, but it's not going to happen, you know, tomorrow. I was thinking about that a lot yesterday, you know, I was thinking about that a lot too. Because again, I was relating it back to like

Trump and just how still so many Trump supporters kind of just believe in everything he does, you know, and it becomes this kind of like cult celebrity warship around one figure. And Putin has that too, and so does like, you know, so do so many of the autocratic leaders, but they don't have your best interest in mine. If these are people, if these are people who would stay in power forever, if they could, you know, they don't have your best interest in

my faith, which is what they're doing. Exactly. Like, if they're just focused on how to enrich themselves, you know, damn everyone else, they're not interested in what's best for you. And like, they're just all the writing is on the wall, you know, like if you're trying to pick a boyfriend, you're not going to choose the guy that only wants to talk about himself and wants you to make all the compromises, you know, and so it's like the writing is on the wall, people.

Yeah. I hope so. We should talk to my daughters if they're too young for that, but later on, I'll give them some tips. A last story here, I want to just do a quick update and get your take on it. So, um, speaking of the Russian president right in a strange turn of events, President Trump broke the blockade over the weekend by letting a Russian oil tanker navigate into Cuba. That ship is called the Anatholika Lothkin and it reached towards this morning.

Now, we've continued to cover this, but the blockade that was imposed back in January,

“it's thrown the island into a full-blown energy and economic crisis. I think crisis can”

see a little bit of a, yeah, vague term. So, yes, and humanitarian crisis. Let me give some specific example what's going on. Cubans are suffering from frequent and long blackouts, power plants aren't operating. Hospitals have limited power capacity to treat patients. The water supply is disrupted. There's no heater air conditioning. Students aren't able to attend classes because there's no fuel. There's no transportation. That means that, you know, like garbage trucks

aren't running. Trash has piled up all over the street. Anything that's arrived at the island is stuck at the ports, including humanitarian assistance. And, you know, the Washington Post report

goes on. Yeah. And I've seen different estimates here on how impactful this single oil tanker

would be, like some people would say that some people have said that it could meet the countries to be on for only 9 or 10 days. Other people have said, like a month or two, either way. It's not a very long time, but Trump did comment on this on Air Force One on Sunday. So, let's take listen. There's a report that the US has got a little Russian oil tanker going to Cuba inside. Well, we have a tank around there. We don't mind having somebody get a boat alone because they

need an have to survive. This would have to have a horse through as far as you know. Well, I would say, I told them if a Tunky wants to send some oil to Cuba right now, I have no problem with it. Do you worry about whether it's Russia or not what? Do you worry that that helps slide in my foot, or no? That's not how bad it would be. You lose this one boat load of oil that's all in his

“thoughts. If you want to do that, and if other countries want to do it, just involve them”

about it. But she's not going to have an impact that Cuba's finish have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership. And whether or not they get a boat of oil, it's not going to matter. I prefer letting it in, whether it's Russia or anybody else because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things. I'm just so curious what you think is going on because we created the humanitarian aid. Once again, it's an incoherenceur because we created this humanitarian

crisis in Cuba, right? On top of the embargo, it's in place and top of Trump's reversal of the Obama are opening that I negotiated. They put this blockade in place. And so the policy of the United States under Trump was to do the opposite of what he just said. The policy of the United States has been to restrict any oil and fuel from getting into Cuba, which is leading people to die. I mean,

“you know, when hospitals shut down, incubators, ventilators shut down, right? I mean, this is not”

without human consequence. And so now he's magnanimous because he's letting a single oil tanker through his own blockade. And again, it's like Iran since I don't know what we're trying to achieve in Cuba because the Cuban government, whatever you think of it, poses no threat to the United States. There's not even like Iran, again, where there's a nuclear programmer. This is a poor country, it's a poor island nation. And so what is he trying to achieve? And actually, what we there's

increasing reports that they're trying to negotiate with the Castro family. Well, the Castro family, I negotiate with the Castro family. I negotiate with Alejandro Castro, who was a good fit negotiator

by the way. I'd say like he doesn't mean I grew them by politics, but they always did what he said.

