Viktor Orban and Hungarian Election Stakes

We're living in a time when politicians can seem to lead. You don't get a second shot at making the right call on taking your country to war. Or agitate. Just ignore them. Boring , boary , If you want to know what's happening behind the scenes in Westminster and get the best political insight the Guardian has to offer, then listen to Politics Weekly with me, Pippa Carrera. And me, Kieran Stacy. Search for Politics Weekly wherever you get your podcasts every Monday. Welcome back to Pod Save the World I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Devin Roads. Uh so this is actually the second time we're recording the introduction to the show. Uh moments ago we wrapped our recording of the initial episode , and then Trump put a truth social statement announcing a two-week extension on his threat to destroy all the infrastructure in Iran, which is obviously a good thing. Uh, we're very happy about that, but it does mean we're coming right back into the studio to re-record the top of this for you guys um to make sure this is current. So here's what Trump just wrote on Truth Social. This is verbatim. Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif and Field Marshal Azim Maneer of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran in sub ject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of H omuz. I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double-sided ceasefire. So you think it's like tape. Um the reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objectives and are very far along with a definitive agreement concerning long term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East. We received a ten point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiatem.ost Al all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two-peek two-week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated. Consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as president and also represent ing the countries of the Middle East. It is an honor to have this long term problem close to resolution. Thank you for the attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump. I've also seen some additional reporting Ben that uh Israel has agreed to this short -term ceasefire. Uh okay, so just a few thoughts for me, and I'll throw it over to you. Uh who writes this shit for him? Like what what is this faux legalistic weird nonsense language? I don't get it. Again , obviously this is good news. Like n nothing good could have or would have come from some like genocidal spasm of violence on Tuesday night from Donald Trump and Pete Heggseth. And I'm truly grateful that Trump uh call it taco, call it a delay, like call it beak responsible, whatever, that he delayed this. Um, I'm genuinely surprised that Iran would agree to opening the straight up Hormuz for two weeks and kind of lessen let's see. Yeah, I uh that's a right. Like put a pin in this one, we'll see if that actually happens because it does lessen their economic and political pressure on Trump. Again, though, it would be a good thing because as as much as I like I I I want them to open the straight up for moves. I don't want people in Asia not to be able to farm and like drive. Um I don't believe a word Trump says here about the US and Iran being quote very far along on a long term peace plan or the problem is cross to the to resolution. I guess we'll see. Uh finally, like later in the show, I say that I heard from someone that the Pakistani led talks were uh more for show when we're kind of bullshit. I I guess should revise and amend that take if they help facilitate getting this done. That's a good thing. But what do you make of this this truth social post pen? Well it's great news. Uh it again it doesn't change anything we said though, because threatening genocide, even if it was part of a madman diplomacy strategy, is just as morally abhorrent. Um I a few thoughts on Mike. Number one, I'm genuinely curious about what the Iranian you know, we'll have to hear from them, but like who is he negotiating with in Iran? Does whoever he's negotiating with in Iran have the ability to control the Iranian revolutionary Guard Corps, who are the ones that control the Strait of Hormuz. What does he mean by oh he says a full opening of the Strait of Hormuz? I I I'm very curious if that's true. Um where are they going to let all traffic through there, whether they're gonna continue to meter it and charge a toll because they've turned this into a toll room? And if it's been mined, like who's gonna get rid of the mines? Exactly. This is much more complicated than just saying, Oh, the problem's solved. I created this problem by you know launching a war that closes straight and now I've solved the problem and ended a war and now I've ended nine wars. Like, no, it's that's all bullshit. Um so the a lot of questions about whether the Iranians have agreed to this in the short term. I mean they've clearly agreed to something, um, but whether that that's the full opening of the strait, like remains uh to be seen. I'm also curious, Tommy, how much pushback he got today? Um threatening genocide, I think probably got the attention of Republican lawmakers. It probably got the attention of world leaders. Uh we don't know what calls were made to Trump today. Yeah. I also genuinely have been wondered, and I we didn't I actually didn't say this on the pod, so I'm glad I've whether the military would follow his orders. I think there's a non zero chance that, you know, Petexeth was giving them the target list or whatever of civilian infrastructure and that I don't know if it's Dan Cain or somebody 's mass resignations through like the kind of it's possible that they're like, We won't do it. Yeah, we won't do it. Because you know what? The like hopefully there's still some honor in the US mil not hopefully I believe there is. I I just know they've been purging generals. Um, so it's also possible that the military is like, we're not gonna do this. Uh and and so he kind of scrambled to to do this, right? We don't know. We'll see. I'm sure some of it will leak out. Um, so it's a re reprieve, but it doesn't solve these underlying questions. And and again, we talk later in the show about the the fundamentally diplomatic questions about the Iranian nuclear program, about the war in Lebanon, which is still ongoing, uh, you know, about the Strait of Hormuz and whether the RGC is going to control it and charge a toll, whether i it's going to fully reopen. So this is not like the some victory of of diplomacy yet. It's only like yet another delay in Trump's thre Yeah, and like the look the idea that these objectives that the war's objectives are close to complete is crazy. I mean again the It's crazy. That's bullshit. The key priority is supposed to be the highly enriched uranium, the 900 pounds of it. It's still sitting in the city. And regime change . Yeah. It's a regime change. The regime change war has has gone from one uh homine to a younger Hamine who's even more hardline. Uh Trump says that uh you know Iran's ballistic missiles have been totally destroyed. Uh, we've seen intelligence reports that suggest it might be close to fifty percent destroyed. So like I just launched some at Israel too. Oh really? That's wonderful. Yeah, so I I just I have a very hard time believing that Bibi Net Ya hu um is going to be ready to end this war. Uh Trump might want to find an off-ramp and save face because he is, I think, looking at polling and realizes that his presidency is uh slowly withering and dying before his eyes. But as we talk about later in the episode, the Iranians have now found a pretty remarkable source of leverage and possible revenue for them. And a lot of people would argue look in in many ways they're doing way worse now, the the regime, but they're making more money now off oil sales. Uh they have more power now by finding this choke point in the Surrey of Homo. So there's there's all these structural challenges when you look at you know the Iranian demands and the US demands uh for each other that are so so far apart. It just doesn't feel like we're close to ending this war. And there's one other thing that I think is really important in that post that you know might fly under the radar. He refers to the Islamic Republic of Iran, not Iran . The Islamic Republic is the regime. Like it's a de facto recognition of the Islamic Republic. That's the system with a supreme leader, with the IRGC. That is Donald Trump accepting that the people he's going to be dealing with are the same regime, even if he killed the Supreme Leader. And that, trust me, like as someone who's worked on this, and we were very careful in the Obama administration about when we said Iran or Islamic Republic. Um the that's a concession uh that he's making which again is just a bowing to reality. Um but you know this this is no longer a regime change war. Yeah. It's a double-sided ceasefire. Like uh whatever that is. Yeah. Like the tape I used to put on my hockey sticks. Uh okay, Ben. Well, unfortunately for the world, uh I just I really don't think this war is close to over. There remain all these huge, you know, political and structural problems that could lead to the war escalating, dragging out for a very long time. Uh all those problems still exist. We cover all the big picture questions in this episode. Just know that we recorded most of it uh before this most recent truth social post announcing the two-week extension on the war crimes, you know, bonanza tonight. So there will be times where we kind of sound anxious and uncertain about what might happen on Tuesday night. Yeah, we play a clip. We play a clip from Brett Bear where he's assured by Donald Trump that there will be no extension this time. Yeah. Uh we should have known at the time that it was useful because it shows you the chaos. It shows you the chaos. It shows you that Trump lies and that Fox News is just his useful idiots who will repeat whatever he said But here's what we cover in this episode. So we're going to start with Trump's threat to commit genocide on the country uh of Iran, literally. We'll explain the consequences of that. We'll explain the consequences of these proposed strikes on all kinds of civilian Iranian infrastructure, what they would mean legally, morally, and strategically. We'll give you the highlights of some extraordinary new reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times about how Trump decided to go to war with Iran, uh, then we'll listen to some clips from an equally incredible monologue from Tucker Carlson where he really firmly breaks with Trump over the war with Iran on a deep moral level and talks about why he is concerned that Trump could end up using, will end up using nuclear weapons. It's very a conversation that is very important and worth having. Uh then we'll talk about all the talks and the secret side deals that are happening with the Iranians. Obviously, we just talked about some of the fruits of some of those, but we're kind of looking at signs of things happening diplomatically that could end lead to a permanent end game, a permanent end to the war and a permanent path out of this mess. And then we're going to talk about these enormously consequential elections coming up in Hungary, and how insane it is that Vice President JD Vance is in fucking Hungary on a Tuesday in April doing a campaign event for Victor Orban Ben. I've just I've truly like never heard anything like this. And the middle of a war, middle of a conflict, um he, you know, in the middle of a political crisis for the White House, JD Vance is over in Hungary. So that is bonkers. We did not have a guest today because we just wanted to go really long on around stuff and I'm just getting back from vacation and so we'll pick that back up next week . Pod se the world is brought to you by Haya. 