Erdogan's Transformation After the Coup

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Terms and conditions may apply. 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, ad-free episodes of PodSave America, love it or leave it, offline, pod save 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 substack newsletters like Pod Save America Open Te So stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Crooked.com/slash friends. Check it out. Welcome back to Pod Save the World I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben congrats on your New York Knickerbockers. This is the best that they've played in my entire life. Usually when they're good, it is still agonizing. I don't know what it feels like to have your team just like paste the shit out of everybody they play. Just crush and be fun and cool and and have our fans take over Philadelphia. Yellon Ding Bong at people.. Yeah It was it was uh you know uh it was pr let's put it this way, like a four-game destruction of Philadelphia was more fun than what would have been probably an agonizing Nick Celtic series for six or seven games. So would have been tough. Uh Ben Stiller out there tweeting away. So bang. Twin towers. A lot of tweets that we take it a couple different ways. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Stiller's uh uh he he like I said, he's just living my text thread on online. Does he sit on the wood? Is he sit like a courtside? Yeah. Oh that's so awesome. Yeah. What do you think those cost? I got to go. Uh yes. Uh that's for the first time this year. And it's weird because you look kind of look down this row and there's like Spike Lee, Chalamet, Ben Stiller, you know, Chalamet wasn't there that day. Um, Tracy Morgan. And it's it's you know, I l I I I actually like our celebrities. Like sometimes that's kinda nauseating, but like Spike Lee, come on. I mean Spike's been going forever through thick and thin. He's a fan. They suck mostly. And yeah, he absolutely deserves to enjoy this. Chalamet has proven himself to be a real sports fan, seemingly a pretty cool guy. I will say that they're they have the ex-players there, which is cool to see too. Um I I I won't name names, but one of them walked by me and the the whiff of marijuana was like one of the most powerful smells I've I got like a Nothing wrong. Yeah, and then Jim Dolan is like uh using AI facial recognition to kick out any critics. All right, just to give a rack here, Pablo Torre did uh fine crazy piece about Dolan uh Dolan's Dolan's the owner of the Knicks and he literally like has his friggin' security goons run around the stadium and chase people that chant things critical of him. He's that petty of a sad little man monitors, people in the bathroom. It's really creepy. That is really kinda palantier esque. Yes. That's very palantir esque. Um okay. Enough about the Knicks. Congrats. I'm happy for you. Uh we have a great, great show today. We're gonna lead with something new. We're gonna talk about the recent elections in the UK , which were a disaster for the Labor Party, uh, and have led to widespread calls for Prime Minister Keir Star mer to step aside and allow a leadership election. Uh, we'll debate whether that's a good idea or not. Then we're gonna walk you through the last disastrous week in the disastrous war with Iran. We got abandoned missions been ceasefires on life support. We had ballooning economic consequences, all of it. Then we watched Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Dent Yahoo's uh interview on 60 Minutes so that you don't have to. We're gonna let you know about all the hard-hitting questions from the new and improved Barry Weiss CBS. We'll preview Trump's trip to China. He's gonna he's actually, I think he's in the air right now. Um, he's gonna go meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. We'll tell you what the both sides want out of the visit, what it means for Iran, what it means for Taiwan. Uh, we'll talk a little bit about some jockeying for the future of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. We'll bitch about coverage of Marco Rubio, because that's all we have left. We're just whiny little babies , cry about stuff. Uh and then we're gonna tell you about Cash Patel's recent testimony in the U.S. Senate. Uh that then you did our interview. I talked to Susie Hansen, who's uh a really great journalist, who's written for like the New York Times Magazine, among other places. She lived in Turkey for 10 years and she wrote a book essentially about one neighborhood, but it's really about the transformation of Turkey under Type Erdogan, both inside of Turkey, but also this role it's played in welcoming uh millions of Syrian refugees in uh the the the Arab Spring and you know the rise of authoritarianism that Erdogan's been a part of. Um so it's both a conversation about Erdogan and Turkey, but also about understanding what's happened in the world through this place that all the trends converge in. I mean, like there's not one thing that hasn't happened in the world in the last 15 years that hasn't run through Turkey. I was thinking about the day that there was that attentive coup. We talked about that. Yeah. That's what yeah, we were just uh you came in and we were still talking about it after the interview because I have so many questions about tanks rolling down the street and then just disappeared. And yet Aaron seemed to know about it, but did he? It's like FaceTiming from his phone on the plane. Fucking crazy. We'll hear Ben and I take some questions from the friend of the pod subscriber community from our Discord. If you want to join, go to Cricket.com/slash friends. You get ad-free episodes of this show, add-free episodes of Pod Save America. You get bonus episodes of Pod Save America. You get polling deep dives from Dan Pfei ffer, and you can get discounted tickets to CrookedCon, our second annual jamboree of politics, fun, hot takes, cold takes, uh, light drinking, heavy petting. There's all of it. So uh Crooked dot com slash friends if you want to go. And by the way, subscribing is the number one thing you could do to help us grow as a progressive independent media company. And if that's a bridge too far for you, at least just subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube or or wherever you get your podcasts, rate the show, review the show. It really helps us grow and we will uh appreciate it. So all right, Ben, let's talk uh let's leave with the UK because we've been doing Iran stuff for like two months straight now. Um there have been some major political machinations in the UK. Uh Prime Minister Keir Starmer's tenure as Prime Minister could be over soon or not. We just don't know yet. The backstory here is last week there were local elections in England and elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. Um, these were not elections to parliament itself. It was not like directly impacting uh Starmer's standing, but these council elections are seen as bellwethers to assess the political mood in the UK. And the mood is pissed. Voters are pissed. Uh the results were really, really bad for the Labor Party. Remember, Labor won an historic landslide in 2024, but in this election, just two years later, Labor lost 1400 council seats. So it's just a drubbing. And Labor lost votes from both directions. They lost to the Greens on their left. They lost to Reform UK on their right. Uh reform is the right wing xenophobic party run by Nigel Farage. Um the cameo star, Nigel Farage. So reform uh they made big gains in England. Reform also did really well in Wales and Scotland. In Wales, the Welsh Nationalist Party won the most seats, but reform came in second in Labour and the Tories last ground. Uh this came after Labour was literally the leading party in Wales for 100 years, over 100 years. And then in Scotland, the SNP of the Scottish uh National Party, they're going to stay in control of Parliament. And Labour had its worst ever result in in Scotland. It is now tied with reform. The Greens also did quite well in Scotland . So what does it all mean? Um, I think first we're seeing the the total collapse of the traditional two party system. Yeah. Uh and it's really becoming a five party system. And you've got labor and the Tories cratering, uh, the Lib Dems are doing better, the Greens reform UK, they're gaining ground. And then um in in uh in Scotland and um Wales you also have like nationalist local parties. Um second you, have voters just furious about the cost of living and a bunch of uh economic issues, and labor has not made their lives better. They're getting punished for it. And there's lots of reports that labor campaigners were on the doors and they were talking to voters, and the voters were like, We hate Keir Starmer. Hate like visceral hate for that man. Um, which is interesting. So that gets us to the question of whether Starmer will step aside or be deposed. Uh on Monday, he gave a de fiant speech taking responsibility for the loss, but rejecting calls to resign. Let's listen to a bit of that. The election results last week were tough . Very tough. We lost some brilliant Labour representatives . That hurts . And it should hurt . I get it. I feel it . And I take responsibility. We are not just facing dangerous times . But dangerous opponents . Very dangerous oppon ents. This hurts not just because Labour has done badly, but because if we don't get this right , our country will go down a very dark path. It seems like he's um not feeling emotions, but performing. So on Tuesday, he also had the cabinet meeting. He was again defined. He told his team he's not going anywhere. But it's not entirely up to him. Uh there are reports that more than 90 Labor MPs want Starmer to step aside. That includes four ministers in his government. But crucially, Ben, uh, no alternative candidate has gotten the support of 81 sitting labor MPs, which is what you need to formally challenge Starmer uh and trigger a leadership election. So Ben, I'll pause there. Your thoughts on these results. And then after that, do you wanna make the case that it's time for uh Keir Starmer to step aside and I'll make the Starmer should stay case? Yeah. Strawman, just for fun. Yeah. Yeah. And I you I could probably argue it both ways, but I would definitely tilt in the direction I'm gonna argue for. Look, the problem here is that labor won this massive majority. Um, in large part because the Tories had self immolat ed as we covered meticulously on this podcast. Over a decade. Uh over the course of a decade with Brexit and Liz Truss and all the chaos, Boris Johnson having COVID parties, all the rest of it. And so they get this huge mandate and have done fuck all with it. I mean, that like the what was their program? Like what what is Keystarmer's They got jobs for Jeffrey Epstein, friends. Yeah. Well what is Kira Starmer's Well, this is part of the problem is that their their theory, Starmer's theory of the case was I gotta purge Jeremy Corbyn, the left wing previous leader of labor and all of his supporters and move this party to to the center make it an acceptable alternative to the Tories and win. And that worked. But the problem is they had no program for when they won. And this is a country that has an identity crisis after Brexit. This is a country that is desperately in need of growth. This is a country that has xenophobic rising far-right politics, but desperately needs immigrants to sustain their care economy and their NHS. Um so there's a lot of work to be done, and and he's not offering any vision or any big ideas about what the UK is or what their economic future is. Um, and and that's showing up in the polls, you know, and I I know some of these can uh you know, uh one of my uh someone I know, Paymana Assad, actually won by thirty votes, but you know, that 30 votes, it's tough, you know. And here I'll pivot to the case against Armer. I I know what he said, which is that we can't be as chaotic as the Tories and change the leaders, you know, uh in the merry-ground. We let me have five years to have the my full mandate. The problem with that is he has not shown any other gear. You know, you know when you see a politician, I mean, first of all, does he get it? No. He looks like he's reading talking points. He was told to say I feel it. He did the 10 speech preps where they said show passion. And he just can't really show emotion or passion. Not his thing. He's like a well meaning perhaps guy, but like he doesn't but then beyond that, he hasn't shown that he has any new vision or any new program. It's all political positioning and tactic. Should I tack a little bit more to the right? Um, as they've done on immigration, which doesn't make sense because if you're anti-immigrant, you'll just vote for reform. Should I tack to the left? And and look, the Green Party's done a lot to differentiate itself and actually stand on principle. That's why they're winning voters. I just don't think he knows what he wants to do as prime minister, other than stay prime minister. Yeah. And there there's a kind of hate, you know, there's a kind of younger Joe Biden vibe here too, of j I just want to stick around. Um and and look. He's the guy that did August. Yeah, well, it's true. Um to be fair. But uh he's not wrong about reform UK being scary. I mean, this is a xenophobic far-right party led by N Nigel Farage, who should