Anne Applebaum: Trump's Firehose of Lies

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“Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast.”

I'm your host, Tim Miller. Congrats to all the next fans that are listening. And all my friends, the long-suffering next fans. Justin and Jackson and Ben and the others. I hope that none of you, like me, turn the game off

on the next releasing by 29 and turned on pod save the world to prep for today's podcast. I would say that the pod save the world episode was far less invigorating than the basketball game that I missed. But the highlights looked exciting.

Kudos to the next fans. And this podcast is going to be invigorating. I'm excited to welcome back one of our friends, staff writer at the Atlantic. Our most recent books include Twilight of Democracy

and Autocracy Inc. It's Ann Applebaum. Hey Ann, how you doing? Fine, how are you? Thunderstorm and Poland, you were telling me in the green room.

I'm hoping that does not auger poorly for the pod cast. But we'll see how it casts. I can hear it right now.

And it would be amazing if you couldn't hear it.

But because it's very loud. But it won't last that long. I hope. Okay. Well, our podcasts are kind of a rainstorm.

Usually for listeners anyway. So it's appropriate. Yeah. I want to start with Iran. We're just going to kind of hop around the world as usual.

This morning. Well, you guys last night, we should save you. It's carried out a fresh round of strikes on Iran with Trump cleaning. It was an effort to force regime into a deal. He was on Fox and friends this morning.

Where he said we dropped $250 million of bombs on Iran. Who knows what is true and what is false coming out of the administration. But it's pretty interesting. Since, you know, nobody in Congress is appropriated anything. Susan Collins is chairman of the Senate.

Proprations committee.

You think she might care about the quarter billion we spent on Iran last night.

But then this morning, Trump believes that we are looking not in the not too distant future into taking carguer went. So he's back to discussing a ground trip invasion of Iran. So I'm wondering what you make of the state of play this morning. In Iran, almost every day something happens. Trump makes a statement.

There's another use of weaponry. There's another piece of information. And yet nothing happens. You know, he keeps changing the narrative. He keeps trying one version of events after the other.

He says we're going to invade one day. We're not going to invade the next day. Maybe at one point he'll be telling the truth. There'll be saying something that will actually happen. But I'm not sure how we will know when that is.

In other words, you know, it's not just the boy cried wolf. We're really beyond that now. I mean, he's almost doing the, you know, the Russian style fire hood of falsehood. You know, if you just keep saying lots of stuff all the time. People begin to eventually blank out.

It's very hard to know what's true and what's not true. And so you kind of throw up your hands and say, I just don't know what's going on. And maybe that's the purpose. Maybe that's exactly what he's what he's trying to do. I definitely think there's some of that.

And you can feel, you can feel kind of the acute pushback to the war a month ago. And like less so now, like whether that be the markets or whether that just be, you know, conversation, I'd need to think that there's kind of a sense of, I got, you know, we're in Groundhog Day. We don't know what's happening.

Like there haven't been the acute crises that like there were somewhere we're warning about with with energy, I mean, the stuff takes a long time to go through. But like people saw like an initial spike in gas prices. And then since then, it's been, you know, kind of steady up a little bit down a little bit. I do think it's new.

Whether you're the threat this morning though, because about going into car

“and it's season the oil, whether he's actually going to do that again, who knows?”

Like you said, well, beyond boy who cried wolf, it's not worthy because, to me, it feels like, it's like, hey, I'm trying a new tactic for forcing Iran to negotiate a table.

And like that's the key point here, is that Iran has seemed to not be susceptible

to his very his like madman attempts to get them to, to deal.

And now it's not where the at least that he feels that he wants to put it back on.

I guess, would be the only minor change this morning. It seems pretty clear to me that the Iranians are calculating that he doesn't want to use ground troops. In other words, that he doesn't want to continue the war. That he's also bored of the war, that he doesn't want to keep fighting.

That he's looking for a way out. And it seems to me that they're using that.

“I mean, they're very things that they want from the United States, right?”

They want sanctions lifted. You know, they want a better relationship with the US with the world. They've been playing on that. You know, the assumption that Trump doesn't want to fight farther. And so maybe now he's decided to at least rhetorically try to call their bluff and say,

he will send in troops as a way of getting them to to concede more. You know, again, we're back to where we started. Is it real? Is it not real? It's hard to know.

I mean, I think it's interesting that Trump keeps returning to this thing about we're going to take their oil. You know, we're going to we're going to make money out of this war. You know, that in the end, it wasn't about regime change.

Obviously, it was never about democracy.

It's not really about peace in the Middle East. It's just not about creating something good for Iran or Iranians rather. You know, so that they get out of the disastrous economic and political situation. They're in. It's about making money or making something for me or for Mike Cleak.

And so that's always the line that he returns to when he's looking for a kind of baseline. Explanation for what it is that he wanted me. It was the same Venezuela. It's the same and almost everywhere. That's the craziest part to be and why I keep telling the Democrats.

