Trump Wants to Use the U.S. Afghanistan Withdrawal to Beat Kamala Harris

Intro welcome back to pod save the world I'm Tommy vtor and Ben has left me all alone in the studio to be anxious by myself on debate day actually there's lots of great people in the studio you can't see them because they're not on this little camera right now but don't worry uh Ben's taking a week off a much deserved break but we have an amazing show for you today thanks to the magic of Zoom it's going to be two parts so I just talked with my former colleague Colin call he was Biden's National Security adviser when Biden was the vice president then Colin served as a top Pentagon official until last year um we tick through some of the biggest security challenges around the globe from Iraq to Ukraine Afghanistan especially Republican efforts to pin everything bad that happened in Afghanistan on vice president Harris now uh we also talked about the growing security threat from Islamic extremist groups in Northern Africa then we talked about BB netanyahu's arguments about what he needs to defeat Isis uh and whether he really needs control of an area called the Philadelphia Corridor which is that border region between Gaza and Egypt so fascinating conversation with a real real defense policy expert who was in a lot of the meetings about Ukraine about Iraq about Afghanistan uh where the decisions we're now debating were made and then you will hear my conversation with a truly excellent reporter named Vera Bergen gruin um she recently interviewed two of the most bizarre fascinating uh and in some cases very popular leaders in Latin America Javier m in Argentina and na buk in El Salvador we talk about those guys uh what it was like to interview them how their you know sort of policies are going why they're so popular and then just the rise of right-wing populism generally uh and we also talked about Russian propaganda efforts in the US and their attempts to pay off some of the lamest right-wing influencers in the United States uh for you know propaganda reasons so an excellent show we cover a ton of ground we cover a lot of topics that we don't always get to here on pod of the world like a rock uh and so I think you're going to really love it so without further Ado here's the interview with Colin I am thrilled to welcome to the show uh my former colleague and one of the smartest most experienced foreign Colin Kahl joins policy Minds I know Colin call great to see you it's great to be with you so this is a very fun uh today because you have this particular expertise in defense policy because most recently you served as under secretary of defense for policy in the Biden Administration uh that's you know a top job at the Pentagon but also the person that is at like every single National Security Council meeting whether you want to be there or not where all the big decisions are made um uh you left the Pentagon in 2023 and then before that from I think 2014 to 2017 uh Colin served as vice president then Vice President Joe Biden's National Security advisor so again in the pdb every day uh as part of all these big decisions so you've done lots of other interesting stuff I'm going to stop puffing you up now uh and you're currently a senior fellow at Stanford University imagine you see our old colleague Mike McFall an awful lot all the time in fact he's actually he's technically my boss although don't tell him that because then he might start ordering me around he might start might start yelling at you um but listen I'm so excited you're here uh we we were chatting earlier both of us um or at least I'll speak for myself I'm so anxious I can barely see straight uh because the debate is happening tonight but also uh there's a lot of issues we don't talk about on the show uh enough starting with the rock our leading topic and you literally were you know meeting with uh senior Pentagon leaders about these security challenges you were traveling to places like Baghdad to meet the foreign government so just really great to have you um so again starting with Iraq which we haven't talked about Iraq military operation for a while but a couple stories caught my eye recently the first was this major military operation last week by I believe the US and Iraqi media sorry the US and Iraqi military uh targeting some senior Isis leaders and the second was a report in Reuters that said the US and Iraq have reached a deal to withdraw US troops from Iraq starting in 2025 and have all US troops out by the end of 2026 however this story noted that the two parties could cut a deal to keep US troops in Iraq longer on some sort of advisory basis and so you know calling these two stories Together made me a little anxious because uh clearly there must be a pretty significant Isis threat if it necessitated this big military operation and that combined with the story about the withdrawal deadline maybe think about 2010 when President Obama pulled all US troops out of Iraq only to send them back in in 20 2014 to deal with Isis so big picture um what is your view of the threat from Isis and Iraq now and what's your sense of the capacity of the security forces in Iraq and the government to handle it and the odds that US