be a punchline, not a prime minister. But precisely because of that threat . I just don't see him rehabilitating labor to be able to compete with Nigel Farage. And so, and look, there's the biggest problem is there's not an alternative. Part of the problem is not an alternative. Uh, the biggest alternative is Andy Burnham, right? Um, who's a very popular mayor, but who would have to come into the parliament to become prime minister. He was blocked from coming into parliament by Keir Starmer and his allies. Yep. And so they've prevented there from being alternatives. Again, echoes of the Democratic Party, how we've done primaries. And so I just don't I just don't know that Keir Starmer has showed us that he can govern any differently than he already has. And we see what the results are of how he governs. And I just therefore think that, and look, take some time. If you're not ready today to find an alternative, you know, figure out But I I if they're running two three years from now into the next election with Kirst Armer, I I just think that's a recipe for disaster. So let me let me straw man the case for why Starmer should stay. Because I I should think it's uh I then we'll talk about our own personal views. I mean I I have a fairly strong view, but it is it's complicated. So it is complicated. The case for why Star mer should stay is like you know, like I said at the top, like this was not a landslide for reform or a total wipeout for labor. It was the political system really fracturing into this new reality of multi-party, not just a two-party system. And with I think we have to adjust our um expectations accordingly. Yes, Keir Starmer is unpopular. His polling is terrible. There's all these reports about, you know, visceral hatred of him on the doorsteps. But every single leader in Europe is unpopular right now. Right. In April, Ugov did a big tracking poll. Keir Star mer is 44 points underwater. French president Emmanuel Macron is 49 points underwater. German chancellor Friedrich Mertz is 52 points underwater. Um, uh, even leaders I think that you and I think of as more deft politically or at least more interesting or struggling. Like Georgia Maloney is negative 22, uh, her approval. Pedro Sanchez is 21 points underwater. So everyone's getting fucked. People are pissed everywhere. Um and then again, like getting rid of Starmer is the easy part. Figuring out who comes next is much harder. Have you heard of uh West Streeting, Angela Rayner, or Andy Burnham? Me neither. And those are the leading candidates to replace this guy, right? And and like if West Streeting wants to run, he needs to man up and do it. And no one's no one's manned up yet. And so to your point, Ben, like about Stormer and his um what do you want to do with the job? I I don't get the sense from anybody really what they want to do within labor. Like it it's it's not about who comes next, it's about what comes next. Like and what are you gonna do with the mandate? And like no one's laying out an alternative vision. I know that's complicated when you're still in government. Um, but no one's done it yet. And then in that speech, we didn't play all of it, but like Starmer did try to lay out a bit of a path forward. He has like more direct intervention in the economy, talks about like nationalizing steel plants, uh more partnership with the EU. He tech takes a more head on fight with Nigel Farage. He blames the Iran war for a lot of his troubles. Speaking of which, you know, the one thing this will do is uh it will mean that Starmer helps Nigel Farage deliver on his big election promise. Uh let's watch a clip of Farage ranting away after the election had already happened about the results. We fought this election campaign on a big national slogan. You might remember it. It said, vote, reform, and I tell you what, he'll be gone by the middle of the summer. The most unpatriotic, worst, least prepared prime minister we've ever seen in this country, and we will have seen the back of him. We are directly taking votes from patriotic old Labour in areas frankly they've been pretty much able to take for granted since the end of World War One. It all goes to show that over the course of the last two years, since we made that breakthrough in the general election, we have professionalised the party. Uh we've done it at a very, very rapid rate. Possible to phone call your friend Donald Trump so maybe in this war in Iran, that would help twice as everyone. I think the war in Iran's very close to an election. I mean heroin's just not my thing. I I First of all way better backdrop for them. Also I love the guys who have the big like brooches like there's one like a ribbon and like a horse jumping competition. But anyway, so if Starmer goes, he he, you know, delivers for Farage . And I think that there's no way this ends with just a just a leadership election. There will be intense pressure to call for an early general election. That'll come at the worst time possible for labor. It'll rattle the bond markets. It'll create a permanent uh economic cost. And so I think you know, the only path forward, deliver on the mandate voters, Dave Starmer, uh, fight it out. Also, uh very awkward that uh the king's speech, it it I think it's the day Yeah I get the case being that part of what like we made fun of the Tories for, you know, musical chairs prime ministers, and that's suboptimal. Um first of all, n Nigel Farage it's like a walking, talking pack of marble red s. Yeah. That voice is so funny. Um I I I I think that they're not easy answers to these problems. I'd say a couple things though. First of all, yes, all those people are underwater. But you notice who's less underwater? Pedro Sanchez and Giorgio Maloney. Wildly different politically, right? Uh Maloney's on the right, Sanchez is on the left. But they believe things . Like the squishy centrism that Macron and Starmer embody literally. And and Mertz is a little bit more to the right, but like is not what anyone's looking for. They want to know that we are dealing in in this country, but also in the UK, see like existential problems. You know, like the economy doesn't work anymore, capitalism doesn't work anymore, the world doesn't work anymore, and this idea that you're just gonna tinker and a little bit of a social program here and a little bit of a tough on immigrant rhetoric here and you know a tiny bit of money for the NHS and National Health Service. Like that that approach, that the starmerism , it's just not what people want. Yeah. And it's also creating problems in that there's not like a clear faction that wants to get rid of him. It's not like the left of the labor party is all like get rid of Starmer. It's just like everyone kind of it's just not that into him. Yeah. Because nobody really knows what, you know what what he he is and stands for. And you know, I I don't I I'd have to go deeper on what the big what big ideas they could have. Um what is an actual here's one. Brexit was bad. Well that's it back in the B you read my mind. It's like, why not just say, you know what? Like this economy has been totally fucked, just like it was predictable it would be by Brexit. We have lost our place on the world stage because we're kind of an orphan now, getting beat up by Donald Trump. Like we should go back in the EU. Right. Like that's gonna be better for our geopolitics and our economy. Uh, it'll be good for growth because we'll have more markets. Like something on that scale. The speech the speech hints at more more with Europe, more something like it like hints at getting back, hints at ondoing Brexit, but then his team was briefing. No, no, no, no. We didn't really mean that. He just wants more partnership with Europe or something like that. It's like uh pick a side. Pick a side and show people that you believe in something. And you know what? God forbid, maybe you lose, but you at least you tried to do something you cared about, you know. And and I and I think that that's what's missing. And now, you know, Angela Raynor would have normally been the left wing candidate. She remembered these tax issues and mortgage scandals that here like you know, nothing. It just came out that he took like five million dollars from some crypto billionaire for some reason. He says it was for security, but like there's no like the me the the British media treats him kind of like a fun person to book on shows and be a talking head, not like a serious prime minister. Yeah. I mean Zach Polansky, the the late the Green Party , um, you know, is made real inroads because it there's a kind of uh Mamdani dust that, you know, uh they have over there. But it's cause like people actually know what the Greens believe in, you know. And and actually on the centrism side, well then you have the Lib Dems. Like la labor is just kind of homeless now. Like it i what is it? You know, i i and I think Starmer is not the one he doesn't seem to be, and you could prove me wrong, but uh he doesn't seem to have the answer to that question. Yeah, I think uh Zach Polansky really screwed up recently and didn't take seriously enough some very serious incidents of anti Semitism that have happened in the UK. So I I don't know what that means for his future. Look I I'm with you. Like he's Jewish though. I know. That's the weird part about all this. I mean the Starmer's speech, I watched the whole thing, then then he did a little press conference. It was just, it seemed it seemed so weak. Like it was like someone was like tr ied to, you know, turn him up twenty percent. He kept he had this refrain where he kept being like, and that's the labor way, or like, that's the labor choice. So it just it just it didn't work. Um he also, you know, he started to blame Iran for a lot of the UK's problems. I think that's well, it's probably accurate. Yeah. They're LNG, yeah. It's useful, but I don't know. I like I think I think no one thinks that Keir Starmer is going to be leading the Labour Party into the next election. And the question is just like when do you get rid of them? Yeah, that to me is the question. Maybe you take take your time. If you make your choice, don't grab a labor Liz Trust, but I I the clock is ticking. They gotta start a process. They can't do what Biden did with Harris and just the Democratic Party did and just seem to anoint someone. They need a process. I don't know how long that is gonna have to take, but they they're gonna have to have one. Um to your Biden point, uh I know this is unfair and silly and like an American thing. But I think Star mer said something about this being a fight for the soul of the country. And I was like, oh just screened Biden. Yeah, look, I think he's a dead man walking politically. I think he was the right guy to get them through that election. He was not the right guy for this moment just because once you have a negative 50 approval rating, I don't know how you fix that. Um, whoever comes next is probably fucked as well. Yeah. But like staunch the bleeding. I don't know. Yeah. We beat Medicare. We beat Medicare. The the scary thing is there there's all these trends we're watching of the rise of the far right in in the UK, in France, in Germany, and we have the French presidential election coming up in 2027. The Germans have a bunch of elections coming up. You could see like A FD governors in parts of Germany. It's just like the future for the far right in Europe is bright. Yeah. Which is dark for us. Yeah. It's never a good mix, far right politics in Europe. No, not good to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. 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Is the war with the run over? And if it isn't who will, decide when it is ? I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over because there's still nuclear material. So clear as day. Uh that was Marco Rubio, Trump, and then Israeli Prime Minister B. ahu, for those of you lucky enough to know So let's try to walk you guys through the last week in the disaster that it was, and then we'll talk about it. So first Trump announced uh Project Freedom. That was this like PR bullshit plan to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz. That mission lasted, I think, about 36 hours uh until Trump pulled the plug on it. Uh NBC News later reported that the Saudis and the Kuwaitis were surprised by the plan. They were mad about it and they pressured the US to pull the plug because they thought it could unravel the ceasefire and and peace talks. Um then we had a bunch of breaking news and sirens from reporters uh quoting senior White House officials saying the US and Iran were very close to making a deal. That of course was bullshit. Uh there's still no deal. And according to the Financial Times, the two sides were very far apart. Trump's demands were a twenty-year moratorium on Iran's nuclear enrichment program, uh, transferring the stockpile of uranium enriched uh to close to the sixty percent enriched stockpile that the so called dust out of the country and then dismantling their three main nuclear sites. And the Iranian response I think loosely translates to get fucked. It was um end the war on all fronts, have Iranian management of the Strait of Hormuz going forward, suspension of sanctions. Uh, and then they actually gave a little ground on their um enriched uranium stockpile. They said they'd ship half of it out, but like dilute the rest. But they gave Trump a little something. Here's how President Trump uh took their response. Let's watch. For the time being the ceasefire remains in place. I would say. I would call it the weakest right now . After reading that piece of garbage they sent us, I didn't even finish reading it. They said I'm not gonna waste my time reading it. I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support. They understand these are all medical people. And Dr. Raz life support is not a good thing. Do you agree? Bag prognostic. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says , Sir, your loved one has approximately a one percent chance of living. Free to allow the removal of all their errors? Yeah. Yeah. Well, they did the two days ago. I they didn't okay. They did two days ago. They said you're gonna have to take it. We were gonna go with them. But they changed their mind because they didn't put it in the paper. So when they sent us this document that we waited four days for, that should have taken ten minutes to do, it looked very simple. We get that, they guarantee no nuclear weapons for a very long period of time, and a couple of other minor things, but they just can't get there. They think that, well, I'll get tired of this, or I'll get bored, or I'll have some pressure, but there's no pressure. There's no pressure at all. I I love the like the sir construct for a story that he's totally making up. Now and now is how the doctor talks to you and like the ER when your mom's there and some random some random people have to stand there the whole time. There's one lady Ben who literally she was someone told her to smile and she did this the whole time. She says, Anyway, uh things are going good? Things are going great? First of all, I'm just gonna keep coming back to this because we have to, uh because our media doesn't do it enough. Uh this is why we have to support independent progressive media. Thank you, sir. Like let's just like not even let him just keep saying something that isn't true because he wants to repeat it until it becomes true. Um the fact that the Iranians aren't even offering the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal terms, shows you that they believe that they have all this leverage. Like they control the Strait of Four moves. They've got and he when the way he talks about I can wait here all day. Well I'm not bored, I won't get bored I'm not bored at all. Right. Tell that to the people in the UK who have shortages, or the people in South Korea who have shortages, or people in Bangladesh who, you know, g have to ration energy. Like everybody is suffering and and Donald Trump's just sitting there on his fat ass being like, oh, I got all the time in the world. Well, well and then he acts like that. Yeah. And here's here's the thing. Like I I've often again, the the will they will be willing to ship that stockpile out because they know that's not their nuclear program. That's just the product of their nuclear program. And so I just don't get why these people he needs to end the war, he needs to show he got something. I just don't get why he doesn't make a deal where it's like they gotta open the Strait of Hormuz and they're gonna ship out their stockpile and they're gonna get some sanctions relief and a bunch of money. Cause that's how this thing ends. And and otherwise it's like a frozen conflict . But it's a frozen conflict where the straight of hormous is closed, you know? And the global economy will collapse within a matter of months if that's the case. The cost is unbelievable at this point. The Pentagon says the direct cost is twenty nine billion dollars. Double that, right? Like it's it's they asked for two hundred billion, so I don't know what planet they're doing. The real number is way more. Oil prices are still are way up. So JP Morgan said its analysts think that the oil prices will remain over a hundred dollars a barrel through this year. That's bad. Um a Brown University study found that as of last week, American consumers had paid an extra thirty-five billion dollars in gas and diesel costs since the war began. That's about uh two hundred sixty eight dollars per household. Jet fuel prices are up seventy percent, fertilizer prices are up thirty percent. By the way, us in uh California man, we get especially screwed. Yes. Because we're more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than other states. Um and then the the Financial Times was looking at the total cost of the war and they found that a reasonable estimate based on the Fed zone models is that the war is going to cost the economy two hundred billion dollars and a loss of a million jobs in the US for like a bunch of factors, including uh interest rates. And uh the Fed's like monthly gauge of global supply chain pressures is now at the highest level since the pandemic. So like everything, the the the economy is like like filling a balloon and something is gonna pop very soon. And he's like, I don't I'm not bored, I don't care. That's the thing. And and because everybody can feel it, right? So there's already this discordance between you know the quote unquote markets and the lived reality of everybody that has to pay for anything on earth um and the shortages that are coming. And I guess he thinks that when the bubble bursts he'll just blame Barack Obama or Joe Biden or something. But But like this is one where everybody knows that things were one way and then this war happened and they're another way. And I I think it's gonna take uh the rest of the world, you know, Xi Jinping in the neck next couple days, all these Europeans, they're gonna have to go to Trump and be like, look, man, and the Iranians for that matter, and just be like, just take the m minimalist deal you can agree to. Trump, his uh his willingness to spin anything uh should allow him to just get the hell out of this thing. I mean, just he's gonna say he defeated them anyway. His his morons who watch Fox all day and listen to like Mark Levin will uh swallow that. Seventy percent of the country will think this is a mistake. They already think it's a mistake. Look, yeah, and the right wingers, the the FDD think tanks and stuff, like they'll hate it, but eventually they'll shut up. Like the Hugh Hewitt's, you know, the professional fluffers and propagandists, like they'll they will hate this deal. They're saying it's much. But yes, I think that's where he's gonna end up. And also been there's been all these reports about um the way the war is kind of metastasizing and spreading across the Middle East. So the Wall Street Journal reported that the United Arab Emirates, UAE, had been carrying out military strikes on Iran directly. They were a direct combatant in the war. They hit a refinery back in April, for example. They had been targeted by you know 2800 missiles and drones from Iran. So it was response to that, but still we didn't know that. Um there was also a Reuters report today that Saudi Arabia carried out a bunch of secret airstrikes during the war, too. So again, this wasn't just the US and Israel. It was a bunch of countries bombing Iran. And then the journal had this wild story about how Israel built a base in the middle of the Iraqi desert to support the military operation in Iran. And then uh I think it was like search and rescue and some sort of Air Force logistics. And the story says that at one point the Iraqi military tried to investigate what was going on there because I'm like, you know, sheep herder tipped them off to it. And the idea fired on them a couple of times and killed two Iraqi soldiers and like just nobody said. What is their basis for being there? It's not their territory. Like the I I think that's even beyond Mike Huckabee's definition of Israel, which ends somewhere around the Euphrates. Ends in Kansas. Yeah.ah, ye Yeah. But I mean, look, uh first of all on the regional side, we just, again, we have no idea the damage that's been done to our bases, to our facilities, to these Gulf countries. We s you know, people still can't like post pictures of Dubai. Um the Emirates uh are the biggest losers or or I don't know, they're a lot of losers, but they're one of the biggest losers in this war. First, they threw all their l chips in with the A braham Accords with Israel with this idea that we're gonna you know form a united front and stand up to the Iranians. And here they are. They just got, you know, showered with drones and their Dubai model got wrecked. And you know they're they're they're carrying out airstrikes and and look if you're feeling sorry for them they fund the RSF in Sudan that is like committing war crimes uh on a regular basis. But it th all this is gonna I I'm very interested to see how the backstory of all these things comes out in addition to the damage assessments. One thing in particular, that base in Iraq clearly seemed tied and it was reported to the Kurds, right? To the idea that the Israelis wanted to use the Iranian and Iraqi Kurds to be a ground force to do things inside of Iran. I think what probably happened there is , you know, the Kurds have partnered with Israel in the past, some Kurds, not all Kurds. Um, and they were probably waiting to see, like, okay, uh, can Iran take this punch? We kill the supreme leader and drop all these bombs and the regime, lo and behold, is not only still standing, they're capable of closing straight of four moose. And it seems like the Kurds are like, thanks, but no thanks. We're not like going to war against the regime. I think the Kurdish play was if the regime collapses , you know, maybe we'll, or the regime is like literally on its last legs, maybe we'll get involved here. But it should be pointed out, that failed. Like the Israeli pitch, as reported in the New York Times in the situation room, was the Kurds are gonna rise up, there's gonna be all these ground forces on our side, Reza Pallavi, the son of the Shah's gonna come in. None of those things happened. And we never hold Bibi Ninya accountable, not just for the fact that he convinced Trump to do this stupid fucking thing, but that his analysis, he was either lying or he was completely wrong that the regime would fall, that the Kurds would rise up, that the Iranians would rise up, that Reza Pall avi was somehow a credible leader of Iran. Do you see Trump like directly bitching about the Kurds? He was like, We gave them weapons and they just stole them and they didn't. He was like complaining about it. Well, that's like a covert action program. And it's such bull first of all, like the it's such bull the Kurds have done so much. You know, they they were the ground force against ISIS for the United States in the Obama years and under Trump. You know, they were on our side in the Iraq War. Like this idea that they're obligated to be our war. To fight our war. To fight all of our wars. And they never get what they want, which is a state. Right. And for reasons that I can understand given the complexity of that. But why would they fucking fight our war? It's crazy. And also him just like crying about a clear like covert action program at in a Oval Office press race. Also, the the New York Times just posted a piece. Uh it's a new like leaked assessment of uh the impact of the war in Iran. Uh most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to thirty of the thirty three missile sites it maintains along the Strait of War moves. Which could threaten American oil tankers. Iran still fields about 70% of its mobile launchers across the country and it r has retained roughly 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. Uh that is bad news. So they got a lot, a lot of kit left to fire at us in a lot of ways to do it. Um also Ben, do you see that DOD wants to apparently rename the Iran War Operation Sledgehammer if it restarts? And they're thinking that that means they get to rest art the 60 day war powers clock so they can Well that's what little Marco's doing when he's like Epic Fury's over. I mean th they think that a war is like the name that you give to something and not the paperwork. I mean, I would argue that we've been at war with Iran since at least the so-called twelve day war. Nineteen forty seven. Well, what was uh was the Tom Cotton timeline? Oh well that that was crazy. But seventy nine. But I mean w remember the twelve day war? Like the th this has all been one war. Uh I mean that's the point. These guys count on our attention spans being so destroyed by social media and technology that we like forget that we're still in a war or something. 