He need to be going full code, pink on this war. It's like he doesn't even know what the war is for anymore. Nobody does.

“Like what is what is the possible justification if you took him at his word for spending $250 million to bomb Iran last night?”

Like we have no purpose. At least at the beginning of the war, there were pretenses for why we're going to do it. Like there isn't even that anymore. And the whole thing's crazy. And you mentioned how we're kind of at the, you know, what was the Russian phrase you called it?

The fire hose of falsehoods. Actually, I think that might have been a Steve Benin phrase. But it was really a description of what the Russians do. They put out not just one lie, but it millions of lies. You know, or not just one explanation, but one after the another after the next.

And there's so many and there's so much of it all the time that people eventually just two now. And they say, I don't know what's true. I don't know what's not true. I don't believe anything. I'm just going to stay home.

I'm not going to engage in this issue. I'm not going to get angry about it. I just don't want to know anything at all. And it's an, it's an actual propaganda technique. You know, you just flood people with massive contradictory stories.

And sooner or later, they won't pay any attention anything at all. And whether Trump is doing that on purpose in Iran or whether it's just the result of how his brain works. It's hard for me to say, but it's certainly having that effect. I mean, it's very hard to focus on a war when, you don't know what's happening. Is the president telling the truth?

Is he, is there an negotiation really happening? Is it not happening? You know, what are the Iranians really thinking? It makes it a confusing story to follow. I think Bannon's version of that was a little more crass, but yeah, I'm with you.

To that end, you know, Aaron Blake over at CNN went and counted how many times Trump has claimed to Iran deal is right around the corner error. And minutes, do you want to guess how many times have you seen that story? It's like 27 or 38. 38. 38.

38. And here we are, who knows this week? Maybe maybe the taking car island is right around the corner. I do want to mention our secretary of war who did a press conference yesterday. And I don't know what the deal is with the Dr. Sue stuff from him, but I want to play for you.

His rationale for us re-engaging and bombing or odds. As President Trump said, they've been tap tap tap. You can see when someone's trying to tap tap tap on a deal. Instead, they're going to have tap tap, tap bombs dropping on key facilities in Iran from the United States of America. That's the real person in charge of the war right there.

You're right. I can see it's like one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, and tap tap. And don't even try what it means. Nobody is, you know, he likes little sinks. Like he's very oriented, I think, towards, you know, tick-tock.

You know, he wants little clips of himself doing cheeky things.

“And maybe he thinks that's what he can add.”

Since he doesn't have any, you know, experience managing a war, since he's a television host. You know, maybe it's more just a branding thing for him. Maybe that would be, it would be hard for me to read into his brain and know what he's doing. But, you know, just to go back to where we started. And this is one of the reasons people are having trouble understanding what's going on.

Because the explanation of the war shifts constantly.

And it's always being shaped for consumption.

You know, it's Trump saying something grandiose. We're going to steal your oil, you know, or we'll only take complete surrender. And so when they say these things that are designed to create internet engagement,

And, you know, there is some reporting for reality on the ground.

Actually, there was a great piece in the Atlantic today about how Iranians are suffering and how bad the economy is and how people are cut off. And don't have access to food and all kinds of other goods. There's also a story about the US may have possibly having hit a water. Yeah, this is Phil up so Brian, I'll put the link in the show. I was about to bring this up.

He says that war crimes need to be officially US policy now on Tuesday, attack to reservoirs in a water treatment facility in southern Iran. Almost immediately after his water was cut off to about 20,000 Iranians who live around the town of Zurich. And, you know, he kind of goes into whether this is a deliberate attack that it seems like it was. Those are real stories.

I mean, I actually, when I, when I read about was happening to Iranians, and I read people who are trying to do reporting from Iran and to get information from inside the country,

“which, if you have some people can do, that stuff I believe.”

It's strange how that piece of the war, you know, what the population is feeling is almost of no interest to the people who are running the war. And, which is very strange given that the original justification for the war was regime change. In other words, we're doing this in order to change the government of Iran so that Iranians have a better life. And so that the protesters who've periodically trying to shift the government can have some success. I mean, that was the, that was the first justification, and it's almost as if that just dripped away.

We're not even, we don't even speak about them as real people. I mean, Trump talks about destroying them as a civilization. Whereas actually these are mostly pretty ordinary people. I'm guessing most of them not religious fanatics, most of them probably not supporting the government, except for a small faction, just trying to get through this.

And there seems to be no interest in them or no curiosity about them on the part of the Trump administration. Which, by the way, is a big difference from Iraq. Right. Forget about all the justifications of pro and con for the Iraq war.

There was never a moment when the Bush administration wasn't talking about Iraqis.

