Whistleblower Account of USAID

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Um it's a great thing to have just kind of sitting in your house if you have a work dinner or something, or if you decide to meet some friends on a Tuesday when you normally wouldn't have a drink. Give it a one shot, get one pack, try it one time. I promise you you'll not regret it. From the start of baseball season to music festival circuits, April is a sprint of outdoor celebrations. Don't let a rough next day keep you from the sidelines. Drink pre alcohol to stay ahead of the game and make the most of every sunny Saturday. Go to Zbiotics.com slash PSTW to learn more and get 15% off your first order. We use PSTW at checkout. ZBiotics is backed with a 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember, head to zbiotics.com slash PSTW and use code PSTW at checkout for 15% off. Mm-hmm. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Then uh another uh Tuesday, another day spent waiting for Trump to make up his mind about what he wants to do in a run. Yeah, we had that uh ceasefire YouTube uh subscribe to our YouTube channel uh on Friday and Feels like it wasn't a ceasefire after all. It was just a bunch of true social posts. Yeah, it's a lot of a lot of diplomacy by truth social by tweets. Um we're gonna walk you through all the latest. There's the on again, off again diplomatic talks in Pakistan. There's the on again, off again closures of the Straight old Hormuz. We're also gonna dig into deeper things like what life is like for people in Iran. Uh, we'll talk about the latest from Lebanon, including why conservative Christians are not at all thrilled. with the Israeli military. I think this is um Probably underappreciated story, the degree to which that this image of an IDF soldier smashing uh a statue of Christ circulated on the internet over the past weekend. Um then we're gonna talk about corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration and how it's impacting foreign policy. Yeah. Really? Wait till you hear about this Jared Kushner guy. Then we're gonna talk about uh the recent elections in Hungary and Bulgaria, the latest on the administration's like slow rolling regime change ish efforts in Cuba. Um then we are gonna update you guys about friend of the show. And FBI director Cash Mattel. He's having a $250 million lawsuit against the Atlantic. See if that goes to court. The discovery on that could be interesting for him. Um and then Ben stick around for my interview with Nick Enrich. He was a top global health official at USAAD when Elon Musk and the Doge guys arrived. And decided to uh destroy the entire agency. So he's a new book out called Into the Wood Chipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded U S A D. Um, as mad as you are about What Trump has done to the world and death and destruction that Elon Musk caused, this will make you even more angry. So I promise you can. No, it's w this is a story that we shouldn't let just go away because the consequences of it are not going. And like it's one of those Consequences are growing by the day. I mean, spoiler, the the the latest count that we talk about in the interview is like seven hundred and fifty thousand deaths as a result of USAID being destroyed. But the conversations Nick had With the people in charge of destroying USAID are like absolutely more maddening and stupid than you would think. You mean Big Balls was in a development expert? Mr. Balls was not a pro on uh Global Health or Pepfar. Uh all right, so let's try let's start with this. what we know about Iran. So as of this recording The Strait of Hormuz is closed, uh, the war in Iran is not resolved, the talks in Pakistan don't seem to be happening. I mean, we literally are waiting all day. It's like Will J D Vance get on a plane? the conversation all day in Washington. Um the president's statements about it all are as incoherent and full of shit as ever. Here are a few examples from an interview Trump did Tuesday morning with CNBC. Let's listen to that. You need uh a At least the prospects for a sign deal. Today and tomorrow. Or else you would resume Uh bombing Um Iran. Well I expect to be bombing. Because I think that's a better attitude to go in with, but we're ready to go. I mean the military is raring to go. You know, they want it to be over immediately, and I just looked at a little chart. World War One, four years and three months World War Two, six years. Korean War three years. Vietnam nineteen years. Iraq eight years. I'm five months. Okay? Five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly. Look at Venezuela. I took it over in forty five minutes. It was basically a forty five minute and uh by the way, a very strong military country. We can't let traitors like Schumer put pressure on you Where they say we want out how think how bad that is. I'm negotiating with these people and they're telling us we have to get out now, we have to get out now, we have to get now. So we've done a great job and I don't want to be rushed by people that are really treasonous as far as I'm concerned. I try to do a little less like media criticism these days, but I I feel like one follow up would have been warranted on the uh hey, I would've won Vietnam and Iraq in a couple of weeks. Seemed like a moment for one. It's so clear that someone made that chart for him too. You know, it's not like he just came across a chart. No. Uh and and I think what he fundamentally doesn't understand Is That Consequences Yes. I mean, objectively the war in Iran has not lasted as long as Vietnam. Congratulations. You get a a gold ribbon, you know? It doesn't mean that it's not a disaster, but also One of the things I think he's missed in this whole enterprise is that The geopolitical consequences of attacking Iran specifically. In some ways. than some of the other wars, I mean not World War One, but say the war in Afghanistan. You know, I I don't mean to minimize that war in any way. Obviously horrifying for the people who live through it. both in Afghanistan and and service members. But Afghanistan wasn't a country of ninety four million people that controls the Strait of Hormuz and is a significant supplier of global energy. You know, he is set in motion. He's kind of messed with the tectonic plates underneath geopolitic and the global economy with this war. Um And so He he doesn't understand this isn't like some Some something that's measured in like how many months of active conflict there are. It's measured in what are the repercussions of this war going to be. Uh above all for the people that have already Yeah, been killed or suffered but also for the Entire global economy. Yeah, for the global economy, the kind of thing you think that, you know, CNBC might find it. Might ask about. Yeah, who am I to to criticize Joe Kernan. So like I said, Ben, like we we were waiting all day to see if J D Vanson make this trip. Just before we started recording, President Trump posted the following message on True Social. Based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shabaz Shar of Pakistan. We've been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as our leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all other respects remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other, President Donald J. Trump. So I interpreted this as Trump blinking. He doesn't want to go back to war. The Iranians know that. Wall Street knows that. Oil traders know that. That's why all the prices are down. But he's also unwilling to lift the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which sounds like it was a precondition. to get Iran to agree to come back to the table. Does that sound right to you? That sounds right to me. I I I think there's a a couple of other things happening here. The first is that First of all, remember he was saying like a week ago that the regime has changed and there are all these wonderful people in charge now. He's still kinda on that message. Th it it hasn't and p what's happening on the Iranian side is pretty clear to me from the outside, which is that The IRG C, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hardest core uh element of the regime. They're calling the actual shots, right? They are the ones who've closed the straightforward moves. They're the ones who are collecting the tolls. They're the ones who are firing drones at the Gulf. And so some of these kind of civilian leaders, these political leaders of Iran. May not even be able to deliver. You know, what they're negotiating at the table because the IRGC are the ones that uh ultimately have to sign off, and they're the hardest of the hardliners. And they got the big guns. And they've got the guns. Literally. First of all, this is what happens when you kill the leadership of a country. Right. So they've killed multiple people, not just the ITola. They've killed other people that could have been decision makers because they had more sway with the R G C and they've kind of finally settled on this speaker of the Iranian parliament who has some cred with the RGC, but but so on the Iranian side you've got this split and the R G C's like you know what? consens that Trump is afraid of this war? And so why would we make a deal? doesn't get us everything we want. You know, sanctions relief we want the Strait of Horn Moose to be a toll road. And, you know, maybe we'll ship out the HEU, the the dust, as Trump says. But we probably don't want to make any more concessions on nuclear program. Why should we? This guy's scared of us, he doesn't want the war. Then Trump doesn't really know what he wants. He just wants to be able to say one. Uh clearly he wants to get like the dust out, which again, as we've talked about, doesn't change the underlying Iranian nuclear program. Um sprinkle on a toilet seat for Bobby Kennedy. He just wants something to say he won, but because he doesn't really know why he went to war, he doesn't even know what he's really pushing at the You know, before the war they were pushing ballistic missiles, support for proxies. That's all gone. Regime change. We're just regime change. Justice for protesters killed. We're back to the J CPO negotiation, you know? And and so that's all Trump knows and then the Pakistanis probably don't even know why they're hosting this thing. There's happy to be there. They they, you know, made billions of dollars of investments in Trump and Whitcoffs kids' business, you know, uh crypts. So This is not the best recipe for de escalation. Yeah. So the I saw this B B C reporter tweeted um that the Iranian delegation was basically ready to come to the negotiating table, but then everything changed. uh over the weekend when the US military fired on an Iranian flagg cargo ship, according to some Iranian source. Um, and that just blew everything up and they want the blockade basically lifted. We'll get more into the TikTok of how we got there. But Ben, I I I've been reading you know, there's a great economist piece about the kind of intra Iranian power struggle that you were just touching on. It's between elected officials, it's between the military, it's between nationalists and Islamists. And the way this kind of played out in in manifested in practice was a ransom eighty eight zero officials to the last round of Pakistan talks. Yeah. Thirty of them were deemed um decision makers. And I think on a pr previous episode we talked about how the Iranian delegation was stacked with experts and expertise and people who had been in negotiations before. And that is definitely like the glass half full version of it. But the glass half empty version was the economist reported that the Pakistani mediators spent as much time kind of refereeing fights between members of the Iranian delegation as facilitating talks with the US. So yes, it does sound like there's a very real power struggle happening and no clear way that it ends besides, you know. the military probably killing a bunch of people or throwing them in prison. I mean some of this is also probably like you want to go to Pakistan. It's been a little rough in Iran. It's true. Probably sounds nice to be in a hotel with good Wi Fi and like uh all you can eat breakfast buffet, you know. It's a good point. The other thing I would say is and this gets to the true social post. When I was you know in charge of For lack of better term, like, you know. advocating er