Rise of the Far-Right Reform Party

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Protect your teeth with Remy by using the code PSTW to get 50% off your new night guard with Remy Club subscribe and save. That's 50% off at shopr em i.com/slash pstw with code PSTW. Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. Hey crooked listeners, if you haven't become a friend of the pod yet, you are missing out on exclusive bonus content that drops every single week. If you do join, you're helping us uh you know grow crooked media, which is one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media companies left in Trump's America. If you join, you also get Ad-Free Episodes of all your favorite pods, add-free episodes of PodSave America, love it or leave it, offline, pod save the Wldor, you also get bonus content like uh our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends, Dan Pfeiffer's Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent substack newsletters like PodSave America open tabs and tons more great content. So stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Crooked.com slash friends. Check it out. Welcome back to Podsay of the World I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Uh Ben, please enjoy this great moment in national security history from our president, Mr. Donald J. Trump. Let's watch. The entire roof is developed for military. They have a 360-degree vision, Washington DC . They have a massive drone capacity. Not only is it drone proof, if a drone hits it, it bounces off, it won't have any impact. But um it's also meant as a drone for it so it protects all of Washington, the roof of the building. Ben, do you think that that's how he thinks that counter drone systems work, that it's just like a strong roof. Does he think Iron Dome is a literal thing? So first of all, it feels like a wonderful space for a coup. Uh for the if you need to launch a military coup what better place to launch the putsch from within your own ballroom . Where you can have a bunker under the ballroom and you can send drones out. So uh good dual use uh to use a national security term. I also just love how did you see him at some Trump Rx event talk about how how great it is for medical? Yeah. Um , this is great for military. Like I I I also love their innovative ways they um try to hold press conferences at the locations with the worst audio possible. They're like, how do we beat this marine one jet engine? Oh, I know. Yeah. Dude with a hammer. Yeah, it reminds me whenever I have to do like a podcast from home or something, and like the planes are flying overseas, and there's some dude with a leaf blower out side. And but Trump likes that. Yeah, he loves it. Apparently. He's like, how can we make this as annoying as humanly possible for everybody? Um also um did you see the Wall Street Journal story the other day with the headline, Dad books are a dying breed. The Wall Street Journal says that nonfiction books about politics, current affairs, and biographies are falling off, and what's killing them then are podcasts. Well, then I'm fucked. So this feels like a direct shot at this show because I I I feel like well first of all, y we need a creed a cur for dad books, 'cause dad books are great. We do. But also dads and we read books. You've got one coming out. I do, I do. So I feel like this is important. We we have a responsibility as podcasters to promote nonfiction books. The podcast should work in synergy with the book not in competition with it. So a week from today, as we record, is the release date for my book, All We Say. All We Say. Uh this book is very personal to me because basically, you remember our last book is about authoritarianism. And one of the things I noticed in writing about Pudin Shee, Trump, is how central history and storytelling is to authoritarians. They're essentially trying to rewrite history as a prequel to their ascent. And it got me thinking of it feels familiar to us here in America. Very familiar. And so I wanted to understand Trump and all the dysfunction and toxicity in our politics today by going all the way back to the beginning and using my speechwriter experience choosing 15 speeches through which to understand the argument we've been having about America and our identity. Who is an American? What is an American? Who gets to decide those questions? And so you take a journey all the way from Benjamin Franklin through some extraordinary abolitionists and suffragettes and people like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass up through Martin Luther King, all the way to ending with Obama and Donald Trump. And I promise you, uh this was incredibly fun to write, so I think it'll be fun to read because when you look at a speech, you're really just looking at history in the present tense, like how were movements operating at that time? Who were these people that emerged out of nowhere to change the course of history . How do you tell a story that actually galvanizes and mobilizes people? Something that we seem to have lost the capacity to do today. Um so the book is out one week from today. Please if you want to pick it up, pre-order it because it . gets it out and it gets It banned on the New York Times bestseller list. Gets on the bestsellers, but it also displaces Don Jr.'s triggered four or whatever. Take a look at the that list and just think how much better you'd feel to see like uh a book about who we are as Americans. We're not losing to those people. Yeah. All we say is gonna beat the bulk order, little cross next to their name, Don Jr., Eric Trump, fucking bullshit, chop shop, Fox News, killing Lincoln garbage books. Yeah, no more kid. We're not killing anybody in this book. We're trying to tell the story of America on our 250th birthday in a way that we can feel both honest about. Um actually one of the other things I was really struck by, Tommy, is like people knew exactly what was going on at the time. You know, the Seneca chief in eighteen oh five. It's not like they didn't know what was being done to Native Americans in this country. It's not like abolitionists didn't know what was going on in the eighteen thirties. Um and just reliving that through uh the story as it was told at the time was extraordinary for me to experience for four years. You can hear a clip of the audio book if you want to go all the way to the end of the uh podcast today. Uh and I'll be out on the road and I'll be sharing all those dates and hope to see the world that was in the audience. Excellent. Save the dad book by picking up a copy of All We Say for Father's Day. Dare I say, yes, the perfect Father's Day gift. Perfect Father's Day gift, which is coming. Fathers love history, they love America. Yep. My wife's gonna be out of town for Father's Day, so I'll be with the kids so low. Just kick back with the Oh we say. That's what she thinks about me. Okay, we got a great show for you guys today. We're gonna find out if Hannah listens to this podcast. She does not. Uh there's all these signals, Ben. We were you and I were texting over the weekend. It just feels like every light is blinking red. Would it be red or green? I guess green, that the Trump administration is planning some sort of imminent regime change operation in Cuba, which is great. We need another one of those. So we need to do about what those, you know, what those indications are. Uh we'll talk about the humanitarian situation on the ground there. Uh we'll also touch on this growing political crisis in Bolivia, which has kind of exploded on social media over the weekend. Uh, then we're gonna up you guys on all things around the bad, the worse, the dumb. Um, we'll explain what was and what was not accomplished during Trump's China trip, why folks in Taiwan are feeling a little more nervous these days than they were before the trip. Uh, and then Ben and I are gonna get to see some highlights from the annual Eurovision contest for the I look forward to this every year. Every year. Michael's curation of Eurovision for us. Every year, once a year, Michael tries to force us to care about Eurovision and we say, all right. I don't yeah, I got on a better pitch. Yeah. Um and then you're gonna hear my conversation with Nish Kumar from Pod Save the UK. Uh we talk about what the hell is happening with uh Prime Minister Kirst Armer, the Labor Party, Nigel Farage, uh the rise of reform UK, the right wing party over there. And then we just laugh a lot because Nish is so funny. Does Nish have a uh a favored horse in this fight? Is he an Andy Burnham guy? Is he an Angela Rainer guy? Um my guess is he didn't say, but my guess is you know, he was from tech a little further to the left. Nick is probably Nish is probably green Curious. ye Yeahah,, yeah. I think we're all a little Green Curious. I'm Green Curious. Um Pod Save the UK is a hilarious, fantastic show. You should subscribe. Also check out Nish's comedy special. It's on YouTube right now. It's called Nish Don't Kill My Vibe. Which is a great title. Also, if speaking of YouTube, please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. How many times do we have to ask? We're trying to counterweight to the right wing pro-war propaganda from Fox News and others. It's free. And when you subscribe, when you like and when you share our stuff you help us grow so please consider doing it and if you want to see everybody here in person Ben uh get a ticket to CrookedCon is November 5th through 7th in DC there will be live shows panels meetups, torrid love affairs under,whelming love affairs, uh, and mostly just fun people coming together to talk about the future of politics, trying to make this country a better place. The midterms will just have happened. Hopefully they're good. Trump endorsing Ken Paxton in Texas today. Yeses.. Mak me a little hope What the fuck? Yeah. That guy is a creep. A walking creep. It's hard to design a MAGA creep more effectively than Ken Paxton. Have you seen the story about Ken Paxton? He's going through a security gate to get into a like a courtroom or something and he stole some guy's like thousand dollar pen. Yeah. I mean just like a crook. If you ever wanted to test the proposition that maybe right-wing politics in this country are not about earnest religiosity. A James Tolerico versus Ken Paxton race is definitely gonna put that to the test. Yeah, that's not a hard one. Uh more info at crookedcon .com. Uh and also friends of the pod subscribers get a discounted price. So another reason to subscribe. Um all right, Ben. Should we start with Cuba? Yes. I know you care deeply about this one. Let's go again, seems like all these warning lights are flashing. The most recent data point was this Axios report from over the weekend that said Cuba has obtained 300 military drones and is considering using them to attack targets uh at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay if they are attacked. I feel like the if they are attacked retaliation part of this was kind of underemphasized