Distributed Organizing and Future Campaigns

Welcome back to Pod Day of the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rives. So, Ben, I genuinely thought ht Trump mig stage some sort of like dramatic military operation for the day after his White House correspondence speech to match the 2011 Obama bin Laden operation weekend. I didn't see this coming. No. Not that it was staged. No. But it was bad. But it was dramatic. Not that it was staged. I I uh it was bad. It was bad. First of all, it's always bad. Violence is bad. Violence is bad. Don't you hate feeling like you have to like always repeat that line? No shit, it's bad. Yeah. And by the way, you're just it's just it's idiotic, it's wrong, and it doesn't do anything to help what that guy seemed to say he cared about. No, it's gonna help Trump politically. I did think that I'm just gonna go there, Tommy. Like the uh this is not a Trump point, actually. And I feel bad that that was like a unsettling potentially scary situation. It is also the case that that ballroom is like about like a football field walk down a densely carpeted hotel room, past magnom magnometers, down a flight of stairs or an escalator into a heavily secured cavernous ballroom. And so let's just say some of the media's putting itself at the center of this as if they survived like, you know, the battle of the bulge was the that was the part of the discourse that I mean yes, I expect the Republicans to cynically blame Jimmy Kimmel or whatever and that's always frustrating, but like the number of people that acted like they just went through, you know, like literally uh the battle of the bulge here was uh that much to me. I look I I don't blame the reporters for being scared. I would be scared shitless if all of a sudden there's gunshots going off. But like the the Republicans who were trying to compare what happened over the last weekend to Butler, like that's a crazy comparison. A bullet hit his ear. Yeah. As you said, this guy was nowhere near the math Trump. But yeah. If he'd done this thing like thirty minutes earlier, he might have had a lot of people in range to fire at. You never know. That's the scary like scenario. Trevor Burrus Well, this guy uh clearly had no idea what he was doing. I mean, uh look, there there there are serious questions actually that are interesting about why there keep being these kind of security breaches, close calls. By the way, there were a bunch in the Obama years. Bullets hit the White House. Didn't throw a grenade like it got pretty close to Trump or to Bush at one point too. This event, we should just say, is not a very secure event. No. It i it actually is in the ballroom. I g I guess from the secret service standpoint, they secured that ballroom. That's where the president's gonna be, right? President doesn't walk in through the mags. He comes in through like an underground parking garage or something and is suddenly in a secure ballroom. But the Capitol Hilton is this gigantic complex that anybody's staying there, like eat they don't have to be attached to the dinner, they can wander through the lobby. And there's always like little sub parties on the exterior range. It's like not not sure that this event uh like this event is already past its expiration date. Oh yeah it's cursed. And now it's like this is another point that like maybe don't have this event at this big non secure hotel where lunatics can walk in off the street and yeah, you may secure the ballroom but somebody could get that secret service agent, you know, thank God there was a uh bulletproof vest. Yeah, it's um it's weird. By the way, thank you everyone who subscribed to uh Podsay the World on YouTube wherever you get the show. We solemnly pledge to you to never attend the White House Correspondence Dinner. And also, if we do and, there is an incident, we will point the camera uh at wood atwards. At word, yeah. Not at our old ass faces. Real quick. Are the Red Sox worse than the Mets? I think the Mets are worse. We just fired like our entire staff. The Mets have scored two runs or less in I think more than half their games and have nine wins. Okay. And the biggest payroll in major league baseball. Uh speaking of bad, do you see Trump's gonna put his own face on the US passport maybe? I do not yeah. I uh I'm just I'm gonna check I carry around a passport wallet in case I need to flee at any uh moment. Um and I'm gonna t check my expiration date. Okay, you're good to go. Okay, some live podcast. That's good. That's uh that's hopeful for everybody. So great show today. We're gonna start with uh the peace talks or lactora between the US and Iran, what the end game for this war might actually look like. We're gonna talk about the latest uh data about the global economic impact and then more data and concern about the dwindling US. mun.itions stockpiles will also cover Vice President J.D. Vance's very subtle attempts to uh spin and duck accountability for this war. Have you caught this at all? Have you have you seen any of this? No, I I have you kidding? I delight to this is what the algorithm is feeding me. It's not giving me the White House Correspond Center, it's like JD Vance. It's funny. I talked to some MAGA people in when I was in DC last weekend who were all remarking on how uh brazen Vance is spinning and all the others around Trump are spinning, how opposed they were to this war. We'll get to it. Uh we're also covered the latest from Lebanon. Uh then we're gonna talk about King Charles' trip to the US, the highlights, the lowlights, the bizarre sexual nuendo, uh his speech to a joint session of Congress. Um then we're gonna talk about the spiraling security situation in Mali after the government came under attack from an al Qaeda linked terrorist group over the weekend. Uh we're gonna share with you some more examples of egregious corru ption of U.S. foreign policy because it's an endless story. Uh and finally, a wild story about CIA operations in Mexico. Got drug cartels, there was a tragic car accident, uh, Mexican president Claudia Shanebaum's kind of delicate balance between sovereignty and nationalism and uh dealing with Donald Trump. So very fun for her. And then Ben, you did our interview today. What'd you uh what'd you talk about? I did. Uh there's a group called DHub Democracy Hub that is releasing an anti-authoritarian toolkit. This is an effort to learn from activists around the world about what's working in the fight against authoritarianism. So I took two people, actually my friends, Federica and Nick, who are both activists themselves, who helped put this together. You know, we talked about the value of this kind of exercise, uh, how they went about it, some of the lessons about how to do social media better, how to have uh networks of influencers, how to kind of mobilize people, how to do a kind of distributed form of organizing where you're not trying to control the message everywhere, but you're trying to give people enough guidance that they're coordinated, but enough freedom that they can run campaigns that make sense where they are. Um so lessons learned that can be applied around the world for how to fight authoritarianism. Gotta give them the D hub. Those uh dictators uh excellent definitely gonna check that out all right let's start with Iran um so this US Iran ceasefire it's kind of holding, right? But there's 900 pounds of hylean rich uranium still sitting in Iran. Straight or Hamuz is closed. Huge parts of the global economy are just paralyzed and there's seemingly no end in sight. Uh other than that, it's good. Um on Saturday, Trump canceled his negotiating team's trip. And forth to be giving a document that was not good enough. And uh so we'll deal by telephone and they can call us anytime they want. Again, we have all the cards. They have no military left, practically. They have no leaders left . We don't know who the leaders are. Nobody knows who the leaders I don't think they know who the leaders are very important. We're not gonna be traveling 15, 16 hours to to have a meeting with people that nobody ever heard of. Traveling takes too long , too expensive. I'm a very cost-conscious person. They are fighting with each other. It's tremendous in fighting. They're probably fighting for leadership. In many cases, I think they're fighting not to be the leader because we knocked out two levels of leaders but uh I'll deal with whoever we have to. Interestingly immediately when I canceled it within ten minutes we got a new paper that was much better. They offered a lot but not enough. I love this idea that the the cost we're all worried about is like JD Vance's Ryanair ticket to Islamabad. Axios reported that Iran has offered a more limited deal, maybe that was referencing there, that would reopen the Strait of Homo's if the U.S. ends the blockade and ends the war , uh it punts all the nuclear talks down the road. That's nothing. No, it's a good problem. Uh I suspect this is kind of gonna be the kind of deal Trump ends up being forced to take. But interestingly, uh Se,cretary of State Marco Rubio came out of his uh post-Iran war hiding wherever he's a witness protection program he's been in since he went to the sticks on Capitol Hill and was like, Israel made us do it, and then it ran away and then didn't speak again for a month. Um but here he is on F ox News kind of shitting on the kind of deal we just described. Let's watch. Us, that's not opening the straits. Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it. The Straits is basically the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon that they're trying to use against the world. And they're bragging about it. That's exactly what's happening, Mark. Seems like they're doing it. Guess what? They weren't doing that before the fucking war. Yeah. Also it sounds like they have a lot of cards, as described by Mark Rubio. Um so Ben, as we all know, there's nothing better in life than when you have like shitty plans, like some shitty dinner and it gets canceled. So uh Iranian foreman Surabas Arachi, he used that time he got back to fly to Russia, he went to see Vladimir Putin, he told Riaus thatsian state med Iran is quote standing up to the world's greatest superpower and that the US has a request to talk because it has quote not achieved a single one of their goals, and that Iran is considering whatever they put forward. Uh Putin said, quote, we'll do everything that serves your interests and the interests of all the people in the region in order to ensure that this peace is achieved as soon as possible. Uh I also am sure you caught Ben, the German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz weighed in saying that, quote, an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership , especially by these so-called revolutionary guards, that nation being ours. Yes. On Tuesday, Trump posted this weird message on Truth Social. He said, quote, Iran has just informed us that they are in a state of collapse. They want us to open the Hormuz trade as soon as as possible they try to figure out their leadership situation, which I believe they'll be able to do. I love the idea of some Orion official is calling Trump being like, Uncle sir, you did it. You got us. Uh I think that message was sent one minute before the stock market opens So Ben, um two things. I'm curious what you make of Arachi's trip to see Putin in the Russian role. Like Russia could be trying to facilitate a deal. Putin could