'Cause as a new name, what what are we children? I mean just rebranding. Yeah. It's like uh it's like uh restaurants that close down and reopen in the same spot in LA every six months. My favorite taco place uh in Venice, Teddy's Red Tacos um it it it it suddenly suddenly was different, different name. And I was terrified, but the menu's exactly the same. Kind of like the Iran War, except the tacos are good. Same, same spot. Uh all right, you mentioned that in Yahoo. Um, Trump, the IRGC, they're not the only arsonists in this conflict. We also have BB Netanyahu. He was on CBS's 60 Minutes over the weekend. Um, as Netanyahu watchers know, Netanyahu avoids speaking with Israeli journalists because they are actually knowledgeable about all of his failings uh and failures and ask him about them. And so he instead launders his message through the U.S. media who tend to be softer than a you know baby skin uh and easily manipulated by him. And uh unfortunately the new and improved 60 minutes under Barry Weiss's leadership was no exception. Um I wanna play uh a one example that just annoyed the shit out of me Ben then we'll talk about some more substantive stuff. So this is um CBS's major Garrett, who by the way is a nice guy. He's a good reporter. Uh not knocking him as a human, but this was not his finest hour or finest interview, I don't think. And it sounds like Weiss steered the interview to him as opposed to Leslie Saul, who probably would have been a little rougher. Aaron Ross Powell But by the way, Major, as you know, is capable of asking tough questions. So that tells you a lot about Barry Weiss's leadership. Even further pass, although I would prefer people didn't go along with Barry Weiss. Like I've seen Major Garrett do tough interviews. Be hard ass. So this is probably a direction from on high. Yeah, it's very weird. So here's a question. Here's part of a question he asked about Israeli intelligence that I thought was instructive Mr. Prime Minister . That is a kind of granular intelligence that is borderline miraculous in the modern world, why wasn't it sufficient to also foment a revolution? So Ben, the He was in his office. The airstrike the killer. He was in his fucking office. It was on his house. Like like he was working above ground in his own house. Yeah. So that would like be a mere miraculous intelligence to bomb the White House to kill Trump or or drone, you know, the gold's gym in Venice to take out RFK Jr. The heavy breathing was great. Mr. Prime Minister, the granularity of that intelligence is just so remarkable. It's like bombing the poodle room. It's crazy. We're talking about a guy, an eighty six year old man who was killed in his house. It's crazy. It, you know, that doesn't count for anything these days. I mean, this is 60 minutes. This is CBS News. This is like literally like the Cadillac of American journalism, right? And it gets purchased by David Allison, whose kind of qualification for running anything is that his father's Larry Allison and he went to like USC film school and wants to play with the movies. Um, and they're super pro-Israel and super pro-Trump. And so he hands the ke ys of 60 Minutes and CBS News to Barry Weiss, whose only qualification is running a blog where she tells rich billionaires that they're wonderful, Israel's wonderful, and DEI is bad. And essentially the the feels you get when you watch Bill Maher are all right. And we're going to bring those feelings over to CBS News. And then you have the prime minister of a country that literally convinced the president of the United States to do the dumbest thing since the Iraq War in launching an attack on a country. None of the things that Nanyao said were gonna happen happened. We're in an economic catastrophe. Major Garrett and CBS News's own viewers are like not being able to afford their gas. And he's sitting in there, like blowing smoke up BB's butt about how wonderful and granular the intelligence is. What is going on here? This is not your job. This is Putin level propaganda. I mean, also CBS didn't ask about Netanyahu's responsibility for October 7th until an hour and seven minutes into the conversation. It feels like that'd be something that'd be front and center. And then he just brushed it off. Um, there was lots of talk about Hamas violating the ceasefire in Gaza. There was none, no conversation about or questions about Israel violating the ceasefire, as far as I could tell. You had Netanyahu vomiting out the same talking points about all the the ways IDF avoids civilian casual ties and texts people. And it's like all the same shit we heard two years ago. Nobody believes. And then we watch like seventy thousand people get slaughtered. And it's just demonstrably false. And it just you didn't get you didn't get pushed on any of it. And also, you know, like Trump sued CBS, right, for editing out a 60 minutes interview, like a Kamala Harris answer. CBS cut from the broadcast version , Netanyahu is saying, We'll play this clip in a minute. He was asked about um social media and you know, NDB blames uh social media for all of Israel's woes and he said basically says like we're not gonna fight the battle on social media, but that got cut out and I wonder why. They also cut Netanyahu saying that Americans turning against Israel also hate America. Again, like why? It seems like those are things that um are relevant for American viewers. And so I like the whole thing, you're right. It it it's frustrating because the debate, like the Barry Weiss's bad Twitter debate, is like kind of boring and reductive, and like I'm not interested in it. But like do I do think like when there's a a product like this that shows the fruits of that labor, it's worth kind of like highlighting the the the harm it did to us as viewers. We're trying to get information. It's much bigger than just the kind of Barry Weiss discourse. Because it it's about the fact that the premium brand in American journalism, 60 Minutes, like when it comes to Israel, it it's like it makes RT look like a hard-hitting news source. You know? And the problem with it is that it's not like there's a significant market for this. Like the problem, I mean to, be specific in in uh complained here, is they constantly come back to this idea that that social media is bad and that's why people are turning against Israel. No, it's what people are seeing on social media. Right? Nick Christoph had a powerful story in the Times about the sexual assault of Palestinian prisoners. Monday, sorry. And all these people are on, you know, this is how outrageous. How could the Times print this? As if the problem is the story and not the underlying conduct that the story is about. Trevor Burrus Well, there's some question about the veracity of some of the sourcing, but still, like there's a lot of well-documented evidence of rape and sexual assault of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. This is not the first story This is not the first coverage of this issue. And I'm this is not that story, but I'm just the hypothetical. Let's say there are 100 instances of sexual assault. And ninety-seven of them are true, but you they find the three that have some holes in the story and they're like, this whole thing is is a libel. Or you know, the or that you know, they go after, you know, sort of one of the victims who's, you know, doesn't it? His cousin is in Hamas or something Conversation about why do we keep doing these dumb things? And we talked about all the reasons. But one of the reasons why is that we don't have a media that tells us the truth. You know, like it like it's so it makes it so much easier to give weapons to Israel or to go to war in Iran if we don't have media that will like sixty minutes viewers, those should should be some of the more informed people in the country that can't be told the truth about what's happening. Yep. Um for the w for the record, I think that Hamas raped and sexually assaulted victims on October seventh and that uh Palestinians are being raped and sexually assaulted in uh Israeli prisons and both are true and I I wish there was like less attacking of reporters for talking about these things and more Um two more clips we want to play from this. So the first is Netanyahu saying basically it's time for Israel to wean itself off of US military support. Let's watch that. I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have. We've come of age. We have uh a booming economy. After three years of war , you know, our currency is the strongest it's ever been in the last fifty years, maybe more. We have a lot of talent here, which we share with our American friends, and we're going to share it with our Arab friends too. And I uh I think that it's time that we wean ourselves from the remaining uh military support and go from aid to partnership. And then uh let's listen to the clip of him blaming Israel's image problem The proportion of civilian casualties non-combatants to combatants is one of the lowest in the history of modern urban warfare. So Israel is given a bum ramp. I'll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with the bot farms, with fake addresses to break the American uh sympathy to Israel to break the American Israeli alliance because they think it's in their interests. And they do it in a clever way. So that on the military support part, like I mean f first of all I'll just I'll believe it when I see it, you know, and also he cites like the three point eight billion dollar a year stat. That's just the beginning of the support that US provides Israel. Like there's always supplemental funding requests, emergency, iron dome transfers, etceraet. Then there's the direct support when the US is like literally shooting down, you know, missiles and how much did we just spend on that? Right. So uh again, like I I just don't believe like Ben Shapiro's been saying this kind of thing too. Like I I just don't believe it. Like, I'd like to see it happen. I just don't believe it's gonna happen. And then the social media stuff though, this is like it's delusional and worrisome on a couple different levels. Like the suggestion is always that those of us who are worried about civilian casualties or the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, were just stupid rubes getting manipulated by algorithms who were not couldn't possibly just be like sincerely horrified by day after day of these like horrifying images of like children suffering in Gaza, right? Do you so there's like there's an eighth front in the war on fucking social media now? Like first of all, Israel is famously active on social media. Yeah. I mean on the receiving end of it. Yeah, there's reports that they're paying influencers like seven thousand dollars to post positive stuff about Israel. Like what what does this mean? It's kind of ominous. I don't think social media is a war. Well, first of all, on the military stuff, I mean what that tells you is he's knows he's losing the political uh argument in the United States. Um but important ly, that ship has sailed. They're not going to get further financing. Now what they do is a couple there are a couple of questions remain. One that you highlighted, which is whenever they're in a war, which is seemingly all the time, there are these supplemental requests that APAC pushes hard. And so it's not in the tenure memorand of understanding where it's like they get a set amount every year. They've gotten way more than that and um you know, quote unquote emergency situations. But beyond that, the debate has shifted so much that last week, or maybe two weeks ago, 40 Democratic senators voted against arms sales to Israel. This is the next front. The financing thing is is over, I think. And that he's just acknowledging that. Um you've got forty Democrats, including everyone who might run for president, voting against even selling them weapons, which I think is the right position. And just to highlight one of those systems that was being sold to the Israelis was bulldozers. What do you need armored bulldozers for? You need armored bulldozers to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon or to demolish whatever remaining structure exists in Gaza. Like that's that that's where this is moving. And people should be aware of that. They're gonna wanna say, okay, fine, we don't need the financing. They're still gonna wanna be able to buy all the weapons. The partnership is some real uh weasel language too. Like what does that mean exactly? It means we sell them whatever they want. And the thing is if they're committing war crimes as they have, we shouldn't be selling them anything. You shouldn't be providing weapons either financed by the American taxpayer or sold full stop. The social media thing is is rich and ominous. It's rich because the Israelis have done exactly what he says for a long time. They've got troll farms, they've got paid influencers. They're not new to this game. They're they're not just these people that oh we just use social media to like post government statements and there's some other governments. I'm sure he's talking about like Qatar or something. They always you know uh hype this. I mean I the this if if i if you have a Instagram account, you know that like uh like most of the content you get related to Gaza is not like state sponsored. You can see that a mile away. It's like somebody you know like reposting a a video. And by the way, you don't even need to to to aggregate whether this or that video is accurate. You can look at just a picture of Gaza and it's destroyed. It's just flattened. Right? It's completely flattened. Now, going forward, I think what is kind of worrisome, it ties into the conversation we just had about Barry Weiss, because lo and behold, Larry Ellison has also bought TikTok. Yeah. Right. And so that's where the fight's going to be. I'm less worried about sure they can pay all the influencers they want. It doesn't really make a difference. Um, just look at Ben Shapiro's audience. The problem is if they start to leverage their friends who bought TikTok or, you know, Elon Musk and X, although Elon seems pretty committed to his version of free speech, which is you know kind of a cesspool, but and start manipulating the algorithm, start shadow banning accounts, start censoring content. That's I think where this is going. And that's pretty scary. Yeah, that's this that is the scary stuff. To maximize your dog's quality of life or to extend the food's shelf life. Think about it. And while you do, let me tell you about Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed Sundays. Air-dried real food made And the best part, you just scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing, no prep, no mess. It's just nutrient-rich, clean food that fuels their happiest, healthiest days. 