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Please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscribers. You'll get ad-free episodes, you'll get tons of bonus episodes and bonus content. And it's really just the best way to help us grow as an independent progressive media company. So go to crooked.com slash friends to learn more, or you can do it directly on YouTube by pressing the join button. Uh all right, Ben. So let's get to the show. In the past 24 hours, the president of the United States went from threatening to commit massive clear-cut war crimes to threatening genocide literally on a country of ninety million people. On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. So that's something he just put in writing. Uh and then perversely ended the message with God bless the great people of Iran. So what we all assume Trump is talking about there in that post is that I threat to blow up all of the bridges and power plants in Iran, though he could do far worse. We'll get to that in a little bit. Um, but here are some just uh of Trump's actual comments about the war in Iran from Monday. Uh then Fox News is Brad Bear is talking about a conversation he had We have w uh a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding , and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by twelve o'clock. And it'll happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to. It will take them a hundred years to rebuild. The entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. Whether it's positive or negative, we're gonna get a response from the Iranians by eight o'clock tonight. Okay, so Ben a few thoughts I'll just kick it over to you. So again, we're recording this a few hours before Trump's deadline, uh after which he'll s he says he'll bomb Iran into the stone age. Um it's not ideal timing for the show or for humanity, frankly. Um if Trump goes through with this threat, I think it'll take some time to kind of figure out what exactly was hit, like the scale of the destruction, et cetera. So we're just gonna record today, frankly just assuming that this war is only gonna escalate. Um and then just unpack the implications of that escalation because I think that's important. I mean, there's peace talks are ongoing. There's some, you know, occasional leaks that suggest they're making progress, but it feels like the two sides are very far apart and this is only going up. Um uh but again, and also Iran I think cut off the talks with the US at least for some period of time after that genocidal tweet that I just read to you. So anyway, a few thoughts from me and I'll kick it to you. I mean, first, again, this just is a clear-cut war crime to say you're gonna bomb all the power plants and bridges in Iran. Um, you cannot indiscriminately bomb civilian infrastructure. There has to be proportionality to any military effort. Um, but let's be honest, like Trump doesn't care about that. Um he's you know, the Hague is not gonna come arrest him. So he just doesn't give a fuck. So I I guess do with that what you will. Um, in practice though, like what it would mean to bomb all of Iran's power plants and bridges is mass civilian death. And I think we should just be clear about that. Like every baby on a respirator will die. Doctors will not be able to perform surgeries. There will be no power for electric pumps that are critical to getting people clean water. Uh you won't be able to treat water to make it safe to drink. There won't be desalination plants running. Um, there will be no way to move food or essential items around the country if there's no bridges. And there's no way of undoing this step. You know, like millions of people will die. Refugees will flee the country en masse. It will be a catastrophe, a humanitarian catast cat rophe. Um, and on Monday, Ben, I don't know if Trump made this insane claim that Iran, the only time Iranians are unhappy is when the bombing stops. But then today, you're seeing images out of Iran of thousands and thousands of Iran ians lining bridges and apparently surrounding power plants in an effort to make themselves human shields to prevent the United States from bombing their country. That sure seems to undercut what he told us on Monday. And then just what is especially scary about all this is this like sense of bloodlust you're getting from Trump. Um, Axios today reported that Trump is the most hawkish senior member of his team. One U.S. official said, quote, the president is the most bloodthirsty , like a mad dog. Um, so Ben, on just a human level, uh, a moral level, a legal level, this is an abomination. It would be one of the most evil, catastrophic things the United States has ever done. And it also just feels like, and we'll get to this in the Maggie Haberman Jonathan Swan reporting. It it feels like no one is really trying to stop Trump. No one around him in the White House. And that is equally scary to me. Yeah. I mean, I I I actually think this is an important day in our history because let's just deal with kind of modern history because we can obviously go back and talk about Native Americans. Um but but we now have a president of the United States who has threatened as a matter of policy to commit genocide. And I think that the enormity of that reality is something that has been hard for people to absorb in this country. Not hard, by the way, for Iranians to absorb because they're living on the other end of it. But whatever happens, even if he doesn't make good on this threat, just the fact that we are now in a position where the president and commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world is threatening to use that military to commit genocide is something that will change the perception of the United States for a generation to come around the world. Because we are now a rogue state. We're functioning as a rogue superpower, threatening to kill countless innocents. It's wrong. The degree of pushback uh from and all both parties uh society in general like it needs to be at a higher decibel level um the the it's just a horrifying thing to to to read that this morning. I think I think the second thing is the the way Trump talks about these things, it's as if there are not people involved. Uh uh I mean, every person listening to this podcast has crossed a bridge, has turned on the lights, has maybe had a parent on a ventilator or uh, you know a, maybe baby in the NICU. I mean, those people will die if Trump does in Iran, if Trump does what he's talking about. And the kind of lack of capacity, he clearly has no capacity to see himself and his own humanity in these people in Iran. And uh we somehow as Americans like need to on a m you know put aside policy and the the stupidity of this war and the insanity of it and the high oil prices and all the rest of it, like threatening mass murder as a a form of policy puts us in a more dangerous world. It's kind of normalizing a certain conduct that we saw in Gaza, that we're seeing in Lebanon, that we saw Vladimir Putin pursue in Ukraine, like normalizing this to this extent, uh and i i you know is is truly dangerous uh no matter what happens. Uh and it also Tommy like I it just made me think uh you know, we we are now in this scenario where we've got this autocratic leader who is dangerous, who is ven al, uh, who uh, you know, maybe he thinks he's doing some form of madman diplomacy. That's like the charitable version . It's pretty scary. They're only a year and what two or three months into this Trump term. Like today's the first day, Tommy, where I was like, how are we gonna make it through the rest of this term? And you know, I I I I I know, you know, it's kind of resistance fantasy to talk about impeachment and the 25th Amendment, the rest of it, but but I don't know, if he does this, I I I mean, you you you start to wonder, like who's gonna stop him, you know, from doing more of this. And so anything Yeah. Anything. And 'cause we're kind of in it now. We're we're we're this is not the first war, this administration, and may very well not be the last, you know, and and so there's a lot that could happen or not happen in Iran. Um, but I I do think it taking us a minute here to just absorb like the enormity of this threat and the consistency of it too, like he did this on Sunday too. Um uh it it's really unsettling in in a kind of uh deep way, and and it makes you wonder where this country in the world is going. Yeah, it's uh it's unsettling. Um it's an evil threat. I suggest someone who is cavalier and indifferent to the value of human life. And it's not just unsettling dust. I mean we're gonna dig into what Tucker Carlson said about this, some'one whos friends with Trump, who's a huge MAGA supporter. Um and also, you know, we we shouldn't let the threat of what Trump has said he might do um uh hide like the horrors that have already befallen the Iranians. I mean again, the the the human rights activist news agency uh estimates that uh over sixteen hundred civilians have been killed in the war since it started, including two hundred and forty eight children. Uh the Iran's Ministry of Science and Technology says that at least 30 universities have now been struck by airstrikes. Um the World Health Organization says it's verified at least 20 attacks on medical centers. The UN says that over three million Iranians have been displaced. So the cost for the Iranian people is massive already in terms of lives and you know infrastructure that will take