It was US that changed the terms of deal when Trump came in. But what's the point of that? Like, what are we trying to achieve here? You know, he talked about regime change, but to what into what end? Like, like, we don't know why we're blockading this island and why we let Russian oil tankers through not other oil tankers. And it's just it's non-sensical. And by the way, bears saying alone, like, this is not what Americans elected Trump to do. Like, they wanted

the lower prices here. Like, they didn't want to like change the Cuban Venezuelan Iranian governments. Like, why, like, why he's doing this flies in the face of anything that with the exception of like small pockets of diaspora populations, like hardline Cubans, Iranian monarchists, Venezuelan diaspora, like, people who clearly have the ear of the administration should not be a mercenary force for, like, a small number of people and diaspora populations. But meanwhile,

don't forget that we cut all foreign aid, you know, that we're helping people who have a day to superkulosis, you know, like, you name it. Okay, well, we're going to not live you out, leave you on that depressing note. So I'm just going to, I'm going to finish the show here with a reading of a poem. And I'm actually going to read the Michael, our amazing producers

exact language here because he always writes such funny scripts. He says, Ben, you're a man of letters.

“So I know that I know you know, the French have had an outsized impact on literature, right?”

Michelle de Montaña invented the personal essay, the Marquis de Saad, pioneered, kinky prose, and Marcelle Proust pushed the very boundaries of what fiction could do. But now we welcome a new member of the Pantheon former president Nicholas Sarcosi to that exclusive club. Okay, so Sarcosi published a memoir in December of last year, the book is called The Journal of a Prisoner. In it, Sarcosi writes about his long stretch behind bars from October 21st of 2025 to November 10th,

2021. Yeah, for the BBC, he was sentenced to five years for conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from the late Libyan dictator, Mohmer Gaddafi. But he was released a

he did a lot of reading writing, found God, because why not? So thanks to Harper as we have a short excerpt from the memoir to share with listeners, it's translated from French by Lara Treesman and it goes a little something like this. I don't know if I can read all of it with the straight faiths, but I'm going to try. I'm not someone who likes to complain, who seeks pity or commiseration. I don't know how to salt, still less, how to pout, sitting down on the unmade bed. On my first night in

prison, I had a shock. I had never felt even during my military service, a harder mattress,

not a glass of water, not a coffee, not an ounce of humanity. Never before had I used a treadmill powered solely by my own stride. For someone used a running daily in the Guadaluña, the contrast was stark. Never had I encountered a more inconvenient shower setup. The meager's steam shut off almost immediately as if controlled by a timer. You constantly had to find the button and press it again, it produced none of the usual pleasure. For my window, I could no longer see the sky,

a burden flight, or a tree trembling in the wind. I was struck by the complete absence of color, and then there was the limp damp baguette. No, no, I felt myself being a full limp baguette.

It was as if my heart had stuffed me. I felt on the bed with this. I got the idea of rereading

Sartre to see if I would find there the emotions I was living through. There was nothing to elevate the eye, the perspective, the setting. I'm a lover of painting. I appreciate the beauty.

“Prison is not made for a set. How do I pronounce that word? Are we sure this wasn't, you know?”

So good. Okay, satire. So Sarcosi, I had the occasion being in rooms with him a lot, and my favorite thing about Sarcosi was, he had this interpreter who was a younger and attractive woman, from a lot to say that, you know, but it was kind of the point. Again, I've gotten French and I've got the funny thing about it. The funny thing about it is, she would not just translate, she would mimic his gestures. And Sarcosi would gesture a lot, so he'd puff out his chest,

and she would too. And he'd pound on the table, and she would too. That's the main thing. And so now he pulled her his lapels, and she would too, it was the most bizarre thing, but I love it was made it entertaining. But he's an over-the-top kind of guy. Clearly his prison experience.

“I mean, what's amazing about that is all that he's describing is, yeah, that's why you're in prison.”

Like, we know the comic crimes, and are convicted of crimes, the baguettes are damp. The shower pressure is not that good. There's not a view of the blood of her own to run in, right? Like, what the fuck did he think was going to happen in prison? Did he think he was going to like, you know, I was going to get like a cushy, you know, tell him the South of France or something, the penthouse cell. And the fact that this is he's describing, I'd actually have some more

sympathy for it if the guy did five years. I mean, I could do that for three weeks. I could do that for three weeks. Do some fucking push-ups. Like a silent treat, you know, like people pay for stuff like that. Like, like, like, block-duff from the world. I mean, but it is enjoyable. Oh, God. Well, I didn't make it through all the way without literally, like, laughing tears, but I hope you all enjoyed my rendition. Next up, we're going to hear about Ben's interview with Nika Kovetch.