troops are really out of the country by 2026 yeah it's good question um yeah spent spent a lot of time in Iraq I think between 2006 and 2016 I took I had about 20 trips to Iraq about four and a half months on the ground um so look I I think the the answer is that Isis is down but not out and you know your listeners will recall that you know Isis the last two letters stand for Iraq and Syria so this is really a threat that crosses the uh Iraq Syria border so this raid that you mentioned uh recently that involved US Special Forces a large number of them like a hundred which is much much larger than normal with their Iraqi counterparts was in Western Iraq in anbar Province where it was like the hot bed of the Sunni Insurgency uh you know during the US uh occupation and counterinsurgency campaign there uh but it really Isis uh not only has uh you know Safe Haven in parts of Amar but also in the mid Euphrates River Valley in Syria so we kind of work with different forces in the in the in the two in the two countries so uh in Iraq we work with uh the Iraqi security fores and their counterterrorism uh forces in Syria we obviously don't work with the Assad government we work instead with a coalition of Kurds and Arabs that we call the you know Syrian Democratic forces the SDF um and the reality is that uh Isis is still there um by sycom statistics their attacks are up uh this year I don't think they are an exist poal threat to Iraq and Syria in the way that they were say you know 10 years ago um nor do I think that they are you know a clear impr present danger every single day to the US Homeland uh but the threat is still there which begs the question then like why would we be talking about leaving if there's still the threat there and there I think you kind of have to zoom out and and your listeners will understand the broader context which is you know most of what we've been focused on in the Middle East obviously since October 7th has been the war in Gaza but also just the broader uh back and forth with Iran and its various proxy groups in the region you know the houthis in Yemen it's got they've got Shia militia groups in Syria but also Shia militia groups in Iraq and they have engaged in a bunch of attacks uh uh against uh US forces over the years and we have retaliated uh with our with strikes of of our own and when we have done that in Iraq uh uh it's very controversial um it was controversial obviously when When Donald Trump authorized the the killing of kasum solmani uh you know the ks Force Commander in in Iraq back in in 2020 but when we've done things in the Biden Administration in in uh in Iraq it's also been very politically sensitive so there's a lot of political pressure on uh the prime minister in Iraq Sudani uh by you know domestic political pressure by Shia groups but also uh by Iran to get the Americans out and so really what I think the the way to Best understand the news is that they're trying to finesse a way out of this problem and that they're trying to create a Time Horizon that makes it look like we're leaving but I would be doubtful that we totally leave I think basically by the fall of 2025 I think we will have withdrawn you know several hundred troops there about 2500 American troops in Iraq and another 900 in Syria several hundred of them will have departed uh I think a lot of our presence will have Consolidated into the north into herbal in the kind of Quasi autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq and that by the end of 26 my guess is we will still have you know hundreds of of uh folks there mostly in the north some in Baghdad they may be rebranded as advisers but I mean they're basically advisers now so some of this will be I think really about managing Iraqi politics I do not think that most of the Iraqi leadership wants to completely kick us out yeah do you think they feel burned by the 2010 2014 experience in the way I think a lot of Americans do so I think yeah burn may not be the right you know because look nor Al Malik who is the prime minister back in 2011 he you know he would have maybe cut a deal to have a stay but he was under a lot of pressure to get us out too and and they thought they were ready and and clearly when Isis swept over large portions of Iraq in 2014 they proved they weren't ready I think the Iraqi security forces are in a better place and they probably can keep a lid on Isis with a you know a smaller more manageable number of American forces I wouldn't want to you know trust it all you know put it all on their shoulders but I do think the next Administration you know whether it's Harris or Trump is going to have to think through what the transition plan looks like for the Isis campaign not just in Iraq but also we don't really you know there's not not there's not a clear Horizon for what happens in Syria too where you have detention facilities with like 10,000 Isis uh dudes and you have these large refugee camps essentially with a lot of Isis family members and there's just a lot of stuff that still has to be done to kind of work ourselves out of that job yeah some really harrowing reporting I think by the New Yorker a few months back about those refugee camps and people who are just