for the Iran deal. Um there was a dynamic that would happen where look, obviously we were trying to emphasize all that we got in the deal. So we would lean in to like You know, they're gonna submit to these intrusive inspections and They're gonna ship out the stockpile and they're gonna we're gonna be able to see all their program, the uranium mines and mills and the centrifuges All true. But sometimes John Kerry would get a call from Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, who'd be like, Hey, can you guys kinda chill out. Chill out a bit on the intrusive inspections piece because it's true But the R G C I mean he I he didn't necessarily say it in these words, but basically it was giving him problems with the hardliners back home. The RGC didn't want the deal, or they didn't like aspects of the deal like the intrusive inspections where you could just show up. And look at stuff. Um and so it w it hurt him in the Iranian system if we were leaning into that. Imagine if you were the Iranian negotiator. And you're you know you're probably out it in front of the R G C a little bit in Pakistan. And you're like, Well, yeah, maybe we could ship the dust out in exchange for this. And you're you know you have to sell it back home to these Killers in the R G C And then all of a sudden you wake up on a Friday and Trump is true social posting. All these concessions that you actually didn't make. Yeah. The straight will be open forever, which is you know not something that I'm sure the Iranians agree to, that they're not gonna be enriched uranium. Trump was posting that. The IRG C guys, I guarantee you, called called out the negotiators and were like What the fuck hey maybe come uh pay a visit to us, you know? And it's like uh and so of course they're like backing out because They don't want to get killed by the IRGC. And and so Trump is literally endangering the negotiators. By what he's doing. Yeah. I I I can sense that. It's a good strategy. No, it makes a lot of sense. Um okay, so well let's let's do a bit of the tail of the table about how we got to this point. And like you said earlier, we recorded a bonus episode for the Pod Save the World YouTube on Friday about this like flurry of social media activity. So please subscribe to Pod Save the World and YouTube to make sure you don't miss any of these bonus episodes. And also when you subscribe and you like and you share the stuff we do on YouTube, you help us get uh people good information when they're just searching for what the hell's happening with the Iran talks and not factual uh not like propaganda because Ben, I made the mistake of watching a clip of um uh Hugh Hewitt on his show interviewing Eli Lake about the latest on the seasfire talks. It was like a parallel universe where everything was solved. The war was a triumph. they'd figured it all out. So uh those guys live with the the reality that that's not true. They do a lot of dust. You know, a lot of that are if Obama had done this, they'd be yelling about how we let the regime in place. So they left the blissing missile anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. Last week we had this flurry of claims from Trump on social media. You mentioned a few of them, but let me just read them. Uh, Iran has agreed to never close the straight up room moves again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the world. Not sure that one held up. Uh the USA will get all nuclear dust created by our great B two bombers. No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. And then finally said, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited all caps from doing so by the USA. That one I liked. So Uh, it was all bullshit. Um Iran had only announced a partial opening of the strait, and then by Saturday, they'd walked back even that partial opening because the Iranians were pissed that Trump said, Well, we're gonna continue our blockade of the strait. Uh then things escalated further after the Iranians attacked. two Indian flags attempting to transit the straight. Trump called those attacks a total violation of our ceasefire agreement. Um and then he re-upped his threat to destroy Iran's civilization, its civilian infrastructure, uh, by saying, you know, if they don't take the deal, the United States is going to knock out every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice Guy, all caps is how we've ended that one. The US later boarded and seized an Iranian vessel that was en route from China. The US seized in a a tanker in the Indian Ocean. So things just kept escalating and escalating. Uh on Monday, Iran's speaker of the parliament and lead negotiator uh Mohammed Galibab said Iran will quote not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats. Uh and quote, we have been preparing to show new cards in the battlefield. So I was excited for like a the new cards you know, mid season twist here. So um then obviously like I like my my working assumption has been That Trump wants a deal or he wants the war over. He wants to punt this as far down the road as he possibly can and just do C N B C hits and convench a bunch. of commodities traders. Mehead traders. That he is in fact uh gonna fold on everything and taco or whatever you wanna call and just like not make their lives harder or not increase the oil of energy. But also he refuses to admit. um that he hasn't accomplished all of his goals. There will be people pushing him from the right. to actually get the H E U. Like I've zero doubt. I've zero hope that the Israelis will actually Um adhere to this demand that they never attacked. And they're still in Lebanon Lebanon again. Yeah, and they're still occupying Lebanon. We'll get into all the details of that later. So I don't know, man, like This is as clear as mud, but like how do you see this playing out in this moment? I think if you look at the Iranians, um They know they don't have to give much, you know, in some ways They could choose to give nothing and the war just kind of freezes. Um, I think what they want though is money. You know, they want either Unfrozen assets, like you know, we heard rumors of twenty billion dollars. They want either probably more comprehensive sanctions relief so they can just sell oil without it being sanctioned. Um they want to tax the straight of Hormuz in perpetuity. They just want revenue. You know? And What will they trade to get that? They will not trade away their ballistic missile program because they've just demonstrated how much they need it. They're not gonna trade away their support for proxies 'cause it's kind of existential to them that they have these proxies. Um and they're not gonna say that they'll never enrich uranium. They're not gonna say we won't have a nuclear program. So I think what they had to trade away is the dust. Because the dust is not, frankly, that important. Which isn't just isn't dust, by the way. It's enriched uranium. It's highly enriched uranium. Like it's so weird. We have to call it dust because he has to say that he obliterated the program, but anyway. Because uh th fundamentally that means nothing to them. They still have centrifuges that they can operate. If they choose to you know, have a covert nuclear program, they just take those centrifugees underground and accumulate more dust, you know? So I could kinda see some deal where They ship out the H E U. And I don't know, maybe they promise not to enrich uranium for some period of time. Which by the way, that promise Is worth nothing. Absent, like rigorous inspections, which I don't think they're gonna submit to, right? And so then Trump says He got the deal of the century. It's so much better than Obama's Iran deal, even though it's gonna be probably a lesser version of the Ron deal and it'll be like the dust for some sanctions relief, you know, and the war's over. And if you think about yeah, but that it'll be a phony they they can say a hundred you know, like I I d who they they've learned that deals are fungible. They've learned that You know, so to them any deal they make is a deal for the duration of the Trump presidency. Right. It's a two and a half year deal. Right. And they'll reassess at that point. Or maybe they'll just cheat and have a covert nuclear program. Yeah, and so you could see this world in which Trump declares victory because he got the dust out. If I I in the straightforward movies it was open before the war was open. Again. Measure that against What he said at the beginning of the war. There's gonna be regime change. We're gonna obliterate, you know, their nuclear program. They're gonna we they have to end their ballistic missile program. We're gonna destroy their navy. Well clearly we haven't destroyed their navy because they've closed the Strait of Horn movies with like a bunch of speed boats, you know? Um So he's not achieved the things he said he would. And it was totally unnecessary. Launch this war, kill all these people. Upend the entire global economy, you know, permanently lose the Gulf states, you know, uh as people that are reliant On the United States and on and on and on. Was all that worth it to get like the dust out? You know, does anybody in America even care about the dust? Which you know by the way, it already been dusted as far as we were concerned, based on Trump's claims. Well and the question is, and I have a question for you, Tommy is like This is a Hugh Hewitt question, is like will the right wingers accept Because that's the total capitulation to the Iranians. Yeah, I I think that where their What they will tell themselves, the story they'll tell themselves is Look, he destroyed all of you know Isfahan. He destroyed all the nuclear facilities. Um it will take a generation to build them back. They have no revenue. The military capacity is Uh. a fraction of what it once was, therefore that is some Big win when uh it's like what everyone has always said about military Um efforts to shut down Iran's nuclear program. It's like you can set them back, but you cannot permanently take it away or solve the problem. And I think they'll convince themselves that the problem has been you know, as solved as much as it could have been when I think we we know in reality. There it could be like a garage somewhere In Iran with some nuclefuges spinning that's enriching you know uranium to the grade they need it to be. Is it the demonstrated capacity of the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz is worth Ten thousand ballistic missiles. It's worth it it's worth far more than support for his blow, you know? Like And they can't Whatever capabilities around lost. They gained a much bigger one. And showing that Just firing a few drones at some tankers. and threatening to the Strait of our Moose gives them control of the global economy. So congratulations, Hugh Hewitt and Eli Lake, uh You've just empowered the IRGC more than anything that has happened since the nineteen seventy nine revolution. Except for maybe the Iraq War, which empower them significantly. So this is the second time that the neocons have given the IRG C a gigantic win. This episode of Potts of the World is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from Frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas. Unlike many store bought options, wild grain uses simple ingredients you can pronounce in a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly and richer in nutrients and antioxidants. Plus All items conveniently bake in twenty five minutes or less with no thawing required. Wild grains boxes are fully customizable. 