be trying to sell some weapons. Either way, he seems to be saying, I'm here, I'm a player in this, uh, you gotta deal with me too. And then on the end game, like the Trump administration seems to think that their leverage is keeping the blockade in place long enough so that Iran Iran runs out of storage for its oil and basically has to shut down its wells and kill off its own industry. Uh it's not clear how long that would take, how much storage capacity they have left, and ultimately this is a game of economic chicken that will crush Asian economies, poor countries, the Iranian people, but probably won't matter to the IRGC because they will uh enforce their will at gunpoint. So I don't know. I don't get it, but what do you make of this play? I think it we just have to name, because sometimes our media is incapable of doing this, what a complete abject fucking failure, catastrophic decision this was by Donald Trump, and that he can't spin his way out of that. On the eve of the war, he was talking about regime change and destruction of the nuclear program entirely and getting Iran ian people rising up. Ga you know, Galiboth, the speaker of the parliament, he remember we were describing him as hot, you know, just like uh America's hot, you know, like he's a hot option. He clearly has decided because he's been so humiliated and he's failed so miserably and was led down a rabbit hole by BB Netanyahu that was so destructive. He's just trying to grasp this is a man, Donald Trump, that like ten days ago we did an emergency podcast because he told the world that there was a deal and that the straits were open forever and they were gonna get rid of the dust and all these things. Right. None of that was true. Right. And so like it's hard to even Now he's clearly decided that his narrative is gonna be their leadership is so disrupted, they don't know who's in charge. The foreign minister is the same fucking foreign minister that was meeting with Whitkoff and Jared before the war. And he's in Russia. How is this guy saying that there was regime change when Abbas Arachi is literally the same guy showing up representing the same regime with the Supreme Leader's son, and then they start dunk on how hurt he is. Well, he's the fucking Supreme Leader, and and he's thirty years younger than his father was, and and the IRGC's calling the shots and even little Marco has to acknowledge that they're running the straight of four moves. So we need to just create some space to just this is not sane. This is failing, right? Now, let's move on. Like what happens now? I think you're right. This is hurting everybody at this point. Like it's hurting the United States, like it it is hurting our economy, it's hurting the Iranian people, it's hurting the global economy. Everybody wants out of this war. And the question is who is just gonna decide that they can spin like Iran won this war. Like the IRGC, like like status quo anti now controls the Strait of Hormuz. And if the big concession they have to make to end the war is opening up an international waterway that was open before the war, like I think that they take that position. Donald Trump is just trying to figure out how to spin his way out of it, that it's a win, even if he doesn't get them to like make a whole bunch of concessions at the negotiating table. And if you look at Putin, he can smell that this is a humiliation of the United States. He's trying to insert himself into this. He's trying to kind of play the role of peacemaker. Trump is the crazy man who starts wars now. Do you see that the Russian some Russian super yacht worth like half a billion dollars just kind of cruise through the Strait of Hormuz this week? Yeah. No IRGC left it alone. Yeah. Putin's flexing. This is Putin and Shi are looking at this and they're like, this is gonna have geopolitical reverber ations for a generation. The Gulf countries are splitting apart and hedging and gonna move in the direction of Russia and China. The Iranians are like their , you know, uh their their closest ally in the region now controls the strait that's of you know the Russia and China want that waterway open so like I think they're probably telling the Rhine's like hey can we wrap this thing up but at the same time they're gonna be thinking about how can we take advantage of the fact that the United States was just revealed to be incapable of collapsing the Iranian regime with military power. Yeah. Uh well yeah. When your opponent shoots himself in the foot, it's a good time for a road race. Yeah, so the Axios a couple of like data points to back up what you were just saying. Axios has a report out this week that Trump aides are concerned. He's getting drawn into a frozen conflict where the US will just be forced to keep a ton of military assets in the Middle East to enforce this blockade while the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for months and harms the global economy. Like yeah, guys. Yeah, that's what's happening. Uh Reuters had a report that the U.S. Intel agencies are studying how Iran would respond if Trump just declared a unilateral victory. Definitely what's going to happen. And I think they want to know if like these guys will kind of walk away and let it be, or if they're gonna dunk all over them, I guess we'll find out. Uh meanwhile, I mean the economic cost is going up. So gas prices on Tuesday in the US rose to their highest level in four years. So the average uh d gallon is now four eighteen. But outside the U.S., as we've talked about many times, the economic impact is massive. So some data points. In China, car sales are down. Uh the cost of plastics are up because they are petroleum-based, and that has led to factories shutting down, people are out of Um according to the Financial Times, the IMF forecasts that the economies of Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar will contract this year, the latter by up to eight eight point six percent, while growth in Saudi Arabia and the UAE will slow but remain at about 3%. The US might have to provide the UAE with a currency swap line to help them bail out of some financial difficulties. There's cooking oil shortages in India. Interest rates are going up around the globe. Uh the world's largest condom maker is increasing prices by thirty percent because of supply chain issues. And then today, Ben, um the UAE announced it would be leaving OPEC, the oil cartel. So the UAE is the third largest producer in OPEC that's gonna leave OPEC with 13% less capacity. I think this is probably less of an economic impact than just sort of like a another sign of the UAE and Saudi Arabia splitting on a bunch of stuff. Yeah. Uh and the reshuffling of alliances that you were just hinting at. But what did you make of that move from the Emirates? So I think like the global economic fallout is going to be profound and long-lasting and is going to lead to this continued hedging that countries are doing. How can I protect myself against the United States? Like first it was tariffs and now it's this war. Like, how can I have supply chains that are more secure and not vulnerable to like some crazy thing Donald Trump might do? Um and and so that everyy countr's gonna make their own calculation. Now the the UAE one is really interesting. Um so OPEC has generally been this cartel of uh major oil producers that produces about a quarter of the world's uh fossil fuel energy and the Saudis have generally called the shots, and the Saudis like to keep prices high um because it keeps their coffers filled. The UAE has a more diversified economy, um, and therefore they care less about necessarily like, you know, keeping the price at a certain point. They want to produce more. They would like to expand into more markets. They want to get the most out of, by the way, oil while they can because they see the writing on the wall that down the line it's gonna be a clean energy economy. So they have some short term interests in having some freedom of action. But the main thing I think that's happening here is that the Emiratis like or le the leader of the UAE is Muhammad bin Zayed. He used to be super tight with MBS, Muhammad bin Salman. They've had a massive falling out that we've talked about in the last couple of years. It's manifested in almost the two militaries that went to war together in Yemen, fighting each other in Yem en. They're backing different sides of the Sudan civil war. The Emiratis are kind of all in with the Abraham Accords and the Israelis, and much more you know, hawkish on Iran. The Saudis, no fans of the Iranians, but you know, have been a little bit hedged. Right. And so I see this as a personal flaw between MBS and MBZ that is fascinating. If anybody could ever make the you know like a Netflix show about those guys falling out, I'd watch that. Um but it's also this kind of geopolitical splitting. Like the Gulf states tried to project this kind of unified front through the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC, and that you know, that's Qatar, UAE, Saudi, uh, Kuwait, Bahrain, they're now moving in different directions. And again, it mirrors what's going to happen globally, where every nation is just going to increasingly, in this kind of crazy, dangerous, nationalist transactional world, kind of look out for itself. The Emiratis want to like , you know, produce more sell without having to like check it through OPEC. The the Saudis are trying to kind of keep prices up to fund MBS's Vision twenty thirty and all these things. City somewhere, yeah. And and and Socrates. Trevor Burrus But the i it's an emblematic of an unraveling set of global arrangements. And I think that the Iran war will be seen from history as a massive accelerant on the kind of unraveling of all these different institutions and ways of doing things. And part of that unraveling are institutions or the belief from other countries that the US can or will protect them. Yeah. And now there's increasing data data about concern that the US can't protect itself because of these munitions shortages we've talked about uh in the wake of these repeated conflicts with Iran. So uh there's some more data on this. The Center for Strategic and International Studies or C SIS, they released a report that walked through some numbers. Then there was some great reporting. Uh it was first Alex Ward at the Wall Street Journal The major concern is not that we're gonna run out of bullets in this war. It's about the next war, especially if there's one with China. For example, uh, let's start with Tomahawk missiles or T LAMs. These are precision long-range cruise missiles that usually get fired from ships or submarines that could be as as far as fifteen hundred miles away from the target. The U.S. launched at least a thousand of them against Iran, which is about ten times the number the Pentagon buys every year for the low, low price of $3.6 million each. Um it'll take years to replace them at current rates. But also, Ben, they require rare earth elements and other like advanced electronic components that China has proven they can choke off. Um and in previous war games about a conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, they found that the US exhausted supply of Tomahawk missiles in a couple days or weeks. So with the supply already down, that's not good. Uh there's a similar missile, like similar uh uh a missile used in similar use cases called the joint air to surface standoff missile. The