trapped in this horrible Purgatory with you know no credible accusations against no way to get out no place to go um really really awful um I did want to sort of hop from war zone to war zone if you don't mind because I imagine uh another you know issue country uh issue Ukraine-Russia War updates set that you sent an enormous amount of time on was the war in Ukraine especially when you were at the Pentagon um recently though you know the war has just been kind of steady state awful but seemingly Frozen I mean some notable recent developments were uh just recently zalinski reshuffled his cabinet a few weeks back there was that surprise Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory now it seems like Ukrainian troops are are struggling to hold that territory um on Monday night Ukraine launched a major drone attack into the Moscow region uh it reportedly killed one person uh generally caused chaos shut down the airport for several hours the Ukrainian military said they launched 46 drones 38 of which were intercepted I assume that means the rest hit Targets this was according to CNN and then on Tuesday I saw uh Tony blinkin the Secretary of State accused Iran of providing Russia with short range ballistic missiles and said the US would respond with more sanctions so just you know we're constantly hearing about new ways that the Iranians are replenishing their stockpiles from Iran from North Korea from other Bad actors um last thing on this I mean on social media you're now seeing these clips of Ukraine's so-called Dragon drones uh which are drones that spray something called thermite that burns so hot it can melt through metal which is pretty much you know the scariest thing imaginable so just a constant you know bruising War massive casualties uh ever evolving and more awful sets of Technologies so with that setup Colin um kind of in the simplest terms you know like two and a half years into this war do you feel like one side has momentum militarily yeah I think Tommy your your setup illustrates that there's a lot going on but in some ways not a lot is happening in the sense that the fundamentals of the conflict have not shifted shed by any of the events that you enumerated so look I think the the ukrainians went into k um to surprise the Russians surprised us uh by all accounts uh as well to change the narrative that they could actually generate some momentum and show that the Russians were vulnerable I think they probably tried to seize bite off a a piece of Russia uh maybe to serve as a bargaining chip later later down the road if there's negotiations to you know whether it's about prisoner swaps or about territorial exchanges um but I also think they were hoping that in kind of holding parts of Russia at risk it would force the Russian army to divert some of the forces that were putting pressure on Ukraine in the East right to defend the Homeland that has not happened so what you have essentially seen is the ukrainians do control you know uh hundreds of kilometers of of Russian territory uh Putin has not kind of taken the bait uh they've redeployed some troops but not the troops that are really pushing on the offensive in the East so both sides are essentially making incremental territorial gains but there is nothing in the fundamental dynamics that changes the reality that I don't think either side is capable of of sweeping over large chunks of territory so the good news is I don't think the ukrainians are about to collapse and that Russia's about to take Ukraine so that's good the bad news is it's going to be very difficult for the ukrainians to take back you know large amounts of ter territory that they have lost to the Russians to date and so as a result because there's essentially it's not really a stalemate but there's a degree of you know just horrible attrition for minimal gain on the front lines you're seeing both sides coming over the top so you're seeing the Russians uh bombard Ukrainian cities we've seen some of the largest missile attacks on on Ukraine in in uh in in the entire War uh in the in the past several weeks I think that's kind of how Putin is reacting to the K and then the ukrainians are also coming over the top and it's not just that they're coming over the top but they are trying to make Russians feel the type of vulnerability that ukrainians have felt uh since 2022 by holding Russian critical infrastructure at risk um and so I think where this is headed you know it's anybody's guess and I I obviously the outcome of us election will matter uh to some degree but I do think that at some point I think it's likely next year the two sides will will sit down and start to talk whether they're able to come to a resolution or not uh I don't know but I think just that there you just there's a physics problem uh in the war that isn't I don't think going to be overcome in the near term yeah and I think you're right I mean it does feel like the the elephant in the room is the US election and what Donald Trump might do versus KLA Harris um but in the interim I mean the ukrainians are constantly pushing for more weapon systems and more flexibility that has been true all along you know you'll often hear you know background sources