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Um, that includes the US and Israeli airstrikes that release these toxic chemicals and pollutants into the air. Remember when the Israelis bombed this big petrochemical facility. It was like, you know, they're Was it raining like acid for days on people, right? It's God knows what that did to civilians. that uh there have been, you know, further erosions of Iran's healthcare infrastructure, which is already under enormous stress before the war because of NT government protests and decades of sanctions and mismanagement. Uh, and then Iran was experiencing this massive water shortage again before the war. that has gotten worse because, you know, at least one of their desalination plants was bombed. And then on top of that Ben so the Iranians have dealt with uh like an almost total internet blackout since the war started. And I would just ask anyone, like Imagine any modern economy. running without an internet for two months. It's impossible to be business every business is screwed. Right. And so um on top of that, you know, you got the US and Israel targeting major industries like petrochemical and steel. you need those industries to rebuild the country and also to get the revenue to rebuild the country. I saw one analyst told the Wall Street Journal that uh the disruption to the steel industry put at risk more than five point five million jobs within Iran and then another 1.2 million at risk because of impacts on the chemical and pharma industry. And so like again, to sum it all up. Um There were all these protesters. who Trump said he was gonna rescue, who are now like staring down the barrel of a more hard line regime, right? They traded the older homine for the younger homine, the IRG C is more entrenched. And life is just exponentially worse for them, or the a disastrous economic situation somehow got worse. Because we bomb the shit out of. Yeah, I think that We live in this world in which you know our news cycle focuses on this place when the bombs are falling. And then you know it's same impulse as Trump. Trump kind of reflects the worst aspects of America. It's a common thread with Trump. If I can just get this off the television set. Yeah, and and actually to him it's a television set for most of us is our phones. Um Then you know we'll think about other things. We'll think about I don't know. The ballroom or the next war against Cuba or whatever But I think what you're reminding us is of the people inside of Iran, like this war is gonna be with them. For a very long time. It's gonna show up in You know, the deeper poverty, deeper repression. maybe health effects of some of these things that have been done that that millions of people will and actually millions of Irani were also displaced, you know? Uh millions of people's lives are worse because of what Donald Trump did. And that's the kind of moral outrage, it's sometimes missing, you know, when people talk about like democratic opposition to the war, that's about like he didn't ask Congress the right way. Like w what about the fact that like he just fucked over like millions of Iranians and In perpetuity, but Gulf Arabs and Lebanese and the U S civil Service members who died or were wounded, their lives are never gonna be the same. And and and and I think we kinda have to remind ourselves of the human cost. I think the other thing that'll be interesting is You know. There's a world in which protests resume. You know, life is shitty there. Um, but the IRGC is now like More dug in, they frankly think that they just weathered If we can weather bombing us and the Israelis bombing us, we can deal with these protesters. Definitely. And there's less of a threat of the United States bombing again. Yep. Like if they're cracking down and killing thousands of protesters at some future date. you know, they probably think, Well, Trump doesn't want to get another war. And I think the other thing that's happened, I'd be curious, and we won't know until we ask, you know, actual Iranians, which is hard 'cause internet block out among other things. These diaspora Iranians that were very supportive of the war, like Reza Pahlavi, who was calling on people to rise up and suggesting he was gonna go Run a transition. Those people have to be pretty d discredited. Because Oh, you would think. Well you and I talked about this. I mean people who push for wars and the wars go badly are almost never discredited in Washington, so I'm sure he'll have a he'll have a friend there. Yeah, he'll have friend in Washington, but I mean uh within Iran. Again, he told these people that he was gonna run some transition. Trump cast him aside, the same way you did Maria Machado in in Venezuela. So uh it'll be interesting to see how the diaspora kind of adjusts to this because I think there's a lot of s splits people that advocated for this now look like they just advocated for something horrible to happen to their country. I'm not suggesting that's what they wanted to happen, but that is what happened. But that's what happened. So w i I think it yeah, but by every metric, life is worse for Iranians. And there's just no time frame for building it back. I mean, Iranian state media put the cost of rebuilding Iran at two hundred and seventy billion dollars. Yeah. Where where is that money gonna come from? And even over in the UAE. Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering Basically a bailout for the UAE 'cause their economy's been hit so hard. So like the entire Gulf is feeling this ripple out. And so then like maybe the best news we have for you guys today, at least in this kind of bucket. Is that the ceasefire is mostly holding in Lebanon? Um, on Friday, Trump posted on True Social, like we mentioned earlier, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough. Um, Axios reported that this caught the Israelis by surprise and that Netanyahu was quote personally stunned and alarmed by the message. It's nice. Take that one. Trump later elaborated to Axios. saying Israel has to stop. They can't continue to blow buildings up. I'm not gonna allow it. Again, I'm very skeptical. uh that that will hold. But God, I would have loved to hear Joe Biden say that one fucking time about Gaza over the course of two years. Anyway, um, the IDF though is still occupying a huge chunk of southern Lebanon. The IDF calls it a forward defense line, we should call it what it is, which is Israel invading and occupying another country. Um a bunch of Lebanese people use the ceasefire to return to their villages and just check out their homes. They found them destroyed in many cases flattened to the ground. by uh US military provided bulldozers. Last week, forty Democrats uh voted to block the sale of military bulldozers to Israel because they're using for this kind of stuff. Uh but unfortunately that vote failed. Um folks on social media over the weekend then might have seen This pretty shocking image of an IDF soldier literally sledgehammering the face Of a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross. This happened in a Christian town in southern Lebanon. Um, when I first saw this image, I thought it must have been AI generated because it looked designed in a lab to inflamed sectarian tensions and erode support for Israel among evangelicals, but nope, turns out it was real. Uh in a statement, notably a statement released in English, Netanyahu said he was stunned and saddened by the soldiers' actions and uh he condemned the act in the strongest terms. So the soldier who vandalized the statue and the soldier who took the picture were removed from combat duty and sentenced to uh thirty day military detentions, but there were six others on the scene. we're gonna be punished separately, you'd probably get a slap on the wrist or something, we'll find out. The damage was done, this incident uh out outraged conservatives, outraged religious leaders. It's not an isolated incident. Folks probably remember that um the only Catholic church in Gaza was shelled a couple different times and the the priest there was wounded in one of those shellings. Um, so Ben, we've talked before on the show about how Israel's biggest supporters in the US are not American Jews. It's evangelical Christians who like want the rapture to come. Um Do you think these stories will kind of will dent that support? Because you do see this narrative get lifted up by Tucker Carlson a lot, for example. I think so. I mean uh first of all I I'm dubious of the ceasefire. One statistic I saw, Tommy, was that Yeah, there was a ceasefire with Hezbollah in late twenty twenty four that was reached. And the UN, um the UN force in Lebanon. uh reported ten thousand Israeli violations of that ceasefire. That doesn't seem before this latest war started. That's so. And so g and we saw the same thing in Gaza. Israel's violated the ceasefire in Gaza hundreds if not thousands of times. And so What they do is what Trump wants is again, Trump doesn't really care about the people in Lebanon. Or Gaza, he wants it to be a low enough level of violence that it's just kinda not leaving the news, you know? And so if Israel is like occasionally bombing Lebanon in perpetuity, that's fine, as long as it's not like the big show where they were, you know, oblitering Beirut. So count me skeptical about the directives to Nanyao to you know prohibit him from doing this in Lebanon. Um On the Christian stuff. I I think that the problem for Trump and Israel. Is that there's a bunch of converging things happening. Is that you have yes, like in Lebanon These are some of these villages that are being destroyed are Christian villages. Some of them are Christian like you know, they've lineage that goes back to like the Bible, you know, like the the new New Testament. Like this is a holy land, you know, for Christians. Like this is the where this war is happening, where Israel's occupying territory. And And and some of the people the priests have been killed in the bombing? Um, I saw, you know, a child that had met with the Pope was killed in the bombing, like the different things that Uh uh uh Yeah. When you add on top of that, Trump posting the picture of himself as Jesus. And Trump, you know, putting out this Threat to annihilate Iran on Easter morning, you know, happy Easter There's a disrespect and disregard for Christianity in both the actions of the Israeli government and in the personal actions of Trump. And so The evangelical Christians are having a double reckoning. Because they're both like Huh. I thought we liked him. He got rid of Roe v. Wade, but it turns out he's mocking Jesus. Now he seems like the antichrist. you know, Christian villages and now there's this, you know, picture of an Israeli IDF soldier like de you know, d desecrating Jesus. Um all the things to post on social media, you take literally slight taking a sledgehammer to Jesus' face what are you th uh thinking? What are your hobbies? Uh I didn't what does that guy say? It does show you the impunity. I mean you see this sometimes on IDF social media, like remember when it used to be the most moral army in the world? Like I guess that talking point. And there was another incident, I think, in the in a church in southern Lebanon where a bunch of IDF soldiers like staged a fake wedding inside an orthodox church. And and probably didn't realize like how profoundly offensive that was for a bunch of Christians in that community. And that went super viral on social media. So like people who again whose feeds push them this kind of content have seen example after example after example, and are now c like the this whole most moral army thing has just been tossed out the window. And we're not even talking about the disrespect and treatment to Muslims, Palestinians, your average sort of like Lebanese person. Like that that is unfortunately priced in. Well it and you also m remember they uh the Israeli government closed uh on Palm Sunday the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yeah to the highest representative of the Vatican in Literally where Jesus was born. Yeah. So I I I I think that look it It is the case that a lot of Americans and American Christians Actually probably didn't know until a few months ago that there's a huge Palestinian Christian community. that includes and encompasses the most holy sites in the Christian church, you know? Bethlehem And Tucker Carlson, people like that are now really, you know, hitting on that point. And so I think it does risk Lowering the floor of support. for both Israel and Trump. Because you know people who actually care about their Christian faith are are gonna be upset about this. It also is a very dangerous Gateway to a certain kind of anti Semitism. That is one of the older kinds of anti Semitism. Well, the Jews are the ones who killed Jesus. Exactly. Exactly. It's very dangerous. And and and and again, like it's Trump and B that, you know, uh doesn't just justify in any way. It's it it shows why these kinds of wars are so dangerous for anti Semitism. Yeah, because they lead people Yeah. And again like the the cost to civilians on the ground in Lebanon has been unbearable. Right. I mean, there's the direct casualties number, but then there's the million people who have been