And, you know, trying to show them for Iraqi women and women in Afghanistan. I mean, sometimes some of the stuff was obviously a little bit. Yeah, and they, and they were talking to Iraqis all the time and they were, you know, trying to build a government in Iraq and try to build justification for something new in Iraq. And so there was, it was part of what the U.S. seemed to be doing or trying to do. And here there's nothing.

There's just no interest in what happens to people in the ground. You know, some are as a tricky one for a middle age gay. On the one hand, you are trying to make sure you can look at it in a speedo and stay healthy. On the other hand, you know, a lot happening in life, working, traveling, kids home from school. And so, you know, the health habits that you get into during the spring.

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That's drinkag1.com/thebullwork. It is a meaningful difference. I wonder what kind of parallels you see with it. When you say that, you reminds me of a thought that I had yesterday reading.

“Did you read the Maggie Hayverman and Jonathan Swan piece about the Epstein cover-up?”

It's just crazy New York Times story about that situation room meeting. Everybody in the administration basically had the Department of Justice, vice presidents, staff, everybody is discussing how they manage the fallout from desire for transparency around the Epstein documents.

It's like maybe we should have Tucker or interview Galane Maxwell. I mean, all of these ideas are just preposterous, but the whole conversation as it's framed in the story is about the propaganda. You know, and that is a parallel I do see here with the Epstein story and with the Iranians with many other stories with the administration.

There was no conversation about, "Oh hey, maybe we should try to find accountability for the victims and maybe that will help us with our PR."

Like that topic never seems to come up.

They don't care at all about that. All administrations exaggerate. All administrations spin. But there is an emptiness to this. It puts them in this space where it really is all just propaganda and service

of their corruption and authoritarian powers.

“And I think is a meaningful difference from what we've seen in the past.”

It's also just the lack of interest in humans. You know, they're not interested in the prosperity and well-being of Americans. Trump keeps saying he doesn't care about inflation. He's not interested in the financial situation of Americans. And I think that's true.

I think he isn't interested.

They're not interested in what happens to Iran or to Iranians. They're not interested in the Epstein victims. You know, they are entirely focused on the online world. And what can they say or do that creates engagement? What creates a good clip?

It's not even really bad headlines anymore because they don't care about newspapers. They care about the visuals, the engagement, what the podcasters will say. You know, they're inside the world that they created. That's the stuff they read, that's the stuff they react to. That's what they care about.

And I think that is more real to them than reality.

I mean, in that sense, they're already living in, I don't know,

the AI-generated world where what's online is the only thing that's true. And what's offline is irrelevant or doesn't necessarily penetrate what seems real when you look at your screen. And the people can't really know what truth is, right? Like this is like the approach of host truth strategy, right?

Which is, I people can know what they're experiencing, right?

“And this is why I think that the gas price thing was hurting them in particular, right?”

Because like people all of sudden saw attention with difference. But like beyond that, it's like, people don't know what's happening in Iran really, right? People don't have a great macroeconomic sense about how things are going. If you're being told things are going great and jobs are being created, right? Like, you know, they are taking advantage of that.

And I do think the new technologies kind of allow for it. I mean, China does this quite well, you know, within their country. And obviously we're not at that level, you know, but yeah, and Russia. But it seems like it's on that trajectory. Very much so.

I mean, and I think that's deliberate. They are consciously seeking to shape information and shape propaganda and shape the story in a way that has almost nothing to do with reality. And then I think is a difference between pretty much all previous administrations. I mean, you've had people try to spin, right? We used to have spin doctors, where something would happen and people would try and make it look good and explain it in a way that they look good.

“Here, we're talking about people who aren't even interested in that because a spin doctor was spinning a real event, right?”

And these are people who are spinning things that may or may not have even happened, you know, or trying to create new realities. Look at the California conversation around the background. The California conversation. Yeah. Exactly that, you know, that their candidate was doing really well online and he was making, you know, tick-tock videos or other videos that were doing really well on X.

And that to them was the campaign. And the fact that this was an election campaign in Los Angeles, which is a blue city in a blue state. And that their candidate in the end did no better than Trump had done in the last election. Seemed somehow jarring to them because for them the real reality is what they see on X in particular. And X is of all the forms of social media, X is the one that's the most skewed.

And depending on which part of the algorithm you're in is most shaped by Musk himself, you know, by what he says and his enormous numbers of followers. This extends also, so you're pushing about Elon's commentary on what is happening in the UK with protests and with the like backlash to some of the, you know, my grant violence issues. One thing I wanted to correct earlier in the week, I think it was a bill on Monday. I had said that and this shows that, you know, we all can be victims of this information online.

And that's of the person that was charged with killing Henry Nillack in Southampton was an immigrant. And he's actually was a British Sikh and he was Sikh, but he was native of the UK. And then we also now have a outburst in Belfast. There's a Sudanese asylum seeker is charged with attempted murder over a knife attack and massive protests there, a building on fire. You know, where there are a lot of immigrant residents, violence, Tommy Robinson, kind of like the racist street thug.