US has used twenty-three percent of that stockpile. These are fired from planes, uh, but they cost again two point six million dollars each. We fired about a thousand attack em missiles in this war. Remember there were there was a hot debate over whether the US should give U Ukraine uh attack em missiles. So those are offensive weapons. And then again we're running out of interceptor missiles for missile defense systems . That includes uh a third of what are called SM6 interceptors, nearly half of the SM-3 variant, more than 50% of patriot interceptors, and 80% of THAAD interceptors. That's a lot of jargon and gibberish. Just know that the pri ces on those bad boys range from four million dollars to twenty eight million dollars a pop, depending on the missile and the variant. Altogether, uh some U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that holy replacing those stockpiles could take up to six years. So that's a long term problem that will take a while to fix. And that is apparently one of the things worrying JD Vance, who once again dispatched his minions uh to the Atlantic to tell them Jacob Reese is concerned . About the war from the stockpiles, the accuracy of information Trump is getting from Pete Heggseth and the Pentagon. Again, Ben, I'm just I'm blown away by how brazen these leaks are. It just shows you that that for all the facade of Trump's a genius and we blew up the Iranian Navy or whatever, they know that this war has been a disaster. Because the the degree of ass covering here through leak is, you know, even by Washington standards, it makes you blush a little bit. I I think when you look at costs, uh the like I just focus on the practical literal costs and then the geopolitical costs. On the practical costs, like the these numbers are are these billions and billions of dollars. Like that is ACA subsidies that are not going you know, that's real health care that people need. Those are that's nutrition assistance. That's like it god forbid we ever do get our shit together for like a universal basic income? Like we just spent billions of m dollars and are gonna have to spend another round of billions of dollars to replace things that Donald Trump and Pete Hexeth could fire off in a six-week excursion, w isn't that what Trump called it? To do to do nothing other than close the Strait of Hormuz so that you can then try to reopen it again and declare victory. And yeah, we blew up a bunch of Iranian things and we killed an eighty-six-year old Supreme Leader. Like, but like the amount we spent is like more than what was once the annual budget of USAID. Yeah. Which did tons of good all around the year. Which we heard that was so wasteful, right? That's a really good analogy. Then I just want to like hone in on the geopolitical cost, because it ties in what I was saying about countries having to make different decisions. What you'll often hear from the national security types, you know, people that you and I like hung out with a lot over the years, uh th that all these munitions, all these systems are really important, you know, in Asia, right, to deal with China and North Korea. And sometimes people hear that and they think, oh, you warmongers, like you want all these weapons to fight the Chinese. No. The the they're there as a deterrent. Like you want those weapons in place to to to prevent a war. You know, so it's like hey, this looks super scary if you're China and you're thinking about invading Taiwan or you're Kim Jong and you're thinking about making a move on South Korea, like the Americans have all these fancy systems. We don't want to fuck around with that. Let's just take the one case of South Korea. South Korea is getting hit about as hard as anybody because of shortages, right? They have shortages of petrochemicals, they have shortages of plastics, they have potential disruptions like to all manner of different industries from this war. Like they're suffering economically, never mind higher fuel prices. Meanwhile, the country that was their you know closest ally, the United States, also moved the missile defense systems that were protecting them from potential North Korean nuclear attacks. Yeah, we yanked the Thaddeus. We moved that to the Middle East because we needed that for our Iran war. We moved these other munitions. So we simultaneously left them more vulnerable to the nutcase like chain smoking uh autocrat that lives to their north or to the Chinese and ruin their economy in the process. If you're South Korea, aren't you going to start making some other decisions about maybe you need to cut your own deal with the Chinese or the North Koreans? If you're Taiwan, how are you feeling about you know the American security umbrella protecting you against a Chinese invasion? So this this stuff is going to reverberate for years. And and Trump can spin and JD Vans can leak. can't change that. Al also when the US put that THAAD system in South Korea in the first place, the Chinese flipped out and they did all this economic retaliation. They essentially banned Chinese tourists from going to South Korea and like crushed the tourism business in the entire country. So yeah, they we got screwed on the front end and they're getting screwed on the back end here. One other just dumb thing, Ben. Do you see remember that guy Paolo is in poly who we talked about a couple weeks ago? He was like the old like 80s buddy that Trump would like hang out with at fifty-four or whatever. It was like some model. Good guy. Great guy. Uh apparently he has been recommending that FIFA kick Iran out of the World Cup and put Italy in. Um did you see this? I saw this. I I think it's FIFA needed to be further corrupted and politicized. And even the Italians were like, No, this is f completely stupid. What are you talking about? Well, first of all, the Italians flaming out of the World Cup, I mean Tough the Italians themselves said we don't want to like get in this But but also like what w I hate that like FIFA's already debased itself so much. They gave Trump that fake Peace Prize member that corrupt guy. Okay, I forget who runs FIFA did you see this today that he like demanded he wanted a motorcade in Vancouver as if analogous to the Pope or the president? 'Cause Canadians wouldn't give him a a full motorcade on the scale of like the president of the United States of the Pope or something. Anyway, break, break. Part of what I find so disgusting about this is like can't sports be like the last refuge of the cult like just like l like you start politicizing sports this way where it's like and not that it's always been pure, it's not. We've you you did a whole podcast on on how corrupt the World Cup is, but the idea that you're literally gonna say like hey, we don't like the Iranians ' Trcauseump decided to go to war with them. So we're kicking them out of the World Cup and you know uh everybody likes the Italians, so what's put them in there even though they flamed out in the European division. Right. Come on, man, like let's just watch the World Cup. Like what like the Iranian even if you hate the Iranian regime, like the soccer players didn't . Also they earned their way on that state. Bad news bears, man. Let them play. Finally, Ben, on paper, um there is still a ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hez But in practice, it's not really a ceasefire, it's more of like a de-escalation of the fighting that is still very much ongoing, uh just a lower intensity. For example, the Lebanese government said fourteen people were killed in Israeli attacks on Sunday alone. Uh an Israeli soldier was announced uh that he was killed on Sunday, two more were wounded on Monday. And the IDF has ordered a bunch more communities to evacuate, including ones outside of the current evacuation zone, so the f the war seems to be expanding. Uh the leader of Hezbollah said they would not, quote, relinquish its weapons or defenses, meaning they won't disarm. Um listeners also might have heard about the killing of a woman named Amal Khalil. She's a well known journalist for the Lebanese newspaper Lakbar. Uh she was driving with a photojournalist colleague in Southern Lebanon. The car in front of them got hit by an Israeli strike, so they took shelter in a nearby building. They were wounded. Uh, and they tried to get help, but an hour and a half later, the building they were in was struck again. Uh when the Red Cross tried to help her and her colleague, the IDF fired on them, and then they were forced to turn back. So Khalil is also reported receiving a death threat that she attributed to the IDF back in 2024. So this is just like this is one of those incidents that um would have been, I think, a global scandal before the war in Gaza, but now it almost feels priced in because the Israelis killed so many Gaza-based journalists that people are almost numb to it. Yeah. I mean I spent some time with this one because it was so egregious. I mean, she's a well-known journalist. You know, and and and she's trapped under rubble for hours, and these releases are literally like striking the rescuers trying to get to her. I mean this is like an assassination. Yeah it's indefensible. They know who she is. Like they have such total surveillance control over that part of Lebanon. They know exactly who she is. She's obviously also wearing press. They they they murdered this woman in front of the whole world and don't expect any significant outcry beyond people who are already upset about these things. And and that's outrageous, you know? And it does, I just I do wish like there's a like a very admirable instinct in among U.S. journalists to advocate for journalists in danger around the world, but it's usually journalists endangered inside of geopolitical adversaries of the United States, you know, advocating for Venezuelan journalists or Iranian journalists or Russian journalists, um, or certainly any American journalists. But like these people are doing the same job as you and yet you just I I like I I I and I'm not some journalists have been outspoken about these things. I'd love I'd just like to see like more voices raised because this is like this is look this is what this is the worst case scenario. You don't talk about political violence. I mean this is literally saying that like if we 'cause I some people I saw then say, well, she worked for like a newspaper media outlet. Like an extremist paper that was sympathetic to Hezbol So what? She's a fucking journalist. Like uh There's extreme extremist Israeli newspapers tied to like the idea of like you can't kill people. Yeah, I don't like Fox News. I don't think anything like bad should happen to those people. Like like this is that's I agree. Like so we just now assassinate journalists and we don't agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. It's like what are we talking about? Yeah. It was a horrible, horrible story. Uh reminded me of Sharine Abu Akla, another famous Palestinian American journalist who was killed during the Biden administration and no one did shit about it. Nothing. And it pisses me off to this day. Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry.me. You don't have to be unhappy at work to want something more. Success doesn't just happen and the most successful people in the world don't figure it out alone. They have mentors, coaches, and people guiding them every step of the way. That's where Strawberry.me career coaching comes in. Career coaching through Strawberry.me can help you get unstuck, can help you uncover what you really want in your job or life. Identify obstacles holding you back, develop a step-by-step plan, and turn your goals into a reality. The term coaching maybe sounds a little formal, but we've all had a mentor in our life or someone we worked with who really guided us or helped us understand our potential, what we wanted, what we didn't want. 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No matter what you pick, RIDGE has free shipping, a 99-day risk-free trial, and a lifetime warranty on all of their products. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at Ridge by using the code PSTW at checkout . Just head to ridge.com and use code PSTW and you're all set. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that Pod Save the World sent you . Okay, let's uh uh switch gears a little bit, Ben. So the Iran tensions we just talked about, those are the the backdrop and the mood music for King Charles's four-day visit to the US. Uh the visit is technically part of the uh America's two hundred fiftieth birthday celebrations because no party is complete without an aging monarch. Uh Charles and Camilla's visit is a thrill a minute. They attended a garden party, they looked at a beehive, then there's a quote literary event marking the one hundred th birthday of the children's character Winnie the Pooh. Uh really? Yeah. How about that? No word if they'll speak with uh Prince Harry or victims of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. A lot of calls on Charles to meet with some Epstein victims and talk about his brother, maybe, but anyway. Um, so this all comes though, uh as we've discussed. Prime Minister Kirst Armer is under attack from Trump on a daily basis for not fully backing or participating in the war with Iran. Uh recently there was a report about retaliation. There was a leaked memo, Pentagon memo that was floated where they talked about punishing the UK and the refusal to uh further participate in the war by revoking U.S. support for their possession of the Falkland Islands. Very 80s response there. This has also kicked up endless hand-wringing and discussion of the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK. The Financial Times reported that the UK's ambassador to the US told some students recently, quote, I think there probab I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States, and that is probably Israel. Very accurate Uh Charles also became uh the first British king to address a joint session of Congress. His mom the Queen did so in nineteen ninety one. Uh but Trump laid out the distinction in his remarks. Here is some of what he said. 1776 in our minds, we can perhaps agree that we do not always agree. As my Prime Minister said last month , ours is an indispensable partnership. We must not disregard everything that has sustained us for the last eighty years. Instead, we must build on it. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, NATO invoked Article V for the first time, and the United Nations Security Council was united in the face of terror, that same unyielding resolve is needed for the defence of Ukraine and her most courageous people. From the depths of the Atlantic to the disastrously melting ice caps of the Arctic, the commitment and expertise of the United States Armed Forces and its allies lie at the heart of NATO. I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward looking. America's words carry weight and meaning , as they have since independence. The actions of this great So as you could hear there, uh Charles didn't totally shy away from policy differences on climate change or NATO or Ukraine. And for context, um I think it probably sometimes seems to Americans like the royals are distinct from the government or kind of float above it. Uh in practice that's not the case. Like a royal visit like this is planned by number 10 Downing Street. His speech is thoroughly vetted, if not written by the government. It is functionally indistinguishable from a, you know, prime minister's visit. They just know that Trump loves the royal family and uh cares more about them and hopefully won't be as much of a dick. So that gets you to me to my question, Ben. I just I guess I'm I'm still c look obviously the shooting attempt thing on Saturday like kind of changes the vibes around all the stuff and you're like walking on egg eggshells for a while. Yeah. But like again, I don't get why Starmer's office sent King Charles in the midst of this war when Trump is calling Starmer, Neville Chamberlain every day, saying he's no Winston Churchill, just like humiliating the guy left and right. When we all know that I don't know, maybe a snub would lead to some actual fallout on policy, but like failing to push back on Trump is hurting Starmer politically and he just looks so weak and hapless. And I'm wondering when is Labour gonna cut the cord on this guy? Yeah, yeah. It is a fucking disaster. It is destroying the labor party. It really is. I mean, the he the reason Trump keeps coming back is cause he smells weakness. Like this is the most obvious thing in the world to see. Cure strengt It's like half-hearted always. Yeah, why is the you know King Charles is here as part of like the Star mer plan to charm Trump. Like it's it's it they're they're literally threatening to like try to give the Falkland Islands to their buddy Javier Mile down in Argentina. Like they've so little respect. And the lesson time and again is like Trump will respect you more if you punch him in the face, you know, than if you are continually scared of him. He's just gonna keep coming back. I think the sad thing about that speech is every clip that we played is absolute Pablum. Like we've heard this for you know our whole lives in politics 80 years and NATO is important , they sound downright edgy. You know, right. The fact that it sounds edgy that King Charles is like, and we shouldn't turnward and let's cooperate, and NATO is important, and we support the brave people of Ukraine, like like basically the most anodyne things that you would expect from your like lib, you know, liberal friend on online , like sound like like you know, King Charles is picking fights , you know. Um and and that's a that's a that's so if Starmer's fault is his weakness, that speech is is in is a good capsule of how much Donald Trump has reordered the world in a year and a half. Because we 're not for any the United States is not for any of those things. We're not for NATO. We're not for 80 years of cooperation. We're not for like looking outward. We're not for agreeing to disagree about things. Like that's crazy that we're so extreme that he's like he's like to talking your like his completely alcoholic family member and saying, like, remember how much fun we used to have taking walks together? We're for drinking after five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're for not being drunk at breakfast. Yeah. Um that's a really good point. I I I previewed some sexual tension at the top. So Trump did this event. They like welcomed Charles to the White House and he gave a little speech. Uh and Trump said something like how we was talking about his mother and how she would say, Look at Charles, he's so cute. My mother had a crush on Charles. Uh Charles is seventy seven. Trump is seventy-nine. You know, he looked so young compared to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I mean it's good to have a young, vigorous man up there. Trevor Burrus Young sausage fingered gentleman. Trump also couldn't but do like a Churchill bus shout-out . If you get the reference, you're too online. Yeah, you are way too online. Speaking of state visits, Ben uh CricketCon is back and bigger than ever, get your calendar out. Pause that pause this podcast, pencil in a trip to DC November 5th through 7th. Bigger stages, more panels. Bigger stages. Hotter speakers. Maybe even King Charles. Probably not though. Uh there'll also be live taping of shows you know and love a lot more. Go to crookedcon.com to sign up for updates. It'll be fun. We had fun last We had a good ass time. We did a fun panel. Uh okay, let's talk about uh the security situation in Mali. So over the last several years, we have covered this wave of coups across northern Africa, especially the Sahel region, started in Mali in 2020, then Guinea in 2021. It's a little outside of the Sahel, but you get my point. Uh Burkina Faso in 2022, then Niger and Gabon in 2023. These were distinct events across a large geographic area, but there were some common threats, like anger at corruption, uh weak and ineffective governance, anger at foreign military presences, especially the French. And the threat from Islamist extremist groups. Uh and With a little Wagner group sprinkling. Yeah, well as it went on, the French and the US security forces we got pushed out of the region. Uh the Russians came in. At the time it was the uh the Wagner mercenary group. Uh they got renamed after their uh their boss had a little aerial accident. Oh funny a grenade went off. And then they named the Wagner group, uh they called it the Africa Corps, which is what it's called now. So in twenty twenty four, uh the military leaders in Mali, Rikina Faso and Niger, they pulled out of ECHOAS, the regional alliance. They formed their own little alliance. And I think Ben, it's fair to say that the US-French approach that predated all of this was a disaster. Terrorism in the Sahel was getting worse, not better. Um, the security extre mist situation was getting worse, not better. But um things now in Mali are really, really bad. So over the weekend, an al-Qaeda-like extremist group called JNIM, they launched this coordinated series of attacks across Mali, including the Capitol Obamaco. They attacked the president's house. They attacked and killed the defense minister. There were militants, like videos of these militants just driving around big parts of the Capitol with no real opposition. Um, and these JNIM fighters also attacked the uh the Russian troops, the Africa Corps troops, who have proven uh over time to be worse than useless partners against is a counter-terrorism partner. Uh in fact, probably helped fuel the insurgency by just killing lots of civilians. Um, in the past few days, the Russians they got pushed out of some key parts of northern Mali that they had helped to retake back in the day. So it's a total humiliation. So this is very bad. Uh this group, JNIM, they were established in twenty sevente.en It's considered an Al Qaeda affiliate. But in this case they also coordinated with a separatist group re representing the Toreg ethnic minority. It's a traditionally nomadic group that got screwed out of political representation by French colonial lines because um they got divided up and they had no one no political representation so uh they have been you know basically waging an insurgency ever since um it got all got way worse again and uh Mohar Gaddafi used to hire these Touri fighters So another reason why that uh adventure in the Obama years was a disaster too. So Ben, I guess the question is like you see these images on TV, they look scary, it's horrible for the people living there, especially women and girls. Um I wonder how much of a threat it poses to the US, whether J and I M is just focused regionally, whether we should worry about them being more expansive like Al-Qaeda and whether there's