in the reporting. But there were a lot of background quotes kind of hyping the threat from Cuba to the US. It's like all these people quoted just figured out it's 90 miles away. No. No. I always love that. Um so there's your pretext for why the US has to take a preemptive Because if they're invaded, they might fight back. So we gotta prove we have to preempt the retaliation. Reports that the US is planning to indict uh 94-year-old Raul Castro for a crime that occurred in nineteen ninety-six. As as is normal. You might be thinking that seems strange. He seems like he's about to die. Uh but it's not strange when you consider how central the indictment of Nicholas Maduro was to the rationale for the Venezuela operation that deposed him earlier this year. Then there was CIA director John Ratcliffe's visit to Cuba last week. Sometimes those trips happen. They're usually secret. That's why you send the CIA director. But instead the CIA put out a statement about it. They said Ratcliffe was there to personally deliver a message from Trump that sounded like an ultimatum to me, Ben. Yeah. Um and then finally the Times has been reporting that there's been an increase in U.S. surveillance flights over Cuba in recent weeks. In the broader context, as listeners probably know, is that uh the U.S. has had this full blockade on Cuba since January. The entire island is uh just rocked by this humanitarian crisis. There is no fuel, so there's no power . Hospitals can't function, people can't cook food, families are starving. It is an absolute nightmare. Children are starving to death. Children are starving to death. Um, and here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about Cuba last week. I think this is like on the way to China or while they were in China. Let's watch. wealth is controlled by a private by a company owned by military generals they take all the money they're sitting on billions of dollars okay this is a country where people are literally now eating garbage from the streets but they have a company that controls all of the money making there that's sitting on fifteen sixteen billion dollars. So it's a broken non-functional economy and it's impossible to change it. I wish it were different. But I believe it's my personal opinion you cannot change the economic trajectory Okay, so uh Ben I'm curious how you're reading all these tea leaves. And like I don't know if there isn't a regime change operation. Are they just gonna starve this entire island full of people in perpetuity? Is like a medieval siege happening here? Yes. And and uh first of all, Rubio , i if you kind of look hard enough into his eyes, uh it's hard to identify like the soul underneath. Um because what what he's talking about i i is it's so farcical because is there corruption and repression in the Cuban government? Yes. But the reason people are reading garbage is because on top of the embargo that has been in place for sixty plus years, there's a full blockade of the island. If they wanted tomorrow to have a market-based economy, they couldn't because they are completely cut off from the U.S. financial system. When we were in office and did the engagement of policy with the Cubans, they wanted to open up their economy to foreign investment and they created a private sector. And literally we couldn't get any bank to do any business in Cuba because of US sanctions, even though we were trying to lift those sanctions. And we actually had to kind of give direct permission to one bank just to facilitate some transactions. So these guys like Rubio like to get up there and make it seem like the entire just travesty of human suffering that is happening there is somehow because of a handful of corrupt communist party officials or generals, when far and away, and I'm tired of just this one end on the other end thing, far and away the reason that Cubans are suffering is because of the US blockade. You could have, you know, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes running the economy. And if you have a total US embargo that cuts the country off from accessing the US dollar, which is needed for transactions, and then a blockade of all oil coming into the country, you'd still have people eating garbage in the street. Right. You can't refrigerate anything. Yeah. There's no electricity for 20 hours at a time. So shit and that means that hospitals are shutting down and people are dying who are on things like ventilators because of Marco Rubio. He's he's killing the people that he claims to be trying to help. And and I wish that there was more of a kind of moral outcry against this from the Democrats, from the media, but it it is what it is. In terms of what's happening, uh my sense is that the Cubans have been willing to make lots of concessions. You know, they've been trying to make signals that they're they're releasing certain political prisoners. They're they're probably willing to open up some real estate for development from you know Trump's rich uh Cuban American friends in in South Florida, or they're willing to make changes in their economic model. But you just heard Rubio give up the game, which is he thinks that the whole government has to change and no government, whether you like that government or not, is gonna negotiate its own regime change. Uh and so we're in this kind of, you know, Mexican standoff where essentially they're saying you guys all have to leave uh or else what? And the or else now seems to be that they they you know Diaz Canal who's the actual president of Cuba is not a big enough fish probably for Trump and Rubio. No. So they're looking at Raoul Castro who's like literally ninety-four years old. Um it's not like he's you know, he may be the final decision maker, but he's not running the country day to day. But he's a name. You know, Fidel's dead, Raoul's left. We're gonna indict him over something. It's like literally a scalp for all these hardline Cubans in Miami who have hated the Catholic. And by the way, if we're if we're relitigating you know things that happened 30 years ago, I mean the the CIA has shot down Cuban airliners and killed civilians. Like there was something called the Bay of Pigs invasion. I mean, like the the the point is that the history runs in both directions in this relationship. And the idea that you're gonna charge Castro for uh the shoot down of an airplane in the mid nineties, um i I mean, why why would the justice system waited 30 years until Donald Trump wanted to play emperor of Latin America to all of a sudden decide to hold Raul Castro accountable for this. And and I think what they'll probably try to do is, you know, regime change on the cheap, uh, a bunch of Delta Force guys are gonna go grab a 94-year-old man, um, and then what will put a gun to the rest of the Cuban government's head and say let the Miami Cubans develop the real estate down here. I mean they don't have oil for us to steal. I mean it's not even a clear play. It's just it's it's like a political project for Rubio in Florida. And by the way, just to hammer home this humanitarian point, uh, because I'm with you. Like I it does feel like there's just a bizarre lack of concern. Interest, concern, we're doing cry. Yeah. We reached out to a reporter on the ground in Cuba named Ed Augustine uh to get his sense from his reporting what life is like She said, tomatoes, milk, uh meat is rotting in the countryside because it can simply not be transported to the city. In Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's main city in the east, I was reporting from eighteen story high ris es where the rich are now cooking with carbon, with coal, and the poor are cooking either with firewood they have to walk miles to to chop with machetes or with cardboard that they find in growing piles of rubbish. We're seeing infant mortality rates shoot up . An increase in the lack of drinking water. Over 80% of uh the water pumps in Cuba to get water from reservoirs to uh people's homes and hospitals relies on electricity. So these sanctions are killing. They're killing the civilian population. It's the most vulnerable that are suffering and are having their life expectancy reduced. But there's also fear of a military intervention. And that is really signific ant because here until recently in Cuba, the notion of a US military attack was seen as a bit of a cliche, right? The government's been warning of it for two-thirds of a century. Now the feelings changed. I spoke to a guy whose dream, he said, was to leave Cuba and to go to the United States. But when I asked him what he'd do in the case of military intervention, he said, Well, I'm a trained sniper and what I'll have to do is I'll have to go and be on duty. Another family I spoke to got told that they have a contingency plan, state organized contingency plan to go and live in a tunnel. What I point to here is Cuban nationalism. Many people that I speak to say if Donald Trump's America invades, I fight. So, you know, like President Diaz Canal has said that any military action by the U.S. would result in a a quote bloodbath and up-end regional stability. I mean, I think it's fair to doubt their capacity as a fighting force, but you know, a guerrilla army could do some damage and kill some U.S. service members. And again, it's like to what end? Um and then you know I saw Bob Gates, uh former CIA director, former Secretary of Defense under multiple administrations on, I think, CBS over the weekend, who was saying that he thinks the biggest risk is we just starve this island to death and lead to a mass migration of tens of tens of thousands of Cubans to the US again, which puts them at risk. But also is you know, f I I was told by MAGA that was the thing they hated the most was mass migration. It's like what are we doing here? Yeah, i if they go forward with this, uh there's several ways it could go. And like the bad, messy scenarios are that there's actually some kind of uh insurgency um that drags on that there's state collapse and mass migration. Um but let's even and also by the way the Cubans have networks across Latin America, th there's this kind of scenario where they could kind of wreak havoc in different places. You know, most like uh terrorist type uh s tactics. I'm not sure that they do that, but um it's possible. However, like let's say this goes Venezuela style, right? We some Delta Force guys and some cinematic operation grab Raul and they maybe they grab Diaz Canal and Marco Rubio gives a And puts out a sweatsuit and and then w we're I guess responsible for the governance of the poorest nation in the hemisphere because of our sanctions . Because I honestly think that one of the reasons why some Democrats aren't more vocal about this is they're like, well, what if it goes well? And we you know first of all, that's wrong. Imperialism should have gone out a long time ago and the idea that we just like randomly, you know, starve and then invade and regime change a country just because we can is the most dangerous form of politics