In the UK, sparking a lot of this Elon posting on all of this, right?

Because it's getting people out into the streets to do these protests.

“But it also has created this distorted view of what's happening, you know, in Britain, broadly, you know, based on kind of isolated, horrible, but like isolated incidents.”

I don't want to minimize these incidents because there's no, I mean either. They're horrible, I mean, but it's true, you can take one incident and you can tell a story about a whole country that isn't necessarily true. I mean, just as you said, if the perpetrator is not in fact an immigrant or not an illegal immigrant or not a migrant at all.

And yet he's being used to whip up hatred of migrants, you know, that's an illustration of how you can take a fact and twist it and distorted and make it into.

Make a story that isn't necessarily political, I understand that story. It was a, it was a police screw up and there was a, there was a deliberate misinformation.

“The perpetrator called the police to report the crime and so the cop.”

That's right. I did, you know, assumed that they were the victim, not the perpetrator.

Right, which is not the first time and the, that's kind of thing has ever happened.

I mean, there are all kinds of domestic violence stories where, you know, men accuse women of doing various things. And anyway, it's not completely unique. But if, you know, once you go down to the story, it doesn't have anything to do with the police being anti white, which is the language that Elon Musk and his pals on the on extra using. I mean, it's a horrible story. It's a terrible story. It's a police mistake and disaster and, and it's a tragedy, but it isn't, it isn't a political story in the way that it's being made to be.

And so the, that you can pluck these stories out of, you know, out of real life, turn them into something else on the internet. And then use the anger that they generate to create riots and, and people burning down houses somewhere else is pretty scary. And what you're watching is the state and the police, the authorities and Belfast and elsewhere, being really unable to deal with this. I mean, they, you know, when there's a wave of information, you know, anger and emotion, that they can't pinpoint on anything. It's very hard for them to know how to react and what to do.

It's another side effect of the, of the fact that we've given up the information space to algorithms that are being written, you know, outside of outside of the places where they're being used. The other night, I was watching game three of the finals, my buddies out on the back porch, enjoying delicious booing of Donald Trump, knowing that I'd wake up in podcasts the next day. We had ourselves little soul out of office beverage. It was nice. It made the booze wash over me in a way that was even more joyous.

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I want to move on to what's happening in Ukraine in some ways for different reasons that we're talking about it, but in Iran, but I feel like now I go weeks without talking about it even just because we've had a long relative stalemate, they've been few developments positive for Ukraine recently, we've brought it from time to time, but those, your last piece was kind of on the state of play there, so I thought maybe you could just cook for a little bit and give us an update on how things are going.

So I consider it my role to keep you continually informed about Ukraine, even though you don't.

“No, I want to be informed, so it's an important role, you have a captive audience at least with me, I can't speak to all the listeners, but for me, I'm interested, so go fire away.”

I live in Poland part of the time, so it's not that far for me to get there, I try and get there periodically, anyway, I guess about 10 days ago, two weeks ago. And the story in Ukraine is actually really interesting now, because we have hit another one of these turning points where the technological advantage is now once again on the Ukrainian side.

And every time the Russians enter that zone with a soldier or a tank or a truck or anything else, it is immediately identified and the Ukrainians can hit it.

When you talk about a stalemate, the stalemate doesn't mean that nothing is happening. What's happening is that there are these waves of Russian attacks and the Ukrainians keep hitting them, and you have this very, very high Russian casualty rates now, sometimes as many as 1,000 people a day that's killed and wounded. Wow, really.

It can be a thousand a day.

Much lower on the Ukrainian side, because their war is increasingly automated, it's increasingly run by drones often by people directing them pretty far from the front line. When I was there, I was shown some of the robots they now use, they use robots both to rescue people who are in the zone and are wounded and need to be taken out.

“And they also use them. They've actually, I think for the first time use them to take a position, they're beginning to experiment with robot guns and it's very, it's not really 21st century, it's kind of 22nd century stuff.”

It's stuff you didn't imagine or it looks like it comes from science fiction or comic books, but it's becoming real.

The front line is not moving. At the same time, Ukrainians have got also much better at hitting longer range targets, so they're hitting or refineries, oil and gas infrastructure inside Russia, creating these spectacular fires and explosions, including one a few days ago. The morning of a economic conference in St. Petersburg, famous one that Putin holds every year is pretty pathetic. This year, Candace Owens was in attendance, so you can see what kind of caliber of economists is now. That's right. All the morning, they hit the refinery in St. Petersburg and they were kind of billowing black smoke over the city while people were walking to the conference hall, so that's pretty in its pretty stark illustration of what it is that they can do.