“Quick question. Are you politically engaged and spiritually exhausted?”

If you said yes to both, welcome home. I'm Erin Ryan, and I'm Alyssa Mastermonico, and we're the host of his story of the podcast for women who care about democracy culture and not losing their minds in the process. We break down the news, call out the nonsense, and spotlight the women actually fighting back on Capitol Hill, in classrooms, and everywhere the stakes are high. It's sharp, honest analysis, featuring women's voices, with humor and zero hand

holding. Listen to his stereo wherever you get your podcasts, and watch full episodes on YouTube. I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend, Nika Kovetch, who's been on the show before. She's an

incredible activist. She's the leader of my voice, my choice, which successfully, right, Nika?

Got over a million signatures, the force issue of abortion rights onto the European agenda and successfully got the European Commission to commit additional funding for that effort. She's also the co-founder of

Hey, I'm so happy to be here. Okay, Nika, so I want to start with you, obviously, or Slovenia, and you've been involved in Slovenian politics, supporting progressive candidates and causes. There was recently a Slovenian election, which we talked about in the last episode. But I want to begin with this crazy story of your role in coordination with some other activist and journalists, and the run-up to the election in uncovering the interference and involvement of

black cube, which is a firm of former massade agents that I have history with, they once were spying on me, but you uncovered that black cube was interfering in the election.

“Can you just start by describing what you discovered, essentially, and how that came about?”

Yeah, so basically like we had elections in Slovenia, very intense campaign. The authoritarian candidate

was so well organized, like they had influencers who are doing like the usual shit that they do by the playbook, and then suddenly throughout the night a web page popped up, which was like revealing the corruption in Slovenia, and on that web page there were like videos of different people. They were called a "Prendics One" or "Prendics Two" or "Prending Three", which were secretly recorded while speaking about corruption in Slovenia. It was not like a video of like actual corruption,

like people getting money, just descriptions of how the state function in Slovenia. And when this web page popped up for me, it was clear to things, firstly, that it's not a whistleblower, that it's not someone who is just wanting to attack corruption. And secondly, that it is way to well-done, that it would be done by anyone in Slovenia. So I got this very suspicious feeling, that it's a foreign intervention, and I knew that similar things were happening in 2018,

in 2022 in Hungary, and I got this very bad feeling that it is going for like Israeli work, and that there are some firms with a lot of money attacking Slovenia. I started to talk with very good friends who are journalists, and they had a leak that Yansha met people who are... Yansha's the very populous candidate. Yes, he is the the authoritarian best friend of Viktor Orban, he is in politics for 33 years, and he wanted to get the power back. He lost

elections four years ago, and he did everything to basically come to the power now. And we got

a leak that basically, a group of people speaking, not Slovenian language, came to him, and that they were from Israel, and they had a meeting. And journalists had this leak,

“and when I started to speak, I think there is like a foreign interference, we started to connect”

the dots. We got information when this meeting happened, we bought an access to flyriders, so we got the information when the private jet from Tel Aviv landed in Slovenia. And then we got the names of the people who are there, and we realized that it is black cube, and then things started to connect, and it was this sort of fuck is happening in Slovenia moment. In three days, we decided that we will tell the story, and that we will go out with the story. I have friends in Israel,

who are investigating that kind of stuff for years, and they told me who black cube is, and then we made a decision that we will expose private mosques in Slovenia. And in one, we couldn't, we prepared a report about this, about the other cases, about what black cube already done in other countries, and also information about what they were doing in Slovenia,

“and what I think it was really important was that we decided that we do it in a very non-traditional”

way, so it was not just journalists exposing them, not just activists, but it was me, one journalist, and another colleague from civil society, who had the press conference, and we told, hey, like, this is happening, these guys are here, and why they met Yansha, who is paying them, and what the people that are paying them want from Slovenia. And this is how the whole journey

of one week of crazyness started. Yansha's first reaction was that he doesn't know who black

cube is, then his second reaction was that they need a monument, because they're exposing corruption. The third reaction was that he will sue me, because I'm saying that he's working with them, and after Slovenia National Security Forces set publicly the data and investigation, and that they were really at Yansha's party, he finally admitted he knows them, and this is when the story started to unfold, and it's the biggest scandal in Slovenia and history,

you know, I think Yansha would win. So easily, if he wouldn't do that kind of bad shit that he was doing, he would just need a positive agenda. People were quite disappointed with the government that we had,