displaced and the people who came back to their homes that have just been leveled. Um, we reached out to doctors without borders to see kind of what they're experiencing on the ground in Lebanon. Uh, and we got this note from an emergency physician, Dr. Tian Min Din. Uh let's listen. I need people to understand what the injuries looked like that we were seeing before the ceasefire. Now beyond the acute injuries, we're looking at a generation left with lifelong disabilities. I visited a young woman a few days ago on ICU. Who uh we treated when she came through the emergency department. She'd been walking along with a friend when both her legs were blown off. She managed to survive her initial injuries, but when I visited her a couple of days ago, she was hooked up to dialysis because the muscle destruction from her injury was so extensive that it had started destroying her kidneys. Yeah. I also recently visit a migrant woman who'd been a patient out of clinic for years. She was injured in one of the very first strikes in the south, and she's still in the hospital. Led into a brainstem and spine. She's paralyzed. Her home is destroyed and the people who would have cared for her were killed in the same stride. We are also seeing. overwhelming number of people whose health needs were neglected during the war, either because they couldn't reach health care or their doctors were displaced. or hospitals had to shout their outpatient clinics to direct resources to trauma and emergency care. Yesterday our clinic diagnosed a young pregnant woman with a baby who had died in utero. Imagine having a fully formed, wanted and loved baby, and having its heart stopped because the healthcare system had collapsed. These are complications that if they get caught early, they can be treated, they can be delivered safely by C section when there's a functioning system. There isn't one. So I look you you often hear people say, Well, you know, the the IDF military campaign in Lebanon is the most justified of all their actions because there is this real threat from Hezbollah and for rockets, et cetera. And it's like Okay. But there there is a flip side to that argument, uh, about the human cost for people living. in Lebanon, uh, who have no association with Hezbollah probably hate them. Um and that's some examples right there. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that strikes me in listening to that clip is these people in Doctors Without Borders, they've been in a lot of difficult places. And you could hear her voice like breaking. Yeah. And it it's the same thing we experienced in Gaza, like The scale of this destruction is not normal even for a war. Um 'cause you hear it in her voice, like that the things that are happening There was a civilian casualty event, you know. Because again, this gets a why is this Why is it necessary to go after the health infrastructure if you're targeting his bullet? Like it it just Clearly this war went well beyond targeting his blow. Either because there was no targeting Or because it was indiscriminate or because there was really objective to kind of paralyze the Lebanese society while you take southern Lebanon. Now The other thing I want to say, Tommy, and and I'm gonna say this Yeah. Many thanks to the World O, Lebanese American, who sent me some wonderful Lebanese olive oil. Okay. Because you know, she was It's not the swerve I was expecting. Uh grateful for our coverage of Lebanon. But actually the reason I I make this point beyond just thanking that person is Lebanese the Lebanese I know hate that their country's only seen As like this war zone. Like if if it's on if there it's like this beautiful. Rubb and Beirut. And and what the olive oil reminds me of this is this incredible place. One of the prettiest places. It's one of the yeah, it's this gorgeous country. They produce wonderful things. They uh like have uh wonderful artists. I mean, I mean, I I it's worth naming this because There's something dehumanizing about The camera only turns on these places. to show like rubble and then a commentator talking about Hisbollah you know like like it's it's like the vast majority of Lebanese, including Shia Muslims, are not like His bla operatives, you know. Just normal human beings. Beirut is usually like an incredibly cosmopolitan city, not Just a bunch of rubb from Israeli bombs, you know, and so The the the the erasure of the the humanity of people cannot be a consequence of the war. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be this way. It's a bunch of political leaders. Um all right, let's turn to just the broader problem within the administration of the failure of diplomacy and the role I think you and I both believe that corruption has played in all of it. So uh Trump, when he has a diplomatic problem, he does not send experts as we've discussed. He sends his idiot son in law Jared Cushner and his idiot golf buddy, Steve Whitcoff. And the issue is not just that they're in over their heads, which they are. They very much are. Um, it's that they are corrupt. They have these huge financial conflicts of interests, and we basically have no visibility into the specifics or how. those conflicts of interest might impact their decision making, especially we're talking about the Middle East, right? And Jared Custer's got all this golf money. So let's just go through the examples because we've talked about this before, but I don't think we've done like a comprehensive kind of like corruption conversation recently. So Kushner is this floating envoy. He meets with the border piece, he meets with the Russians, he meets with the Iranians. Um, he's in Gaza all the time. He's talking to the Israelis. And the the White House, they talk about Jared like in this role, he's making this big sacrifice 'cause he doesn't take like the White House salary. Yeah. And don't For those who might have been Why might believe this bullshit? Jared is an unpaid volunteer because volunteers don't have to make FX disclosures and release their conf their personal financial disclosure forms. So we only know because of previous reports that Jared's investment firm Affinity Partners got $2 billion from the Saudis and he got hundreds of millions more from the Emirates and the Qataris. We also know that at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Um, Jared was ostensibly there as Trump's Middle East envoy, but he's also soliciting funds for his firm. The New York Times said Jared was trying to raise another five billion for his fund. I assume most of that would come from the Saudis if he had his drrothers. Uh, Blueberg reported that ninety nine percent of all Affinity Partners assets belong to non US investors. So that's the little we know about Jared. Eric and Don Jr. recently announced they're gonna work for a drone manufacturing company, which later merged with a publicly traded Trump company that owns golf courses. So that makes a lot of sense, Ben, is totally on the up and up. Uh Forbes estimated that between from 2024 to 2025. Don Jr.'s net worth went from 50 million to 300 million. Eric's went from 40 million to 750 million. And Baron Trump, who is a college sophomore, is estimated by Forbes to be worth $150 million, all of it tied to cryptocurrency stuff. Uh and then finally, Ben. I know you've heard of um Truth Social. Um, but did you know that its its revenue does not just come from spam y ads for mail order brides and uh Chinese peptides and things of that nature? They also uh well we'll do it a little multiple choice game here. Um, what business did Trump media the owner of True Social get into recently via a six billion dollar merger. Was it A? Orbital data centers? B. Fusion Energy. C non woke AI. D. Uh Anti Woke legal services. via its acquisition of Liberty Legal, which is an anti-woke legal services company for patriots who don't want their case law to be totally gay. All right. So I I I in my mind it's probably orbital data centers or nonwoke AI. And I'm gonna go with nonmole AI. Sorry, my friend is fusion energy. Really? Yes. Yes. The Trumps recently got into the fusion energy business. The conflicts of interest are so massive. The media barely covers them. Do you see the reporting the other day that's like Jared Kushner's conflicts are barely mentioned in the reporting? Yeah. And it's like this is harming our national security and it's kind of just not part of the conversation. First of all, we should say There is a a highly evolved network of corruption between kind of Russia The golf The US far right kind of Magaverse. Hungry. Um you know, there there's just a lot of money that kind of swashes around this space. And what's interesting is Jared gravitates to all the places that are the most corrupt. Yeah, interesting how that works. So, you know The hotel deals in Serbia. probably one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and uh an extension of Russian interests in a lot of ways. Or obviously he's vacuuming up money in the Gulf. Um, Pakistan as I mentioned. Uh has a partnership with World Liberty Financial controlled by Trump and Whitcoff Kids. um to launch a a stablecoin, right? And So that's why the like why else are the talks in Pakistan? You know? So the point is that Jared is negotiating issues. that are directly related to the interests of these countries that are paying. in the countries that are paying if not him, his family members. And it's simultaneously raising funds for his business while he's negotiating. And and and I think what is so grotesque about this is Sure. Like in some ways this is kinda how business is done in parts of the world. Like there's a lot of corruption. you know, there's some big commercial deal and there's some money that exchanges hands under the table. But what Jared is leveraging. is literally the US military. Like the US military is an instrument of his corruption. Our capacity to sell weapons to the Gulf countries, or to protect the Gulf countries, or to go to war with the opponents of the Gul countries. is directly related. To both his diplomatic portfolio and probably the reason they're writing checks. And so it's just a a higher scale corruption because He's not trading like small f it's not like Hey, like, you know, we're gonna do a soybean deal. And I'm gonna get some money under the table. Or Hunter Biden. I'm gonna get a fifty thousand dollar a month retainer from Barisma to sit on their board and hopefully get influence to the big guy, Joe Biden. No, this is like billions of dollars. that are being paid because he has the power of the US government behind him. And and and it it it is a shame on the US media. that they don't name that that that should be in the first paragraph of every story. It should be it has to be and not for like partisan reasons 'cause like how are you informing your readers? Tell people why. Why is Jared at the table. Why is he at the table? Why are these talks failing? Why do we keep reading that like Jared and Steve Withoff didn't understand the substance of the nuclear negotiation. Oh, right, they're not nuclear scientists. They're there because of corruption. And like Steve Witkoff's son, Zach, is the co founder of World Liberty Financial. Yeah. The crypto firm. It it it sounds sure sounds like a big scam or a Ponzi scheme. Like you know who's You know who's mad at World Liberty Financial recently then? Is Justin Sun. Remember that crypto billionaire that pumped billions into World Liberty Financial. Wow, what a coincidence. Right at the same time, the SEC investigation into one of his companies went away. And now he's accusing them of fraud. Yeah. Yeah. This guy's attacking World Liberty Financial. The Qataris gave Trump the plane. There's the real estate deals all across the world. And you got like You know, remember what was it, the Gaza Peace Agreement event when some world leader is like, Hey, Trump, can I get Don or Eric's phone number so the president of Indonesia, one of the biggest countries in the world, is like, Hey, can I get Eric Trump's phone number? What do you think that's about to get his advice about how to deal with development in Aceh and Indonesia? Like no. I mean and and and and this is all like just happening on the open. I mean one thing I've heard you guys begin to ha talk on PSA about, you know Project twenty twenty nine kind like what happens if Democrats win? Like The accountability goes so far beyond Donald