They're really beginning to damage the refining capacity and also beginning to cut off a lot of supply lines into Crimea and into southern Ukraine with these longer range, so called medium range drones, and they're just making it very hard for the Russians to continue fighting the war. That doesn't mean that Putin doesn't have things he can do. He can still hit Ukrainian cities with missiles and Ukrainians have very little missile defense left or relatively little, you know, he can still create, you know, anger and hardship, but the Russians are now very publicly and clearly not winning.

And here's where we can connect this part of the conversation to the previous part. Putin has also been seeking to persuade the Russians not to pay attention to the war. It's inevitably a Russian victory. We're going to win sooner or later. We're much bigger than they are. They're not a real country. You know, they're countries run by Nazis. They aren't. It's not a real government. And we're going to win. And suddenly it's becoming clear to a lot of people not just near the front line, but in in Moscow and St. Petersburg that they are not winning.

And that's beginning to have echoes. You know, you can see it in the Russian internet. You can see some responses, even from sort of believe it or not Russian influencers.

“You can see where the Ukrainians have Putin that are starting to bubble up or sort of their critiques of Putin. There are people commenting, you know, why aren't we winning? Why aren't we trying harder?”

Some people talking about nooks. Again, that always happens when the Russians are losing. There's a sense of shakiness and instability. And you know, the Russians had this they have a every May. They have this enormous victory parade. And this year it was much shorter and it went forward without any usually they had these big weapons. You know, they have tanks and, you know, military hardware. And this year they didn't do that because they were afraid of Ukrainian drones hitting Moscow during the victory parade.

That's that's palpable. That's now cleared everybody in the country that they aren't winning the war. And so the gap between Russian propaganda and reality is now becoming clear what that means is hard to say. Is there any scuttle about what Putin's move could be in this? And I saw another colonist suggesting that maybe I couldn't open up a new theater, you know, goes a little bit into a Baltic state or something to try to distract or, you know, get attention elsewhere.

“I think it was just speculation. I don't know what, but you're hearing.”

They threatened that they'll do that. And they've been sending drones into, you know, across the border into several other countries. And so one of the speculations is they might use this moment while Trump is distracted by Iran.

weakness on our side or just to create some anger and distraction and, you know, and cheer up the Russians. I mean, it's possible.

“I mean, it seems like that would be a fairly fool. Hardy thing to do because actually they don't know how with the reaction would be.”

Right. I would think the more likely reaction is that Europeans who are now more aware than ever before of the physical and cyber and propaganda threat from Russia, certainly much more so than they were a year ago or two years ago. It just might re-wake in that that understanding. But you know, I mean, his choices are all bad now. And he can widen the war. He can have mass mobilization, which would, you know, also create a backlash.

Or as the Ukrainians have suggested many times, he could have a ceasefire on the current lines.

And for him that would be a failure because he said he was going to conquer the whole country. He still says he wants to conquer the whole country and he will not have managed to conquer the whole country. But it might be at some point soon something that he or people around him will want to sell to the Russians on the grounds that, you know, it's not going well.

“I mean, there's a deeper story here, too. And this is, this is maybe the better and more relatable part of the story, which is why has this happened. Like why is the Ukrainian drone industry so good?”

What did they do? And the answer is that Ukraine is a very decentralized country. It's very messy, disorganized in chaotic countries, some of the time.

But it also means that there are these pockets of creativity. So it's not like there's one Ukrainian state drone company that's giving orders for drones. What you have is like literally hundreds of small companies. They work with individual units or with particular commanders. You know, there's this constant feedback. When I was there a few days ago, I met a CEO of a drone company. I went to see his factory and he was kind of, you know, looking kind of scruffy because he'd just been to the front line for a few days. And he just got back because he goes and, you know, meet soldiers and watches how they're using his drones.

And then they report back to him. And then he makes alterations inside his actually incredibly high tech, you know, warehouses where he does this work. And so there's this, there's a kind of feedback loop. There's this lots of different people trying experimentally different things at the same time. They have European money. They don't have US money. And they have now a lot of joint ventures with European companies. And of course, now Zelenski is offering some of their technology to the Gulf States as well, which for which they'll also get money or or other weaponry. So it's one of the few good examples at the moment of how a more open society can defeat

“or can at least stand up to a much larger closed society. And so if you want to feel better about democracy and liberalism and then this is, this is your example.”

All right, I'm for it. I love that. The one kind of real thing that you just hear out the other just interested in your take on is that that there was a little bit of an economic interplay with the war and Iran like the rising oil prices can help Russia economically, you know, we let these sanctions. There's still it's kind of weirdly at the spite of the opposition to Russia in Europe, like some pockets of European, you're abusing Russian oil and other energy resources. Like from Kale and Robertson was on the ground, you can use this back in Ireland talking about this story in Ireland, they have like Russian companies providing electricity. So it was that aluminum was that aluminum. And so anyway, I'm just kind of wondering, like, is that is there anything to that story about Russia's economy stabilizing?