from in the ukrainians uh military complaining that President Biden is moved too slowly on you know the f-16s for example but then gets to yes and then the the biggest source of frustration at the moment seems to be that the Ukrainian military wants permission to use Us weapons to strike targets inside Russia uh but they basically aren't allowed to do that with some limited exceptions along the border um President Biden has talked about the risk of escalation with Russia which is very understandable uh given their nuclear Arsenal could you just take us inside some of these debates and help us understand how you guys thought about escalation risk and the Rules of Engagement and weapon systems sure I mean first it's it's worth keeping in mind that you know really Ukraine is the first conflict since the end of the Cold War where we had to relearn some of the lessons and boundaries from the Cold War experience you know the United States and the Soviet Union took enormous pains not to directly confront each other during the Cold War because they you know for however we you know they helped Vietnam you know uh uh they helped North Viet the North Vietnamese against us in Vietnam we helped the mujahadin uh in Afghanistan we supported different parties in places like Angola and Nicaragua and elsewhere it was all done very indirectly and self-consciously to manage the possibility that one of these wars uh uh could mushroom into literal mushroom clouds of of World War II so Ukraine was you know we we've been relearning some of those lessons and I think this is my this is my own view but I think that our our national interest with Ukraine Ians like if you did the ven diagram they overlap probably like 90% maybe even 95% but there's a sliver of difference and the biggest difference is that the ukrainians are fighting uh an existential struggle this is literally a struggle for their country and so they just wait the escalation issues differently because for them they're already all in and what else can the Russians do to them whereas I think you know President Biden and I think any reasonable president of the United States has a special obligation not just to to the United States but to the world uh to weigh some non-trivial risk of escalation with another major nuclear power because it could lead to the end of the human race for like for all time yeah so uh so I I I really I I'm not I don't have a lot of um you know I think sometimes the critics who just say ah you're too weak and you're too scared and it was always a bluff and um how do they know uh they have no idea and okay maybe the risk wasn't 30% maybe the risk was only 3% of a nuclear war like these are serious uh decisions that the president of the United States has to take into account so look I think we have uh incrementally provided uh the ukrainians more uh ability just to uh to hit Uh Russian uh forces to the degree that those forces are are you know uh inside Russia proper are directly supporting the front lines there's been some loosening of restrictions on us weapon systems but I think as as secretary Austin said this week like you the other part of this story is that there you know you know everything is supposed to be a GameChanger right like you provide them ab's tanks it changes the game you provide them f-16s it changes the game you provide them these attack thems long-range missiles that changes the game you provide you know this that nothing is going to change the game in and of itself and so if you're the president you have to weigh whatever the assessment is of escalation risk versus the reality that no one weapon system or slight change is going to completely mean Ukrainian Victory I think that's such an important point because when you give them the attack missiles or or longrange weapons they adjust uh there was this big fight over whether the US should give Ukraine aprim tanks and then I read that they were pulled off the battlefield because they were deemed to be ineffective or or basically Sitting Ducks near the front lines so you know there's no Panacea here I think it's an important thing to remember and sometimes the uh the demand for the weapon systems gets reported and when it's not useful you don't you don't really read about that well I mean look I look I I remember uh you know when I was the under secretary of defense for policy I had to sign off on every single security assistance package they went up to the Secretary of Defense and then over to the state department and the president and I think I oversaw $43 billion of of security assistens to Ukraine so that's that's real money um and you know I was oftentimes asked like why aren't you you know giving them f-16s and why doesn't that happen faster and I would say look to give them brand new f-16s would essentially consume like a third of the money that we had to provide them with it and by the way these weapons platforms are super sophisticated it takes a couple of years to train pilots and like you have to make decisions about what are you prioritizing when now we'll have to see what happened but we did recently see one of the f-16s that was transferred by the Europeans crashed very early on and there's an investigation