anything the U.S. should be doing about it. Aaron Powell I mean, yeah, first of all, I I do think that the you know Mali was a place where, you know, around in the aftermath of Libya in part, and also just in part because of you know some extremist elements, like around 2012, 2013, things were getting very hairy there. And it the f it was a French intervention, literally, you know, French special forces went in, they kind of pushed out these jihad ist groups. They kind of formed the kind of backbone of uh propping up a government there. And and then, you know, there was kind of this model where the US had some counterterrorism capabilities, you know, we had and um you know intelligence gathering and probably a light footprint of some special forces in that region. And then the French were kind of the bigger footprint and training, security forces, things like that. Clearly didn't work. Uh you know, was a little too self-interested, created um, you know, its own forms of corruption. And you described well the dynamic thought these coups. I I I guess look, Tommy, I I I'm sure that there's some nexus to some people with wider ambitions beyond this part of Africa. But at the end of the day, I think one of the things we've learned about these countries is like these are at the end of the day inherently like local dynamics. You know, that that there are there are militias, some of them are more extremist, some of them like buy into like an Islamist ideology that is like repressive and but I I I I I think part of what has kind of contributed to the factors that have you know made this region more radicalized and violent is seeing every group of armed guys in land cruisers as like ISIS, you know, Cor or Osama bin Laden. What is needed are are are strategies and approaches that fit these countries and deal with their politics. And I don't claim I say this with tremendous amount of humility, I don't claim to know the exact formula to bring to Mali. I just don't think that's right, though. I I I think that these countries have internal dynamics that need different solutions rather than being seen as like a front in a global war on terror. Trevor Burrus It certainly hasn't helped to just have the only security relationship between the US and these countries to be like intelligence sharing or selling them weapons. Well, yeah, because like fed the conflicts, but I know I'm about to offer a solution that is not currently available, but I think that it also didn't make sense for the former colonial power to be the one that comes in because that feels an awful lot like colonialism if you're in Mali, right? This is why you need a United Nations. Like, this is why you need credible international institutions that can do like retro 1990s era missions like multinational pe acekeeping and conflict resolution and negotiation. Like this is a proving case. And by the way, it'd be good if the African Union did some of that, which they don't, because they don't really function either. And so I I I think what's really needed is is is multilateral systems and and institutions. Yeah. And until then, uh not great. Yeah, until then I think it's just gonna be this kind of game of thrones. Pretty bad. Pod save of the world is brought to you by Aura Frame. Aura Frame is the perfect Mother's Day gift to capture the chaos you put her through and the memories that came with it. Also, I just want to personally thank the Aura F frarame people because every year this copy reminds me that mother's coming up. Yeah. Now, unfortunately for me, I've already purchased my mother an aura frame. Me too. Because it was a massive hit. And if you're out there and you're thinking, oh man, what am I going to get my mom this year? Get an aura frame. Do it. You got you got a you've been going on vacations, mom would like to see that. 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And the company's chief strategy advisor, Eric Trump, President Trump's son. Congratulations to you both. Thank you so much for being here. So Eric Trump is like apparently like the chief advisor to a robotics company. And she's like, oh, that's totally normal. Like, so thank you, Maria, for that hard-hitting journalism. Uh, and then also Ben, we had uh discussed previously how some anonymous person uh had made more than four hundred thousand dollars by betting on poly market that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be deposed. Sure enough, it happens. That guy cashes out . Um, it turns out that the individual involved was a master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces who participated in the operation itself. Uh, he apparently was also not the butt brightest bulb on the tree since this guy transferred the money to Polymarket and back via his own Coinbase account, which is a US-based crypto company that verifies your identity. So you're gonna get nailed there, buddy. Uh not hard to track that one. So that said, Ben, I am going to place a bet on polymarket that that guy gets pardoned after watching these comments from Trump. Are you concerned that federal employees are betting on these prediction markets and potentially getting rich? Well, I don't know about it, but uh was he betting that they would get him or they wouldn't get him? It sounds like he was betting on his removal from office that Maduro would be removed. It sounds like he was involved in the operation. That's like Peter's betting on his own team. It's a little like Pete Rose. Pete Rose, he kept him out of the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. Now if he bet against his team, that would be no good, but he bet on his own team. Uh I'll look into it. Yeah. So uh the indifference. So 80s man, like the Pete Rose references. The indifference there could be also because uh Donald Trump Jr. is an advisor to both Polymarket and its number one competitor, Calci. So good stuff. Both of these things speak to a like tip of an iceberg of corruption, right? And and we get into this in the anti-authoritarian toolkit, the need to spotlight corruption, but also to explain it. So the the the Eric Trump thing, there is a degree of corruption happening with the Pentagon budget that we have no idea. If the Democrats get control of uh Congress, I would burrow in here because they want a one point five trillion dollar defense budget . You know, you got Eric Trump suddenly getting in the drone game, you know, uh and getting contracts from the federal government that his father controls and its father's sycophant at at the you know, Pete Hexeth is like in charge of this Department of War. But it's not just that. All these tech guys like who suck up the Trump, you know, Alex Carp, the head of Palantir, like s all these defense tech guys, you know, probably with Peter Thiel investments and stuff, like they are just feeding at the trough. Yeah. And they're just the the stuff they're throwing, you know, Eric Trump's way is a ton of money to you and me. A few hundred million dollars here, billion dollars there. These guys are probably walking away with tens of billions of dollars in contracts, right? So we gotta look at the defense uh budget. And then on the polymarket stuff, this is a you know it reminds me of like Abu Ghraib, where you know, like this guy is guilty as hell, but they're gonna punish the service member, but not how many people were making bets on polymarket do you think you know it's the same or how many people are shorting oil markets before Trump posts something, right? I I hope to God that there is some investigation by the SEC or some New York State authority on the stock market manipulation, the oil market manipulation, because otherwise, like what's the point of having these agencies? Aaron Powell Well and do you know I I don't even know the answer to this. Why isn't every Democrat like campaigning to shut down all these prediction markets? I don't know. Are they? I mean, I think some are I think was the c lay I've not dug into everybody's platform on this, but I think that's not a criticism. This is a piece of advice. You cannot find a more acute manifestation of corruption, then the people that controlling the government have the capacity to bet on their own actions on a prediction market. And and most of the actual business on these platforms is just an end run against state bans on sports betting. That is like their primary revenue. So yeah, it's it's a terrible idea. Uh I do not support it. Um finally Ben, let's let's uh turn to Mexico. So uh because US involvement there and a counter cartel operations, they've created this huge headache for Mexican president Claudia Shanebaum. Um the story uh starts on April 19th, so that two Americans and two Mexican invest investigators were killed after their car reportedly plunged off a cliff. I don't really it's hard for like I feel like there's more to the story we don't know, right? Yeah. Did they just drive off? Something happened. Yeah. It's like so there's so much we don't know. Yeah. But they were returning from a drug bust operation on a meth lab in the mountains uh of northern Mexico in the state of Chihuahua. So it has since been confirmed by some U.S. officials who spoke to the AP among other news outlets that they were CIA officers. This created big political and legal and foreign policy problems for Claudia Sheinbaum. Uh, under Mexico's constitution, foreign governments cannot conduct law enforcement or intelligence operations on Mexican soil. Um it's very sensitive, at least not independently, they need to be with the government or registered. It's a very sensitive sovereignty issue. It dates back many decades. There have been all these terrible incidents. And this became an intense focus under President Lopez Obrador, who a couple of years back, like 21 or 2020, passed legislation further restricting foreign law enforcement intelligence agents in Mexico. So again, fast forward to when this story broke earlier this month. Shane Bob initially says that she was not aware uh that American officials were participating in the operation. Um, she's basically held to that story . So far, she's like asked the US for more detail or clarification, but mostly blamed officials in Chihuahua um and threatened to reprimand them. It I think it's helped that the governor there is from the opposition party. Um, so Ben, I'm trying to like again, trying to figure out how to read this. Did the U.S. really not tell the Mexican federal government about this operation or register these individuals? We don't know. Was this like a don't ask, don't tell situation where the U.S is doing a lot of stuff. Um, Shane Baum gets told some general strokes, but not all of it, for deniability on the specifics. Like big picture, it's like definitely an example of how she is trying to balance between nationalism and sovereignty and then all the things Trump is demanding. Because as we've talked about before, Trump has threatened to conduct airstrikes on cartels in Mexico on Mexican territory. There's reports that the CIA has been flying surveillance drones over Mexican territory. God knows what else the CIA and the DEA are doing in Mexico that we don't know about. Um and so Shane Bomb is trying to fend off these crazier ideas while like not getting tariffed to hell. What did you make of this story and how like to read between the lines? I thought it was really important. I mean, the suggestion out of the fact pattern that we see is that there were two CIA agents that