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Uh dates back to the Ming Dynasty. I think it was built in like 1420. Uh then he attends uh a state banquet Thursday evening. Then he has tea and lunch with She again on Friday. And then he goes home. It's a lot of meetings. Um, so let's just speculate on what they want out of this trip, Ben. So for Trump, first and foremost, he wants to feel like uh the biggest boy on the biggest stage uh and special and the pomp and circumstance. Um then I think he wants a trade deal or something he can sell back home as having some sort of economic benefit. Third, I'm sure he would enjoy some help reopening the Straight of Hormuz or getting Iran to chill out. We could talk about what that might entail. And then fourth, I think we should just always assume that there's a big fat corruption bucket sitting there that we'll learn about down the road someday, whether it's crypto or Don Jr. is suddenly invested in Chinese robotics company. Chinese drones. Yeah, Chinese robotics company, the CEOs uh Don Jr. Um for Xi, uh Xi Jinping, I would imagine he wants to get rid of US tariffs on stuff. He wants to show the world that he can manipulate Trump and that he is actually as strong, if not the, you know, stronger party. Um, I bet he'll try to wring some concessions out of Trump on Taiwan, uh, maybe try to get rid of some restrictions on AI chips. Who knows? So Trump on this trip is going to be flanked by a bunch of American CEOs. Elon Musk will be there. Tim Cook will be there. Remember when they almost briefed Elon Musk on the secret China warplant? Yeah. Yeah. Good idea, great idea. Yeah. Here's Trump talking about the China trip from Monday uh in the Oval Office. He's a great gentleman. I find him to be uh an amazing, an amazing man . And I when I say that, the press always says, oh, that's terrible. They called him . He runs 1.4 billion people with a pretty iron fist. He's uh he loves his country, I can tell you, that president she I look forward to being there. And if he felt anything, we wouldn't we wouldn't be doing it. But uh a lot of good things can happen. Now we'll be talking about, I mean, he'll bring up Taiwan, I think more than I would. I have a great relationship with the president Xi.' Were doing a lot of business, but it's smart business. We used to be uh taken advantage of for years with our previous presidents, and now we're doing great with China. We make a lot of money with China. I have a great relationship with with the President Xi. And I think you can see that with the fact that in Harmuz they get a big percentage, 40% of their oil from Houz. There's been no ships coming in, no nasty ships coming in that we end up in skirmishes with. There's been he'd like to see it get done. He doesn't want to see, I'll tell you what, look, I respect him a lot. And hopefully he respects me. He didn't respect our previous government, that I can tell you. Oh all those clips are from another rolling out ladies moms.gov. These poor women It's up there with the uh the DoorDash lady. We started yelling out about trans athletes or something She's like, I'm just here for the tip. I mean, this is completely insane. What do you what do you think? What do you think? What's the what's on the agenda for the meeting? Like, what's the best case you think in terms of an accomplishment? A deliverable. Don Jr. gets a robotics. Yeah. There's a deliverable for him and us. For real though. So here f first of all, there's a problem, which is normally these are huge summits. They usually happen like every two years. You spend two or three days. You know, we use this, for instance in, Ob ama to come up with a bilateral agreement on reducing carbon emissions. It became the Paris Agreement. You know, like we worked on that for a year. So first of all, the fact that there's a war in Iran and Hormuz is still closed for business, um, means that they're going to spend a big chunk of time just talking about that. And we'll Trump is probably gonna be asking the Chinese to pressure the Iranians to open the strait and make a deal. Chinese gonna be pressuring us to you know just wrap this thing up. Well the China the Iran conversation will be like, Mr. President, how do you expect me to help you with the Iranians and to not sell my good friends in Iran weapons when you're selling weapons to Taiwan and giving them all this help? Yeah, that's wink wink. Chinese are very good at whataboutism. And by the way, we get to do what uh you did to Iran and Taiwan. Um I think i in and yeah, Trump may want, you know, uh I think for him a win is like you know, they agree to buy a bunch of soybeans or something, right? You know, like you can just say he loves these deals where it's like the Chinese said they're gonna spend X amount of money on American products that by the way they're probably gonna buy anyway or something, you know, and and the Chinese will extract some concessions.. Or there's a lie about it Or they'll lie about it. No, as everybody's done. I mean, I mean, if you add up the money people claim that they're gonna spend in these uh photo ops of Trump, it's like trillions of dollars and none of it's here. Um I would here's what I would be doing. Um on Taiwan, what you want to do is you wanna create like some diplomatic track that just kind of puts this thing on a back burner and like slow rolls it, you know. I don't think Trump is deft enough to do that. The Chinese will say don't sell them arms. We'll say don't conduct military exercises and most likely it's just going to be what it is. Well interestingly I the the there's been some big headlines announcements of arms sales to Taiwan, but I didn't realize that there are those have been very slow on getting delivered. There's like a $20 billion backlog on the delivery of U.S. arms to Taiwan. So that's kind of the rub there if you're Yeah. Well, and what's notable about that is that the Congress votes for these things and then the executive branch has to deliver them and they're probably slow rolling them uh to create positive atmospherics as she. If in terms of what I think they should be doing, uh I'm not sure they're gonna do, is they should be talking about artificial intelligence because we are the two AI superpowers. We have all these frontier companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and Microsoft, Google, et cetera. They have uh their own AI models that like and here we should say this is actually kind of a I don't know failure of the Biden administration, but there was this idea that we're gonna put s all these restrictions in place and export controls and sanctions and whatever. The Chinese figured out how to build the technology anyway. Yeah, we slowed that we didn't. Yeah. And so the the the the whether who's ahead, it you know, someone might be ahead by six months, it almost doesn't matter because Chinese have AI, we have AI. In normal times, we would be sitting down and saying, let's negotiate some norms and some guardrails around this new technology before it's fully deployed out in the world. We want to make sure that nuclear weapons and command and control systems have human beings in the loop. We wanna make sure that job displacement is cushioned by testing models. We have huge cybersecurity. You know, you saw this um incident with uh Mythos, the next generation of anthropics AI model , that when they you know shared it with some of their customers, it was like nobody was ready to deal with this. It could literally launch a cyber attack and shut down, you know , the the power grid of the country. You know, do you see the time story about how AI bots were telling these scientists how to make biological weapons? Exactly. Biological one we can do. Here's the recipe for biological weapons. Here's an you know another pandemic strain, right? And so what should be happening is we should be getting off this idea that there's some like AI race, like foot race, and whoever wins gets the technology. No, everybody's gonna get this technology. Um, we should be putting strict guardrails st arting with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, dealing with job displacement, dealing with cybersecurity risks. The Chinese aren't going to want to negotiate around disinformation or information operations, but that's part of this. I just don't think Trump's gonna do that. If anything, he's gone the other direction. If Biden was building export controls, Trump is for whatever reason, probably some corrupt reason, is greasing the skids so Jensen Wong and Nvidia can sell advanced semiconductors to the Chinese. So the Chinese would love that. I'm sure what the Chinese wouldn't do is buy a bunch of chips, you know? Um so I'd love to see how AI is dealt with that at this thing. It's just the idea of Trump sitting down for tea in like the forbidden city with Xi Jinping and having like a deep substantive conversation about AI. It's so impossible to imagine. Yeah, and you need to test models and set guardrails. It's just not how Trump thinks I mean it it it's what you should be talking about. For sure. No doubt. There's no doubt. Or human rights, remember that? Or climate change. Yeah. Oh there's a few things. Um okay, we got a couple more things. Um so we'll we'll get to those now. We'll we'll obviously next week we,'ll talk about how the trip actually went, at least that we know. Uh, but first we're gonna be petty for a second because there was an article in the Atlantic last week with the headline, Is Marco Rubio the happiest cabinet member? Uh that we wanted to discuss here. So this was almost entirely based off this one press briefing Rubio did at the White House. Uh it was like his only appearance at the White House briefing room since the war in Iran started. Um here are some excerpts from that briefing. I mean the top people in that government are to say the least um you know um they're insane in the brain. I d I wish I knew your name I apologize. Can you put name tags on? Can I ask you in Spanish or can I ask you? Yeah, you can answer in Spanish.. You can ask me Right there, yes ma'am. No, no, you. The first one I called on.. Th Thank youank, you Mr . This is chaos, guys. I wish I had like a dice. Go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, right there, because I'm going to Italy. Okay. He's Italian. I know him. He used to cover Capitol Hill. Secretary . Uh many people want to know what is your DJ name. My DJ name? Your DJ name. You're not ready for my DJ name . They are facing real catastrophic destruction What a cool cat. Uh there was also this video of uh Rubio like stepping into the DJ booth in Mar-a-Lago. Trump's fucking caddy turned deputy chief of staff. Dan Scabino posted that. And then this whole conversation kind of folds into this broader debate of will it be Rubio or will it be JD Vance who takes like kind of the mantle of MAGA and becomes a Republican nominee in 2028? So um this is petty media criticism then, but I did just want to ask reporters, like, what are we doing here, guys? Yeah. Because first of all, Rubio, I don't know if he's happy or not. I don't I don't wish him any personal unhappiness. But like he should not be happy about how his job is going if he's doing a briefing when the US is stuck in a catastrophic war with Iran. And just like regarding that press briefing itself, Rubio was rolling out Project Freedom, that Straight of Hormuz escort mission that we just talked about, which Trump unwound like a day later. So that is that is humiliating. Any other any other senior foreign policy official would be judged accordingly. Like that would be seen as a humiliating moment in defeat for them, possibly a like career ending thing. Um and on top of that, like the last time Rubio did a press conference, it was when he was on Capitol Hill that one day, and he basically like ran up to the sticks and was like, the Jews made us do it. And then he ran away and he hid in a fucking uh in a cave for a month. And so I was like, what is this article? My daughter, um I remember she did AYSO soccer, um and uh I think she was , you know, six or seven. And um at the end of the year it was really nice, even though the team didn't win a single game, it was kind of a bad news bears kind of team. Um they all got trophies. Nice. You know, participation trophies. Literally. Um the eagerness with which most of the Washington Press Corps is intent on giving Marco Rubio a participation trophy is so embarrassing. I mean, let's just dr to just build on what you said. The man is Secretary of State and National Security Advisor for a country that just lost uh and mounted one of the dumbest wars in recorded human history. Uh he announced an operation that lasted twenty-four hours. Let's just dig into his responsibilities. One of the reasons that that operation shut down is because the Saudis