that there is. And and also like really importantly, you mentioned MAGA, like who wants this? Like, why is this happening? Rich Cubans in Magazine. This does exactly this does nothing for anybody in America. Like the the there's not even some weird bank shot like with Venezuela that they could have got oil, although the gas prices are up. It doesn't seem like getting the Venezuelan oil to put a dent in that one. So like a very small number of people will get rich, right? Some like you know, Miami Cubans might get some beachfront property, like some corrupt you know, Eric Prince will probably get hired to Jared Kushner will run some new board of peace offshoot for Cuba. Builds Trump properties and golf courses. Uh and and look, we our tax dollars will probably spend billions of dollars on the operation. I mean, we have to start like uh we you it it can't just be the the the wars that are catastrophically consequential like Iran that people are against. Like all of this is uh connected. It's all about imperialism and corruption and power and grift and you should care as much about Cuba as you care about Iran in the same way that frankly the decent feedback we Trump got on Venezuela, probably contributed to the war in Iran. And so this Cubit operation is probably a gateway to Greenland or Panama Canal. Like whatever comes next. This is what history tells us happens with autocrats. You know, they they they they keep going they never stop when they get the territorial expansion regime change book yeah it's not great of the world is brought to you by Quince. The warm weather is finally here, so it's time to change up your wardrobe rotation. 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When you complain to them about your problems, they're not listening . They're thinking about what they got to do. Yeah. You know? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. What you need, you need someone to talk to that is paid to be there. That's okay. That's listen to you and is trained on how to help you. Yeah. You don't have to traverse life's challenges alone. Don't traverse. Find the find the personal support you're looking for in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at better help.com/slash crooked world. That's better h ome slash crooked world . We're gonna talk about Iran in a second. Um, but before we do, we wanted to flag this growing crisis in Bolivia where uh supporters of former president Evo Morales have blocked roads for a couple weeks. They've created all these shortages of fuel and medical supplies and food. It's grow it's a really a growing crisis. Um and on Monday, some of these protesters clashed with police uh in La Paz, the Bolivia's capital. And so the protests are over economic conditions um which are very bad and prices going up and inflation and long gas lines, uh but also the treatment of Morales who has been holed up in the jungle surrounded literally uh by uh like an army of supporters who say they will fight to the death to protect him . Um the protesters are now calling on the current president, President Paz, to resign. Um there have been reports that the government has ordered the arrest of of leaders of like indigenous rights m groups and unions. Uh and there was also a report that I've not seen corroborated anywhere else, Ben, that the US military was preparing some operation with oblivion police to capture Evo Morales. Yeah. Um again, that was not confirmed, but like uh post post Venezuela, it feels a lot more believable. And I can understand why like any leftist leader in Latin America would think that the Trump administration is angling to take them out and is ready and willing to intervene militarily in their affairs at any time. So I don't this sort of like exploded my feeds over the weekend. We wanted to talk about it. What do you make of this happening? You remember the Donro Doctrine? Yes. So there's a lot of smoke around some of these reports, right? So we have this idea that there might be some special operation to grab Evo Morales in Bolivia. We also have, you see this like weird Honduras thing that the Trump administration was working together with like Javier Miley and other right wing leaders to, you know, basically uh target, you know, Shanebaum in Mexico and Petro and Colombia, like meddle in their politics and undermine the Latin American left. We've had these reports of kind of CIA presence in Mexico that we've talked about. I think when you take this all together, there really does seem to be a pretty comprehensive and coordinated playbook to essentially treat all of Latin America like literally imperial possessions of the United States, where we either pick the leaders, we, you know, member Trump intervened in Argentina with a massive bailout for Melee. Or if some leftists get in charge, we you know undermine them, go after them, maybe even seize them. And and Avo Morales just points to how kind of weirdly personal this is. Because Ava Moras isn't powerful anymore. He's literally like he's not a good guy. No, he's a rape. But he's out to pasture. Like he's not like uh like it's not even like some election coming up that he's running in like he's like some guy like on a compound somewhere and i it i it feels like there's this m you know a lot of people are using the Trump administration. I heard you describe it as like smash and grab, and that's exactly right. And it's also like, oh, I can use this moment to settle my scores. You know, a lot of people are mad at Avo Morales about things he did 10, 20 years ago. And it's like, I can talk the Trump administration into like running a special optic graphic. Yeah, like some corporate interest. It really feels like 1950s, 60s, like kind of Dulles brothers in charge of the CIA, just like rampaging through Latin America on behalf of you know a fruit company or whatever. And by the way, these things can feel cost free when you do them, but they tend to have a tail. You know, like meddling in Central America in the eighties led to death squads and left wing revolutionaries and mass migration in the United States. You know, so it might feel clean when you decapitate the Cuban government or grab Ava Morales, but like other people don't forget, and then they kill people, and then they get massacred. And so this all this stuff it can set in motion uh dominoes that lead to to pretty dark places. Yeah, agreed. And something we're watching closely. Um okay, so let's turn to Iran. Uh the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Just doesn't seem like the US and Iran are anywhere close to a deal to actually end the conflict. Uh last week, Trump said the ceasefire was on life support. Then on Sunday he posted, quote, for Iran, the clock is ticking and they better get moving fast or there won't be anything left of them. Time is of the essence. Another another adorable, like, you know, mass casualty truth social post of, you know, extermination. Uh but a day later, uh, Trump announced that he would not attack Iran this week because of a request from leaders in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He always has to like name check The Field Marshal. Field Marshal Hassam Munir . Did you know that uh the cops in London have an arrest warrant out for him for like torture and like crimes against humanity. So the New York Times reported that the delay in the resumption of hostilities could also be related to fears within the Pentagon that Iran has been studying, you know, U.S. tactics, U.S. flight patterns, baby conjunction with Russian intelligence, and can now better target U.S. planes. And maybe that's why that F-15 went down. Regardless, shit in the Gulf keeps blowing up, Ben. Drones keep flying from places. So last week a drone hit the UAE's Seoul nuclear power plant. Not good. Uh luckily the damage was limited to a generator on the edge of the facility, but still, nuclear power plant. Uh the UAE says the drone was fired by Shia militia groups in Iraq. Saudi Arabia also said they intercepted a bunch of drones coming from Iraq. Just another example of how the war has metastasized the entire region. Um again, like we said at the top, US and Iran seem quite far apart when it comes to a possible nuclear deal. Uh we can tick through all of that if you want in a second. But um here's what President Trump had to say about Iran in the last few days. This is sort of a hodgepodge of all the very coherent thoughts he had. They've been holding up the world for many, many years with the straight. You know, they've used this many, many times. They said we'll close the strait. They've closed it in the past. They use it as a weapon. They're not using it as a weapon with me. We really did the ceasefire at the request of other I wouldn't have really been in favor of it, but we did it as a favor to Pakistan with terrific people, the field marshal and the uh prime minister for uh . Well I I mean I'm say two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week. A limited period of time. Because we can't let them have a new nuclear weapon. Twenty years it's not enough for you, it's gotta be a per no twenty years is enough. But the level of guarantee for them is not enough. In other words, it's gotta be a real twenty years. Not a big get all the fuel out There's been people that have and generals that I've spoken to that think you have to get the dust w which is the enriched uranium. I don't think it's necessary except from a public relations standpoint. I think it's important for the fake news that we get it . Don't tell Netanyahu that. Did you see Trump started ranting at David Sanger from the New York Times and accusing him of treason on the plane? David Sanger. What the fuck? Uh uh what do you make of all that? I mean, like I I don't know, man. It's just it feels like they are just absolutely treading water. I mean have no plan. Here's the there's a baseline that we need to name again, but I I found a different way to do it this week, which is remember the talks that were happening right before the war when Whitkop and Jared were tabling these proposals. At the time, their demands were dismantle the entire nuclear program, dismantle the entire ballistic missile program, or accept limits on ballistic missiles to a certain serious limits. Number of miles, i.e., you can hit it in the middle of the size. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and then also cut all support for proxies. And no enrichment. So and no enrichment. So the fact that even under best case scenario, they've gone from those demands before the war to nothing about support for proxies, nothing about the ballistic missile program , and just trying to get the the dust. So first of all, by their own negotiating positions, they are in a much weaker position than they were before the war. And Iran is in a much stronger position than they were before the war because they controlled the Strait of Horror moves, which they didn't before the war. Trump is nuts when he's talking that they did not close the straight I didn't that's just the opposite of the truth. But that's just a you know upside down lie. And by the way, Iran's just their offer, according to Iranian State News, was like asserting their right to enrich uranium in peaceful nuclear development, lift U.S. and UN Security Council sanctions, withdraw U.S. troops from areas around Iran, end to the war in Lebanon, end to the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hamous, release Iranian assets and compens ation for damage caused during the war. So an expansive list. Because that tells you everything you need to know about who actually has the leverage here. The Iranians are sitting there. They can absorb economic pain. They're controlling the strait. They have a revenue source from that if there's no deal. And if there's a deal, they get all the sanctions released. So either way, they're gonna come out with a lot of revenue coming in. And and Trump is completely cornered. And he doesn't want to restart the war, but he feels against a threatened to restart the war. But the Iranians don't blink when he threatens it. The Gulf countries are pissed. Uh, they too would like to see Iran weakened, but they're afraid that if the full scale war ramps up again, that they're gonna get hit harder again. And and and so here we are, and everybody can see. Like it's only people in this country that you know feel the need to believe that we accomplished something or they watch Fox News. Everybody else around the world's like, shit, the Iranians have him pretty checkmated. Yeah. And and I love that he's like, I the the dust caught on. We say dust to make fun of you. Yes, yes, but like the reason that's it. It is it is highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel . And we know that you say dust because you have to cling to the lie that only sixty-five and over white people who watch Fox News believe that you obliterated the nuclear program in the so-called 12-day war that still hasn't ended. So yeah, it's this is just a guy who has no idea what he's doing, no way out of the mess he's created and the only way out is to basically accept defeat and hopefully the Iranians let to get the dust out in exchange for a bunch of revenue. Yeah, and it's just a question of w if and when he'll move on some of his positions. Because again, like i the the the conflict is metastasizing, it's spreading to other countries, like we're learning about the UAE and Saudi Arabia taking direct strikes on uh not only Iran, but also targets within Iraq, Shia militia groups within Iraq. And I saw today, the the Wall Street Journal said that over half of the 1,000 drone attacks on Saudi Arabia came from within Iraq. So like clearly, like they've been feeding drone to these Shia militia groups. So again, this is just like a regional war now. And then last week, then uh Israel and Lebanon announced a 45-day extension to the ceasefire there. But Israeli strike killed seven people in Lebanon on Monday alone. So it's like hardly a ceasefire. Like people are still getting killed. Um, a couple of months ago, remember when the the Trump administration announced that they would like had this plan to provide insurance to ships that wanted to go through the Strait of Homoose? You know how many people took them up on this offer? Zero. Zero. Zero. Worked about as well as Operation Freedom or whatever. Yeah. Project Freedom or whatever. Brief Freedom. Uh the FT has now reported that seventy-six countries have had to take emergency measures to deal with the economic fallout from fuel shortages. So that ranges from Australia, France, and India to like poor and developing countries. Uh, and then energy traders are warning that like prices are are high now, but we are going to eventually reach a tipping point where there's like a freezing up of the markets that you could see oil prices jump to like one eighty a barrel. Uh and a bunch of countries have already released their emergency supplies and those are going to run out by July. So it's like this is fucking bad, man. And like wait, doesn't a five siren emoji axios report change the shortages? That the war's ending? Because that that that's worked seemingly with the markets before. That does work with the markets. that there's the what what is so interesting about watching this war play out is Trump is still operating in spin world but there's a physical reality here like there's just not They're just our shortages. They're just our higher prices. And and you can't like talk your way through that. And he Trump seems to think he can just kind of talk his way through that. And the irony of it all is that he you know the straight is closed because he launched the war, and he really needs the straight open. Like he can't just accept a permanent reality in which the straight of war moves is closed. No, so at some point, he really does have to make concessions to Iran here, or else the whole global economy is gonna collapse this year because they we just can't endure this level shortage for for several more months. No, it's it's crazy. It's crazy. I just feel like the stock market and the oil markets are all just kind of like whistling past the graveyard and that'll work until it doesn't. You know, like the interest rates are f shooting up over five percent and like something is gonna break and it's gonna be sudden and it's gonna be devastating. People are gonna lose a lot of money, except for the Trump people who will front-run the church. Um before we move on from around Ben, I just did want to give a shout out to some really great reporting. There's a piece by Sky News's Dominic Waghorn. Hope I say his name right. He got into Iran, uh traveled to Minab, took like a four day drive to Minab to speak with people there who were impacted by the US airstrike on the school that killed 150 people, I think 120 of them were children, mostly schoolgirls. Um, he interviewed some men who were first responders on the scene who had to like try to dig through that fucking grisly setting. He talked, you know, to a mom uh by her son's graveside , who is grieving him. And, you know, it was, it's like gut-wrenching stuff. And it just um it's worth watching. It's really important. And a reminder that Trump and all the lackeys at the Pentag on, uh including like combat commanders, like the head of CETCOM was on the hill yesterday, they still will not take responsibility for this mistake. And it is um it is shameful. It is truly shameful. I have a problem with first of all that this is not like a bigger story. We killed like 120 girls. I mean, I have two daughters. Like th th this this should be like the biggest story in many ways about this war. Um, but I also like I'm just gonna grab onto the third rail, Tommy, and hold on to it because the uniformed military has basically gone along with a whole bunch of bullshit from Donald Trump. Not not down to the pilots and the service members. I'm talking about Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the CENCOM technically. Admiral Brad Cooper was up on the hill today and and um Adam Smith, Congressman Adam Smith was trying to push him on like, hey, what's up with the investigation? This should not be hard. Yeah. Right? Like remember there's a map that they like the whatever. Dan Cayman had a map up in one of his Heggseth briefing that showed all the places the US was bombing and Minab was on that list and the Israelis were bombing in the North. Like it only could have been us. They know it was us. They know everybody's done exhaustive investigations. And so what you've seen is a complete failure to take responsibility for this horrific incident, a complete obfuscation of the damage caused. I mean, we saw Dan Cain kind of standing next to speed hexath when he was saying that we like decimated their ballistic missile capability, and then we had to learn in the New York Times that seventy-five percent of their ballistic missile launchers are still there. So what some uh out there 's like seventy, seventy five percent. Yeah. Then we don't know the damage done to the bases across the region that we taxpayers pay for. The Congressional Research Service, CRS, had to issue a report about all the aircraft that we lost, because they won't be transparent about that. Just because you're wearing a uniform doesn't mean you're infallible. And I don't think those guys are lying like Trump is, but they're standing right there and not telling us the full truth either, including on this incident and the th they know that they're lying about this. They know what the idea that the CENCOM commander has no idea what happened in Manab is They knew the next fucking day if that was a US Tomhawk missile or not. And they're they're they're they're they're I guess afraid that Trump will be mad at them if they acknowledge it. No. I mean it's it's kinda like the Republicans , you know? Someday he's just gonna endorse Ken Paxton. So keep your honor Podse of the World is brought to you by Bilt . Whether you're renting or paying a mortgage, one of your biggest monthly expenses should be working harder for you. That's where Built comes in. Built is the membership for where you live that matches you with points on every housing payment wherever you live. Built started out rewarding members on their rent. As of 2026, built members can also earn points on mortgage payments wherever they live. 