were down in this state in Chihuahua and they were not there under the approval of the Mexican federal government, that maybe they'd made some side deals with local officials or the governor and and that they were in some operation and then something went wrong. And I, you know, I do wonder how the car plunged off a cliff. Aaron Powell And by the way, a reason for that could be that the U.S. thinks that the federal officials are corrupt and the state officials are up and up, so they go around them. Yeah, it could be that they think that if we tell the federal officials they'll tip off the cartels or it's just faster to deal with that or it's kinda like how we deal with I don't know, hypothetically like Pakistan, you you know , it's it's just rough out there and we're just gonna have to do what we have to do and you know, we'll we'll we'll we'll let them know generically we're doing stuff over here in your tribal regions, but you know, we're not gonna tell you about what we're doing. Now, the here's why I think this is important. If there are these two CIA guys doing this, it t that tells me that this is happening. This is not the only place that they're probably CIA. That's my assumption, too. And so it suggests to me that we have moved the war on terror paradigm into Mexico, where you've got on the ground CI presence, some of that is partnered with local security forces, some of that may be freelance, some of that may be coordinated with the government, but that there's a kind of much more active confrontation with drug cartels. Now, people may say, well, that's good. We're fighting the drug cartels. Uh the war on drugs paradigm and the war on terror paradigm, neither of them have worked. And so fusing them uh is a little disconcerting to me. And and I feel like I saw this and I thought uh, you know, and I was singing this to our producer Alona before we recorded, like we've like Mexico dropped off the war list. You know, it's like, well, Cuba, Greenland. Good point. And this question of what are we doing? Are there covert operations happening? Are there CI operations? Could that lead to military action against the cartels directly? And then related to that, what does this mean for Claudia Shanebaum? Because she does not want to have that happen. She's made very clear she doesn't want US military engagement in her country. Um and and one way to do that is to look the other way and just kind of you know not pay attention to what the US government may be doing. But this event this episode makes that kind of untenable for her because she doesn't want to look feckless, right? And not in charge. And so it's going to create potential, you know, difficulties for her to manage through too. This is one of those stories you put a pin in and say, I have a feeling we're gonna be talking more about Mexico. I have a feeling that there's more happening in Mexico than we're seeing. Yeah. And and like so far, she's given Trump a lot of concessions, like she extradited a bunch of drug leaders for prosecution. She put national guard troops on the border. I think she slapped a big tariff on the Chinese to be in line with U.S. tariffs. She cut off oil shipments to Cuba. Um, so like she's given Trump a lot of what he w ants, but even when there have been major cartel operations, like the takedown of that guy El Mencho that we talked about a while back, Trump's reaction wasn't to praise them necessarily. It was like he got mad at the images of violence and chaos that were on TV afterwards and started demanding that the Mexican authorities do more. So she's like just in this squeeze. And you know, there was an interesting piece, I think it was a Wall Street Journal had a great profile on her in this moment and like all that she's doing to manage this guy. She talked about how she has a security meeting at six a.m. every day. Then she does this seven thirty A.m. press conference every day. And then just like works into the night. Like she's like just grinding. And is getting pressured by Trump, but also getting pressured by uh President Lopez Obrador, her her like political benefactor mentor, who is, you know, on paper, left the scene, is writing a book, but he's pressuring her to break with Trump, to cut deals with China , to cut deals uh with Canada demanding more nationalism. And she's like met with Trump once, but had nearly 20 phone calls with the guy. So there's clearly all this behind the scenes like management happening um and a relationship that actually seems genuinely cordial. But um, you know, as you know with Trump, like you're always one comment away from the thing being offended. Yeah. No, and I she's just trying to manage through it. And she's been firm with Trump when she needs to be. I like Claudia Shane Bam a lot. I and by the way, Amlo, you know, Lopez Overdo, her predecessor, kind of rich for him because he was pretty chummy chummy with Trump too. Like he was like Mr. Fellow Populist. I'm just a leftist populist. Um so I but I get it. Like he's reflecting the kind of left-wing nationalism that you would expect from that political party in Mexico. I I I should just say the problem is that this strategy won't work. Like the drug cartels are deeply entrenched. Trump's not gonna defeat them in two and a half years with some CIA operations. Strategy that far more aggressively just kind of goes after all their money sources. Like they depend on global financial networks. They have sprawling business and em and empires that go beyond Mexico. They control ports, you know, in different parts of the world. Like there are other ways at trying to shrink the cartels. Um, by the way, you could legalize drugs uh in this country to kind of take away uh the revenue that goes that way. I I personally favor that. Um but like uh you're not this isn't gonna work. Like e the peop the the idea that like some CI operations you know Mexico's a big country, like the drug trade is decades established, like it employs tens of thousands of people, like you're you you're not gonna beat them with like CI operation after CI operation. We're just killing off leaders. Like I just the kingpin strategies don't seem to work. They create chaos, they create the Sahel that we just stability. Yeah. We killed a lot of terrorists there, you know, Al Qaeda number three, down again. Yeah, doesn't always work. Uh all right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you're gonna hear Ben's interview about how to fight authoritarianism. We got a playbook for you, so stick around for that . Podse of the world is brought to you by Supremacy World War III. Supremacy World War III is a free-to-play grand strategy game that drops you into the heart of a modern global conflict. 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Offer valid for the next 30 days. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined uh by two friends of mine. Federica Vinci is a program coordinator and Nick Entipov is a project associate for Democracy Hub, uh DHub, a group that works to counter authoritarianism. Uh, they have created an anti-authoritarian toolkit, which is going to be a resource that activists and political leaders can use to defend against and ultimately overcome uh autocracies. So uh we're here to talk about the release of that project that uh I've had some interface with over the years. Um just a couple brief notes about you guys. Federica is also a board member for the Volt There Foundation. Um she worked on campaigns. She's increased women's participation in politics. Nick is a co-founder of Make Out, a project on gender, sexuality, and anti-discrimination in Belarus that empowers the LGBTQ community there. Um, has also been an activist against the authoritarianism in Belarus. And I met you both because you were both also Obama Foundation Europe leaders. So Nick and Feta, thanks uh for joining me today. Thank you, Ben. Thank you so much, Ben. So before we get into the toolkit, um I I I do wanna just kinda introduce people a bit to your journeys. Um and I guess I'll start with you, Feta. Talk about how did you come to DHub? You know, how how did you take a journey from being kind of a politician to someone who's more in this kind of activist space? Thanks a lot, Ben. So um I still remember the moment in which I realized that authoritarians were organizing all around the world. I was leading a transnational political party, it still exists, it's called Vault . And I remember that at one moment um all different Albertanian slash far-right parties were presenting in different countries around Europe a piece of law that forced women to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus before abortion. And I was shocked because I could see that like in and they were presenting it in Hungary and then at the same time they were presenting it in Italy. And at the same time they were presenting it in Spain and in Portugal and in France, and we on the other side we were trying to organize a transnational political party, and we didn't even know how to make people talk, the people that didn't talk the same language, they didn't speak the same language. And I was like, there must be something here that they are doing that we are not. So while I was thinking about this question, I was also I was also deputy mayor of my hometown back then. I was doing politics at the local level. I come across D Hub or whether better D Hub, Nika Kovac that we both know, comes across me and she talks to me about this organization that had as main aim the objective of creating a democratic playbook. So something that people that were fighting for democracy could use and replicate exactly in the same way that authoritarians were doing for their own autocracy. So I thought I thought that this exactly made sense and when she came to me and she asked me to join D Hub, I was like, look, I've heard I felt on my own skin that we needed something like this. And I'm and I was really more than happy to join this fight and starting writing. I mean starting producing and working with those people for the authoritarian for the authoritarian toolkit. Okay, so Nick, you had uh like a different experience. I think Feta, you described well the kind of awareness of this right wing, far right authoritarian kind of coordination. Nick, when I met you, you were dealing with a much more kind of visceral form of authoritarianism. Lukashenko, the autocratic leader of Belarus, has cracked down the opposition. You literally had to kind of exile um at first to Lithuania. What describe your journey from being in Belarus running an organization to D Hub. Yeah, thank you. My my journey, yeah, my journey to the D Hub, it's a bit different. Um you know, born in and raised in Minsk and under the under the regime Lukashenko, going to schools, washed with all propaganda. Um somehow I found this, I don't know, courage and some I don't know meaning in a way that something is not right. Something is not doesn't make any sense. And obviously maybe it's connected with my with my sexuality of a queer identity, I found this idea of liber uh liber ation inside me, uh liberation of my sexuality, liberation of my community, and liberation of my own country. Because back then I didn't understand how everything is so connected. And the fight for LGBTQ plus rights, it's also the fight for for for democracy. Um now five years later, yeah, I I lost uh kind of I lost my country, I lost my uh lost my ability to see my loved ones, lost