“and wanted to change, and I think what Faktima's up was that he's actually an evil guy who used”

even more evil guys to help him in Slovenia, and he was not ready that a group of people will expose them. So yeah, I'm going to give a little bit of background for the listeners too, because of my own history. So for me, way back in 2018, the Guardian reported that Black Cube was digging up dirt on me, and trying to spy on me. That was news to me, but I subsequently learned all these things, like they'd contacted my wife, they had fake LinkedIn pages, they had to file on me,

that had all kinds of stuff in it, but you know, kind of stuff that was kind of more to intimidate, like pictures of, I don't know, my apartment or the front door of my apartment or things like that. What was interesting is, in relevant to Slovenia, I went to Hungary a year later when I was reporting my book, and I met all these people that I didn't even know had been similarly spy on by Black Cube, but essentially what I learned is, Black Cube had run a whole operation inside of Hungary to help

Victor Orban, where they recorded conversations with someone who was basically just saying,

hey, I'd like the European Union to put more pressure on Victor Orban, which by the way, any activists would say, if they came on this podcast, right? But because it was recorded secretly, it sounded like a secret plan, and guess where the leak was, Nika, it was in the Jerusalem post. So what's any subtle? But then Orban took this leak, and they called it Soros leaks, and then Steve Bannon started to juice it on Breitbart, and Orban kind of closed this campaign

with the idea that the George Soros was trying to overthrow the Hungarian government. The point is that there's a history of Black Cube intervening to help right wing, far right wing, autocratic people in Central and Eastern Europe. The question I want to ask you, because some people may not be familiar with the positions that the current Prime Minister of Slovenia has taken on Israel,

why do you think Black Cube and Israeli intelligence or former intelligence was so interested in helping Jansza this far right guy win in Slovenia, and is it tied to the desire to see far right politicians win in Europe, or is it tied to the positions that the Slovenian governments taken on Israel, and what are, give a little bit of background for people on what those positions are?

“So first, I think that it's really important that we say that the Black Cube has always”

a playbook, like they always are having fake identities, they record people, they post this,

and they even like do not post real stuff, they do these mixtures from videos with a clear intention to basically fake the reality. What we need to know is that there are not activists, there are not people coming to the country and fight for like different political opinions, there are a firm which is making billions out of that kind of resources. They were also working with Weinstein and the operation with Weinstein constant like 1.3 million euros. So firstly,

someone needed to pay them that they came to Slovenia. But what is also important is that they were definitely close with Jansza because the people who came to Slovenia were like the highest people in this organization. Why is this happening? Because as you said, our prime minister had a really clear stand on Gaza, what he was saying is that this is a genocide, he was very clear about this, we were one of the first countries who basically made Nataniajo a persona-non-grata in Slovenia,

and it was very very clear, like where we are standing as a country. But on the other also,

Hendi Anshah always is visiting like Israel, he's always speaking nice about Nataniajo

and he's clearly connected with these people. I don't know if this was like an Israeli state operation, like in Slovenia and I also don't want to claim this, but what I know is that there was a clear interest to basically attack the current government and to basically mess with it, but we also need to know that like this cost at like hundreds of thousands of euros, probably this whole operation was more expensive than all the Slovenian elections all together.

“And my question is like who is was paying for this? Is this the money which came from Hungary?”

Is this the money that came from some rich people in Slovenia? And why people had such a big interest to do this here? - Yeah, I think, and what we've talked about this a lot in the podcast, but people just really need to understand that there is this network, this nexus, that extends from Russia and the Hungary, right? Orban is tighter with Putin, he's not a supporter of Ukraine, but then Netaniajo has been very supportive of Orban, despite Orban having some pretty any

And so this is kind of weird convergence of the American outright and Trump and Putin and Orban

“and guys like Jansa and Slovenia and Netaniajo, like these guys all help each other out.”

And again, we're not saying it's in this really state operation, but we are saying that the group of former sub guys are getting paid to help Jansa.