hadn't been notified about it and we wanted to use their who would do that normally. The Secretary of State. Utterly at his job. The National Security Advisor is supposed to be coordinating policy making, so it's smart. Did anyone ask Marco Rubio why they didn't know that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz? Because it's his job as National Security Advisor to war game how the war is gonna go. And they clearly do not know anything about Iran or the Strait of Hormuz, uh, did not consult allies, which is also his responsibility. So, like, he is directly responsible, more even than Pete Heg eth for the catastrophic failure of this policy and the fact that the whole world is suffering because of it. And they're all sitting there like having a grand old time chuckling about what he says. Second, these sure he doesn't do the like Dr. Seuss rhyme, weird Pete Hegseth voice, but this check yourself before I wrap it lame. It's not cool. Is he more is he more charming than JD Vance? Sure. But like talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations, says George Bush once said. That's not cool. Check yourself like the the the I I cannot believe the extent in this foreshadows of Cash Patel segment to which we are run, our country's run in apparently a a significant slice for our media by by people that just could not get anyone to sit next to them at lunch in high school, you know? And sit and now years later, he's like, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Like that, that, that's that like what is And like look, Rubio is like seen as politically ascendant within the Republican Party. Like Sarah Longwell from the Bulwark talks about how his name's coming up in her focus groups all the time now. There's this meme of like Marco Rubio on the couch in the Oval Office, getting every job. Apparently that's like genuinely helping him because he's seen as competent. But again, it's like, you know, the land uh the the you know the one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind kind of situation where it's like, yeah, he's the most competent of a bunch of morons. But what is what is his accompl like here's what here's what drives me nuts. Venezuela has seen this as one accomplishment. But again, that that is not a finished story. Yeah. Even if you just like accept the premise, the premise being that he's capable of standing at a podium and being s reasonably articulate for an extended period of time. Which by the way should be like the bar for like the deputy press secretary, not the future president or the secretary of state, even if that's some bar he clears, judge him on his results. Like what what is he like this what hate our politics i uh I mean just today's media criticism day , like w don't the results matter? Like it just the optics, just the fact that this guy manages to not like vomit on himself or or appear to be on on adult. Trump's p approval ratings in the t in the toilet. Yeah. Thirty seven, thirty six. What are we doing here? Why are we building this guy up for for for for nothing? Like f for for for being responsible for this policy. It is enraging. Um speak of losers in high school, Ben. Uh FBI director Trash Patel. Sorry, Cash Patel. Uh he's up on Capitol Hill this morning on Tuesday. As our listeners know, Cash has gotten a little bit of unwanted attention lately because he's because he drinky drinky. Um he was guzzling beers on camera at the Olympics. The Atlantic reported that his boozing is a source of concern within the bureau. And that Cash was once so drunk that his security detail couldn't wake him up and consider ed calling a SWAT team to get the equipment used to like bust on the door. Then he sued the Atlantic and this reporter in particular, uh and apparently the FBI might be investigating her. And then she dropped another banger on his head and we learned that cash has created and distributes his own signature bourbon bottles. Not really beating the drunk rap there. Got a little logo on it. There's Eagle Talons got his name on it. It's a dollar sign for Cash, yeah is that's that's his name cash because like the dollars anyway yeah so um presumably you would think that given all this context cash would want to deliver a calm sober performance at front of the Senate to silence his There have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you. Is that right? Nope, it's a total force. I don't even know where you get this stuff, but it doesn't make it credible because you say so. I'm not saying it uh Director Patel. I I it's been written and documented. You are literally saying it. No, I'm saying that these are reports, uh Director Patel. Unlike unlike your baseless reports, the only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you. You know the only person that ran up a seven thousand dollar bar tab in Washington DC to lobby car was you. Okay, yeah, that was with uh Senator Chris Van Holland. So that exchange actually goes to the while longer. Chris Van Holland doesn't strike me as some guys like really a big boozer. Yeah, yeah. Like it's just not like not a credible attack. Well first of all, I like I yeah, I have no idea about the bar Yeah. So you Van Holland went to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Obrego Garcia. They they had a conversation at the embassy. Uh Diabukele'sy goons put these drinks in front of them to stage a photo op that made it look like they were drinking together. It was just like it was it was completely propaganda bullshit. Of course Cash Patel's repeating that. Um second, as you noted, Kilmara Brego Garcia is absolutely not a convicted gangbanger rapist. And for the FBI director to say that is he perjured himself. It's crazy. He's perjured himself. Mark it down. And then finally, buddy, like butt button the top button. He he looked like a groomsman who'd been at a wedding since you know the bar opened at five. He looks like he tied one on last night. Yeah. He's got like a bottle underneath the fucking table. Slouching forward. Yeah. Like I know they all think that this is what Trump wants, which is like fight back, throw a punch. How'd that work for Pam Bondi? Did that look good to you? I mean, first of all, we just have to remember that the FBI director is supposed to be a nonpartisan official. Yeah. So it's just insane that anybody would be and he's supposed to be like a yeah, a civil servant essentially. Um and and so the and i like I get that the audience of one but but this makes him look ridiculous. Like if his problem is he looks ridiculous to the point that the whole country's making fun of him and he's like becoming a thing on Saturday Night Live, like he's just just keeps dumping ammo out for everyone else to use because he looks um completely absurd And actually, he's just drawing attention to that Atlantic report. Like, you know, it's not even good communications. Like the the smart thing is to be like, no, that report's not true, and just that's it. But by like throwing a little tantrum, it's like gonna drive some more people to that article and be like, ha ha ha, Cash like had to get woken up in the morning because he's so hammered. I mean uh like the boy this guy I I can't decide there's the content cre ator in me wants cash around, but like the American is a little concerned about that that's the person running the federal bureau of investigation. Yeah. And by the way, I'm a little bit obviously concerned about the fact that nobody's mining the store and there's actually criminals and terrorists and all the sorts of people that the FBI is supposed to be dealing with. But that mentality, the way you talk to Van Holland , the FBI has vast investigative powers. Yeah. It did not suggest someone who might not abuse those powers to like how does he know about the bar tab? I don't know. Like I I think someone that is seems that paranoid. I mean there's all these reports, right? Remember the other report in the it wasn't in the Atlantic that he got logged out of his computer and he freaked out and thought . And he's polygraphing everyone's detailed. He seems like a dangerous, paranoid, like kind of wounded animal who knows he's not up for the job, who would do exactly what you're saying there, like kind of use the enormous power of the FBI to go after critics. I like, yes, whoever comes next will be terrible, but I think it would be good for the world to get that asshole out of there. Yeah, yeah. I think it would. We'll miss him. I guess we can cover it. I'm sure we'll go back to podcasting. And then Bon Gino can team up again. Yeah, it'd be great. Okay, that's it for uh our boy Cash. Drinks on Us next time you're in LA. Pre order my book. It's out two weeks from today. Pre order. And I'm actually gonna be doing my virtual book launch event uh next Monday, so I'll throw that link on my social trans ference. There we go. But also stick around for Ben's interview with Susie Hansen about Prime Minister Erdogan, life in Turkey, lots of big important ge opolitical issues. So don't miss that Times in our lives when you wake up and you're like, why is my jaw hurt? Why do my teeth hurt? It's because you've been clenching and grinding from stress. It screws up your sleep and it makes you feel like not sleeping. It happens all the time. It used to happen to me a lot. It was actually a real problem. I'd wake up with a heada ches and jaw pain until I got Remy. Uh this was years ago by the way, long before they were ever a sponsor. Uh and that's why I trust Remy to protect my teeth with their custom night guards, uh, which have been helping out over like 350,000 Americans. Remmy night guards, they're clinically tested and FDA clear to prevent teeth damage from grinding, to reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain, and improve your sleep quality. 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No, Remy, they send you this thing, you like roll together some of this putty stuff, you put it in your mouth, takes five minutes, you send it off, then they send you your mouth guard. It's way cheaper and it works just as well. It is really so much better than going to a dentist to try to get a night guard. Protect your teeth with REMI by using the code WORLD to get 50% off your new night guard. That's 50% off. Go to shop R E-M-I .com slash World Again, that's shopre mi com slash world with the code world. Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. Hey crooked listeners. If you haven't become a friend of the pod y et, 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 individuals 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, pod save 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 Cricut.com/slash friends. Check it out. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend Susie Hansen, who is a journalist who lived in Istanbul for over a decade? She's written for the New York Times Magazine. Her first book, which I also recommend, Notes on a Foreign Country, was The Finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Her new book, which everybody needs to buy if you like politics, geopolitics, literary journalism, great writing, amazing personalities. It's called From Life Itself, Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan. Uh Susie, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Ben. Okay, so this uh really is um you know uh a unique book because uh you start it and you are reading the story of a neighborhood in Istanbul, then you realize you're reading about the city of Istan bul, then you realize you're reading about Turkey, then you realize you're reading about Arag on, and then you realize and this is all within the first probably, you know, forty pages, that you're reading a book about everything that's happened to the world, you know. I want to begin by asking where you begin the book, which is you describe how the forces that we've all become familiar with now, the kind of cocktail of nationalism, authoritarianism, corruption, chaos, how those things that we feel as Americans arrived in Turkey first, and in particular in this neighborhood that you profile. You write the dissolution of nations and borders and peoples and seemingly civilization itself was transforming how many of us felt about our individual lives and our future, that sense that we are we're in history here and not the good kind. Can you describe how these forces became manifest in in Turkey and in this neighborhood uh first and it's really around twenty fifteen or Arab Spring to twenty fifteen uh that you begin and and why did you choose to write about uh those forces through this neighborhood? Aaron Ross Powell So it was two thousand fifteen. I had been witnessing I I I moved to Turkey in 2007, so I'd been there for seven or eight years, and then I was there as all of these Syrian refugees were fleeing the Syrian civil war into Turkey. And you know, I'm sure you're aware of this, this was a kind of laissez-faire refugee management situation where Erdogan was just allowing people to come in, millions of people, and they sort of had to figure out their lives on their own. I mean, they had to find, they had to rent a place, they had to put their kids in school, all of that. So no one really had any idea how everyone was making this work. And there were at that point, 2015, 500,000 Syrians in Istanbul. And one evening I went to a friend's for dinner and they said, you know, after