my um lost my meaning basically, you know, to to influence on my community and to try to push it. And living now in Berlin, I kind of realiz ed, especially I realized that when especially when Trump started getting into power, people sometimes started talking about, oh my god, this is new new world order. And then I was like, wait, wait a second, is it? Or maybe it's already authoritarian playbook which already was built and actually uh just transformed in a new wave. So I'm kind of was happy that my journey and my journey of like a small community also in a country which sometimes also overlooked in the big politics. Um I tried to take all the lessons from all these years of democracy defenders in my region and kind of also share it with my with my community and community worldwide. So yeah, at the DHUB now we're creating this Ontario ian toolkit which connect all practices in some kind of readable and hands-on uh hands-on book, and not book, and that's an only publication, to make sure that we have all the knowledge and all the strategy how to fight it back. So and eventually I hope it will bring uh my region uh to democracy. So uh I I've interacted with you guys through DHub and so people understand you know the essentially your network that works with, you know, small D democracy activists, not just in Europe, but but around the world. I mean, it's a global perspective that you're taking on this authoritarian challenge. our own ways. You know, I've I've dealt with Trump here in the United States uh from the perspective of politics and media. Uh Feta , you've been a uh politician and activist yourself, kind of feeling the rising tide of uh uh uh of a certain kind of far-right politics in places like Italy. Nick, you had the most uh firsthand experience of losing, you know, for at least for the time being your country. How do you describe the process by which you put together this anti-authoritarian uh toolkit? Um you know, who who did you talk to in order to put it together? And and I guess to begin, Feta, with you, um , uh can you explain l I wanna start pulling out lessons. One that we talked about when I saw you uh in Costa Rica was putting broccoli in the rice. I I like that you guys try to have these um, you know, phrases that they're punchy and and clever um but that actually speak to something important. Like how how do you get from talking to Thanks so much for the question. So basically we as you were saying, we're activists ourselves and we started from our own people to start um understanding what what what was the ground. So what what are what were we talking about when we were talking about rising authoritarians? What was their playbook? And from people like us and from our own contact, we started to talk think to talk with other activists. First to understand what was the playbook of authoritarians and from this the authoritarian playbook was born. But then we just we didn't want just to give another diagnosis of how the word the word was working. We really wanted to get into how do we fight them. So we started talking with activists from literally all around the world. We have case studies going from Thailand to South Africa to Kenya to Argentina, um, talking about with them about what were the different strategies and tactics that allowed them to win possible authoritarians. Also, because here I think it's important to say that we are talking about elected authoritarians. So people that almost fairly win the elections but then get into power and dismantle the institutions of democracy from within. So we needed to understand first how do we do in order not to have them elected. So how do we win elections ? But it was not just about election, it was about building movements, it was about building creating an opposition inside different parliaments. So we started talking with people that managed to do it successfully. A good example with this of this where for example our friends in Brazil or our friends in in France uh where they just um beat at the uh far right and the parliamentary elections a couple of years ago. So we started talking with these people and they gave us different strategies and tactics in order to fight back. And one of the strategies and tactics is exactly what you were talking about, which is the strategy of broccoli and rice. So what we do here is that within our volume of digital comms, which I happen to have it here, we talk about several tactics that can fight authoritarians and we have a grand strategy. One of these tactics, for example, is network of influencers. And when we talk about broccoli and rice, we ask these influencers that might talk about several things like makeup or um gossips. We ask them to put into their pages, some piece and bits of political content in order to start shaping the idea of the people that listen to them and that and that see them on social media in a democratic way. This is a play that authoritarians have developed so well all around the world. An example is Bukele, who has more than 1 500 YouTube or Facebook pages that talk about everything and include his politics in his social media. We need to start doing the same and we wrote it exactly that. How do you do it within your own people, within your own communities to put broccoli, so things that people might not generally like, like politics, into the rise, so the nice content about makeup, so that you start changing the discourse yourself. Yeah no it's a really important point because a after the last election, I mean this is why we're on a podcast, so it's one of the reasons I brought up this point. After the Democrats lost in 2024, there was this kind of pretty predictable freakout. Oh, Trump won, you know, by going on all these podcasts, you know, Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan and people like that in the United States. And the D Democrats are like, maybe we have to go on the podcast too. And and I think what they missed is, you know, Joe Rogan is a comedian and a UFC commentator, right? He's not he didn't start in politics. Like he started with the rice. The thing that people were attracted to was his kind of curiosity and his background, and you know, he's funny, they think, or whatever. And then, you know, that gives him more credibility in some ways. You know, politics is downstream from culture, as you would say. Uh to the to that when he has a political conversation, he's built up a credibility with the audience. Um and I think that's an important message for us. Now, it's uh this is a c one of you know one of many you know lessons you have embedded. Uh Nick, I want to ask you though, um to this question of um messaging. You know, one of the things that uh Trump and uh other auto authoritarians have done is they kind of talk about a corrupt system and then they themselves are phenomenally corrupt. You know. Um and and we've seen corruption become, you know, a a a a tool that has worked against authoritarians. It just worked against Victor Orban in Hungary. What what lessons do you take from how how corruption can be a way of going on offense against authoritarians? And and what other lessons are there about the forms of messaging um that that that can help drive arguments against authoritarians who are kind of trying to control in some ways the media space? I think you know it's also very I I need to point out that the authoritarian populism uh rises not because people people love it, uh, but also because democracy failed to meet their needs. Um they're talking about corruption also because of it. But the problem with the authoritarians that they um they changed. And yeah, maybe they no longer arrive with tanks and stage coupes, but now they build popularity and win these elections. And uh but the problem with people not realizing that once they elected, they erode democratic institutions, they uh dis destroy um independent media and concentrate power and uh weaken civic spaces. So um they uh slowly like uh like a frock in slowly heater water by the time you realize it you are already in a autocracy. Building this toolkit, we wanted to show that the time uh the that that progressives needs to learn also, and sometimes we are also doing wrong. In when we're talking about democracy, we not need only to defend democracy, but we also need to renew it. These ten volumes, as Feder mentioned, they are two core volumes. Yeah, the authoritarian playbooks, which helps identify and understand authoritarian tactics, and democratic playbook, which brings together the all uh best uh knowledges from all our sector um of our toolkit but um talking about um yeah talking about um public conversation . Yeah, I think the progressives needs to change uh how they do it uh in the digital environments because the authoritarians actually they are the first one who understand this uh these spaces and they have a clear advantages, like Bukele as mentioned in El Salvador, or even in uh even um Orban in Hungary, but he lost. Um yeah, I mean this is uh influence no longer works through the single message or messengers, but the through ecosystems. And this is what we did in our uh that actually it's mentioned in our authoritarian uh playbook. Um, that we need to uh put a broccoli into rice or working with uh working with influencers. This has to be renewed. And the our message needs to be also simple. Uh we need to stop be very preachy. Um yeah so that's my that's my thought about the the changes. Well and Fed what do you what do you take I mean there's a lot in here what what would you want to highlight for people as some of the key learnings that you're seeking to kind of spread to other like-minded people. People are asking us whether we want a different way of doing politics, and this is what we're thinking about when we talk about the author the anti-authoritarian um toolkit. So we are bringing new practices into what is being held and talking about the several lessons that can be learned learned. First of all, as Nick was saying, is how do we manage digital communications? So we were talking about put putting broccoli in the rice, but this is not only the only thing. We need to, for example , um have networks of influencers, change the way in which we talk about politics, come and talk about real values. You were talking about corruption before, Ben. There is one thing really important that I want to say about per corruption. Authoritarians use corruptions as their main enemy from the other side. So when they're discovered as the corrupted one, this is the moment in which they start losing. One of the things that we have to do is exactly exposing this corruption and see how the moral authority from which they're coming to expose the other side is corrupted, it's actually the one that is breaking them because they're not. And an example that you were giving about Magyar and Orban, well, Magyar won exactly because he managed not only to expose this corruption, but also to go on the ground and he visited like more than a thousand little places during his own campaign so that while he was attacking on the other side, he was meeting people one by one and building a vision. This is another thing that we have seen in several campaigns that really worked, like the Mandami campaign. We're not talking just about exposing what is wrong from these authoritarians, we are also giving people a vision of what is it that word that we would want and that we would like. So all of this together