And also these people like who are in Slovenia were one of the main people who were basically the propaganda

machine for the genocide. They were the people who where we can see public statements of them that like the Gaza needs to be like basically cut down from the humanitarian aid, that they need to be cut down from like food, that they need to starve the whole population there. So I also like we need to know where they're standing ideologically and why they're such a good friends with the answer and why they were in Slovenia with such a big passion and wish. Well yeah and so there

are a lot of questions didn't be answered. I do want to ask you about the Slovenian election because also part of what happened here is it seemed like Jansa was going to cruise to victory like you said. And part because there was a vigorous campaign and part because of this in the final week, it turned out that the progressive incumbent won a plurality. He won the more votes in Jansa. However, you know, everybody was under 30% because there are a lot of parties. How do you

feel about the election result and what I know now it's a coalition formation question like do we have any sense of who's going to be the next Prime Minister of Slovenia? So a couple of things

like the first thing was that like people were disappointed by the government. They were disappointed

by the cost of living, by the housing situation, by healthcare and also like what current government did wrongly is that they had like Biden's model of campaigning as the role model of campaigning. So the campaign was not hot at all. You know and it was very hard to make people

“excited for the elections. Why I think that revealing this story was so important was because”

it was a reminder what Yansha is and it was also showing like what kind of Sikh methods he's using to go to the victory. What will happen and what happened on the elections is that grew up one for like 7,000 votes. It was very intense. And also like right now we don't know who will be the next Prime Minister of Slovenia. We know that Yansha lost in his big mission, his big mission was to get a constitutional majority and I think this could happen without all

the stuff that happened in the last week. But I think that in Slovenia right now what would need to happen is that all the parties would need to say we are not going with Yansha, he betrayed the country, he brought like Israeli private militant in the game and this is a limit like if we are Democrats in a sense of like believing in democracy we cannot collaborate with that kind of person. But they're not saying this like the process for forming the government will last at least a

month more and I wish that the current Prime Minister will stay the Prime Minister but I cannot say this with certainty. And also another option is that they will not be able to form a government for a couple of rounds and that we will have another elections which is something that no one is very excited about. Makes you exhausted thinking about it. But we'll follow it. Two more questions that kind of widen this lens a little bit. One is you're obviously involved in Slovenian politics

but you're also involved in anti-authoritarian politics across Europe and frankly around the world. The kind of next big election that everybody's been watching is Hungary. You've taught already, you know, Slovenia is often seen as a bellweather to the small country but it's kind of often been seen as an indicator of where things are going at least in that part of Europe. It seems like Peter Magiar, the opposition candidate in Hungary, has the best chance to be

Victor Orban of anybody since 2010 when Orban came back to power. I know you have a lot of

“Hungarian friends. What is your assessment of kind of the Hungarian election but also does it?”

Does the Slovenia election have any relevance to Hungary in the sense of, you know, Johnson or Bonner buddies and Johnson just under performed? I mean, how are you feeling about the Hungarian election? I mean, I'm watching videos from Hungary all the time and it's giving me so much hope because I see people like standing up and resisting and also Orban is doing a lot of mistakes. They also have spice candles. They have different things which are popping up in Hungary and my

feeling is that he will end on his own, his own regime and I hope this will happen.

Another question which we always have in that kind of countries is will elections be fair and will

I answer will lose a lot of money and a lot of funding for the system around him. A lot of media

had been bought with Hungarian money in Slovenia. It was always very connected to regime. So we are

watching this with a lot of excitement and I also think that like you mentioned the whole picture of the Europe even three weeks if we have like centuries government in Slovenia and the centuries government in Hungary. It would mean like a huge change for the Europe and also for the vibe of the whole continent. I don't know what will happen as I said but it's the biggest amount of hope so far and I always hold on to the hope in that kind of situations. Well, we need to hold on

to hope right now. Last question we're asking is we've talked a lot on this podcast and you're not talked a lot about how network the far right is, how much they learn from each other, how they help each other. You've already talked about the fact that this Hungarian money, the buying up media and Slovenia, there's Israeli, ex-Massad helping both Orban and Johnson. You had Marco Rubio fly to Hungary to endorse Victor Orban like there's all this synergies on the right. What we need to do more on the

“progressive side is similarly network and learn from each other. And frankly, I think a lot of”

this type of people listen to this podcast. When you look back on the Slovenia and election that just took place, what lessons would you identify that might be relevant to progressives who are mountain campaigns, other in politics or civil society and other countries. And if I may ask kind of a leading question, it seems like being aggressive in exposing and revealing that far and interference is probably one lesson, like don't just wait for the newspaper to print it, you know, people

have to go out and do it themselves. Yeah, a couple of things. So this is my second get-out and vote campaign and the second campaign where we managed to defeat the answer at least by the amount of votes. And in both campaigns, it was super important that I was spending time with people from other countries that I understood what happened in India, that I understood what happened in Russia, in Belarus, in other places. In on the first campaign, it was important because I needed to understand

the total returns have a playbook and that they always play by the same rules, that they attack

the media, that they help other friends, that they attack independent institution that they try to