about how related that may or may not be to Pilot training and the reality is that when you rush some of these things it may not have the effect either so sometimes you know a lot of times when we would say this from the Pentagon that ab's tanks are really hard to maintain and guess what Austin like used to drive these things around the desert so he knows what he's talking about or the f-16s take a long time to train on people would say dismiss those concerns and just say why do you hate Freedom right you know it's like that was never what it was about no man our political debate is very very smart um last question for you on Ukraine uh there is this allegation that I see often from the farle in the far right often on Twitter it's that Ukraine and Russia were very close to signing a peace deal in March of 201 22 but that Boris Johnson then the prime minister of the UK was dispatched to keev some Say by Biden himself to Scuttle that deal and I just saw a clip of a former top state department official named Toria nuland who was asked about this Theory she said basically uh the US kind of read the terms of the agreement that Putin had put forward they found somewhere in an Annex that it had these severe limitations on what Weapons Systems Ukraine could have going forward but there were no such limits on the Russian military and I I guess the concern was that leaves Ukraine vulnerable in per perpetuity on for another Invasion that comment by Toria was kind of taken by some as essentially confirmation that the US had in part scuttled a peace deal a few months into the war what's the truth here yeah well look uh I mean the reality is that you know Folks at the White House and the state department would know more about the details I'll just say from my perch uh uh at at the Pentagon and in these inter agency meetings I never saw a serious deal on the table that is one that would reliably and sustainably end the conflict and yeah the two sides were talking um but you know on on the other hand the the ukrainians were looking to build some momentum to get more territory back the Russians weren't going to give their territory back and the Russians speak out of both sides of their mouths on these on on these things so you know I can't comment on the specific annexes or details that that uh Toria uh spoke to but I think the I think separate from like whatever the particular detail is I just think more macro um they were not that close uh and I certainly uh do not recall any High Lev meetings and I think I was pretty much in all of them where the president of the United States said you know what we should do we should put Boris Johnson on on the plane and get him to kill this deal because like we want the war to end we don't want the war to end like that's just that's not that's not how these conversations went down of all of all people Boris Johnson would not be my Messenger on anything except for you know how to get away with the well get away for a little while with raging during the co lockdown but um but yeah I mean I think the the sort of gist is that for some reason the US wanted the war to continue maybe because they were happy that Russian forces were getting chewed up but that sounds like you say that's ridiculous no I mean I I think the the position you know I think a lot of times what the US government says something they actually mean it so I mean in this in this situation like uh we don't want the war or the peace more or less than the ukrainians I mean at the end of the day we're not going to tell the ukrainians what to do is their territory that was invaded we can give them advice about what we think they need and obviously we'll make our own calculations about what we provide and under what terms and all of that but at the end of the day um you know we were we we've never been in a posture where we were going to twist their arm to sign a bad deal nor were we telling them to hold back because you know we didn't want uh a peace agreement I will tell you in the fall of 2022 what we were mostly focused on was the possibility that the Russians could actually nonlinearly escalate to use Battlefield nuclear weapons and so there was no sense that like wow we really want this war to keep going like that that was like maximum period of danger was in the fall of of 2022 I mean you remember the president of the United States saying that we were the closest to Armageddon since the Cuban Missile Crisis so that does that sound like somebody who's like so you know what we we really want this war to keep going like I it's just not it's it's not plausible I have never understood this this Theory or the suggestion that it was somehow good for Biden to keep the war going it's to me it strikes me as ridiculous but I thought I'd ask um switching to Afghanistan so we're recording this Afghanistan withdrawal again a couple hours before the debate tonight between the vice president uh and Donald Trump um we don't know what was discussed because it hasn't happened yet but in the days leading up to this debate it seemed clear that Trump and republicans in Congress want to talk about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan uh Mike McCall the chair of the house