Trump. senior. You know, like But the combination of the fraud and crimes that are being committed and also the need to have laws that prevent this kind of corruption is got to be like one of the first spate of executive orders from a Democratic Party. Totally agree. And Trump also got rid of all the inspector generals at all the agencies that might be providing like watchdogs of this. They closed the I remember they closed the DOJ Kleptocracy uh task force. They stopped enforcing FARA, which is the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which is try to prevent like, you know, foreign agents from buying influence in Washington. Uh there's been a bunch of reporting recently about this friend of Trump's from like the eighties and nineties named Paulo Zampoli, have you read about this guy? Fuck. The one who knocked on his ex-wife or something. Yes. Yeah. This dude was boys with Trump in like the 80s and 90s. He was uh, I think a modeling agent. Now Trump made him the special envoy of the president of the United States for global partnership. has a very Epstein ring to Yeah, we've buddies with Epstein and he he told the F T, uh, whenever people see me, they want something. They want access to the president. I tell them, Buy Boeing. If you want to make the president happy, buy Boeing. It's the simplest thing in the world. It's like Just talking about access trading. Can we say one other thing about this, which is that the uh the stock market uh It's been extraordinary to watch this, first of all, 'cause there's an irrationality. You see it kind of going up. Part of the problem is Trump looks at that as a useful metric. Th there there's two problems. One is clear someone is doing massive incentive trading and there's been the BBC has a great investigation people should look at. That they've accounted for all these trades. before Trump makes an announcement of people essentially, you know, betting on Trump making that announcement and then making hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's happened repeatedly. on both Iran and on terrorists. And and so somebody is clearly profiting. But the other thing is the market is just a bullshit indicator for how the economy's going for people. Right. Because it's a bunch of fucking traders sitting in front of computer screens. Betting on currencies. Betting on the price of oil. So even if You know, you're gonna get fucked and there gonna be oil scarcities and your gas prices are gonna go up. They can still make a ton of money on trades by just betting where the currencies are gonna go and the prices we're all seeing reported daily in the news are like futures prices usually, which are which often are less than the actual price of a barrel of oil if you were to like pull up to Kuwait and like throw one in the back of your truck. It's just such the whole thing is corrupt. Capitalism has kind of reached its late stage Frankenstein monster, you know, where it's just a vehicle for people like this to grift off of us. You know, No, I think it's great that we're betting on uh when Maduro is going to be deposed and some i insider can make hundreds of thousands of dollars on Cal sheet. Some Yeah. you know, a a a special force. I'm not trying to pun them, but like you shouldn't have that there's a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people know when things are gonna happen and then they can make money off it. Yeah. All right. Well, that was nice to get that off our chest. By the way, if you guys want to support uh a media company that will always report on Jared Cushners corruption and the Witcoff family's corruption, please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscriber. Go to crooked.com slash friends. You can subscribe, you get ad free episodes, you get lots of bonus content. Uh, and you also help us build an independent progressive media company that can help hold this administration accountable. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Hims. some point you stop blaming stress, sleep, or just getting older. Bedroom performances in question. probably crossed your mind to do something about it. The good news, you don't have to jump through hoops to fix it. 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That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at fastgrowing trees.com using the code World at checkout. Fast growing trees.com code world. Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use world to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. All right, let's talk about corruption uh over in Europe. So last week there was this historic election in Hungary where after 16 long years, uh right wing populist named Victor Orban was finally ousted after losing the parliamentary elections to a party led by his former ally, Peter Magyar. It was an election that focused on anger about corruption. Uh, and frankly, you know, anger at Orban's total failure to deliver for his country. Many supporters of democracy writ large are hoping that uh this election might provide a playbook for how to defeat other authoritarian creeps like Orban, and also that it might be a bellwether, um, that might help us just kind of see the future and determine which direction Europe is gonna go, 'cause there's a lot of far right parties that have been doing well. So um that brings us to Bulgaria, Ben. Uh they just had an election over the weekend that seems to have some of the same dynamics at play. Four months ago, there were these major protests against corruption and the economic state of the country, which forced the former government to resign. Uh the Progressive Bulgaria Party, aka PB, they just wanted a landside victory on Sunday with 44.7% of the vote. The leader is uh Bulgaria's former president, uh Ruman Radov. Now that's a more of a ceremonial position, but he is a a former fighter pilot. Uh he commanded the Bulgarian Air Force, and you know, he's sort of an interesting character, like Orban, he took a bunch of pro-Russia sounding positions. uh he opposed Bulgarian military assistance to Ukraine. He's criticized EU sanctions. Um uh but there are questions about whether he's just sort of like posturing for the election. Or whether he's really committed to these positions or whether, you know, he's more of a pragmatist than Orban ever was. I guess we'll find out. Um but Rada's win was bigger than what the polling anticipated um his coalition should have a majority in parliament now. Um, the former prime minister and the Gurb Party. I love the names of these parties overseas. The Gurb Party came in second with like thirteen percent, and the liberals got like twelve percent or closer to thirteen percent too. Um, Ben, any thoughts on sort of developments you've seen in Hungary since we last talked? and how you might interpret uh the elections in Bulgaria from over the weekend. I think first of all in Hungary Pierre Magiar's been as aggressive as you could possibly have wanted him to be in signaling that he's gonna go after urbanism. And people may have seen these videos of him literally going on state television, which did not allow him to appear the entire campaign and being like, My first fucking thing to do is gonna be shut your ass down. You know, like I mean it takes some guts. It'd be it'd be like you know, going on Yeah, CBS News, Barry Weiss and being like, Yeah, we're shutting you guys down. Yeah. I'm not like a big fan of like censoring the media, but like walking into state TV and saying, To your face live on air like you're full of shit and now it's time to pay the paper is kind of funny. And by the way, it it's hard to overstate the extent to which Urban turned this. I mean he he literally would not allow. Peter Magyar as an opponent of his to appear on you know so this goes beyond Fox News. This was literally state media. So I think Magyar is fully justified in doing what he's doing. He signaled he's gonna go after the corruption, including Orban's family members. Um he signaled that He would arrest Pibi Nanyao as a war criminal if he traveled to Hungary. I mean, everything the guy says sounds like he's gonna take a sledgehammer. to urbanism and the corruption that undergirds it. That's good. You know, the the potential bad is There's a bit of a strongman persona in Maggie Arn doing this and I don't know what he's gonna build in its place. So uh he was a Fides party member until very recently. So we'll see, if it's so far so good. But I think what we're seeing in Bulgaria Is A broader problem there's two issues. One is just like w whether the far right are they do they have the momentum or not. And you can find now evidence that they don't. Or about lost, Maloney's backtracking away from Trump. Or you can find, yeah, look looks like they're maybe getting a foothold in Bulgaria. Slovenia, which we talked about that election, where the Progressive actually got the most votes. Appears that the you know Creepy far right guy, Johnsa. is the one who's gonna be able to form a government and and and I think the problem for the EU is All Russia needs is one spoiler. And they have that in Slovakia, this guy Fiko's like that too. You know, one country where people are probably just pissed about prices, because people are pissed about prices everywhere. And so they vote out the incumbent Progressive Party and then the kind of pro Russian party gets in and then all of a sudden they're like Putting sand in the gears of the EU on sanctions on Russia. It it speaks this is not sustainable. Like If all Russia has to do to like fuck up the whole EU is just find one relatively small central Eastern European country where there's an anti incumbent mood and kind of surf it into having instructionists. Now none of these people can it's important pe people know this. None of these people can take the role that Orban did. Like Orban was an absolute hub. for far right activity, for corruption. There's rumors that the Russian money was going to the Hungarians and then going to C PAC, you know, like he was he was bigger than just like a a vote for R Russia's interest in the EU. But I I do think that this speaks to a problem where the the EU has to get away from like unin unanimity of decision making because they're always gonna have some pain in the ass leader in some country. Definitely. Definitely. But yeah, I I I agree with you. It does look like a bit of a mixed bag in those recent elections. But it there's also like interesting soundings like Nigel Farage was um was asked about his relationship with Trump last week and he said, I happen to know him, but that's by the by. Lord David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, uh was more critical. He said Trump was heedless of the moral element of leadership and undeserving of support. uh he said a moral line has to be drawn somewhere and this week Trump went beyond it. That was in an op ed uh in Germany we've talked about the AFT party, the neo Nazi party, um, they're distancing themselves from Trump. uh especially the Iran war. Uh, and then Marine Le Pen, who's like a longtime ally and supporter of Trump. told the French media um that Trump's moves in Iran were erratic and the consequences would be quote catastrophic. So again, like It's just this weird place where the far right is willing to be critical of Trump on Iran in ways that Inexplicably. Keir Starmer, the labor prime minister in the UK with a 50 point underwater approval rating. Will not even though uh every time he does it seems to benefit him politically. I just I can't make sense of it. It tells you and we said this last week, but it Trump is the best thing going for anti far right politics, because he's such an albatross on these people that they're running away from him. But to your cure Starmer point. If the fucking AFD can figure out Boost your numbers is to stand up to Trump. It's pretty extraordinary that Starmer. Can't seem to draw the same lesson. Yeah, like look, I guess in fairness, it's easier to be in opposition and when you actually have like government to government relations and you're managing the special relationship, like I'm sure there's some way Trump could punish you. I just think political malpractice. I think I'm trying to be charitable, I don't believe what I'm saying. To tell fucking King not to go on the trip. That would send a message. Yeah, Georgia Maloney uh had no problem saying Trump. Yeah, like why why is King Charles like, you know, don't come here. You know, like you you're pissed about this war Britain gets a significant amount of its energy from Qatar that's now offline, like that's gonna screw over a bunch of people. Like I I just just no what are you getting? I mean actually one w let's just look at from the other standpoint, like What is Keir Starmer getting from being kind of scared not Winston Churchill. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's going great. Yeah, but Tr Trump's gonna take King to like a monster truck rally or something. Oh my god. I wonder if we'll go to the ultimate fighting event. Uh That'll be fun. Maybe he can be a part of Joe Rogan's like pilot psychedelic program. Take a little IB again. Yeah, take a little Take a little psilocybin MDMA journey. That sounds like more fun. I beg again shit to not talk to you. No, I I think you let's I I I'll I'll be in the other clinical trials. I'll be in the MDMA one. I will take you and I can take um King Charles. Is Camilla gonna come? We'll take them to the sphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see if like Dead and Co will kind of Run it back. Have a good ass time. Yeah. Okay. We solved that one. So let's find two more things. So we're gonna talk about the latest from Cuba. Um I don't the the New York Times and Axios reported that a senior delegation from the US had visited Cuba for negotiations. It's like the highest level talk since the Obama administration. Um those talks were reportedly about like economic reforms, getting them to a market based economy. Um some releasing some political prisoners, not regime change. The talks have been primarily with President Raul Castro's family, not with the president of Cuba. Um, Castro is ninety four years old. So again, he's gonna regime change himself pretty soon, but his kids are included, including his grandkids. Um, his son Alejandro uh uh Castro Espin, who is known as the one eyed man. of an eye injury from when he was in Angola, then I know you know this guy. Um, he's been part of them. Then there's Raul Rodriguez Castro, is supposedly Raul's favorite grandson. He was like his bodyguard, his body guy. Um, he's like the the keeper of Castro's phone and controls like messages that come to and from him. Uh, he's also known as the crab because he was born with a six finger on one hand. These guys have awesome nicknames. Imagine the Obama kids were known as like the crab and like the the one I'd been. I would say I I probably spent, I'm not kidding, over a thousand hours with Alejandro Castro because we'd have these marathon multi day negotiating sessions. Or at least hundreds of hours. Uh, several Um I look I'll say it like yeah, he lost a nine in Goa. Um You kinda notice it. Um I mean there's something in there, you know, but uh There's a fundamental unseriousness to how they you know, I never was like I'm off to meet the one eyed man. You know what I mean? Like these people seem like they're fucking kids in a movie. It's like it's the same way that Cas Patel likes to, you know, work out at Quanico. Like there's a fantasy camp element to them giving these nicknames of the crab and the one eyed man. Um that's the first point. The crab is not a nickname that I would want. No, no. Or the one eyed man for that matter. No. Uh Crab's got in his in continue. Wha what are these talks? What is happening what's happening here? So I think what's happening is We think that Iran is making them pump the brakes on this shit, as I guess by threshold question because They know it's not going well. No one has any bandwidth to do another regime change, at least not militarily. So like What what is the path? How do you slow the roll? I I assume that what they want is Um Some So what's interesting is they clearly think Venezuela was a huge success. Trump talks about it a lot. And look, the problem for Trump is, sure, he got Maduro. Delse Rodriguez is in there. She's cracking down on All her opponents. Yeah, socialist, you know, strong woman. Um And and I guess we get some oil occasionally from them or something. Um but here's the problem, like most Americans just don't give a shit. Like n no Americans like, you know what? My life is demonstrably better. Because we depose Maduro. Right. So then I think they look at at Cuba and they're like, Well, we could do that. Right? Like we could You know, get rid of the leader and But here's the problem, like they they don't have oil in Cuba, you know? And and so I imagine The potential deal could be I'm sure the Cubans would be willing to open up their economy they were before with us. Um And what what you might what Cuba has is real estate. Right. So they have beachfront property, quite literally. Like the whole north coast of Cuba facing Florida, beautiful beaches, or beautiful keys. And you could say in a very corrupt way Hey, the Miami Cubans can come in here and own this land and develop hotels on it. Maybe the Trump throwing a Trump Tower to and a golf course. And Mean maybe Miguel Diaz Canal, the president of Cuba, he goes. You know, he's the Maduro in this scenario. And they try to find some Delcy Rodriguez type person that The Brow Castro is okay. Yeah. The the problem with this i i is first of all Diaz Canal doesn't run Cuba. I mean that's evident by the fact that they're not even talking. He's not even in the way that Maduro ran Venezuela. Like he he was never Rao's been the kind of, you know Emeritus leader of the country. The military's got a deep interest in the economy 'cause it's a sanctions economy and they control a lot of stuff. And Diaz Canal is kind of an apparatchic who's kind of the front man. So I think that the the the Eli Lakes of the Cuban hardliners. No. That just getting Diaz Canal out doesn't change that regime at all. Like it just means a musical chairs in the president's seat. For what, a real estate divid deal? And it's kinda like a like w why did we go through all this? What we like. We did a fuel blockade, we killed Cubans literally because there were power shortages at hospitals. Like we've killed Cubans with our sanctions in the re recent months. So that like some Miami Cubans t tight with Marco Rubio can like invest in real estate. 'Cause I don't know what else Cuba can concede, you know? I if they're not becoming a multi party democracy tomorrow, which they're not gonna regime change themselves. There's not much for them to concede. They can release political prisoners and You know Again, like give Americans. But like I I just what is this all about? I don't know. And once again, like it seems like through these talks the administration is further empowering the next generation of Castros. The crab. So we're just empowering yeah this six finger guy and the one I guy and rinse repeat. I don't know, man. I guess hurry up and wait and we'll keep watching. Um final story, Ben. Um So longtime listeners to the show know that we have issues with some of the people in the administration, but that we're huge fans of FBI director Cash Patel. Yeah. He is eminently qualified for the job. He's a great leader. Um he's an expert in all facets of law enforcement. And so it was shocking to me personally to uh to learn Via a recent report in The Atlantic magazine that Cash is not nearly as popular within the FBI itself as he is with us on this show. So according to this report, Cash Vital The FBI director. He's routinely drunk on the job. And by the way, this is a twenty four seven job. Uh, he is uh he the piece says that on multiple occasions his security detail had trouble waking cash up because he was so shit faced. And in one instance Uh, they had to make a request for equipment used by SWAT teams to break down doors. So that is that is drunk. I don't know that I've been that drunk in a long time. I guess he didn't have uh what's that product you guys? Z biotics. Yeah, you just didn't have the Z biotics. You could help him out. We could ship them some Z. I'm happy to help them out, because again, I'm a big fan. Uh the Atlantic Peace reported that uh meetings with FBI staff uh have been have to be scheduled around his hangovers, and that he is, quote, erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence. bad tendencies for the FBI director. Um he's also incredibly paranoid about getting fired to the point where he flipped out about some random IT issue and thought it meant that the White House had locked him out of his account. Now this paranoia might be justified. The article says that senior White House officials have had conversations about who might replace cash. We also saw uh Minecraft head uh Dan Bongino. leave his job as deputy to go be a podcaster again. So Ben, I mean, this is not the first report. that outlines all the ways the cash patel is kind of a joke and treats the job like it's fantasy camp. There was his request to go jet skiing. at a conference of our closest intelligence sharing allies, the five eyes. We know that uh Cash uses the FBI's private jet to fly to Italy for the Olympics, to fly to Pennsylvania to watch his girlfriend sing at some low rent wrestling contest. to fly to a place called the Boondoggle Ranch. I love that you always include that one. I love the Boondoggle Ranch. I want can we go? I'd like to go to Boondoggle Ranch. If I can get us a ticket will you go and It sounds where that guy shot Dick Cheney in the Dick Cheney shot the guy in the face. Yeah. If you and I go, that'll be us. Um Uh, but like this is the first time I've seen the the argument that People in the FBI think Cash Patel is a threat to national security because of his mismanagement of the role. Now, the counter argument you hear is like, look, every minute Cash Patel is designing his like FBI Punisher logo challenge coin is a minute. He's not like fucking up ongoing FBI operations. I'm not sure I buy that. I see a pretty big opportunity cost here. But what did you make of this? uh this article. Oh god, I have some thoughts, man. Um So first of all Um I love that he's suing the Atlantic for $250 million. $250 million. When uh Lorian Jobs owns the Atlantic, so I think she can cover the legal bee fees. Also what's interesting about this is that We saw the guy. Like shotgun a fucking beer at the Olympics with the hockey team. And he looked like Will Farrell in old school. Like, remember when Will Farrell shotguns for a spear and he's like Oh Yeah Like that's exactly how Cash is acting. It's just like it was activating all the like the tank. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and so it is completely believable that this guy I mean, we know he was at like Rouse member the I think maybe when Charlie Kirk got killed or something, he said like you know Tweeting out wrong information. He's always in in uh Las Vegas, something called the Poodle Club. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you don't go there to drink seltzer. No, he's not the kind of guy who orders a club soda on the plane. He's the kind of guy's getting the two bottles of trine. Um but uh so it's eminently believable that he's a drunk. Um And and I to be serious about it, like you remember, Tommy, like When shit happens, like the FBI director I remember the Boston Marathon bombing? Like I just left, but yes. Okay, so you just left, so Bob Muller was I mean, rest in peace, um, was in the fucking situation room for like hours, you know? And and he's briefing Obama and he's on the phone with agents in Boston and he's managing up and down and around and he's briefing Congress like happened on the regular where And there's stuff like that we never learned about like ongoing investigations that were so sensitive that like the White House people were never brief that they're managing. Yeah, like that is a that is a twenty four seven job literally. You will get woken up in the middle of the night and asked A question like Who do we They have to notify about this, or can you call your counterpart in this other country because there's a terrorist plot and we need someone at the F FBI director level to call the head of M I five or something. Like shit like this happen all the time. So if he can't function on the job 'cause he's hammered. For hours at a time. That's dangerous. Uh I I'd also say like What is Cash Patel even doing in this job? Because like what is his vision of the FBI? Because All that seems to get him geeked is people come and train agents or to change the logo. Like, he has no vision of like how to reform the bureau. Like I'm he's not even he's so incompetent and people are so innocent that he's not even pro persecuting Trump's opponents 'cause the he's too incompetent to that. I mean and then the last thing is I read the piece and it kind of explains to me, Tommy, I don't know Remember when he was like posting like through the Charlie Kirk investigation, like we got the guy, he's in custody. Like it felt like drunk tweeting. It was we've all been there. Absolutely. When I've done it, it's usually been like I'm at the end of a dinner that's not that interesting. So I start looking at my phone. I've had a few and I'm like ah I'm gonna tweet about this. No, you I'm not the FBI director. No, usually for me it's uh I'm going I'm I'm I'm walking back to the main stage at Coachella, the Molly's wearing off, and I just wanna weigh in on the Hungarian election. You know? Yeah, you you you you run out of things to talk to Katie Perry about. So you're just gonna weigh in on the Hungarian Kate Katie does want to hear your takes on the Hungarian election. So you're gonna share with your honeymoon phase is over. All she wants to talk about is Bieber, all I wanna talk about is Orban. One uh uh group, one organization that seems to have kind of Grasps. Who Cash is is whoever made this Lego movie about him. I don't even know if it's the Iranians anymore. They're all getting credited. It's entirely a meme, but whoever made this one um had a good ass time with it. Let's watch. Easy eyes, Epstein Files, cover up lies, Trump name redacted Why you drop 'em, but you crawl Falling Kirk shot, wrong guy and cuff we Total bust, Olympics hockey locker room camp. F I get to Milan, you have Friend Crab Alexis Wilkins is real clap back Go Am I fire? Meltdowns what a le Maybe AI is good. Uh it is I mean we found a good use for it. Yeah. I I mean the amazing thing about that is that there's every single narrative about cash, because we've been covering them all on this podcast, is somehow in like a one minute video. Yeah, From I mean, he does have crazy eyes. Um him getting hammered at the flavor podcast guys call him Kakad Cash. Yeah, him posting uh the wrong guy was caught and Charlie Kirk. Like everything that this guy's done, like they can just grab that and within like an hour like turn out like this AI video that's Honestly, like pretty interesting to watch. Now they always have the Israel control thing. They always have the Israel So they always have, you know, Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend is Massad honey pot uh honeypot. Um But yeah, man, uh it couldn't happen to a a better guy than cash, I have to say. I wonder if there'll be a a Cal she market on how long it takes her to dump him after he's fired. I guess we'll find out. Yeah, if he can have a SWAT team guard her. Actually Notes on the uh uh IRGC Lego video. They left that out. That there's a SWAT team that uh basically provides security for his girlfriend. Come on, guys. Do better. Do better. Yeah. IRGC. Whoever made this. Um Wow, good stuff. Uh anyway, hopefully Trump fires Cash Mattel. Yeah. He's on a firing spree rate lately. Uh it it's just self evident that this guy is not qualified. Maybe the point is it just things just haven't been the same since Bon Gino left. Yeah. He's holding it. Square Minecraft head. Uh okay, that's it for uh the news portion of the show, but please stick around for my conversation with Nick and Rich. We talk about his book into the Wood Chipper. It's a whistleblower's account of what it was like when the USAID got doged by Elon Musk. idiot friends and uh presumably, reportedly, allegedly a whole bunch of ketamine, so stick around for that. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates, but don't be fooled this can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the Wise account, you can send, spend, and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond, most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending Reals and Rio, the wise travel card gives you the mid-market rate on every purchase, no costly markups on your bill. 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My guest today is the former Bureau of Global Health Director of Policy Programs and Planning for USAID. His new book is Into the Wood Chipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredd USAID. It's a very evocative title, and I assume one where you need to much less ketamine to come up with it than Elon did for uh his famous tweet. Nick Enrich, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to meet you. Um, so let's start by just, you know, kind of talking about a a bit about your time and work you did at USAID pre Elon. Uh you were there for over twelve years across four administrations. What did you focus on and what was your proudest accomplishment? Yeah, so I was um as you said, the director of policy programs and planning for the Global Health Bureau, which was essentially the CFO CO position of that bureau. My job was to make sure that we had the resources we needed for global health and that we were using them as efficiently as possible to achieve our health goals. Um, and you know, we I my my job was to come up with ways to make things better and and um I think that's that's where I was the most proud. One of the the last things, sadly, that I did um uh in in the last administration was come up with a new uh global health policy for the agency. We had actually never had one before for our whole global health sector. And we thought that this would be a great way to get a little bit more um uh efficient in the way that we would administer our programs. I also had a list. When I heard Doge was coming in, I had a list of things that I wanted to do to improve the agency that I thought would be the kinds of things that Doge would be excited to hear about. Obviously v quite naively because um I never actually got a chance to to share any of those ideas. So like far from battling these guys, you're like, Oh, I got some ways to make this place more efficient. Here's my literal list of things we could do to, you know, make money go further. Yeah, they were called the Department of Government Efficiency and you know In the abstract it sounded like a good idea. Um, but The the reality was it was no such thing. Yeah. So let's talk about that reality. So by now I I imagine everyone listening knows how this story unfortunately ends. It's Elon Musk and the bunch of like young, arrogant uh kids from the tech world just rampaging through USAID and destroying it. That decision alone is estimated to have already 75,000 deaths. Just so far. Um so but I I think Liserman might not fully grasp Just how careless um and ignorant the people in charge of this process truly were. Um, can you recount for listeners a story you tell in the book? about what a couple of Doge staffers said to you after most employees at the agency had been placed on administrative leave. Sure. Um that it wasn't until after most of the employees were paid placed on administrative leave or fired that I was given the opportunity to explain what we even did in global health. So I just gave a quick overview, um talked about the infectious diseases that we've worked to stop, our work to help save uh newborn uh newborn babies and mothers, um, and and a few other of the just top line highlights. And it was I was kind of met with a stunned silence from the leadership of USAID at that point. Um, and the chief of staff of the agency, um, kind of like looked at me and said, Wow, I had no idea you did all that. When I think of what USA did in global health, I just assumed it was, you know, abortions. What is your reaction in that moment? What how how do you even address comment that ignorant by someone who's supposed to be the chief of staff at the agency. It was very difficult to decide whether to laugh or cry. I knew I didn't want to argue with him, um, because I knew that wasn't gonna get me anything and get me anywhere, but um it w it just betrayed this extraordinary level of ignorance and to think that these were the people that had made the decision to get rid of all of our staff before they had any idea what the work was that the agency even did was shocking. Yeah, truly shocking. So th there was this moment where Elon and the boys come in to USA D. It's clear they're gonna destroy some parts, but it's not clear yet if they're gonna like completely upend the entire, you know, agency. I mean, ultimately they got rid of what, like eighty three percent of all programming and folded that into the State Department. Um, and so before USAID was was fully gutted, you decided to author and then release to uh uh the media some memos about the impact to become a whistleblower. Can you tell listeners sort of what you put in those memos and how you made that decision and whether you think It made any like did anybody read your memo? Did anyone rethink what they were doing? Well, so what I put in the memos that there were three memos. The first was to describe everything we had tried to do to restart our life saving programs, which was something that uh Secretary of State Rubio had promised was gonna happen as they tore down USAID, but yet they didn't let us restart any of our programs. And um in fact they stopped us at every possible turn. So that was the first memo. The second was about how they decimated our staff and really just traumatized the workforce for the that six week period in which I was uh responsible for global health. Um, and then the third memo documented what the impacts were gonna be of the cuts to USAID, including potentially up to 2.6 million lives lost per year. Um, and tens of millions of uh mothers not being able to receive emergency life. uh uh life saving care and numerous other uh other issues. Did it did it make a difference? Well USAID was still destroyed. Um some of the contracts that had been terminated that were necessary to do our most life saving projects. were actually restored in the few days after my memos were released. But that was about it. I had kind of hoped that this would uh light a fire under Congress or um others to be able to uh like shed some light on exactly what was happening there. But Um, unfortunately the end of the story is not a happy one. Yeah. Marco Rubio is a real villain in my view because, you know, he was once a huge supporter of USAID and its work. Um, in fact I've heard you say in other interviews that people at the agency were a little bit relieved when he was named Secretary of State. Because his record suggested that he understood USAID, he understood the value, and that he might support it or protect it. Why do you think he completely turtled on this and reversed himself? And like what what's your take on Rubio now? Yeah, I mean he did certainly did not live up to the um the estimation that I and and other other staff at USAID had thought we were going to get, which was a long time staunch supporter of foreign aid and development. Um instead we got lies. We got uh Rubio saying that no one has died as a result of the cuts to USAID, which was just blatantly not true. And he went further and blamed the USAID uh career officials uh for being insubordinate for not um restarting programs that his own team was preventing us from doing. And look, maybe um you know he got lost somewhere in the connection between the the wai that he allowed to to restart life saving programs and um when that was not allowed to actually be implemented by By Doge, but this is the problem when you hollow out an agency of all of its expertise and replace it with completely um you know Incompetent and unknowledgeable and unqualified buffoons. There was this chaotic period, right, where like Trump takes over. Elon comes in, Doge goes to USAID first. There's like a freeze on programming then they say, Oh, life saving stuff will continue. Then it's clear that that's not happening. Like Now that you have some time and space from that period of time. Was the chaos lying? Was it people not really knowing like what the left hand was doing to the right? Or like what was happening there? Like what was all the competing statements and the confusion and the kind of bullshit that was coming out of uh the Trump administration's leadership in the in that period? Yeah, I mean, certainly there were lies and there was cruelty um to an unbelievable degree. But I think the thing that people maybe underestimate the most, and maybe what has the most um the the most relevance for other agencies, perhaps, is the level of sheer incompetence. uh that we saw. These were people who were not just unknowledgeable of global health or international development. They had really no idea how government even works. And frankly, they were really terrible managers of people and projects. So you know they had been tasked with a an unreasonable assignment to dismantle you know, a a an agency that delivered foreign aid over six decades. And you can imagine things are gonna go wrong with a project like that. And when they inevitably did, the The people who were in charge just had no idea how to fix those problems and ended up just making things worse. It was a lot of like table smacking and yelling at each other and not understanding what was happening because they had already gotten rid of most of the experts that would have been able to help them do it. That's a yeah, great way to run a railroad there. Get rid of all the people who understand the building and then Try to dismantle it. Um, if you had like two minutes in an elevator with Elon Musk in that period to explain to him. what he did and the impact it had on the world. What would you tell? You know, somebody said that the image of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. And I would like I would love to convey that because I do feel like the destruction of USAID had nothing to do with improving efficiency or fighting waste. Or realigning foreign aid with some, you know, the the new president's uh uh priorities. This was the it The just destruction of an agency for the sole purpose of satisfying the ego of a billionaire. And um it's something that I'm still quite angry about, as you can probably tell. Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, sure, like waking up every day to read these insane tweets. I'm this like ketamine addled monster. Um, who seemed to just take glee. in in harming the agency, upsetting employees. Um Being an asshole, but it just must have been horrifying. Yeah, I I mean there was a day um where I think he he tweeted over f forty times between like three and four o'clock in the morning about USAID. And um this was on a Sunday night and and on that Monday morning, um there were some of my colleagues were asking me, should is it safe for us to come in the building? I mean, he's calling us criminals, he's calling us a ball of worms, he's calling us evil. Um and and, you know, I I I didn't really know what to tell them. I I mean I uh uh the the the good bureaucrat I was, I said, Well, we haven't gotten guidance to not come into the office, so we should still come. Th these were the kind of the my my my normal tendencies that that I I had to fight against and what took me so long to decide that it there was there was no way that I was actually fulfilling my oath as a civil servant to be doing what I was being told to do. And that's why I eventually Felt like I needed to stand up and say something. Yeah, I mean it is hard to remember back to those days where he's essentially accusing USAID of being like a criminal organization and evil and I mean the the The vindictive nature of the attacks was shocking and baseless. Um So let's just look forward a little bit. Um a lot of voters genuinely don't want to spend US taxpayer dollars overseas, whether it's on a war or development. They think it's a waste. You've probably heard all the kind of isolationist, nationalist arguments against foreign aid or or foreign spending that can frankly be really convincing. But I do think some of those people could be persuaded by national security arguments in favor of foreign aid. So in your opinion, Uh what are some ways that destroying USAID is hurting our national security now and making Americans less safe? Yeah, I mean the the the f there's several ways. The first is specific to uh infectious diseases, and that's the one that keeps me up at night because I think the shortest term threat is from a new disease or an existing disease that we're no longer able to detect. um coming to our borders because we are currently fly blind when it comes to an early warning system that we had previously set up uh within USAID to help countries detect and treat and and respond to outbreaks before there was any chance of them spreading. And now those systems have been ripped up. And we have no idea. We're basically uh conducting um bio biosafety and biosecurity policy by crossing our fingers and hoping. So that's the thing that that scares me most. And what we saw um when we would give issue these warnings to the the Doge team and the political appointees as they were tearing it down was just The they couldn't understand. So when I tried to explain, for example, that when they froze aid, they froze clinical trials testing new drugs for drug resistant tuberculosis, um, that these were our antibiotics of last resort. And when we interrupt treatment of those, it allows for the potential. development of new strains of an airborne infectious disease that we no longer have any antibiotics to treat. And when I would say that, I I I told that to um to the the leadership at USAID, and they told me they asked me if I could make Barney style slides to explain them in a way that non health experts could understand. Barney style? Barney, like the dinosaur. The children's dinosaur. That's um who who are those for? For Trump? I guess I I don't know who they were for. I mean it's certain it certainly was for nobody that was gonna be making rational decisions about national security. Yeah. That's unnerving. Uh I I've I I'm trying to imagine what a a Barney style briefing about um drug resistant tuberculosis looks like. I don't want to watch that show, I could tell you that much. Not with my kids, but okay, continue. That's um horrifying. That's an awful image. Yeah. So so that that's sort of the the most immediate threat that keeps me up all night. The longer term, you know USAID was the embodiment of American generosity. Um and I think it really w it was um preserving partnerships in ways that are done so much more efficiently and effectively than you'll ever see from What can be run out of the State Department or the Department of F Defense when we try to lead by um coercion and the use of force. I mean, um I think it was uh General Mattis under the last uh uh Trump administration said that if you cut foreign aid, you're gonna need to buy me more bullets. And I think that's really true. Um, President Obama said that uh for many people around the world, USA is the US. And I think that's right too, because a lot of people, they the only engagement that they ever had with the US was through the generous support that we offered them under the banner of from the American people. And I'm I'm afraid of what's gonna happen in the world where that no longer exists and They don't have that image of of the United States. Well no, it luckily everything else is going really great. And we um off this catastrophime change war in Iran. We have a president tweeting, you know, Praise Allah on Easter and insulting all Muslims and all Christians at the same time. So I don't I don't really know what could go wrong there. Okay, so again, looking forward. You it you couldn't put USAID back as it was if you wanted to, right? Because all the infrastructure and partnerships and expertise, it's gone and there's just no way of kind of like fixing that. Um, but the next Democrat who who wins the presidency is going to want I imagine some sort of reformed, updated version of USAID. Do you have a sense of kind of of an envelope kind of sketch of what that might look like. Or also are the is there anyone like a group of experts out there somewhere kind of trying to rethink USAID for that next iteration that hopefully we could, you know, get through Congress or get done and and get back running? Yeah, I mean, I actually maybe am more optimistic than you. I believe that USAID could be rebuilt and not that difficult in in not that difficult of a way. And I and frankly, I think it should. Like again, let's not think that it was torn down because that was a good idea or that it wasn't working or anything like that. The reality was, as I mentioned, it was torn down by people who had no idea what it actually did. Um I the the the arg the the counter argument is to keep it where it's now being tried to fold into the State Department. And I think that's a problem for several reasons. First, I think it ends up having um you know that for the same reason that we wouldn't uh just suggest combining the State Department and the Department of Defense. Which are two separate pillars of foreign policy, so too is development, which is a third critical policy pillar of foreign policy. And what we're already seeing with them trying to run foreign aid out of the State Department is major problems because of that tangle. as they try to um kind of shoehorn it into their transactional diplomacy, where they exchange the idea of HIV treatment for millions of people in exchange for access to critical minerals, for example, which is just it really kind of defeats the purpose of everything that we've learned about how development policy works and builds partnerships over years. So that's one piece. The second is, as I mentioned earlier, having Having an independent agency that is the the the face overseas of American generosity is symbolically important. And that flag and that logo of the handshake and the four the American people, I think is important um for projecting. uh American goodwill and and generosity overseas. And and I think that that that on its own has um has value. Um for personally I I find that folks who who say, Well, you know, it's over, USAID is done and and nothing's coming back. it it that it's kind of like a lack of boldness and a lack of creativity um that sort of allowed USA to collapse in the first place. And so I'm I'm hoping that the next administration, um, even the next Congress is looking forward to boldly taking on the rebuilding of USA. And I think it's something that is not a hard lift. I think it's very popular um overall when people understand what it is, right? It's less than one percent of the um of the federal budget goes to goes to foreign aid. And with that amount, we've saved 92 million lives over the last 20 years. So I I don't think it's a it's a hard sell. I think it's just does require the political willpower to um to say, look, this is what we want. And there are ways to make it better. It doesn't have to be exactly the same. Like there are some valid criticisms of USAID and there are ways that we can Use this opportunity to make it less less likely to foster dependency over time, more likely to partner uh more closely with local organizations, um, have a little bit more flexibility in the earmarks that that Congress has set for us so that we can address overarching problems rather than kind of stay shoehorn. There's tons of ideas that I would love to talk about for anyone who'll listen. Um, but where I stand is we need to rebuild USAID. All right. Well, let's hope uh that uh others in Congress share your optimism. The book is Into the Wood Chipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded US aid. Nick Enrich, thanks for doing the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again, Nick Enrich, for doing the show. And uh I have a feel that we're gonna be talking to you before next week, guys. Yeah because Wednesday maybe is a deadline still. We don't know. J D Vance Peacemaker. Yeah. And maybe J D will go to Pakistan. That's a long flight. Jans. Also like the security requirements. Like it was dangerous for our diplomats to be in Islamabad. Like I can't imagine what goes into I mean, you want to talk about cost of war, like the cost of securing J D Vance and his Lombard has gotta run into the Tens and tens of millions at least. Yeah. Uh okay, well that's about it. And um like I salute you, chief of general staff of Pakistan. Like it's so cool. War criminal general. Thanks for your help. State sponsor of terror, like you know LT, like you know, Lascar is like The Indian government loves that. Hot Save World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonnerje. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. 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