dinner you have to take a walk down the main street of Kargamruk. All of the shops have become Syrian. And that was I knew enough about Kargamruk to know why that was surprising. Kargamruk was a nationalist neighborhood. It was famous for them for mafia, for thieves. It was famous for this uh right wing party, the Mehhepe. And so I knew that they were not going to be welcoming to Arabs. Um, and I saw the opportunity to tell this larger story through how these people were getting along because what I when I started talking to them, they started talking about how the presence of the Arabs was challenging their Turkish national identity. And then as I was there for the for the next few years, all of these major events were happening. So you had the Syrian Civil War, obviously, you had ISIS had appeared in Turkey and they were flying into Istanbul and then switching to airplanes and going down to s the southern border. You had a new war with the PKK, the Kurdish militant group, um, and you had Erdogan steadily becoming more repressive. And I suddenly recognized, okay, maybe I can see all of these events through these characters, but understand how they're seeing it from the street level, not from the headlines and not from the the point of view of the West. So you you shift back and forth between some of these incredible characters you find in this neighborhood and Erdogan himself, who's a huge character in your book. And I want to focus a bit on him. Because I'd never read a book that I learned as much about him from. He's a fascinating character. And where one place I wanted to start, I did not fully understand this. You write about his kind of dual love of Islam and capitalism. And and we in the West think of him as an Islamist. But you know, you write about how much he embraced capitalism and kind of you know development, real estate development for lack of a better way of putting it, and kind of the corruption, the playbook we've seen, right, where you're building things but you're skimming money out the top and and all the rest of it. It also got me thinking that as much as we don't associate Islamists with capitalism, I mean in our country the religious zealots, the Christian evangelicals, are are similarly bullish on capitalism and deregulation and uh Aaron Powell I mean this goes deep into Turkish Islamist history. It goes way back to the first Islamist parties and movements in the 1960s and 70s. But I think you have to put it in the context of you know Turkey's founding party was Autoturk's party. And the only way for and they had shunned religious people to some degree, they had um forced religious brotherhoods to go underground, they had wanted Turkey to be a Western-looking secularist country . Um, and so the people of the countryside and the religious people were very much shut out from the halls of power, right? And so there were a number of old families that got a lot of the um contracts from the government and were rebuilding Turkey after World War I and World War II, but the religious people were shut out of this. And so slowly, slowly over time, they did see business and the and and starting their own business es as a way to build their own power in the country because they were shut out of the state and shut out of most of the business uh activities. Erdogan was the mentee of a man named Nejmetin Erbakan, who also saw the union of Islam and capitalism as a way of restoring Turkish pride, because these were people who were very nostalgic for the Ottoman Em pire and for this more grandiose sense of Turkey than what the Turkish Republic became. Erdogan learned from him, but also I think it was sort of deep in his blood in the sense that he came to power as the mayor of Istanbul. And Istanbul was a wreck at that time. It was very poor, people were suffering. And what he recognized he could do, even though most of the secularist elites did not want him to be in office, was he could actually improve the lives of the people, which seems like an obvious thing for a politician to do. Um, but it's a little bit shades of mom dani there. Um but he he saw that, oh, I can clean up the the garbage of the city, I can improve, the water supply, I can improve. But he needed to obviously um to ally with business groups and and other businessmen in order to make a lot of these things happen. And so I think it happened naturally . But I think a really crucial thing here also is when he finally becomes prime minister, he feels still threatened by the secular state, by the military and the judici judiciary, who very much wanted to get rid of him. They put him in jail in the nineteen nineties. And so he quickly had to build up his crony class, his businessman class. And that was the way he saw that he could solidify his power in the country. Aaron Powell So one of the things that listeners of the show hopefully know is that you know over the years I've kind of really had to reprogram myself around or away from some of the assumptions that are kind of baked into American foreign policy or or baked into kind of the commentary class about the world. And you go right at some of those assumptions about Erdogan. And I want to go through a couple of them. Uh the first one is I remember when we came into office in two thousand nine and and we went to, you know, uh uh Ankara and Istanbul in two thousand nine. You know, uh from that period kind of through the Arab Spring. The trendy thing was Erdogan is a mediator between Islam and the West. He's a potential bridge because he has cred with these Islamist, you know, Muslim Brotherhood guys and places like Egypt and and yet he's modern and capitalist and wants to join the European Union. Um I kind of now see how like orientalist that was, you know, to just kind of emp well he's Muslim and so therefore he you know, he can be a bridge, you know. Yet at the same time, he's clearly an intermediary in other ways. This is a guy that can navigate between the US and Russia, between Europe and the Arab world, between you know the BRICS countries and NATO. Wha wh why is it you know I mean Turkey historically has always been this kind of bridge country between Islam and the West and the rest of it, so there's some of that history. But why what what is it about him that has allowed him to play this kind of mediator role or this guy that can kind of live in one block for a few months and then shift to another one? Aaron Powell I mean I think I think in the beginning, first of all, that was how they were marketing themselves to the world, right? And it was not only Erdogan, but it was also this other Islamic Brotherhood, the Gulen movement, which was already very international. This is this global Islamic movement that was in the United States, knew lots of people on the hill, was had schools in every country. And so he, these two allied together. And I think again, you know, their fundamental fear was about the Turkish state, right? So they want to create a sense of them as big on the global stage in order to for tify their own power and um counter some of the f national forces that were against them. I mean it's amazing because he came to power in the 2000s. It's like really globaliz ation is is is is firing on all cylinders and he becomes this kind of globally minded leader. And so I think he was very different from other Turkish leaders who were much more inward looking and much more almost defensive And so I don't think it was all incorrect. Um, but now what he has managed to do is something even more extraordinary because over these twenty years, what we have seen him do is extend himself in Libya, in Syria, and Azerbaijan, but also to stand up on the world stage with his rhetoric and say, no, you know, we take care of our own country, we are regional leaders, we own our own Syrian refugee crisis, we are not going to let the NGOs in and tell us what to do. He has over time steadily made this into , you know, his position in the world, but with those refugees, if you remember, he was essentially able to say to Europe in the West , you can no longer tell me what to do. You cannot criticize me in terms of human rights and everything else. He's putting leaders like Selahat and Demiritash, the pro Kurdish leader, in jail, and all of these he's repressing thousands of people after the 2016 military coup, but he had four million Syrian refugees. And it gave him a card to play with the Europeans so as to say, you know, I can just let them into Europe anytime I want. And look at us, we are actually taking care of these people and you can't deal with them. I mean, in all of these different ways he was able to assert himself. It's unprecedented. And now he's yes, he advertises himself, I'm the middleman for everybody. Hey Ukraine, hey Russia. Hey, you know, Israel. I mean, he's he's he's always projecting this sense that you need him. That all of the but I think in some ways they do simply because of Turkey's geography. I mean look, Europe, is now speaking to him in these very kind terms because they might need him against Russia. You know, I mean, so he somehow manages to bounce back and reposition himself always. Yeah, no, you and I mean uh among many good things about there are all these what ifs of history that I found myself asking, one of which was, you know, there was still this idea that they're gonna join the European Union, which seems impossible now in two thousand nine, two thousand ten, and you rightly point out that Sarkozy is the one who you know truly tubed that, although I think probably other Europeans supported that. That's a great what if what if you know they're in the EU. One other uh DC thing that you you kind of take aim at um is you know and I've been guilty of this uh which is that you know he gets put in the creep club, you know, it's uh uh you when you're rattling off the list of autocrats who got elected through democracy and then dismantled it, you know, y it's usually you're like saying Putin, Modi, Erdogan, Orban, Bolsonaro, Duterte , um Netanyahu, now Trump. Um you kind of push back against that. Uh and I was really curious to kind of pursue that with you because on the one hand, you know, the way you describe it uh uh uh you know really meticulously uh uh you know, I see a familiar playbook, you know, um you kind of enrich people through corruption and you build these power blocks and you slowly change the judiciary and then you you know, you're you're you're starting to intimidate the media and make it pro government and and and then lo and behold, you know, we're changing the Constitution and Erdogan is, you know, going to be president after being prime minister or whatever. And yet you kind of push back against him being the same or kind of in a group with those guys and they're all guys. Um I think I get why in the sense that Turkey has such an eccentric um political system. But but but how would you position him relative to the autocrats who have kind of defined our age. Aaron Powell Well it just never when they when he was lumped in in that category it just never rang true to me and I thought it was a little bit lazy. I think now from the point of view of 2026 I'm seeing um more and more of these similarities with the United States. So when I wrote the book, I finished it in 2025. I never would have compared the US and Turkey, but now since 2025 and 2026, I it actually, this current time period echoes the book a lot. Like there's a whole chapter about a university and the re in the oppression of universities. But I think the a few things are different. Number one, um you know, he's he wasn't we weren't really referring to him as a populist in the beginning. I think it's the first ten years that is different about that are different about Turkey and that you want to look at. He was not just preying on people's sense of victimhood or grievances the way that, say, Donald Trump does. The people who he appealed to actually had legitimate grievances. They were actually left behind. They were not folded into the system properly. They were people who felt that they had been looked down upon and left behind in terms of the economy and education and many other things. And so I think. And then the second part is he actually did improve the lives of people. This there this wasn't this isn't a superficial, you know, ruler. This is someone who actually everyone can talk about when he got the natural gas you know, uh people's natural gas accounts hooked up to the internet or when he made water supply um easier or better, or when he improved the electricity, all of these services, when he improved the health care, when he, you know, um and then of course just what he did for people's self-esteem, which was all very real . So it was because of this genuine popularity that that that that's the basis for why he has sustained a lot of his role today. I think it's more interesting to consider again as you said, yes, the EU, what would have happened, but also all of these other regional and global events that were going on and how they affected some of these regimes. He had okay, the Syrian Civil War played a huge role in radicalizing Erdogan. I think that's worth looking at. But I think at the end, which I'm sure you remember, I do think we have to consider how, for a regime in the Middle East, how the war on terror also just the that environment led to um this increasing radicalization. It's not