“knew. In these elections, why it was important that I have all of you in my life is because I”

could recognize the pattern. And I could understand that what is happening, it's not a whistle-blowing campaign, it's not a referendum about corruption, but it is like fucking foreign interference in elections, which happened in other places and it also happened to my friends. The second thing which I always learned is that we should not be afraid of them. Like we always think that they are so powerful and so strong, but actually these dudes just play by the same rules. And when you become

loud and when you become not afraid and when you start to expose them, they get so lost because they don't know what to do because they count on you being afraid. The third thing is that the secret is in big coalitions and that usually in on our side, politicians are not sex and hot. Like it's very rare that you have a candidate. Yeah. Or like you know, I'm Danny and stuff like that. Like in general it's your very lucky if you have a candidate for who you would like go on this

street and die for. So we need to create this like our of making collections fun and

“important and joyful like on our own. And this is why I really believe that we need to form big”

coalitions not just with civil society but also with influencers with like people who are doing different stuff like with coffee shops with bars who have the posters with people on the ground. And also one of the things is that we need to demand from politicians. Like that when we go to the elections and when we vote people need to have a feeling that there will be a difference and that they're voting for something. And if we don't have this something extra what I think happened in

US and also in Slovenia to certain extent like it's very hard to do a campaign. Because people deserve more and politicians needs to promise more. And the fifth thing is that expose them and talk about their tactics and their strategies because it's important that people understand and in our case what was also important that like we were a group of friends like if I wouldn't have such a close relationship with journalists who are exposing this and with part of civil society who was with us

like we would never do this crazy and dangerous thing but we did it because we trusted each other

and we did it to protect the country and also the last thing is that you need to love your country.

love it and when you show the people that like there is something we need to protect and care for

“they will join you. So at the end usually things come together. I don't know if it will be the case”

right now informing the government but at least we didn't allow black cube to fuck around. I don't know this. Well look that's one of the best summers of the counter authoritarian playbook I've heard. I hope everybody pays careful attention to that. I also just want to say and you guys know you've been working like crazy for a long time because you protected and extended abortion rights and Europe through my voice my choice. You expose this black cube operation. You

helped defeat Jansza at least in the vote count for the second consecutive time. So we're very

“proud of what you're doing and also hope you get some rest. Time for self care. Let's add that”

to the list of things. Or did we stop with everything in the open of bookstore? Well as you know that's a plan. I may need an independent bookstore and maybe we're going to have one in Solvini and one you know in New York or something I don't know. Yeah that's good thing. All right what's so

good to see you thanks for joining. Thank you. Bye bye. All right thanks to Nika thanks to

Nicholas Sarkozy for giving us the visual of a damp sad baguette. Thank you Lona for stepping in. Thank you for hosting the show with me Ben and Tommy will be back next week everyone. Potset of world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is a Lona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Boltzmann. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonnergy. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered,

mixed and edited by Jordan Canter. Audio support by Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls and Ryan Young. Matt Jagrope is our head of

“production. Eater and Hills are senior vice president of dues and politics. If you want to listen”

to Potset of the world ad free and get access to exclusive podcast go to crooked.com/friends to subscribe on supercast sub-stack YouTube for Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at crooked media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, post takeovers and other community events. Please subscribe to Potset of the world on YouTube for access to full episode bonus content and much more. If you're opinionated like us, leave a review. A production staff is

proud of the unionized by the writer's guild of America East. Quick question. Are you politically engaged and spiritually exhausted? If you said yes to both, welcome home. I'm Aaron Ryan and I'm Alyssa Mastermonico and we're the host of his stereo podcast for women who care about democracy culture and not losing their minds in the process. We break down the news, call out the nonsense, and spotlight the women actually fighting back

on Capitol Hill in classrooms and everywhere the stakes are high. It's sharp honest analysis, featuring women's voices with humor and zero handholding. Listen to his stereo wherever you get your podcasts and watch full episodes on YouTube.