with working with the whole digital ecosystem, and what I mean by that, we generally think that democracy is protected either by politicians, either by journalists, either by civil society. What we say here is that we what we say here is that we don't have those are not three words that work separately. We need to put together the whole democratic ecosystem that is built on these different pillars and make and and let them work in a way that they support each other. We have one whole volume and place on how the political side can actually work and collaborate with civil societies and journalists in order not only to win campaign but to expose corruption, to expose the authoritarian place, and so be stronger together. This is I think something new that we have that we have seen with all our researches and interviews, that it is the moment in which we have the whole democratic system working together that we can actually win. And everything can be found in our website, antiauthoritarian.com. So if anyone listening to us is interested you can just think go and give a look to what uh we're putting up together at antiauthoritarian.com and so you've got i mean we've just to pull out the things we've talked about you know the idea of building networks of influencers, the idea of engaging people on the things that they're interested in then working your way into politics, that's the broccoli and deris. The the need to spotlight corruption to kind of turn the tables on the authoritarians, the need to show up everywhere like you said Magyar did to get out into the field, to go to places maybe that progressives haven't been showing up before. Um Nick, are there any lessons that you want to add to that from uh the work that you've done about how do you mobilize people, how do you get people out to actually vote? And also one other thing that you guys have is is examples of of where this worked are are there case studies, are there places, you know uh Fed it mentioned you know Mamdani in New York, we've talked about Hungary. Are there are there places that you would spotlight where we can learn from progressive successes against authoritarians? No, of course. Um the whole of the the whole toolkit is designed to be adapted. Yeah, I I we always say that uh take that works for you, adapt the rest, and uh and use whatever uh uh it in whatever you are. So um I wanted to you know when I just wanted to amplify this is the the huge of work which was done uh by um by not only by the DHA but by Democracy Defender of Worldwide because we spent uh almost two years and talk with doing like 100 interviews with the people, like real people , uh, who was fighting for democracy, who fought or who lost in their batt les, and we really wanted to create some kind of not a publication. This is not a publication. This is uh uh it's uh it's a hands-on uh resource designed to be uh used uh by the people right now. Um I this is this is I cannot say right now that there there is is something which we can work, for instance, in the United States, or it was the best what works in for Hungary or in Poland. But the but the thing is like people can connect. We are as progressives sometimes losing the hope that we can win, and we finally have something which can help us to continue. I coming from the background when I I don't need a hope. I always say that I don't need a hope to continue to fight and to resist. This is what I will uh taking from the queer community in Belarus because we were we were we were we were existing before uh this concept of hope so now i think when we have this material which can be used and implemented in different societies or different regions . That's kind of impressive. This is what we that this is what we wanted to do. And also this is like a non-stop process. This is like the toolkit will be updated. The tool toolkit will be um like like we will be updating through our website, it's a podcast, it's our video, it's it's everything. So Fed just to give you the last word here. What what do you think about um I take Nick's point that essentially what you have is a bunch of different ideas taken from around the world. Here are some strategies and tactics that have worked um that might be either replicated or adapted to other places. So I take your point, Nick, that the that it's not gonna be exactly what happened in Hungary or New York City is going to work in Italy, for instance. But that there are lessons you can take and then apply. Um and that that just there's something empowering about the sharing that you're doing um in that regard. Uh do you uh when you look around the world the last couple of years, the time you were working on this , where did you see democratic campaigns, and I don't mean the Democratic Party in the US, I m or Italy for that matter, I mean you know, small Democratic campaigns, where do you see the most innovative strategies that uh that that we can be learning from in the battles to come. Let me add something on um exactly that. Um not only the most like interesting strategies, but um what ATK is needed for. So as as Nick was saying, as you as we're underlying, we cannot take plays and exactly use them in one country. But I give you like a very specific example of a play that I thought was extremely interesting and now people like me in my own country or like a person who one of the people that wrote the Anti-Dorin toolkit, Agustin is right, is using in his country, is the play of distributed distributed organizing. So this was a play that was developed from one of our friends' friends, Saradurio, in France, right before the parliamentary elections in France a couple of years ago. So Macron calls for elections um three weeks before the actual elections. So people didn't really have the time to organize around the elections and understand what they could do. So what they did is that all of these people came up into a into a Zomo call and they started organizing in order to have a get of the vote campaign and also to understand who they had to move in terms of candidates to um allow for the um Front National not to win. And so what they developed was like a central team that was like very very small and that was not controlling. But this central team was basically managing the communication of what is it that they can communicate to people that it's gonna work and then share the messages with thousands of organizations, influencers, people that could actually move the base and so that that this message could get to a wider public as possible in a way that was not coordinated, I mean that was coordinated sorry, but that was not controlled. So the main part of the message was there, was developed by a central team, but then everybody from influencers to organizations could adopt this message and communicate it in the best way that they needed to in order to reach their own target. And in this way they managed to do these two things: develop a huge GOTV campaign that allowed them to not have the Front National and so the far right party in France win, but also to then have a massive influence on candidates. So who which were the candidates that needed to go down in order for have uh at the local level, let's put like this, in order not to have Front National win. And they they did it. And so now what we are trying to do here in different countries for elections that are coming, it's sort of like replicating the same play, but in a more organized way. So we are adapting this playy and we're tring to put together from now in France or civil societies journalists that want to have a specific talk sp that want to have specific topics to talk about for the elections and then have a GOTV campaign run on these topics that will be supported or we hope are gonna be supported by um by center left partieslash democratic parties that go against the far right. So what we did here was taking the example of what we used, what was used in France and wor ked, reimagined, wrote it in the in the AATK into the anti-authoritarian toolkit in uh as a play, so a tactic. And then now activists like me are taking it, changing it, and adapting to their own national country context. And this is just one idea, but on anti-authoritarian .com, people are gonna find 10 votes on 10 different topics, all of them with place, and more than 150 cases of what worked in different countries, and literally and how to so how can you do display from one to seven steps including tips to make it work in your own context? So the idea is that really this is something live. We want people to take it, use it, make mistakes, but at least try and have something from scratch, like from to start from. Because I remember that as an activist, it was really hard because you had no idea from where you had to start. And now at least we have something that tell us those are the things that are working around the world. You can take it, you can change them, you can use them. This is what we're looking for. Yeah no I th I think uh the distributed organizing is an important point and I mean it it resonates here in the United States because I think Democrats sometimes are trying to figure out the perfect set of talking points or you know, the the one message um that's gonna work across the country, or w are are we moving to the left or to the center? But the idea is if you have some core arguments and core values and and core anti authoritarian messages like, you know, Trump is wildly corrupt and uh is actually looting the government for his own purposes, not trying to fix a corrupt system. That you then allow for a coordinated dissemination of that messaging. That, you know, Zorra Mamdani is going to have one message in New York City, but James Tallarico is going to have a different mess m version of thatage in Texas. There'll be a common DNA, but there'll be this distributed organizing where it's different in different parts of the country. And that's kind of part of what needs to happen around the world. I mean, just to wrap this up, I'd just say the main thing is that there needs to be coordination among politicians, activists, civil society, even sometimes journalists, as you say, independent journalists, but also just among like-minded people around the world because the far right has been very networked, very coordinated. Um you guys have experienced that in your own lives and work. Uh we're all experiencing that around the world. This is the uh a starting point for trying to create a kind of living resource for people. So again, we'll put this in the show notes. I encourage people to check out the anti-authoritarian play uh playbook, the toolkit, um, and and DHub in general. So, Nick and Federica, thanks so much for the work you've done on this and for joining us today. Thank you, Ben, for having us. Thank you so much. Thanks to Nick and Federica for coming on the show and uh we'll talk to you guys soon podsy of the world is a crooked media production our senior producer is alona minkowski our producer is michael goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed, and edited by Jordan Cantor, audio support by Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Matt DeGrote is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of news and politics. If you want to listen to PodSave the World ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to Crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. 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