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Head to threedaybinds.com slash world for their buy one, get one, fifty percent off deal on custom blinds sh,ades, shutters, and draper y for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to threedayblinds.com/slash world. One last time. That's a buy one, get one, fifty percent off when you head to the number three D-A-Y blinds.com slash world. Alright, Ben, let's uh quickly recap Trump's China visit since there was just like a huge build-up to it, and then ultimately it was quite a dud, unless you live in Taiwan. Um, we'll get to that. So Trump got nothing from China with respect to Iran or reopening the straight or Humus, like literally nothing. Uh Trump claims literally nothing. Trump claims that Xi Jinping promised not to sell weapons to the Iranians, but there's all these reports. Yeah, right. US officials told the New York Times that Chinese firms have been plotting secret arms sales to Iran through other countries. So I don't I don't know. Seems like there's probably some loopholes in there, guys. Um Trump did not secure a trade deal, nothing close. No trade deal. He instead announced some like pretty sm all potatoes, economic deliverables, uh economic deliverables like uh purchases of ag uh like $17 billion worth of ag purchases, I think, which will never come to be. And then a commitment from the Chinese to buy a bunch of Boeing planes, which was so underwhelming that Boeing stock price went down. So great work there. He also apparently agreed to a vehicle for Chinese investment in the US, including Chinese investment in US farmland, which is just weird because that's a big MAGA thing that they're really mad about. They don't want the Chinese to the U.S. farm ownership of land. That goes back to like the uh organic plug. Uh I learned a lot about how the American populist movement started in the nineteenth century around one or two issues, one of which was foreign ownership of land, and the other was terrorists. So like Trump to like Trump is you know fuck ing over you know his throwback OG populists. Well and also he explicitly in his campaign he explicitly promised to ban Chinese ownership of arms. Whatever. It's like just like crazy. Yeah. So then there's Taiwan. Um here are some examples of how Trump has described the US commitment to uh defend Taiwan since his visit. Let's listen. Uh but the nineteen eighty-two uh assurances that President Reagan gave said you would not so the United States would not consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan. Well I think nineteen eighties is a long way. It was has a has a big thought distance you have so what am I gonna do is I don't want to talk to you about it because they have an agreement that was signed in nineteen eighty two. Uh no would the US defend Taiwan if it came to I don't want to say I'm not gonna say that Should the people of Taiwan feel more or less secure after your meetings with President Xi? Uh neutral. Neutral. This is what I think. Has the policy changed at all? No, nothing's changed. US policy. No, nothing's changed. I will say this. I'm not looking to have somebody go independent and, you know, we're supposed to travel nine thousand five hundred miles to fight a war. I'm not looking for that. Uh I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down. But you're waiting on approving billions of dollars of weapons for Taiwan. Is that moving forward? Well, I haven't approved it yet. We're going to see what happens. Uh I may do it, I may not do it. Yeah, what's your your hinge point Well I'm not gonna say that but I may do it, I may not do it. I'm holding that in abeyance and it depends on China. It depends it's a it's a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly. Back to the point earlier about how he doesn't know English. You don't feel neutral. It's it's like it doesn't make sense. Well, and then in the next breath, change the policy. Yeah. Yeah. So like also he's really hunchbacked. It's not looking good there. And also, can I just say, like, because we know Brett Bear . Watching a guy like that that's been on the like the Taiwan Hawk uh cocktail circuit in DC um have to like choose his Trump master over his own personal politics on Taiwan? Not just his Trump master. Brett Bear was doing like straight up pro C C P propaganda while he was there. He he like went into some convenience store and ordered a sausage from a robot. It's like Tucker with the uh Moscow uh Metro. Brett, what are you doing? You don't like you don't have to do this. Anyway, Ben, um, I feel pretty confident that the answer to Brett Bear's question about whether you know the Taiwanese people feel less secure after this visit is uh yeah, they feel pretty freaked out. But I I what did you make of you, know all, the Taiwan elements here? First of all, it just goes to saying like we got nothing out of this summit. I mean, no trade deal. Like I was gonna watch the AI stuff and the giant nothing. We agreed to talk about it . And then Scott Besson went out and like dunked on the Chinese about how we have better AI, but like it just the there's nothing of substance. I mean, the idea that you have like a a a carefully planned multi -day summit with the president of China and literally like have nothing to announce except some Boeing planes got sold and you know , Jensen Wang probably, you know, did some side deals on some chips. It helps the Chinese. Well, that was the other thing. Like they they they re-upped the offer to provide or sell the Chinese the H200 NVIDIA chip, which is not the top of the line, but it's like the pretty good. And the Chinese said no, I think because they're probably just getting all the best chips they want through like carve outs in Vietnam and other places and then developing their own indigenous chips. And they were yeah, like the the whole thing is so upside down that they were like kind of preparing to frame the Chinese buying high-end chips as like a Chinese concession, when in fact it it's what is going to help the Chinese pass us on AI. On top so if you go into this as an American the reason I say that too is if you go into this summit as an American president, the last thing that you want dominating the conversation is Taiwan. Right. You want that under the radar. You want to not touch that. You want to talk about the things you want to talk about. Like Xi Xin Ping wants to talk about Taiwan and how we have to not sell them arms and let them basically do whatever the fuck they want. You want to talk about trade and all these things. Trump like just kept tripping over himself talking about Taiwan. And and look, it what And she was like, this is our top issue. And he was like referencing like the Thucydides trap, like suggesting there would be war over Taiwan? He the language that the Chinese put out, which is always like very carefully calibrated, first of all, there's some hilarious things where like they we were reading out, like Xi Jinping said he would be helpful on the Strait of Hormuz. It's like not crickets in the Chinese readout, right? They're just like making shit up in the readouts. And then the Chinese put up this like bloodthirsty statement about Taiwan. Like there will be like conflict. Yeah, like in the for them, it was bloodthirsty. And and look, the the the thing you want is you want there to not be a war or a Chinese invasion. And so you're just trying to kick this can. The arm sales are actually part of kicking the can because you're trying to show the Chinese, hey, look, this might be a tough operation, you know, like just full on amphibious invasion of this island, it would not be simple, especially if they have arms. And so again, this is one of those weird situations where you're trying to deter conflict by not cutting the cord on the Taiwanese. Because if you cut the cord on them, then they are vulnerable and the Chinese do a blockade and they squeeze and squeeze. And and he just kind of kept stepping on rakes, you know, because he would say something that made it seem like he wouldn't care at all about Taiwan. And then you would say, like, nothing has changed in the policy, and yet now I'm gonna say a word salad that is totally different than what the policy is. But then you'd be like, Hey, but I'm gonna call the president of Taiwan, which is something that would upend fifty years of U.S gov.ernment policy because we don't have leader-to-leader contacts with them. Yeah, because in fact the last guy who did that was Trump. So look, if I'm in Taiwan right now, I'm just thinking like I gotta get through the next two and a half years of that being invaded. Um and I'm not saying that because I want the next president to go to war over Taiwan. I want the next president to have a more effective strategy over avoiding a war uh uh in Taiwan. And and so I'd be trying to kind of keep my head down a bit here, you know, keep your relations with Congress and both parties and kind of just don't even really try to play the Trump game because he has no interest in Taiwan. And the more he gets dragged into it, the more he's gonna signal how little he cares. And the more that might make Xi Jinping think, you know, it wouldn't be a really good time to invade Tai wan like the last year of the Trump administration. Aaron Powell Right. I don't want the U.S. telling the Chinese what to do. Like, okay, well, if you don't like the uh economic disruption that's coming from a two month long straight or who move closure, wait until there's no chips for any of the computers and phones and other things that come out of Taiwan, right? Like that would be a big problem. And Ben, just you know, so Trump, there had been a 14 billion dollar arm sale that had been approved and was pending from the administration that they held off to try to like make she happy in advance of this trip. It's not at all clear that Trump is gonna go through with it. But on top of that , there is $32 billion worth of aid to Taiwan that has been promised as part of foreign military sales that is still being held up. Drones, air defenses, like anti-ship missiles, like big ticket stuff. And it just seals like people will always point to those uh Trump administration arms packages to Taiwan and be like, see, look, the hardliners, they're in there, they're committed, like Rubio's doing the right thing, but they're not delivering this stuff. You're not delivering anything. Look, this is yet another issue where Trump is the one who kind of led this move towards like getting tougher on China and being against engagement in China. Remember the campaign. And by the way, all the Democratic blob types followed that like herd because it's like, now we're to gonna be superugh. He's now swerving in the other direction. He's talking up leader to leader from you know, he's friends with She and what a great man. He's gonna come to the ballroom and uh and I'm you know canceling the trade war because the Chinese have more leverage with rare earth materials, um, just like the Iranians have the Strait of Four Muz. He's tacoing left and right. And so all these things he he promised to get tough on the Chinese. He promised no foreign wars, he prom you know all these things Like what does Steve Bannon think about this visit? Where basically had Trump sucking up to Xi Jinping like a supplicant, like it's the Middle Kingdom and we 're going to like pay tribute to the Chinese Emperor. Right, what's our goal? Like Trump's goal is just protocol. It's just that he's like received well and has nice dinners with Xi. Like I want to negotiate like AI safeguards. You know, like I I want real things. And again, if you're the Taiwanese, like you also don't want he started describing arms sales to Taiwan as a negotiating shit. Yeah. Well that means that you also are entertaining negotiating away exactly Taiwan as if by the way it's yours to negotiate. And again, what you don' m not suggesting you want to go to war. I am suggesting you don't want to implicitly green light China going to war. Because to your point, even if you don't care about the Taiwanese people and I do, ninety percent of the world's advanced semiconductors come out of Taiwan. T SMC. That's your car computer. That's all of it. Ever it's everything. That's the the entire economy, you know? And that would be bad. Yeah, and these like bloodless ghouls, you know, over the all in pot or They've been saying that for a while. I heard that the CHIPS Act was going to do that when Joe Biden was the guy that did the Pacific Basin. And then they unraveled that. Yeah. And by the way, like, you know, R.I.P. Any conversation about religious freedom, human