It's not stable, but it's true that the Russians have found a lot of ways around sanctions. It's true that European and American and other companies, lots of Chinese companies are so far away from the world. These companies are still finding ways to supply Russia. It's also true though that, you know, enormous amount of their budget is going into making weapons. They have labor shortages. They have very high inflation. You know, and as I said, they have these exploding refineries all over the place.

The exploding refineries seems to be preventing them from benefiting from the rising oil prices, the way they could. So it's a big country. It's very hard to know and all this is just a good phase anyway. So it's hard to know exactly what's going on. But it doesn't look from the outside and from the little news we have from the end. It doesn't feel very happy. They know they're not winning. They know they're not prospering. They can see they're falling behind and all kinds of other races, you know, the AI race, the technology race, and they're stuck, you know, fighting this ground war that they don't want to be in.

And I don't think it changes that even the bump up in oil prices. I don't think it's helping them the way it could. They've lost something like 20% of their refining capacity, which is a lot.

All tools that are important for the development of the factory are, for example, made by Lager, are found directly in the dashboard.

Let's start with a new test of copy-file.com. Unread to Venezuela. This is an interesting app at the Wall Street Journal by Leopoldo Lopez, who is in the app position, and it was... Former mayor, and was the opposition leader in Venezuela. Yeah, it was wrongly jailed by the previous regime. It's pretty striking, but it begins like this. My children, I watched a video on a phone screen last week. Venezuela and officials cut a ribbon at what used to be our home in Caracas. They are applauding announcing a social program for the elderly.

I spent seven years of the political president on the absurd charge. I had sent some webinar messages to Venezuela and people, the judge who presided over this travel steers still in the bench.

“I think he was trying to offer a wake-up call and a reminder to what the situation still is regarding political oppression in Venezuela.”

You know, there's the change in power to Delsea Rodriguez, and you hear Trump bragging about how great it is now, but you don't really hear a lot of reporting about what's actually happening there. And so it's fun to flag that. It's a really, really important story. Also, he goes on to make a broader point, which is that there's still no rule of law in Venezuela. And you'd be crazy to invest in Venezuela. You could write a contract tomorrow, and it could be annulled by the government.

He's house was expropriated. So why wouldn't the government expropriate your oil company's investment? Should you want to make it?

You know, the acting like if we just change the leader to someone who's, you know, less obnoxious to me personally, that that somehow changes the situation in Venezuela completely when we haven't changed the judges or the regime or anything else is crazy. I mean, one of the reasons there's not a lot of reporting from Venezuela is it's incredibly dangerous for Americans to go to Venezuela.

“There's still reports of threats to Americans in the street and a lot of caution about sending reporters there.”

We don't have a very good idea of what's going on deeper inside the country. I mean, it seems like there are few small kind of wildcat oil companies who have gone in and are trying to make some money. But I'm not hearing of any really big investments or long-term commitments, which is the kind of thing you would need to really get that oil industry moving again. And until there is a real change, until there's an election, until there's a change of regime, until there's a regime that's committed to the rule of law.

At the very least, you're not going to have a lot of change in Venezuela. I thought it was a really moving and well done up ahead, actually. Yeah, and he's done right. I guess there's a new, there's essentially new Supreme Court coming up and like that will be an interesting inflection point right if they keep the same people like you'll know that nothing is really changed. You also cited, you know, it's, we're at strange times, you know, we're looking for strange heroes these days. We have to shout the ex-on mobile CEO as the person injecting truth and reality into the public sphere.

But it is like note one of the, that Darren Woods was there. I had, I this Silicon Valley guy on on Tuesday. I, I, I, I, it was the frustrating conversation was trying to like understand why all of these tech oligarchs are just totally submitting to Trump and going along with his wise. And, and, and, and participating in them and helping to perpetuate them, frankly. And like it, there's like one good ol boy, oil and gas CEO.

It's like, I'm not going into Venezuela. Like, thanks for good and Venezuela. You're just very blunt about it.

“And I was like, why can't everybody just be like that?”

Like, that is a normal society where CEO can, can just, you know, offer bluntly something that the president's doing is bad as long or not accurate. Exactly. The story from the times this morning with the next wave of deportations is going to the Central African Republic, a country that we have a travel advisory for. And those deportations include a couple of Iranian women trying to find freedom in a asylum in America while this war is ongoing. The mystery that I covered.

Many months ago now, probably in 2025, the Iranian woman that had been sent, I'm going from memory now, I believe to Panama. And she was like, she had a sign in the window where they were holding her in Panama that was like, don't send me back to Iran.

Like, on the one hand, it's like we're invading this regime, talking about other terrible regime on the other hand.

“We're sending their dissidents either back there or to some other dangerous country.”