generations to rebuild. And one other thing I was thinking about, Ben, I mean, I was watching, I don't know if you watched the entire like 90-minute Trump, Ratcliffe, Hegsef, Dan Cain victory lap on the rescue operation in Iran. We're basically not even going to talk about it because like so many lifetimes have happened since then of news. I mean, it's extraordinary. What our military did to find these two airmen is extraordinary. But I kept thinking about um a previous press conference with Hegseth when he was bragging about how the US military sank an unarmed Iranian ship with a torpedo, and how cool he thought that was to put, you know, 150 Iranian sailors at the bottom of the ocean. And it just made me think about how those two airmen would have been treated by the IRGC, had they been captured , given like the cavalier way that Pete Heggseth not only doesn't give a shit about civilian casualties or rules of engagement, but like seems to revel again in the bloodlust , in the killing, and in like does his fucking, you know, war crimes beat poetry Dr. Seuss routine at these uh briefings. So it was just I don't know, the whole thing. Again, unsettling is the right word. Yeah, and I I think you know, two things. Cause there are these , you know , Twitter warriors who've wanted war with Iran for fifteen or twenty years who you know like to say, well, you know, there's scientists that went to that university and so it's a military target, or you know, or and they also say, like, maybe the Iranian military could drive something across that bridge. No, that's not how this works. works. In a bomb Harvard, infrastructure. What are we talking about? Yeah, I mean, well you could make under this logic, I mean you you you actually do have to put yourself in the shoes of Iranians, which is something that these people seem incapable of doing except to want to kill them. Um Harvard does plenty of research, including some stuff that reaches US military. Like w how would we feel if they were bombed by Iran? You know, uh just some service members might take the train down to a base to deploy. Does that make the train like this is such a slippery slope? Yeah. What are we talking about? Who've we become that we're sitting here post facto ? You know what? The I can guarantee you that most of the people that went to those universities are just students, like you and I were when we went to college. Probably the most progressive people in the country. Yeah, they're the people who fucking protested. You know? And so I'm I just want to call out how what bullshit it is to to to kind of you can find a a crazy logic train to make anything literally a target under that. Yes. And there's a reason that international law distinguishes civilian from military targets. You know? Yeah. Uh it it's it's it's like so good Yeah, and it's not even a question. It's just like so self-evidently a war crime. Um a little bit on on just how we got to this war. So again, M Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times have a book coming out on uh June twenty third about like the new Trump 2.0, the new regime. Um, there's a big excerpt from the book in the Times today that's all about how Trump reached the decision to go to war that is just extraordinary. Like the detail in this reporting is unbelievable to me. So a few things, I mean, Ben and I are coming at this from as news consumers, but also as people who were like uh threatened every day by Lindsey Graham on Fox News for like allegedly leaking shit. And now that more has leaked about the Trump administration and a few months than has ever leaked about any you know other administration in history. So they got all this detail, Haberman and Swan got all this detail about a meeting Trump held with BB Netanyahu on February eleventh, where Netanyahu made the case for war. Apparently, this is Netanyahu was physically in the White House situation room. They zoomed in like the Mossad guys behind him. Um, and they made their case, the Israelis made their case for the war, and it detailed all these Israeli assumptions for how things would go. And my God, were they catastrophically wrong then? Um, here's a few things that the Israelis told Trump. Uh, Iran's ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz. The odds that Iran would hit US interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal. Uh, and the Massad assessed that street protests would start again. They also had plans to help foment street protests, and they thought that bombing could then help the opposition overthrow the regime. And then, you know, the Israelis, as we have now seen reported elsewhere, were driving this plan to have Kurdish forces in Iraq invade Iran and basically attack the regime from a second front Um, so Hibman and Swan report that US intelligence assessed that the Israeli claims about regime change and a popular uprising were delusional. Um, but Trump apparently dismissed those, you know, what the US intelligence said and said it was quote, their problem. It's not clear in the book whether their problem means Israel's problem or Iran's problem, but that was how seriously Trump uh t considered these, you know They also report that while Netanyahu's pitch was influential, Trump was way more hawkish uh on Iran than many of his base believed and was like pretty disposed to wanting to bomb. Um they report that JD Vance was kind of all over the place. Like he wanted Trump to enforce the red line that he made in January when the protesters were killed. But Vance is also reportedly the most opposed to the war in time of the like war cabinet. Um Vance initially said apparently tried to steer Trump towards limited strikes, but then when he realized that Trump wanted to do it, he made the pitch to go all in with overwhelming force. So like great work there, JD, I guess, like profile and courage from you. Um Heg Seth was the biggest proponent of the war. Shocker uh Rubio is described as ambivalent, but didn't try to talk Trump out of it. Again, another profile and courage. Um and it sounds like Tucker Carlson was like the only person with any real guts here. Um, and he told Trump that the war would destroy his presidency. Last thing, Ben, um, Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence were excluded from the war planning. Uh might have been good to have someone who was thinking about the global economy, energy supplies, uh, in the Intel case, I don't know, at those meetings. But Ben, takeaways from you from from these reports? I mean, first of all, you and I have both over the years uh and over the last few weeks, you know, been called an an anti-Semite for suggesting that Israel pushed us into this war. I mean, we now have reporting that the Prime Minister of Israel literally flew to the situation room to give a fucking presentation about why Trump should get into the war and that most of his own team didn't even want to do it So can we please put to rest this idea that we're not allowed to discuss that Israel and Netanyahu in particular were the principal advocates for the US doing it. It doesn't absolve Trump at all of responsibility. Frankly, it makes him even a bigger idiot. Makes him look a moron. You got plate. Yeah, it makes him look like a moron. He's a fucking fool. John Ratcliffe is not some like, you know, impartial guy. The fact that he was saying like that, you know, the CI doesn't agree with this tells you a lot. So let's I don't want to hear any more stuff about we're not we have to have a conversation about Israel is an expansionist power that wants to take land from Lebanon and Syria and create destruction in Iran and somehow has got Trump on the caboose of this plan. Um, that's a problem. Yeah, we're not even talking about this week the fact the Israelis are are uh now basically saying that they're gonna seize about fifteen miles of territory into Lebanon. But that's part of the d I think the plan, right? Is that under the cover of this big war, we're gonna do this in Lebanon and we're gonna do all the stuff in the West Bank. Then it's also like it points, it's interesting to rel ive that presentation from the Israelis because it reminds you that none of the objectives that Trump set are being met. There's no regime change. There's no popular uprising. The nuclear material is still sitting there. The enriched uranium is is in is the Han. It may have been moved. Yeah. Yeah. May have been moved. So like the stated reasons at like for what Israel was pitching and what Trump said when he launched this war, like those are out the window. Even in the rosy scenarios, if we get a deal somehow, don't address those things, the regime will be more entrenched. It will demonstrate it it controls the straight of four moves. It can extract fees from countries that export energy through there. And and that that kind of like it kind of takes me back to the pilot thing, Tommy, because I I had the same feelings you did um and I saw somebody like attack you online and be like, you you won't be give Trump a win. Look, uh it obviously the people that rescued that pilot like did their jobs. But you know what? No. I'm not gonna give Trump fucking credit for it it like it's the same thing. If if he opens the Strait of Hormuz, we're gonna have to hear about it's the greatest win ever when the Strait of Hormuz, you know when was open? Before the fucking war. Yeah. You know? And and we've seen this pattern where he creates messes and then he celebrates. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He sets something on fire and he puts out part of the fire and wants like the Nobel Peace Prize. Like, no, that pilot shouldn't be there. That's my first of all, that pilot shouldn't have been dropping bombs. It's not his fault. He's got the orders, but like uh on Iranian universities. But then he shouldn't have been in that harm's way, as you said. And and and the Strait of Hormuz, like the the fact that we're frantically trying to negotiate its opening just tells you how much Trump has fucked up this war that should not have been fought. The other thing people were saying to me, like not to be in my Twitter mentions, but people were saying, like, the people who oppose this war are upset that the pilot was rescued. It's like, I'm sorry, what are you talking about? I'm upset that he was shot down. I'm upset that he was shot down, but uh like if you oppose this war, literally the worst thing that could have possibly happened was a hostage crisis where the IRGC had had one or two American pilots. And like , because then Trump would have just raced up the escalation ladder. You know that's what would have happened. Yeah. And the last thing that kind of connects all these things you're talking about is it is interesting to hear that Trump was the kind of bloodthirsty one? And because the worrisome thing, and we saw this with Putin, right? Uh sometimes you get these autocratic leaders , they're getting older, they're thinking about like the sweep of history, maybe their domestic agendas run out of gas. Um, this is what happened with Putin. Like he he didn't care anymore about the Russian economy or whatever. He's like, how can I enter history? You know, uh well, uh by taking territory. And uh what worries me is that Trump has got the aging autocratic bug where it's like the way I go down in history is not the big beautiful bill, you know, which he probably doesn't care about. It's yeah, it's I'm gonna conquer Cuba, I'm gonna conquer, I'm gonna break Iran, I'm gonna conquer Greenland. Like this is why this is so dangerous, is he seems to have caught this , you know, this bug that we've seen plenty of other autocrats catch of powerful nations, um, you know, where I can I can use the military as this extension of my sense of vengeance and grand iosity. Yeah. It's really it paints a very scary portrait of Trump. I'm eager to read the rest of the book. Again, though, just on this excerpt, I mean, look, you and I both had jobs where we were charged with trying to explain to the country kind of like national security issues and decision making while also guarding secrets. And every time we did the former, we got attacked by like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and other people for so-called leaks, even when it was just like basic like press briefings and things like after the bin Laden operation, right? Everyone lost their mind and act like you know, somehow all this secret information was put out and it's like I don't really think that's true, but whatever. The shit in this book, the shit in this excerpt is stunning, like literally direct quotes of what the chairman of the joint chiefs said to Trump in a meeting of like eight people or something that happened a few weeks ago about the most sensitive decision making around to run. Again, I'm this press conference yesterday, like it seems so ill-considered the way that Trump and Heggseth and Ratcliffe went out and did this victory lap and like disclosed all the ways that they rescued this pilot, because God forbid another pilot goes down, they have to do this again. But you know, the New York Post today then um said that they found the second airman using a secret tool called Ghost Murmur to find the weapon system officer. Uh this is how it's described. The secret technology uses long range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate s the signature from background noise to sources close to the breakthrough said, It's like hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert. A source briefed on the program told the post in the right conditions, if your heart is beating, we will find you. Um Um, that sounds pretty fucking cool. It also sounds like the thing you probably don't want out there, but Trump was like essentially disclosed this when he talked about the ability to pinpoint the second airmen from 40 miles away on the top of a mountain. Um, the CIA was also talking about running a deception campaign within Iran to fool the IRGC into looking in the wrong places for the missing airmen. Um, it's like there was just so much they were leaking from this press conference. It was so irresponsible. And it was clearly like just an attempt to, you know, put a gloss on this war, to get a rally around the flag effect, to get people on board with the war effort itself. Um But like the just lack of long-term thinking is uh I mean it's typical for these assholes, I guess. Yeah. I mean, even if you're a casual observer of national security issues or you've seen a few movies about special forces, you know that literally revealing all the sensitive capabilities that we use in rescue missions, which there'll be more of, you know, hostage rescue missions, uh happen, you know, semi-regularly . Um this is just giving the playbook away to anyone who wants to use it. I mean, clear as day. It also just there's a hypocrisy that it's so extreme that it it kind of comes back to the point that when they would attack people for you know leaking, it's just projection because they know that they would leak anything if it would make them look good. And in the same way that Trump is using the military as an extension of his kind of personal interests, whether that's, you know, potentially committing genocide or whether that's purging generals, he he sees these capabilities that are not his, right? Like we taxpayers pay for them. They're American capabilities. They're not his to like the the idea that just this might make him because what also the politics like,, do we really think there's gonna be like a surge in approval of Trump in the war because he revealed this supersonic weapon? I mean, it it's it it like even the politics of it make no sense. It's liter ally like a kid who just like wants to brag about something that he had nothing to do with. Like and this like Donald Trump had anything to do with what those people on the ground did. He's always like, I ordered them to do this. It's like okay. Well that yeah, that was the hard part. It wasn't, you know, fucking refueling a helicopter at low altitude going around Iran as everyone is shooting at you with every weapon they can find. Like I think that was the harder part. I think that was a little harder. Fucking asshole. And also like everything they said, every claim they made about you know how the war is going is a lie. Like the the New York Times reported that Iran is still launching 15 to 30 ballistic missiles a day, 50 to 100 drones. Iran is now using cluster munitions to defeat certain Israeli missile defense systems. Like basically the firing ballistic missiles that released cluster munitions, which are like little bomblet at hsigh altitude, which lets you get around some of Israel's missile defense systems, which is why you're seeing those clips of these like you know looks like a like fifty like stars kind of sinking on Tel Aviv or whatever, which is doing enormous damage. And meanwhile, Ben, I mean, I saw a report. It was called the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. It's a DC think tank that estimates that UAE and Bahrain have expended more than three quarters of their Patriot Missile Pac-3 interceptor stockpiles. And that's one of like the core defensive missiles in their arsenal. So again, this is just a way of saying like you know, there's it's a war of attrition happening here. Um Iran does not seem to be losing it and the numbers of casualties and the damage and the economic fallout is going to go up and up every day this goes on. So it's just it's not a good setup here. And they will brag in detail about the minute details of a rescue operation while simultaneously they are lying or concealing information about the damage that's being done. We get no credible transparent reporting from the government about the damage to US facilities in you know across the Gulf, be they military bases or embassies. Some of which are just closed or inoperable, right? Do you see the thing the Saudi, the the hit on the US embassy in Saudi? I don't know if you guys talked about that last week. I mean, apparently the Iranians put two drones on the same spot on the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia. They they fired them at night because during the day, that area houses like 200 or 300 employees. It would have been a mass casualty incident. And the thing was burning for half a day afterwards. And we've heard nothing about it. Nothing. Like no no briefing. I mean, these are the people. Remember how much they used to care about embassy security? Yeah. Remember We don't know how badly wounded the hundreds of Americ an service members are? Like they are they are simultaneously suppressing bad news and then just like hyping the shit out of anything they can grab onto as positive news. And that's like a, you know, that's a recipe for Americans to not trust our government. Yeah. And we pay for these things. This is what I hate about this so much. Is like, again, Trump acts like this is all his to do whatever he wants with. Like, no, uh an embassyy, a militar base, like those are those are national assets, you know, and they're just not leveling with us. Yeah. Uh yeah. Well standing the world is fucking gone. Yeah, it's gone. And they're look, they're all doing it because uh the war is really unpopular. I mean, the public opinion started out opposed to this war. It has been getting worse inexorably ever since. Trump himself is not getting a boost or like a rally around the flag effect like you usually see in wartime. Um Harry Enton at CNN uh did a great piece on this. He pulled together some numbers. So George W. Bush got a 14 point bump in the first month of the Iraq War. His father Ben got a 34 point boost uh in the first month of the previous Gulf War. Even Jimmy Carter was up like 30 points in the first month of the Iranian hostage crisis. But Trump's net approval is actually down four points. That is completely a historic. The only sort of like uh similar instance he could point to was uh the month after Biden left Afghanistan when he went down six points in the approval rating and basically it ended his presidency. Um and so they they also looked at the CNN aggregator, uh the polling on the war itself. It started twelve points underwater, now it's twenty-two points underwater. Uh and I'm positive that's gonna get worse, right? Because gas prices are only going up, other commodity prices are going up, the price of food could go up, the global economy is slowing down,. uh U thereh could be a collapse, but it it no matter what, it's slowing down. Um, and on top of that, like during the Iraq War, which you and I lived through, uh, it was all cheerleading for the war. But now you're seeing like major voices in the kind of the MAGA media ecosystem loudly opposing this one. And so today we're going to play for you guys a couple clips from Tucker Carlson in his most recent episode that I think are quite important and instructive. Um and for the record, yeah, like yes, we know all the bad things Tucker has done and said. We know he's a flawed person. We know he's a flawed messenger, but he reaches milli ons and millions of people who are pro-Trump, who are MAGA and who trust him. So what he says to them is really fucking important. Um, and so this first clip is long, but it is worth it, I promise. Um, so again, this is from Tucker's most recent episode that I think came out Monday night. And so the morning of Easter is a uniquely joyful and peaceful moment. And yet that peace yesterday was shattered. That's not an overstatement. It was shattered for many observant Christians by a statement that the President of the United States put out at 803 AM Eastern Time on Easter morning, that said this. And we're going to read it in its entirety, not in outrage or self-righteousness , but honestly in horror. Quote: Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it, three exclamation points. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch all caps. Praise be to Allah , President Donald J. Trump. Now, a lot of people reading that imagined, of course, this can't be real. Did the president of the United States really just write that? And it is real. It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done, and also the most revealing . On every level , it is vile. But then the tweet continues. Pardon me, the ironically named truth continues. There will be nothing like it. Open the eff and straight. How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country? Who do you think you are? You you're tweeting out the F-word on Easter morning? You'll be living in hell as if hell is a place. Hell is a condition, and this is an example of that condition. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran . Okay . If you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. This is a mockery not just of Islam, it's a mockery of Christianity . To send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning promising the murder of civilians and then saying praise be to Allah without explaining any of it, you are mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians. Oh, I get it . We can't support that. So that that is a small slice of an extraordinary forty-five-minute monologue from Tucker that is basically like it, I don't know how to view this other than a pretty firm break from Trump. I mean, maybe he'll come back. A lot of them do, but it is um it is an attack on Trump in the most harsh moral terms. So it includes Tucker attacking Trump for the following pen . Uh he he starts at the top. He says, like Trump saying that our motive for invading Venezuela was stealing their oil. Should have been a moment where a lot of people said, I'm out. And I think Tucker is sort of using that monologue as a moment for saying he wished he had said that. Um, he talks about how Trump didn't put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in at his own inauguration, which Tucker said suggests that Trump quote, affirmatively rejects what's inside that book. And that what and what's inside the book are limits on human behavior. Because if there's one theme that spans all sixty-six books in the Christian Bible, it's that you are not God and you cannot assume his powers. You may want them, but in the end they're not yours. End of quote. So Tucker is not at all subtly uh accusing Trump of thinking he's now God. Uh he goes in on the Easter Truth Social Post, like we just heard there, and then he argues that Trump launched this war because of literal bloodlust. Um, like because he enjoys the killing itself. Uh and then there's the dis uh the WMD piece that we'll get to in a minute. And so, you know, Ben, I think both of us, you know, we listen to Tucker now because he's been really compelling on Iran. Uh and it's important to know what he's saying to his audience. We wanted to highlight this because it includes a really, I think it's a strong moral case against the war that's that's um rooted in Christianity, uh, there it includes a call for everyone to say that this is unacceptable and unjustifiable and crazy. And then again, most importantly, the message is coming from Trump's literal close friend, a man who spoke at his convention who is arguably the most important voice in conservative media. And I just think that is a huge, huge deal. Uh and I wonder what you took away from this from this episode. Uh like you, I've been listening to Tucker 'cause it's interesting uh since the war started. And uh what I take away is first of all, uh in the some of the early episodes, he was strongly against the war, but it was much of his ire was focused on Netanyahu and there was almost a sense that like Trump was this guy that was like he left the name Trump out of some of his criticisms. It was the Israelis kind of pulling all the strings. Yeah, and and and you know, for whatever reason, you know, sincere conviction or opportunism or both, that that felt like a total and complete rebuke of Trump from somebody who is deep, deep within the tent. And frankly , I I I listened to that and I part of me thought, how come Tucker Carlson can mount a clear moral case? By the way, in there's no mention of Israel, like I'm not here to excuse, you know, platforming Nick Fuentes at all. But the point is that that was a more morally grounded frontal assault on the war than you hear from certainly any elected Republicans other than maybe Thomas Massey and Rand Paul and frankly most Democrats. Oh you think it's you think it's better to make a case on values rather than process not coming to the biggest . It's Tucker's not saying like, well, we didn't briefly Yeah. Like and and actually, you know, I think you can learn from people who you disagree with. Yes. And I disagree profoundly with Tucker Carlson about a lot of things , including you know the nature of this country inside its borders. But I think we can learn just stripping out all the other things and mounting a direct moral case against what Trump And frankly, I don't have the standing that, you know, I I'm not a Christian in the same way, but the fact that he and Marjorie Taylor Green and some other people are really entering this conversation through the doorway of Christianity gets it a real weakness for Trump because as Tucker says elsewhere in that show, he's not personally pious. Like he's never pretended to be a deep Christian, but he's kind of, you know, gas lit Christians and you know delivered certain things for pro-life Christians, for instance, overturning Roe v. Wade. But if if you if he starts to lose that base of support, evangelical and Protestant Christians in this country, he's pretty fucked. He's dose. Um, and I should add, by the way, there's the other American who's been even stronger on the moral basis is the Pope, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And the head of the uh conference of uh Catholic bishops in the US put out a withering statement today urging Trump to walk back from his threats. So he's got a problem. And and again if people s want to say does this matter like some of the polling shows that MAGA's behind him. Tucker Carlson, you know, I read the Crooked Reeds book, uh, by Jason Zangerly. Great book. And part of what you learn about Tucker is particularly in the last you know decade, the Trump decade, and and a little bit before, this guy has seen where the puck was going and skated to it. Yep. And so just because the polling hasn't collapsed in Maggie yet, the fact that Tucker is seeing the direction of where the MAGA movement might go or Trump supporters might go. He's always out in front of it. He's always leading it. This is a guy that had the highest rated show in the history of cable news on Fox and then has a giant platform now. And I guarantee you that Republican politicians listen to that show. They also know that Tucker Carlson may be preparing to run for president because it certainly feels like a lane is open now that J.D. Vance is on board with this war. So that's a lot of reasons why this is both interesting. It there's again, I hate to say this, something to learn from the kind of moral case he mounts. Um, and I I think is a it is a real warning sign that if if Tucker is, you know, because it's not just him, we we see plenty of other people uh that are kind of following his lead in that kind of podcast space uh and in internet space on the right. I I I I think it's a harbinger that he the the people are beginning to look past Trump. Yeah, and look at the like people will say, you know, there's polls, including by CNN's Harry Enton, who you mentioned earlier, that said like quote unquote MAGA voters are not leaving Trump. Well, yes. If you're if you're self-identifying as a MAGA voter, you're basically saying like you're a a Trump fan, right? And those people are going to be the last to go. But he's losing Republicans. But I do think like the war is only a few, it's like a few weeks old, right? And I think when gas prices continue to go up and when you have people like Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan or others repeatedly condemning the war in terms like these or MTG, uh, that opinion can change over time and slowly erode. And again, like in American politics, like Trump's never Trump will probably never get down to a uh you know, ten percent approval rating, but if his approval rating drops a couple of points, five percent say, that could lead to an electoral landslide in the midterms or other elections. So it's very, very meaningful . Potate of the world is brought to you by Remy. You'll never believe this, love it, but uh I once struggled with um sore jaw in the morning, teeth grinding, you know, a little stress in duced nightly clenching until I found Remy. You know what Remy is? Sore jaw, you say. Oh God. Oh God. 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Look, uh, it's a scary world out there, there. Th'eres a lot going on. Wars in our professional lives. There's stuff in your personal life. There's work anxiety. There's kids. There's everything. You need to talk to someone and have a therapist and get your mental health in order. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp .com slash crooked world. That's betterhel p.com slash crooked world . Uh finally, Ben, just before we go on to this weapons of mass destruction discussion, I did want to play you one other clip from uh a MAGA voice who many would argue is more influential than Tucker and the Pope all rolled together. So let's watch. How do we 25th Amendment is asked? The problem is they get the twenty fifth amendment's harder than impeachment. You have to get two thirds of the House and two thirds of the church. So what do we do? Uh tackle Trump uh and and pretend let him pretend he's president and publicly uh report that he's going through a health issue and Vance takeover. That was um uh InfoWars founder Alex Jones, uh who's been one of the biggest Trump fans ever, screaming, How do we do any fifth amendment is ass? I just thought that was fun. But it like who's he talking to? Is he interviewing himself? I think Alex Jones or something. I don't know if he created like it like Glenn Beck when he interviewed like an AI version of himself or something. We should put in an interview request for AI George Washington to see if we sometimes I don't know if anyone listened to Alex Jones anymore, but like just him screaming out of 200 men of his ass. But it's not just them. It's also like I don't know if you ever watched Tim Dillon, like sort of a you know conspiracy-loving, kind of right-leaning comedian who endorsed Trump and just you know hated Biden, hated Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan, right? There's like a lot of like it's not just one person. It's like a bunch of voices saying, hey, you lied to us, right? This is not what you said you would do. Um and it's a moral case against Trump about his character, not just the policy. And that's what's so meaningful about it. So um Tucker's kind of chief antagonist on all things Iran has been a Fox News host named Mark Levin . Levin is very pro-war with Iran. Uh, he's a huge BB Netanyahu friend and fan. I think he like literally showed up in the courtroom at Netanyahu's trial for corruption. He advocates for war all the time on his show. He also despises Tucker Carlson and everything he stands for and calls him an anti-Semite all the time. Um the they don't like each other very much in this episode. Did you catch when Tucker compares Mark Levin to Jeffrey Epstein? But yeah, like this weird way, but he's like, neither of them have any real talent or power, you know, just a mouthpiece. Um so no love lost there. But so Tucker's monologue builds to an argument that Trump has exhausted his conventional military options for winning this war, or at least by for opening the Strait of Hormoes, right? Because you can't just like bomb your way from the air to getting the Strait of Hormuz open, especially when you can mine the Strait of Hormuz and put mines underwater and block it that way. Right. So that is obviously correct in my opinion. Um, but then Tucker's next argument is something that's worth debating, which is that the escalation ladder is going up and up and up in a way that will lead Trump, in his view, to using a nuclear weapon in Iran. Uh here's a clip. Here's what Mark Levin said on his Easter weekend show about what we ought to do next in Iran. Watch. And the casualty numbers, as horrible as any casualty is deeds some context. The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 plus casualties, over 12,000 Embedded in there is something you need to know. It's an argument that is being test driven and since no one to our knowledge has pushed back against it may be in full operation now, it's an argument for nuclear weapons. So Ben I I don't know about you, I've not seen any news outlets report that Trump or Netanyahu for that matter are considering using nuclear weapons in Iran. Um, but I do think we should take the conversation itself seriously, because in any war or any like terrorism debate, there will always be people who make some version of the argument that it is acceptable to kill as many of them over there to protect us over here. Uh, you can sort of insert whatever country you want there. And but that's how you end up dropping two thousand pound bombs on refugee camps in Gaza. That's how you get to Trump threatening to blow up every power plant in Iran. And that is how you could get to a point where the US or Israel in the most like staggeringly hypocritical act in history or imaginable, could argue that it's okay for us to nuke them so that they can't one day nuke us. Um and again, I know like Tucker is flawed. I'm not gonna go through it all again, but like he knows Trump as well as anyone. Um, and it seems like something is freaking him out here about this issue in particular. Um, and in that segment, he even implores White House staff to make the case not only to Trump not to do this, but to ignore ord ers to use nuclear weapons if it gets to that point, which is pretty extraordinary when you think about the debate over like the seditious six and the way Republicans were attacking Jason Crow and the other Democratic members of Congress, who basically maybe those guys were onto something. Yeah, which is you you know it can't follow uh an unlawful order. So I don't know. What what do you make of I mean, not just Tucker is part of this? Because clearly he hates Mark Levin and that's you know fueling some of it, but like how worried should we be about this kind of WMD debate? My headline on this, you know, I mentioned you, Tommy, I've heard from some normies in my life, like the kind of people that don't follow, you know, foreign policy that closely, um uh starting to email me or text me like, hey, is he gonna use a nuclear weapon? Like it's it's out in the ether, you know, because of what he's saying. Cause when you threaten to destroy civilization, um, you know, and you threaten to commit genocide, like that's the kind of space you're entering. Um, and and and my headline on this is I I certainly don't think that that's likely, but the fact that it doesn't feel impossible is terrifying. Because yeah, I could see a scenario. Let's say Trump goes through today or two weeks from now or whenever with this threat to kind of mass bomb civilian infrastructure. And then I don't think anything about the Iranians suggests that they will capitulate. The Iranians bomb a lot of Gulf energy infrastructure and desalination plants. Yeah. Yeah. D and we just keep climbing an escalation ladder. And you know that,'s the top of the escalation ladder. And it doesn't feel impossible, and it should feel impossible. Uh, it also , you know, there were people on the left who were right um uh during Gaza when they said this kind of violence, if normalized, could migrate to other places. And and again, if you look at Gaza, it looks like somebody dropped an atomic bomber. Oh, yeah. I mean, every every structure is destroyed. Like you said, they were dropping 2,000-pound bombs on apartment buildings to kill one person in the process killing scores of people. Um and here we are in a place where we've already bombed a girls' school, where we've already bombed a bridge. Like we're s we going down this slippery slope. Yep. Like uh and the girls school may not have been intentional, but the bridge certainly was. Um, we're we're kind of once you start saying we can just start kind of mass bombing you know civilian infrastructure, it does lead to that. And the Mark Levin argument, there are two things that are scary about it. One is I hate these guys like him and Lindsay Graham, who seemed nostalgic for the days when tens of thousands of people died and Iwo Jima in the battle of the battle. Like they literally talk about it like it was a w we used to, you know, we used to have the good old days when 12,000 men would die or something. Um, and then yeah, he's making so we had to drop the atomic bombs so we didn't put in ground troops. And so again, I don't think it's likely, but man, the fact that the president of the United States has sole authority over the nuclear, you know, launch codes, um, and that we be counting on people to not follow a plainly illegal and a moral order is frightening. And and you know, suggests revisiting again proposals from the first Trump term about limiting the president's sole authority on the use of nuclear weapons. And also that, like, you know, one of his primary advisors is fucking Pete Heggseth, who's a he's an idiot. He's a clown. That's the guy who's in the chain of command. Does that make you feel any better? Right. Like Fox News weekend anchor, who's now the the, according to Haberman Swan reporting, like the loudest voice in favor of war with Iran. You don't think that guy's that guy's whole identity and place in Trump's orbit and future rests on this war going well and the US being perceived as winning it. You you think that like that can't lead you to advocate for some pretty fucking evil stuff? I think it certainly can. And remembered his confirmation hearings that came out, one of the things that came out was him like getting drunk and like chanting kill Muslims. Remember that? Yeah. Well, maybe we should fucking pay attention and not confirm sociopathic drunks uh who advocate for war criminals in their free time. Yeah. Uh all right, let's try to end the kind of Ron section in a way that's a little more hopeful uh and just think about the ways this could end. Um obviously won't end well because since it once it started, it can't end well, but um and would be good. So like as we've said before, there are ongoing talks on the Trump side. Those talks are still being led by dumb and dumb or Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. So that's not ideal. Um there's lots of reporting Ben about the Pakistanis facilitating some talks. Um, but I've heard from some plugged-in people that the Pakistanis aren't really doing shit. It's all just for show. Um, the Egyptians and the Turks are also facilitating talks. Um, Egypt's intelligence services seem to be the main event here because they have actual IRGC connections and can really get conversations happening with the right people at a time when it's by the way incredibly difficult to communicate. I mean Trump himself said this, like it's impossible to get a message to Iran right now because they're worried we're gonna kill them. They're so, you know, they're not gonna like pick up their cell phone and and talk to us, right? So they're you're doing note passing through children is how he described it. Um, there have been reports that the US has pushed Qatar to facilitate talks, but they have resisted. That could be because both the Israelis and the Iranians uh bombed them pretty recently. Yeah. Feels like that would make me not want to get more involved. Pretty uh pretty good uh yeah. Not not the best way to kind of make friends. Um and then obviously I bet there's stuff that's still secret. Like we don't know what we don't know. Then there's also like clearly just side deals happening with the Iranians directly. So uh for example I,ran recently said that Iraq is exempted from its restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hamous. They could clearly cut some kind of deal. The Philippines said their ships will get through after some sort of negotiation with Iran. Um, there's other reports that Iran is uh basically charging a toll in some instances to allow boats through. And then the UK brought together more than 40 countries to build up a coalition to try to figure out a plan to safeguard shipping in the strait. Obviously, that's easier said than done. But long story short, like there's just lots of churn out there . There's