rights, freedom of expression for the Chinese people. Remember you were you were raising whether like he might get Jimmy Ly out of prison? Trump brought up two political prisoners. Uh there's Ezra Jin Mincree, a pastor who was detained last October, uh, and Jimmy Lai, this media tycoon from Hong Kong. Um Trump said she said he will strongly consider the pastor, didn't you remember his name, but basically sounded like there was no shot in hell he would do anything to support Jimmy Lie and that Trump didn't really care and wouldn't, you know, do anything about it. And, you know, I don't know what Steve Bannon thinks of this uh trip, but like full-time Trump fluffer Hugh Hewitt, who's one of those like pro-Taiwan anti-CCP right-wing guys who always talks about Jimmy Lai, he's been suspiciously silent on Trump, just absolutely caving on Jimmy L ai. Yeah, all these guys, I mean, it it does make you wonder what they actually believe. Yeah, like I will say one thing, credit to Hugh in that like when he interviews Trump, he'll ask about these issues. He'll ask Trump about Jimmy Lai. But when Trump completely caved Xi Jinping, he says he never follows up. He's still just like this is why and this is actually an important point that the I don't understand you know, we saw John Cornyn get rug pulled today. All these people seemingly convinced themselves that Trump would actually act on the thing they cared about, whether it was the Epstein files, whether it was not getting into forever wars, whether it was being tough on the C C P like when all it you don't need to be like a a genius to see that Trump only cares about himself. Yeah. you know, and frankly, if if he likes anybody, it's the field marshal and Xi Jinping because they're fellow autocrats. Yeah. He loves those guys. Uh all right, Ben. Um, final topic for us here. So years of doing the show with you has taught me many things. Uh one of them is that there exists a song competition in Europe called Eurovision. It's one of the longest running TV program s in the world. Hundreds of millions of people watch it and go bonkers for it. Big deal. There are always scandals. There are always controversies. Usually they involve Israel. I never really understand why. People are boycotting. It's a big thing. Um It's also interesting 'cause Israel's not in Europe, but side note. And then most of all, most importantly for us, there are goofy clips of the performances themselves, which Michael curates for us to enjoy. Whoa, Jesus Christ . What the fuck? Come here back to li fe . Fucking hey man. That look that was like I took acid and was on the ship from the fifth element. Remember that movie? And somehow booked an appointment with a dominatrix for a while. Yeah, and then at the end it's just the British boy band guy with a teletu bies. Um so the list there was Moldova, Romania with a song called Choke Me. Okay. The Romanian dominatrix uh that I would have guessed Romania. Yeah, she was she was choking. Uh Ukraine, Serbia, Lithuania, Finland, and then the UK. Who's that guy who's just screaming at stuff? I don't know. What who was that? Um , that tracks. Um the the UK song was called Einzweidre . I'm assuming that was German. Um finally, this is the Eurovision 2026 winner. Spoiler alert, General . Bulgaria. Learned that today. Their song was called Bangaranga. Is that really true? Bang who? Bangaranga. Bangaranga. Bangaranga. Should we watch the bangaranga clip? Let's watch it. That's a winner? I can see why that was popular. I mean it's it's catchy. She's you know, but like I if if if this is a window into the state of the culture, what is going on in Europe? I mean here we know what's going on. It sucks here. Biggest glass house on earth. Uh acknowledging that. I'm guessing that people not, you know, fluent in Bulgarian, just muted. It feels like pop it feels like pop music needs like a like a reset button here, 'cause we've reached kind of the end. My my musical critic take on this is like there's like the end of death metal there, like the end of like uh a kind of gaga pop, you know, the end of some weird British acid daft punk kind of thing going on like Teletubby. Like we need to like start over with some genre bending I don't know. Yeah, I just think um an shit is weird. Sometimes. They they they seem like they're having fun. That it looked like a good asset. We're not having fun. No, we're having a terrible time. So their lives are probably objectively better than and more fun than ours. They probably go to clubs and dance that music and have a really good time. Yeah, they probably get to the club at six in the morning, leave nine a. I mean, so you're winning at life, uh, even if I I couldn't really see myself listening to any of that. So that was um Eurovision. Until next year, Ben. I gotta say. Did Israel compete this year? I did uh compete? Yeah. Second place? Israel got second place. I feel like they're always the clips really do deliver in terms of weirdness, though. Every year I'm like, I don't know. Is this gonna be funny? Yep. That's some weird shit. So uh well done in that cut. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break. We come back, you're gonna hear my conversation with Nish Kumar about the weird world of British politics. So stick around for that . This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand, and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes With their collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. 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If you haven't become a friend of the pod yet , you are missing out on exclusive bonus content that drops every single week. If you do join, you're helping us uh, you know, grow Crooked Media, which is one of the few independent , proudly pro-democracy media companies left in Trump's America. If you join, you also get ad-free episodes of all your favorite pods, ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, love it or leave it, offline, PodSave the World. You also get bonus content like uh our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends, Dan Pfeiffer's Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent sub stack newsletters like PodSave America open tabs and tons more great content. So stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Crooked.com slash friends. Check it out. My guest today is the stand-up comedian television presenter Sex Symbol and the co-host of Pod Save the UK, Nish Kumark, great to see you. You have a special out. Nish don't kill my vibe on YouTube right now. I have a stand-up special available right now. And I think by giving people an opportunity to watch a video of me, they will immediately get to stress test the sex symbol claim. I'm staring at one right now with my own two eyes, so I believe them. Excited to talk with you today. Your co-host on Pod Save the UK, Coco, was going to join us this morning. She had a last minute scheduling thing. U, soh we don't have her, but we we love her. She is um effervescent in all things that she does, but we'll miss her today. So um I'm excited to talk with you because there's a lot of crazy shit happening over in British politics. Last week, Ben and I talked about labor's drubbing in these recent local elections in England, Scotland and Wales. Um it seemed for a moment like the writing was on the wall for Keir Starmer and that everyone agreed he could not be Prime Minister anymore and that he was not cut out to lead labor in this moment. However, it was not clear who would depose him. Um, that kind of weird status quo seems to be holding. Like w where do you think Star mer stands at this moment? And can you give us like kind of your quick and dirty take on how Starmer went from leading labor to this historic landslide, you know, nearly two years ago, less than two years ago, uh to this mess today? Okay. Well let's yeah, let's talk about w the why of ha Starmer has got here uh second because this 'cause so much shit has happened. This is a little uh anecdote into m my personal life, but I told my mother that I was doing this show today and she said, Ooh, it's bad when they ask you to do the show, isn't it? It is. It is always it's never because something is going it's never to to come on and talk about how the UK is functioning too well. So basically NHS is fixed. Yeah. Yeah, everything's fixed. We're all fine. So basically we're you guys got to and where we got to in our shows last week was that ta uh Labour had taken a drubbing and then Keir Starmer had to go through this sort of ridiculous process called the King's Sechpe where, the monarch announces the government's legislative agenda for the year, and the king has to give that as a speech, but it's a speech that's written for him. I've spent most of the last week trying to get us to incorporate an element of RuPaul and have the Prime Minister record the speech and then the King lip sync it live, because I think that would be sort of more entertaining for everybody. But obviously, this King speech felt particularly strange and pointless because Starmer was announcing his government's legislative package whilst at the same time seeming on the precipice of losing his job. So Wes Streeting, the health secretary, went in for a meeting with Starmer that I believe is supposed to have is supposed to have lasted 16 minutes. Uh he then uh left uh Downing Street and then announced that he was resigning from the government. So there there had been a kind of spate of resignations . Um In the aftermath of the local elections. But West Streeting, obviously, the health secretary is one of what we refer to in the UK as the great offices of state. That's a huge high profile position, streeting also has been sort of touted as a potential replacement for Starmer from Starmer's wing of the party, which is sort of has has morphed over the course of his life as leader of the Labour Party, but now his constituency is tr is is sort of viewed as the right of the Labour Party. Um Streeting had been posited as the guy who was going to take over. He he he needed uh eighty one other MPs to co-sign his bid to be the next Labour leader. And I think just very quickly realized that he did not have the support within the Labour Party. But he quit anyway and said that he wanted, you know, to start a conversation about who the next leader of the Labour Party was gonna be. Real Machiavelli, that guy. Don't have the votes, quitting anyway. Just shit in the bed, right off the bat. There's problem that West Streeting has, which is that he was sort of widely portrayed as the closest ally of Peter Mandelson, who obviously listeners of this podcast will be well familiar with. He was the man who uh Keir Star mer appointed uh as uh the British ambassador to America, despite, I mean, I believe the technical term is a dump truck's worth of shitload of mentions in the Epstein files. And so some of that was revealed when the latest trunch of documents was released, but Mandelson's friendship with Epstein was something that