It's simultaneously the world cup happening. It is interesting that the Iranian soccer team has been led in. They were wearing the pins representing the girls who are killed in the girl's school, which was interesting. But we banned a referee from Somalia who's denied entry. The government hasn't really said why they said vaguely that there's ties to terrorists or something.

But you want to kill us? Yeah, you want back to Somalia. Ref the game there. I saw this video. Those are quite moving from like a local Somalia and soccer game where everybody's cheering the referee. You don't see that. You don't see that very much at sporting events. So anyway, I just kind of wanted to get your take on on that story, which is, you know, kind of continuing to happen.

But it's not has not been the immigration story has not been as acute in the public eye, you know, since the transfer from now.

It's kind of performative cruelty, isn't it? It's, you know, we're going to take this, these Iranian women who've obviously left the country because they would be persecuted for political religious reasons. You know, we can't send them back to Iran. And so we're going to send them to an equally dangerous country where they have no means of, of making a living. And where who knows they might be kidnapped or taken by, by Iranians who do do that sort of thing and take in home.

And we would borrow from our country, you know, a World Cup referee who's qualified to be referring matches. And here's the strange part for me was that I didn't see FIFA, you know, the organization that runs the World Cup. You see barely any objections. I mean, there was no real commentary, no condemnation. Oh, the United States has the right to do it.

Do you see the other, if they see the other fee for story, they have a floor, a trump tower. Like it's the 17th floor at trump tower in New York, if they got that it's empty. Like they like opened up a quote unquote office in Trump's building in New York. I mean, it's just a form of bribery and sucking up. Maybe it's about avoiding corruption charges, notoriously corrupt organization.

Maybe it's about maybe they have other reasons for it. Maybe they want to get through the World Cup without without something terrible happening. Yeah, it's a CYA, maybe it's like why they gave him the peace prize, giving that FIFA pre-sprise order. It's like if we pay him, if we give him awards, you know, then if some controversy comes up, we can use some of that access, whatever, to try to try to help manage, you know, the dictator.

And I guess they don't think that, you know, defending the honor of the referee in a rose to a level of using them. If that capital at the game from buying off the trump family.

“Or why didn't they have the referee do the games in Canada and Mexico?”

I just don't, I was mystified by that story, actually. I didn't fully understand it. I thought it was really profoundly offensive, you know, qualified person who's come to take part in an international event, who's excluded for some, you know, they have a thing about Somalians, you know, because they're racist against Somalians, or they don't like Somalians, they've put Somalians on some list. I mean, that's just not an excuse.

And as I said, the only the explanation is that it's a, it's a display of cruelty. It appeals to Americans who also want to, you know, demonstrate their strength and cruelty and desire for to exclude others. And it's, again, I think it's part of the same, the same propaganda that makes everybody else feel numb. You know, there's kind of one thing after a next, you know, one horrible story after next. And after a while, people say, I don't want to think to do it politics, I don't want to know about it.

We're now back, because I'm a bit of a game between one name and one. It's a live-spot, it's a fact that people are trying to take advantage of it, but they're not allowed to take part in it. And now it's coming to our heart, from the field. Good morning to you, bonus, and that's where I'm going to be at the station. Let's go!

Let's go to the health of the Russian. The United States is a football player, but we're going to our best. We're going to have a contest, a contest, and then a contest, a contest, and then a contest, a contest.

“Anything else on the autocracy in Guach before we go to a palette cleanser?”

To close the show? I mean, you know, let's go to the palette cleanser. Okay. I mean, everything, our existence is the autocracy in Guach. I guess.

Talk on the show last, or your second last article, which is about my old friend, Kerry Lake.

Listen, tweet at me in a while, I kind of miss her. She hasn't drunkenly accosted me in a bar recently. And I don't have any plans to go to Jamaica, so make sure you might not have a chance. You write what did Jamaica do to deserve Kerry Lake? I didn't get a kick out of this.

There are a couple little anecdotes in there that I wasn't aware of that she was. Does it not even the first choice for Jamaica ambassador? Apparently not. Yeah, and so it was all known. It was thinking about running for Congress, but couldn't get Trump's full support for that.

There she is with her kind of matte filter down in Jamaica.

“Yeah, well, she, I wrote about her earlier in the year, because I wrote about her, which she has been doing for the last months.”

She was running something called the US Agency for Global Media, which is America's Foreign Broadcasters. She's a voice of America, a radio for Europe, a radio-library radio-free Asia. And really essentially running them into the ground. And wasting, I mean, tens of millions of dollars, well, do it again. I mean, it's a long story.

I can recommend you to the Atlantic article where she was, you know, she tried to fire people. She did it illegally. They wound up being on administrative leave. They were all getting their salaries. Well, not working.