lots of people like trying to figure out a path forward. Then did did any of that reporting or what we've seen so far give you a sense of what an end game might look like or kind of like a path to maybe a ceasefire that gets extended long term. And then I think, you know, getting the Strait of Hormuz back to where it was might not be an option, but getting it functional to the point where it is not going to lead to a global depression, feels like a pretty good goal at this point. So like what are you looking at? I I you know and and again, as of this recording, like that Trin was out about the Pakistanis announcing some proposal for a two-week ceasefire, um, a two-week or delay in Trump's uh threat in response to some partial reopening of the strait. And look, you know, that could happen and and that would be great. Um just that a civilization, a five thousand year old civilization doesn't get destroyed tonight, that would be great. I think what I'm looking at is okay, what what what does the US want, what does Iran want, and what does the world want, right? I think Trump at this point, he, you know, he he he has to decide whether he needs some more identifiable win, you know, like, which I don't think he's necessarily gonna get, but like seize Karg Island and or try to get the nuclear material and say you you know but but at core what the US wants is the Strait of Hormuz open, which is again ironic because we could have had it open if we didn't start the war. What do the Iranians want? Well, the Iranians have already demonstrated that they control the Strait of Hormuz. They've already won something from this war, and they're already getting tolls, they're already getting fees to let like a dribble of of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz. I think what they will want is some kind of security guarantee that the US and Israel will not attack them again. That probably can't just be the US in saying that. Uh some constellation of countries china others may have to kind of somehow be a party to these security guarantees that are given to the Iranians. I think the Iranians will want sanctions relief. I think the Iranians will want, I'm I'm not saying they'll get the US to pull out of the region to not have bases surrounding them. Um so the Iranians have a list, but at core they'll want the regime survival to be assured and some kind of economic benefit. And they'll have a list from sanctions relief to reparations. Um and and look, I uh the US may be able to reach some part of that deal to just stop the conflict where it is. But I actually think the more comprehensive reopening of the Strait of Hormuz , we may just see other countries negotiate that. Like Trump is nuts. The Iranians don't trust him. And it may be that Europe and some Asian countries and the Chinese kind of they're the ones getting together with the Gulf Arabs who desperately obviously want the war to stop and the strait to reopen. And they just pay a fee going forward. Like if if if I'm them at this point, I'm like a dollar per barrel of oil, fine. That's better than like the 30, you know, the 50% increase I'm paying now and like the global global meltdown we're about to experience. And by the way, what a humiliation that would be to BB net. Absolutely. The man that said that this would be a easy regime change war, and obviously Trump. Um, suddenly you've got a regime that is more IRGC controlled, that is profiting more off of the straight of hormuz. But again, I I just think hopefully we get some kind of partial ceasefire just so that people stop dying and the escalation stop spiraling. And then I actually think it's gonna take a lot of other countries kind of trying to land the plane here on something that it reopens the straight of Four moves. And it's probably going to have to involve the Iranian regime being assured in its security and having more revenue. And that's extraordinary. That's how far Trump has moved things in the wrong dire ction on his own objectives from before the war. Yeah, way to move the uh Overton window, sir. And like, yeah, like the stakes are so high. I mean, look, it it it sucks for us in California paying six dollars for a gallon of gas, but like this energy shock is an absolute crisis for a lot of countries right now. Like countries in Asia are literally weeks away from running out of fuel. You got like Bangladesh had to close schools. They're imposing fuel rations. Um, Ethiopia is putting non-essential government employees on leave. There are like massive, like hundreds of cars and lines to get fuel at gas stations. Farmers can't get fuel to to work their crops, and then things will only get exponentially worse as this fertilizer shortage really hits. Because again, remember, like helium can't get the shoot through the straight or you moose, uh the fertilizer can't get through. The only positive I've seen, Ben, is that there are far right parties all across Europe that are now running from Trump. It's actually interesting to me that Victor Orban, who we'll talk about in a second, would allow J.D. Vance and Trump into his country at this moment when like Trump has created a massive crisis for them. But like the fucking AFD in Germany, the neo-Nazis are like distancing themselves from Trump. Uh the Italian prime minister Georgia Maloney, who remember she was like a Mussolini youth fan, uh is fury. She's at the Trump inauguration. Yes, the Trump inauguration. Like she's furious because like this is causing a massive economic crisis in Italy. Uh look, the downside of this is that Trump is blaming everything on NATO for some reason. Um, he's once again threatening to pull out. He's like whining about Greenland, so that's not good. Uh maybe, you know, Mark Ruta can get down on his knees and you know, do some work tomorrow with Wednesday at the White House. I mean I, wonder how many times they'll call Trump daddy. Yeah, yeah, daddy. But uh, you know, it's not good . Too far? Uh Mark Rudy is such a it's comically pathetic in the way he sex up to Trump. Yeah. Podsave the world is brought to you by Surfshark. Ever feel like the internet is reading your mind? You search for one thing and suddenly your entire feed is nothing but ads for it? That's because every click you make is being tracked. Surfshark helps shut that down. It encrypts your internet connection and hides your real IP address so your activity stays private, whether you're at home or on public Wi-Fi at an airport or hotel. Your data is locked up tight. 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Surfshark because your search history deserves boundaries . All right, let's talk about Victor Orban, one of your favorite people. The MAGA World's favorite dictator, who is currently the prime minister of Hungary. So Hungary has parliamentary elections on April 12th. So coming up soon. And for the first time in 16 years, Orban appears to be in some serious political trouble. So he's facing a major challenge from a guy named Peter Magyar's political views are not totally clear. Um, I bet our audience would not love them if they saw like a you know kind of punch card of policies. He's not a progressive, he's not a liberal, certainly center right, but he used to be an Orban ally and a member of Orban's Fidesz party until uh Magyar quit the party in 2024 amid this massive, awful scandal involving like horrible sexual abuse of children, and then the way presidential pardons were used to pardon the head of an organization that, you know, turned a blind eye to that abuse. And then Marguiar's ex-wife and her role. It was like very salacious stuff that involved like leaking audio tapes he made of her, et cetera. But anyway, um, according to the associated Press, though, Magyar uh is really running hard. He's campaigning in six towns today. He's hammering Orban for corruption. And by corruption in this case, we don't just mean like this, you know, standard corruption or the ways that Orban has enriched himself or his family and friends. But like he's talking about the ways Orban, and Ben, you can expand on this, the way Orban has uh just upended Hungary's political system, the media, the courts, the economy, to make it a way to just further consolidate his own power uh for himself for the Fidesz party. Um so Orban obviously as you'd expect is not taking it well. He's pulling out all the stops to win votes. That includes threats, that includes bribes. Um Magyar has accused in the past Orban of blackmail and plotting to release a secret sex tape of him. A police officer recently uh released information about a secret operation by Orban's domestic intelligence service to get data from Magyar and the TISA party's IT systems. There have been several instances of election interference with ties to Russia, including a maybe like a false flag bomb threat over the weekend. The Serbian president Alexander Vucic called up Orban and said that the Serbian army found, quote, two packages of explosives with detonators in northern Serbia that was close to a pipeline that feeds natural gas from Russia to Hungary and beyond. And so, you know, Magyar says this is a false flag. I guess maybe someday we'll find out. And then finally, Ben, there is the blatant election interference campaign being run out of the White House. Um, here is vice president J. DeVance, who, as we mentioned before, is in Hungary in B udapest today, Tuesday, uh on the stump for Victor Orban. Let's watch. I love Hungary and I love that Victor. I'll tell you he's a fantastic man. We've had a tremendous relationship. President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the American people, we admire you. And we want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do. I'm not telling you exactly who to vote for. Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels ? Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy ? Will you stand for Western civilization ? Will you stand for freedom , for truth, and for the God of our fathers? Then, my friends, go to the polls in the weekend, stand with Victor Orban because he stands for you and he stands for all these things. So to answer your question, yes, we're certainly aware that there are elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services that tried to put their thumb on the scale of American elections, on Hungarian elections. This is just what they do. This is this is part of the the cost of doing business within some elements of their system. He like calls uh Trump on his cell phone and puts it on speaker and and holds it up. Um and then at the very end, that was a clip from a press conference that JD Vance did with Orban where he was asked about something and ended up blaming the Ukrainian intelligence services. Ben, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this, the Vance visit, um, that bizarre clip of him br blaming Ukraine there. And then why you think like Peter Magyar seems to have a a a chance while others don't, and what it would mean if Orban actually lost this time. Yeah. So one book plug ago, right? So my my last book after the fall, um, I wrote about it hungry. Um, and uh I'm not just saying this uh to to reference the book. There one of the characters, so I profiled some people in opposition. Um, and one of the three or four Hungarians that were kind of characters in my book that I spent some time with in Budapest is a investigative journalist named uh Sabolch Panyi. Uh, writes for an outlet called Direct 36. He's a great investigative journalist. And I mention him because he got charged by Orban and the Hungarian authorities with espion age. So it's kind of weird, you know, to write about somebody who's a journalist and then see them being uh accused of you know colluding with a foreign government. It's all bullshit, right? But it was part of the what what what Sabolchpany had reported on is all the Russian interference in the Hungarian election, which is obvious. I mean, like they they're projecting onto Ukraine, what Russia is actually doing.. Yeah. Right Yep. And and it's bogus, and people have called out that. But I the what is so interesting about this is again, Hungary can seem like a smaller country. Viktor Orban is both an ideological leader of this far-right brand of, I don't even call it populist anymore, like this kind of far-right blood and soil nationalism that we've seen. He has been a propagator of the playbook to enshrine authoritarian power in Hungary that the Republicans have copied here. He's at the fulcrum of efforts by Russia, Israel, and the United States. Putin uses Orban to BB uses Orban to sow disunity in the EU around Israel and any potential sanction of Israel. And Trump and Vance use Orban as a fulcrum inside of Europe to fuck up whatever they don't like about the EU. And that could be anything from, you know, potential tech regulation to to just, I don't know, having liberal democratic policies, right? And so it is quite interesting that this man who's been in power this time around since 2010, um, that Putin, Bibi, and Trump, all the worst people, are desperate for this guy to win because he's a tool of their efforts to upend European unity and bolster the far right across the continent. Um so the stakes are very high here. Now Magy ar has a chance where previous uh the pro one of the problems that uh we've seen in past Hungarian elections is that the the center to the left i is very divided. Um and some of that is again almost not their fault. Some of that's kind of by design. Like there's a lot of like influence operations by the hung by the Fidesz party of Orban, by the Russians and others, to turn people against each other to create, you know, their version of Dems and disarray there. Um, some of it is because the legacy it was of very deep disgust with the governing center left party before Orban, right? So there was kind of a stink around uh some of the kind of more conventional parties. And so to have a guy like Magy ar, who is a defector from the conservative movement in Hungary? Um, creates a new political opening because obviously you have the left is willing to vote for anybody to get Orban out, but then you win over some of the independents. But also urban hasn't delivered right like if you look at Hungarian standards of living Hungarian poverty levels Victor Orban has enriched himself and become some big international celebrity to the far right but life for Hungarians, it's not like he's like not even like the Chinese Communist Party where they can say we raise standards of living. Like th this is not working. And I think also just people are sick of this guy after fourteen years. It feels similar to like a little bit like Navalny too, right? Like in the the the Naval ny in a many ways was a nationalist in attacking not attacking Putin from the right, but was not like trying to be some big squishy liberal. He thought that his path to uh taking down Putin was focusing on kleptocracy and also just coming at him from like a far more conservative perspective. That's right. And that's exactly right. And and look, we should just say like these guys have put Victor Orban, if he wins, it's because you know he's got the media completely on his side in Hungary. He's God knows what corruption's happening. He's got the Russian television services helping him. If he wins and ekes out a win, like that's kind of status quo ante. If Victor Orban loses this election, it is a seismic event. It is a fucking earthquake in global politics. Uh and we should and and we and by the way, we should insist that it is one because you know what these guys put all the chips on him. JD Vance flew there to bo bolster him . Like he was bolstering like a yeah in the Methodist campaigning for a midterm election congressional district right before the election. So this would be humiliating to Trump. It would be a huge setback to the far right in Europe. It would be a wind in the sails of Democrats in my small D Democrats in Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where they've been fighting some tough battles. Um, so like, you know, uh the pod saved the world endorsement is with Maggie or like such as it matters. Yeah, it would be seismic. I mean it would be credible for the European Union, it'd be great for the continent, it'd be great for it'd be great for like some wind in the sales of progressives all over the world. I want to um I just want to quickly trigger you if that's okay. Um I was watching uh the Vance Orban press conference and I What has happened in this country, what has happened in the midst of this election campaign is one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen or ever even read about. The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried to make Hungary less energy independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers, and they've done it all because they hate this guy. But I think that what the people of Hungary, what I would encourage them to do is ask themselves the question not who's pro or anti Europe, not who's pro or anti the United States of America, but who is pro-you? Who is pro-the people of Hungary? How about the absolute incredible hypocrisy of the vice president of the United States going to stump for Victor Orban and then complaining about foreign election interference. By the way, with all the context that we know about Trump, you know, remember when he he offered Argentina a $20 billion bailout and told voters there that like either, you know, vote with uh Javier Malay or else like the US would cut off support. Like these guys are brazenly interfering in elections all over the place. And he's still JD Vance is still like his he's a one note, like tiny little man, fucking pathet ic little baby loser, and he's whining about bureaucrats in Brussels, because that's like all he can that's his entire playbook at this point. Yeah. I mean you hit that point. Only I'd add is on the substance , Viktor Orban and his cronies have been stealing EU money for years. The EU provides billions of dollars in assistance to Hungary, because it's one of the poorer countries in the EU for things like infrastructure projects. And all the money just gets skimmed off the top and goes to enrich Urban's cronies and finances politics. So if the he's got problems with Brussels, yeah, part of it's that he's way out of step with the Europe on things like Ukraine. But part of it said he's been fucking stealing from Europe, right? And that's why they don't want to keep shoveling money to the guy. Um, so not that JD Vance cares about that. Uh so I mean for him, I mean the Ukrainians are being bonded and invaded. For him to to accuse it it it is such an atrocity, like that this guy is sitting there taking pot shots at people that are a million times tougher than he The other weird comment he made, Ben, is he said like he was doing some weird bit about how Orban's leadership is a model for how other European leaders should be dealing with the energy crisis in Europe, which as far as I can tell, like Orban gave like huge government subsidies or basically just like forced like state agencies to absorb a bunch of costs. Then they were super pro-Russia and they just like advocated either for purchasing oil and gas from the Russians or removing sanctions from the Russians. And now they're sucking up to Trump, even though he is creating this new massive energy crisis via the war with Iran. It's just like w what does he think vote like I guess he thinks voters everywhere are stupid. Maybe that's just the answer. He does. I mean, he he he thinks he can like JD Vance them, you know, and uh uh this shtick is just growing really old. Because like you know what, who in America, the only people that give a shit about this are like the ideologues at like the Claremont Institute. You know, like it it's like far-right intellectuals. Like it's not like , you know, the working folks of Ohio that JD Vance represents or claims to represent are sitting there, you know, in rural Ohio being like, you know what we really need? We need an Orban victory in the Hungarian election. Like, yeah, you're who's the fucking elitist cosmopolitan? Like, give me a break, JD Vance. Go to back to Ohio and like actually talk to people who can't afford their bills instead of like spending taxpayer money to fly to stump for somebody that probably nobody in Ohio has heard of. It is very weird. And there is also, by the way, I mean, remember Tucker Carlson did his week of programming from Budapest to Yeah, that's that's that's where we break from Tucker. Yeah, big big time. Big time. Um the the the way the way politics is kind of getting reshuffled right now is very interesting. I mean this was probably inevitable and bound to happen in some ways because Trump is essentially a lame duck president and everyone's kind of, you know, jostling for uh their spot in figuring out what's next. But there's no doubt that Tucker was right when he told Trump that, you know, the war in Iran would end his presidency and would be the undoing of him uh and potentially the MAGA project. And uh it does feel like we're at the beginning of that happening and it's happening more rapidly than frankly I would have expected, but um not sad about it. Not sad about it.. Mm-hmm Not sad about it. Okay, well, uh, that's it for us today. Thank you for listening. 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