was known in the British media and had been talked about by journalists at the Financial Times and the documentary maker on Channel 4. Yeah. So it the idea that one of the biggest things that Keir Starmer has done wrong in the public's eyes being the appointment of Peter Mandelson, it's absolutely unfathomable that the only person who we equally have identified as being close to Peter Mandelson was even consider ing a run for Prime Minister. So I I think Streeting's bid at that time was dead in the water. So then the the problem the reason that Starmer hasn't gone uh already is that there has not been a clear front runner to actually challenge him. So Angela Rayner, who was the uh the deputy prime minister, had to step down from that position uh because last year there were some revelations about her tax affairs that um found that she uh m may have underpaid tax whilst buying uh a flat. Now uh on uh on Thursday morning the full investigation concluded that she hadn't done anything wrong and her misdemeanor was the lowest class of mistake that the UK tax authorities uh deemed to be even a transgression. So there is an arg there is a possibility that she has a clear path to running, but she's so far not shown any inclination that she wants to run. So the guy who everybody seems to think is going to run is Andy Burnham, who uh I you've talked about on the show. He's the mayor of Manchester. He's a Labour MP from the north of England. He got a lot of positive headlines in 2020, as a lot of politicians did, because they were immediately on the news after Boris Johnson had said something. So, like there were a lot of politicians in this country that came across as being hyper competent because they had just followed a man who really was giving a press conference but really thinking about how he was who he was gonna bang later. Like that that was during the pandemic when the parties and dicking around and yeah. Even before we knew about the parties, his press conferences were often garbled because Johnson is uh smart in a very specific, rich, white Englishman way, which is he's sort of able to recite poetry, but crucially he doesn't understand any of it. And so w when he was actually put under pressure in 2020, he he would often give these press conferences that were rambling and borderline incoherent. And then it would cut to, you know, uh a different UK politician. And it's specifically in the case of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, who would by comparison seem incredibly studious and like a leader. Um and so Burnham really got a lot of attention in the pandemic. He was also of he was already a very high profile figure because you know being the mayor of Manchester is a big high profile job. It's a big important city in the UK. Now the problem here is that Andy Burnham is not an MP. Right. And so that's the re that's it's it's so there was all this polling done that suggested he's the most popular politician. His uh net favourability is sort of somewhere in the mid -30s and sort of seeming everyone else in British politics is in the like low teens or the minus numbers. But the problem is Andy Burnham is not an MP and as such, he can't be Prime Minister. So then on Thursday, a fairly extraordinary thing happened. Uh Josh Symonds, who is a Labour MP in Makerfield, was a constituency just outside of Manchester, announced that he was going to step aside and therefore force a by-election, which is what we call a special election, in which Andy Burnham could stand so that he could become the MP for Makerfield and therefore run for Prime Minister. It it is I feel like I've the word unprecedented has lost all meaning in the last decade, uh, both in my country and in yours. But this is pretty unprecedente d. Um so now what what what comes next basically for the Labour Party is this special election in Makerfield to determine if Andy Burnham is going to become an MP, to determine if he can challenge Keir Starman for Prime Minister. In the interim, nobody has shown any appetite to challenge Starmer. So Starmer is still in post , but he's sort of Shrouding as Prime Minister. Like he sort of is and isn't Primeister Min at the same time. It's quite an unbelievable situation because everybody knows he is kind of he he is on the way out. It's I honestly, it's sort of baffling. You know, I'm used to the last couple of years of Rishi Sunak, everybody knew he was gonna lose the next election. So every time he announced anything, everyone would be like, Yeah, cool, buddy. See in a couple years. Yeah, I'll see you with McDonald's in a couple of years. I can't you know, that's not the So but this is pretty it pretty extraordinary because technically from an electoral basis, Starmer just won a huge majority. He doesn't have to call an election until 2029, if he wants to. That's how far he can push it. But he has seemingly no ability to run the country at the minute. Yeah, or lead his own party. Yeah, the the the the Andy Burnham by-election is remarkable because as you noted, like he's gonna run dis i it it's not a sure thing that he'll win this seat, first of all, given the mood music in the country. But also you're in a situation where you have like f what, thirty thousand, forty thousand people vote to maybe make this guy an M P. And if they make him an MP, he's the odds-on favorite to be prime minister. So you're kind of voting for this guy to be prime minister, but not because that's not the process. The other name that's been thrown out there recently is Ed Mili band, uh of the Miliband family, but the sandwich loving variety. He's the energy minister currently. It sounds like he's been doing a lot of plotting behind the scenes. Um, is he really uh a a candidate, do you think, for Prime Minister? So he I mean he did he was leader of the Labour Party, he did run uh for Prime Minister, he lost the 2015 election, and then he was sort of slightly cast out into the political wilderness, but whilst in the wilderness, he sort of through media appearances and through a very successful podcast that he co-hosted for a while, sort of rehabilitated his public image. Also, he continued to be an MP in that time. He didn't just immediately quit his job as uh job in politics completely and go and cash it in in the private sector. But he rebuilt his kind of political capital in this country, which is i is completely fascinating. And he is a sort of nationally popular figure. Now I think that I don't know what it would be like if he attempted to run for Prime Minister again. I don't know how that would look because a lot of these sort of accusations that were levelled at him in twenty fifte en w might come back around again. Now I will say the twenty fifteen UK election, and this is m there's no need for us to get too far in the weeds of this was a very strange and peculiar event because it it it sort of happens it it's the sandwich filling in between two referendums. So there was the Scottish Re independence referendum which, the pro independence lobby lost, and then there was the Brexit referendum the year after, and those two things are the factor around that election, right? Because the Scottish voters were so incensed by the Labour role in helping to deliver a no-vote in the independent in the independence referendum, and then which then led to the Conservative government essentially sort of disregarding Scotland immediately after it decided to remain a part of the United Kingdom that they switched en masse to the Scottish National Party, the SNP. So a lot of progressive voters in Scotland, which are a huge part of Labour support base, switch parties. Also, David Cameron went into the 2015 election promising a referendum on the uh uh Britain's membership of the EU. So he essentially headed off the threat of Nigel Farage. So Labour support collapsed on its left flank and the conservative i sort of electoral split that had dogged the party for most of the twenty first century was essentially found a kind of detente because Nigel Farage was essentially like, Well, I guess we don't need to run that hard because these guys are going to give us a Brexit referendum. So that you know that it it sort of so in Miliband losing that election, there's some wider circumstances that obviously aren't at play at this point. So you can sort of see why but I still think he's not gonna run. All of the r rumours coming out of the the UK press at moment are that he was threatening to run if there was no viable candidate from the soft left of the Labour Party. And he was essentially threatening to run on a platform of Jesus Chr fuckingist not awesome. I think from from what I could tell that what what while Streeting was like touting his credentials as a candidate, Ed Miliband was like, listen, if it has to be it has to be someone other than this fucking guy. Got it. I I look, I know that feeling. Um you mentioned Brexit a few times there. From an outsider's perspective, it just seems so obvious that Brexit was a mess. It was a disaster. It was sold to the public on all of these lies about funding for the NHS, stopping the boats, et cetera. Um and that has harmed the UK . Therefore, it has always been confusing to me that that labor isn't more full-throated about reversing Brexit or like I don't know, talking it down, running against it. Why is that? Like what am I missing here? Because of our kind of screwy electoral system that's like sc that's's it screwy in a different way to yours. So like obviously the electoral college, what the hell is going on? Not the best. I don't understand. None of us will ever understand why that's allowed to happen. But our first past the post system means that the same problem essentially occurs, which is there is a disproportionate importance to a small group of voters in potentially swing constituencies. And a lot of Labour support collapsed in what they call the red wall. So vote uh constituencies in the north of England that had historically voted Labour, but then voted Brexit in 2016, then deserted the party, and part of the thinking around that is that it's over the Brexit vote. So that's why the Labour Party, essentially at this point, no one, including Nigel Farage, the man who absolutely agitated for Brexit, had been championing and touting it as a political project for really 20 years. No one talks about Brexit anymore because everybody is afraid to engage with the fact that it has negatively affected our economy. It is making us poorer. But there is no political will to reverse any of the decisions behind it because I think there is and also to be honest with you, there is a real fit the it was it was really, really ugly. And you know, a sitting MP in the lead up to the referendum was murdered by a man who in court gave his name as Freedom for Britain. And there i there is also a fatigue about rehashing those arguments. But I totally understand that from an outsider's perspective, it feels complet ely inexplicable that we don't at least talk about mitigating some