to let him off the hook, because we can talk about the second ten years, very happy to do that. But I think that it is just worthwhile to to Aaron Powell Yeah. Well let's talk about the second ten years. And and you know, maybe I can I bring in a little bit of my history here. It might be interesting. So so and you write in part one you, we kind of work up to 201 5 and Erdogan's consolidated power, the Syrian refugees are there, like these changes are in motion. Then you have this coup where uh I still don't uh you know, people think when you're in the US government in a role of mine you know what happened. Um I have no idea what happened. Um I know that something fundamental shifted in Erdogan, and you obviously get it in this in the book. I will tell you my experience, which is he used to be a fascinating guy to meet with. They'd go back and forth and he was nimble, flexible even. He might change his mind on something in the meeting. After that coup, uh Obama only overlapped for what like a year. Every meeting, he would literally show up with files about Gulen the, this is Islamist that he fell out with who he blamed for the coup. And demand his extrad ition and and just didn't want to hear about anything else, didn't talk about anything else. He kind of started presenting like Putin, you know, like I I I I believe what I believe, some of it may be true, some of it may be conspiracy theory. Um and that was my experience of him. I mean I mean you write about this transformation in him. I mean , what was your impression at the time that you have to reflect on about what happened? You know, there something happened. There was some attempt to you know bomb the Parliament. Um and and and yet I also notice Turks who think like that was all false flag, you know. Uh you know, th I you hear a million different things. Um but something clearly did happen. Um how did he change um because of this event uh that also, by the way, coincided with the year that Brexit and Trump happened, so the world is taking a pretty dark turn. I think he genuinely felt threatened. And then I think that he made use of a of a glorious opportunity , which echoed, you know, what happened after many military coups in Turkish history, which is that they sort of remake everything. Um, they put people in jail, they start all over. Um, but it was much worse with what he did . But I think that, you know, if you look at the number of threats that in his mind he was he was facing, it was this war with the Gulen movement. Most people do believe the Gulen movement was involved in that military coup. I think that it's very they they suspect that yes, he might have known about it earlier, he let it happen, then he knew he could take advantage of it. But that war between Erdogan and the Gulan movement was absolutely real. And it was there a lot of people in the country really resent the Gulan movement. So I mean there have been tons of things written about it. Um it's just very difficult to understand and I think getting your head. Yeah. It's a very weird, fascinating movement, trust me. I tried to sell lots of magazine stories about this many, many years ago and it was hard because people couldn't really get their their head around it. But but by now it's quite well known what what they were about. Um but I think also, you know, he saw Muhammad Morsi in Egypt opposed in 2013 , and he believed that it was possible, or Turks believed it was possible that the Americans were involved in that as well, and this is a Muslim Brotherhood guy. You know, you have a belief in Turkey on the left, on the right, basically across the board that the Americans have always been involved in military coups in Turkey or played some sort of role. So I think that just speaks to a broad fear. Um and and then I think there were also in 2013 the Gesi Park protests, which, you know, might not seem that threatening from the outside. You know, you think, oh, he's a big guy, he's a strong man, whatever, he can just deploy the military and put them all down. It it was deeply threatening Yeah, this was like people occupying this uh green space, it was gonna be demolished, it was the last re maining green space, just so people know and and it be grew to thousands and thousands of people upset with what had been happening in Istanbul in the country I I yeah, I see that. And I guess I to just to to pull it up to today and then I want to get to the neighborhood with uh uh one more question. Um how do you know you look at Erdogan today and look, you know, uh he's still a key player, uh and almost an indispensable man on the world stage. He in Syria, Ahmed al Shahra, uh a guy he backed is now you know in charge of that country instead of Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, you know, Israel's making noises about attacking Turkey next after Iran. We'll see if that happens given what happened in Iran. He's you know barely skates through elections but he does. Um uh the the Kurdish issue is, you know, up and down, like there's a peace deal with the PKK, but there's still these concerns about the Kurds in Syria having Power? Is he have a strategy that he's implementing in Turkey and in the region? Or is this a man that is just a survivor's had to react to a million things in in an opportunistic way and some of them work and others don't? Um how much do you think he's building something and has this kind of idea of what Turkey is and should be in the region versus he's just a very canny political survivor? No, I think they had a vision for Turkey in the region and as uh what if you say middle power, I don't think they like that term, but as a regional power, I think they've had a vision for a long time. I think they've been building up their defense industry. I think they've obviously, as I said, extending themselves uh throughout the region. I think they also did that for business interests. I think they did that um as a way to just uh shore up their power and I think it it works in the sense that I think some people in Turkey probably can imagine who will would come after them at this point because he has successfully taken over basically all of the institutions of the country. Um he has repressed about 40% of the population. Um and at this point he's now taken to meddling in elections. But I think in terms of the bouncing back and being a sort of canny, flexible domestic leader, I think he's he's just reacting to events at home and he's happy to shift. He was a liberal looking leader in the beginning, then he became allied with a right wing party around 2015. And so, you know, he was looking at a Kurdish opening in in his first eight years in power and then he was he turned against it. Wherever he saw the mood of the country or you know, his own political fortunes shifting, he would shift also. And he'll do it again. I mean, he has now put the country just in a terrible , terrible economic situation. And that is the trap. I don't see the way out of that. I mean, I was just in Turkey in March. The people in my book who loved him for all of these years suddenly are shattered people , including one of my characters, Hussein. Their self-esteem, their sense of self, and also their belief in Turkey's great future and their children 's future is now gone. And I think that that is um a a br is very, very new for him. And I think it's I don't think he has a way out of it. So I think it will be interesting to see to see where we go. I think the the question that you have and I have is what about the opposition? What happened? Yeah. Yeah. And at this point, what what exactly can they even do, given how much he's repressing them? Aaron Powell Well, the the last thing I want to ask you is um the the neighborhood itself is fascinating and and and one of the things I love about your writing and your journalism is that you don't exclude people. I know we just spent a long time talking about Erwan. Um And the question I want to ask you is I love this role of Mutar. So people understand this is kind of like you're it's not just like you're the kind of mayor of the neighborhood. You you literally people come to you with every problem, like from, you know, I don't want my daughter to marry this person to, you know, where can I get this document? And it it's a very old feeling form but it's a form of democracy in a way. Um it's it's just people constantly trying to have solve these problems and survive. Uh I hesitate to say resilient because I know a lot of people who hate being called resilient because it makes it seem like it's not hard. Um but with all this change, like you just see these people working it out, you know. And sometimes they're helping each other, sometimes they resent the you know new Syrians or what have you, but but it is human beings just in in a somewhat democratic way, just keeping this neighborhood moving. And the question I want to ask you is we just talked about the the, you know, decline of democracy in some ways under Erdogan, uh which is undeniable. I I I've changed how I think about democracy. It's there's no such thing as this is a democracy and this isn't. Like we're everything's a spectrum. You know, like America right now is very not democratic in tons of ways, and kind of democratic in others, right? But did you learn something about democracy itself by just focusing in on this local neighborhood and now human beings experience democracy. You know, the human beings that may not have a stake in you know how Erdogan's policy is going in Syria well beyond the refugees, so maybe that's not the right one. But like the the the the h how did how did that local viewpoint of democracy change how you think about the concept itself? Aaron Ross Powell Well this was why I found this neighborhood interesting because they were a bit on the margins. No one in my neighborhood was a member of the media that was being oppressed, or of the academics, or or the Kurds, or maybe the judiciary, the judges who were all being um fired or transferred. These people were a little bit on the margins, and many of them supported Erdogan, about 75% of the neighborhood did, and then there was a 25% that did not. But they weren't, their lives were not directly affected. And what I think was the benefit of failing to finish my book in a in a normal amount of time was that I got to go there for ten years and I got to see how all of these people changed and and evolved over those years. And what I found fascinating, and I think would be fascinating to Americans as well, is that you might disparage some of these people who vote for the autocrat, but what you're not really prepared for is how they are actually processing what's happening to them and the moment when it strikes them that their lives have changed. And it does. And I think the the chapter in the book that is somewhat hopeful, although it was um, you know a a while ago now is is 2019 because what happened in my neighborhood was that it was the the Istanbul election. There was uh AKP was running their candidate. They had run Istanbul for twenty-five years, and then there was the opposition candidate Ekram Imamolu, and he won. And it was the first time AKP had been defeated in a very important election in the Istanbul election. And then the AKP tried to s claim that there were election irregularities and they called a second election. And everyone in my neighborhood, even his supporters, were so insulted. You know, they said, what does he think we're stupid? Does he not realize? Does he not think that we realize what he's doing? And it was a very funny kind of macho reaction in some respects. And they s they started saying, you know, we're going to teach him a lesson. We're just going to teach him a lesson this time. And then the ne ighborhood actually voted for the opposition party, which they had not voted for for maybe in in all of their lives, just to show Erdogan that they were not going to lose their voice. And an interesting thing about Turkey is that it has always had free elections. And this is the one thing everybody has had, and they love to vote there. I mean, it's really a great pleasure to witness election day in Turkey. And so they they fought back in that in that instance. Imamolu became mayor. Of course Imam is in jail now. Now he's in jail. Um now he's in jail. But I think that when we think about people's psychologies in the age of authoritarianism, I think you know, the verdict is that we don't really know what's happening, how people are feeling, and what exactly they are going to react to. And you're right , in a neighborhood like that, in an old Ottoman in these neighborhoods in Istanbul, they still work together to figure things out. They're out in the street, they're talking to each other face to face. I mean this was also what was appealing to me because I was online all the time. Yeah. And they're still talking to they're still passing on information in this face to face way, which I think is is a lesson for all of us as well. Um so, you know, I do I do have hope for Turkey. Um I I just I simply do. It's it's I think also one thing to consider about characters like Erdogan, and and this is really an open question. You know, he loves elections too. So he has put his main rival in jail. This was also an unprecedented move. Um but will he return the country to some sort of of real elections? I think that's that's a still a possibility.