She ended some contracts in a way that was damaging. So the US government will have to pay compensation. I mean, you know, literally like one catastrophic mistake after the next, you know, undermining our foreign broadcasting. You know, including, for example, in Iran at a time when speaking to the Iranian people might even be a useful thing. And having achieved really nothing and having undermined and destroyed this agency,

now the Trump administration is running around looking for something else for who do and they have this great idea. Let's send her to Jamaica. But, you know, Jamaica is a parliamentary democracy. Probably at this point, more stable than America. It's a, it's a friendly nation.

You know, it has lots of American tourists. There's lots of, you know, consular activity between the United States and Jamaica. Important Jamaican population in United States. Rich kids on spring break, you know, get a go to high, lose their passports, you know. Right.

We need to be serious. But what, what did Jamaica do?

Did you deserve this kind of third rate, you know, fourth choice.

Retrid, you know, somebody who failed at running for office and who then failed at running an important agency. And now she gets sent there.

“I mean, it's, you know, I think Jamaica deserves better.”

I do as well. But we've kind of got better. This is why it's a power country. You can see how this could be a sad story or an angry story. Because it does suck for the Jamaican people.

And it is sad, which she did dismantling, you know, our communications tools and overseas. But on the other hand, if she had gotten like 20,000 more votes in that first election, she was so close to beating Katy Hopps. And she beat in Katy Hopps and become governor of Arizona.

She might be the highest president right now. Thank you. You think that we're in the worst timeline. But like we're, like, we're only like two degrees away from her being like really, like the most likely non JD events choice.

So I've been some appeal of her being a woman. She sucks up like JD. She would have won a swing state governor's race versus JD. Who is in a room over red state. There was a path to Carrie Lake being best president.

We don't have that path. Instead, she was the backup choice for Jamaica Ambassador. And that makes me happy. I get some joy. That's right.

That's a good news story. That's a happy ending. Okay. We'll close with the unofficial Ann Applebaum book club after it met. I was on it.

Because, you know, you come on every couple months which we appreciate about a quarterly visit. And, and I've, you know, I can read a serious book a quarter of these days despite my content calendar. But I've gotten behind. I've been instead reading gay fiction. You know, I was reading some Justin Torres fiction and a lot of both of his books.

So I was doing that instead. But I'm going on vacation coming up here in a couple of, well, five weeks and five weeks. Two people are going to miss me. I'm going to have good guests. I guess toast. So I'm going to catch up on my Ann Applebaum book clubless. But for people who are more on up to speed the me or who want to catch up.

We originally had the captive mind. The opera men's, the director, the choice of comrades. What we can know by Ian McQ and the last time you're on, we shouted out furious minds by Laura Fields. It's about Clairemont and how, you know, the bastardization of the conservative movement in America.

“Do you have, do you have a new addition for people the summer?”

So I have picked a novel for you. Great. I love it. It's not even law novel. It's a short novel. It's called The Time of Cherries and it's a novel that's set at the very end of Franco's Spain. And so it's about the end of a dictatorship, not the beginning of one.

And the author is called Monster Out Roy. She was a Spanish kind of part of the Spanish opposition to Franco family. And the book has a really great description of what it's like to be in a demonstration. And then what it's like to be arrested and go to jail. But it's also other things. It's how people adjusted their lives to the system. I think it was published a year or two after he died.

And so when people were reading it, it was already history. But you can see how people's lives have been shaped by politics, just ordinary people ever. Interesting.

That's one of the themes that I always find really interesting.

You know, the big things happen in the world and how do those relate to ordinary people and how do they adjust and how do they think about it?

And as I said, it's an easy read, not too long.

Well, written.

“I love that. A lot of Franco fans on the mega, right? So also a little relevance there.”

I'll throw one at you then. I've got a bonus. I've read this a couple years ago. Now it's one of my favorite gate because it hits all of my interests.

It is a gay novel. It's a gay coming of age novel, but also that overlaps is kind of a historical autocracy.

It's a gay love story in Pinochet's chili. It's called my tender madador. My tender madador. My tender madador.

“Yeah. So people want to have the time of cherries in my tender madador.”

People can have two short novels for the summer.

Or you get a little, you know, the little autocracy. So, you know, you can kind of feel like you're, you know, in touch with something that is relevant in the news, but you're also separate from the world. And you're also doing, doing fiction. So there you go.

“And Apple by my appreciate you very much.”

Huck the wildflowers bloom soon in Poland. And we'll be talking to you a couple of months. Thanks so much. Alright, everybody else, we're back here tomorrow for a week in addition to the pods. See you all then, peace.

The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Loots and audio engineering in editing by Jason Brown. We're now back with a lot of fun and fun. We're in perfect shape and we're going to take a look at the beautiful place. And now we're coming to our home.

And we're going to the place where we're going to be. Oh, the last possible health of the road. The last time we were in the forest, but we're going to our best. Conto, Geschäfts Gronto and the Neem's Gründung, Puhalting.