of the effects of Brexit. And the the big problem was that nobody agreed what it was until it had been voted for. Yeah. So if you go back and look at the campaign, they were making all kinds of crazy claims and they were also very in the short term clever by not fully defining the exact terms of it. So it was able to be this kind of diffuse thing that was gonna deliver uh more money for the public sector. And actually, because of that, we spent we had this kind of three years of just no political movement whatsoever as people tried to work out what it was that they had just asked the country to vote on. So there is so little political appetite, but I totally understand. People looking at the UK must be totally confused by it. No, I I I would love to have more three more years of debating hard or soft Brexit or Irish tax stops or all the bullshit we all had to learn. So I I g on some level I, get it. Um you mentioned Nigel Farage there. Like he he's the the leader of Reform UK, this new far-right party. They gained a lot of ground in these elections. It is objectively bad to have a like right-wing xenophobic political party do that well, especially one run by a a clown and a charlatan. I guess I could squint at it another way and say, I don't know, maybe they maybe this signals there's a cap on their support sort of in the twenties, low thirty per thatcent we' ve seen across Europe. How worried are you about the rise of reform and the potential for Nigel Farage to be the prime minister? There's a lot of people making the case that based on uh polling projections from twelve months ago, reform actually underperformed um in these local elections. And th you know, there are various statisticians that are trying to make the case that reform support may have peaked. Nigel Farage is also sort of embroiled in another scandal at the moment over here where just before he became an MP, he got uh five million pounds from a cryptocurrency billionaire called Christopher Harbin. Yes. Who's based in Thailand? Yeah. Is is five million pounds. And it he said initially it was because he needed that money for security for the rest of his life. He then, when he was pressed on it, said that he had it was a present for doing Brexit. Right. A reward. Campaigning for Brexit. Okay. It was a reward for campaigning for Brexit. Regardless of the reasoning for why the money came in, he did not long after it landed his in a in his account buy a house in cash for about for about one point four million pounds. Didn't Keir Starmer get killed for taking like clothes from supporters or like eyeglasses? Like again, like thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. Like I understand why it was an issue. Clean that shit up. But like it just feels like the press doesn't cover Farage like a real candidate. They cover him like a pundit or some like, I don't know, the performance artist. Yeah, on Podse of the UK, we had to talk a little bit about the fact that the leader of the Green Party, Zach Plansky, who was sort of polling very well and taking votes from Labour from the political left, uh may or may not have paid council tax, which is the tax that you pay on wherever you live in this like your house tax essentially, on a narrow boat that he lived on for a period about ten years ago. And so we were talking about, you know, we're talking about w we're w whenever we talk about politicians like Starmer and Polansky, we we're talking about scandals that are sometimes in the hundreds and the thousands. But Nigel Farage, we are talking about five million pounds from from from a crypto from a crypto billion aire. Reforms platform has pushed the idea that deregulating cryptocurrency would be something that they would push for in government. There are a lot of signs for that. So this is , you know, if it looks like corruption, it smells like corruption. But it is we we both suffer from this kind of scrutiny deficit in with right-wing politicians. And people like us get ourselves sort of twisted and contorted because we're all trying to do the right thing. Like progressive people want to hold progressive politicians to a moral standard that we have uh all agreed upon that trans cends our political biases and leanings, right? And that's fine. Unfortunately, in the last 10 years, the other side of the political spectrum has abandoned that you know uh shared moral code. So it means that it creates this scrutiny deficit where if uh uh a a left wing politician does something that we consider to be a transgression, everyone piles in on them. If a right-wing politician does it, the right-wing press and other right-wing politicians kind of shrug their shoulders. And I do think with Farage it is it's is fucking baffling. Like he he he is treated like no other politician in my lifetime apart from Boris Johnson. And the really interesting thing about Boris Johnson is that when things really went south for him, when all of those revelations came out about lockdown parties, it was the conservative press in this country that went after him. And I think that's a slightly under-discussed part of the collapse of Johnson. It was just the first time in a long, long time that a a the a kind of right wing populist was fully exposed to total scrutiny of their actions and behaviour by the entirety of the UK press and John son's political career collapsed on contact with that scrutiny. And it would be really interesting if, you know, conservative papers did pick up on this Farage story. But I suspect it won't. You know, if you if you sort of speak in defense of deregulated capital, people tend to find a way to excuse whatever behaviors you're engaged in. Oh, go listen, brothers, you're preaching to the choir over here. I mean, Trump just created a 1$.77 6 billion slush fund for his political allies, and I was watching Fox News before I walked in here and they were doing uh a segment about an AOC interview from May 13th. So like whatever it takes to keep from talking about dear leader is is what they'll what they'll do. Final question for you. So this summer, July 16th through 18th, I think I know where you're gonna be, uh CPAC Britain is taking London by storm . Yes, yes. I'm uh I'm opening for them. I'm gonna do twenty minutes of comedy to open for CPAC. Let's watch a quick hype video um by by one of the leading lights of British politics to kind of like get us fired up to talk about this. Here we go. We are launch ing a British CPAC which is going to take place this summer, bringing together conservatives of all parties, not just from Britain but from the United States, from Europe and from around the world. Two questions. Will you be purchasing the 100-pound ticket or the 10,000-pound ticket? And why does she talk at 0.5x speed? It drives me absolutely insane . I will be purchasing uh I will immediately go straight in for the 10 grand package. I gotta have front row to CPAC UK to the the issue that CPAC UK has is that right now Liz Truss is so politically radioactive that even Nigel Farage isn't gonna turn up to it. No, really? And so CPAC so far he's a nerd. Yeah, so far he's a nerd. Because she is so politically toxic that no one wants to be photographed stood next to her. And I I mean I listen, I am fascinated to see who turns up. I imagine it's going to be a who's who of British conservative batshittery. Like it is really going to be Woodstock for red-faced men c alled Christopher. Like it is gonna be really like it 's really and I m listen, and I imagine we'll get some like leading lights from the European far right as well. Oh yeah. I believe uh Victor Orban has some time on his hands right now. Oh yeah, he'll be there. He'll be he'll be punching tickets at the front selling drinks. Yeah, I believe Orban's got some time. But like the the problem with these kind of fringe whack jobs is that they are obviously funny to look at, but the ideas that they're propagating do have a way into the British political mainstream. Because you know, as much as Farage wants to distance himself from them for sort of electoral reasons. He's essentially offering the same policy platform. You know, he he he he's he he's he's more competently presenting it, but it's the same shit. CPAC went from this thing that would happened that we'd all make fun of it was like you know the bar scene from Star Wars to being just like the MAGA base. And the and the guy who founded CPAC and still runs it, like allegedly runs around bars when he gets drunk and just like grabs guys cocks. That doesn't mattered for whatever reason it's kind of match slap. Um and so yeah I mean like it is um it's a pernicious thing it managed to seep into the politics there's a lot of money behind it I think there's some question about I I'd love to know who's funding you, know, CPAC UK because you know, there's some question now whether the CPAC Hungary was getting funded by the Russians, right? There's a lot more learning now that Orban is out and the records are open. But we will uh watch it. We will make fun of it. Um but also you're right to say it's a it's a problem. I think it's really important to tread a line between saying this is a real problem, it presents some dangerous ideas for us. But it is also important to say, fuck me, these these lads are weird. Like it's really important that we don't lose sight of the basic strangeness of a lot of these people. Yeah. Because they are so strange. So strange. So this is why we need comedy and stand up comedians, because you know, you guys are like fun bullies. You know, we can we can all take take down these losers. Um what a s what astonishing dismissal of my whole profession, probably . I wish I could do stand-up. Every time I I Yeah, I've got a lot of uh listen, I got m I got started with my midlife crisis about ten years early. Oh good. In fact, actually, to be honest, my whole career as a stand-up comedian is a midlife crisis. It just began when I was twenty-two. So like I've just I've always been ahead of the curve. I'm proud of you. Well, I I got into podcasting as a grown adult. Uh Nish, thank you so much for joining the show. Everyone should listen to Pod Save the UK and check out your special Nish Don't Kill My Vive on YouTube now. Perfect . Beautiful. That's a watch. Right right away. Now. Watch right now. Thanks again to Nish Kumar for joining the show. And now you are gonna hear exclusive. More exclusive information about Ben's book, All We Say, which you should have already bought by now. And if you haven't, this audiobook excerpt is gonna put you over the top. Yeah, I'm disappointed in you if you don't. We live in a cynical time. We are surrounded by forces designed to make us feel like we lack control . Whether it's an algorithm that shapes what we see, an oligarchy that controls wealth and power, a world untethered from old notions of order, a climate that is changing, or artificial intelligence which mimics human functions and thought . Corruption abounds . The existence of truth itself is distorted and contested