Foreign Affairs committee released a 354 page report that says the Biden administration had quote the information and the opportunity to take the necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collap of the Afghan government and safely evacuate people but they quote picked Optics over security that's what this Republican report says uh which led to you know the the horrible images we saw uh in those final weeks in August and then the death of 13 service members at the Abbey gate uh and lots of military equipment being left behind which seems like that's the thing Trump cares about most um according to Politico vice president Harris was mentioned only twice in a preliminary report that McCall released in 2022 but the final report names her 251 times um I'm curious what happened between now and then Colin uh what's your what is your takeaway to kind of like the main thrust of this report to the extent that you've had time to read it sure look I mean clearly the timing and the fact that they hyphenated everything so that it's Biden Harris where every you know they just like found you find replac every time said Biden they just yeah um so I mean that that that part is transparent um the reality is that whether you think it's a good idea that we uh left Afghanistan or not um you know this the president owned that decision uh and uh the you know the president's the commander-in-chief uh he had very strong feelings uh about Afghanistan those feelings long predate the Biden Harris Administration to back when you and I were in the white house together and you know how what he felt about Afghanistan then um so I I think I I wouldn't make too much about kind of the vice president's role in this I think that's just the Republican Party trying to you uh uh associate her with something they think they can use uh politically well presumably she was in like National Security Council meetings or principal committee meetings but I mean I guess you were there I mean was she someone that had strong views on Afghanistan policy or withdrawal I take I absolutely agree and it Jes with my experience that Joe Biden had deeply personal and strongly felt views on the need to end this war period paragraph um but I'm just curious what you make of her role look I first of all I should you know the caveat being I did I didn't get confirmed in my job until the end of April so I wasn't there for the deliberations about the withdrawal itself I can only speak going forward um look I think she was in you know she's in the Oval Office she's in the situation room for issues related to all sorts of National Security issues I did not get the sense she was the driving force behind uh these these policies one way or the other in large part uh on on Afghanistan because the president had full ownership over these decisions um I do think look people can people can um agree or disagree about whether we ultimately should have left Afghanistan or whether we should have left under conditions uh that were more favorable if if those could even be achieved but I do think it's important to keep in mind two things that the Republicans don't like to talk about the first is the die was essentially cast when Trump cut the deal with the Taliban a year before right Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office they cut that deal the Doha agreement with the Taliban behind the backs of the Afghan government completely delegitimizing the Afghan uh the government and then they proceeded to withdraw most of our forces from Afghanistan leaving only a very small uh you know contingent of a few thousand there in a manner that completely reduced our visibility on the types of deals the Taliban was clearly cutting at the local level which is what they enabled them to sweep through Afghanistan uh a year later so and let's also keep in mind like Trump basically directed The Pentagon to withdraw from Afghanistan around Christmas time with zero planning right it was essentially stonewalling by uh by the Pentagon that prevented that from happening so this notion that like if Trump would have been president it would all been have been better like that's just counterfactual he cut the deal that set this up and then he tried to get the Pentagon to leave with zero planning and I will tell you as a as someone who worked on the transition team between uh uh Trump and Biden I should call it the non-transition team since the Trump team was so non Cooperative they had no plans and whatever information they did have they were told to hide the ball so we come in at the beginning of 2021 with two things a timeline but no plan wow yeah so what the president asked was he believed that we could buy ourselves an interval into the fall the deadline for the withdrawal was May but we could buy ourselves an interval into the fall but that if we pushed it too much further or completely reopened two things would happen one the Taliban which had not been attacking US forces would start attacking us again which means we would be back at War he didn't want us to be back at War and neither did the majority of the American public and then second what he believed was we weren't winning in Afghanistan even with you know a few thousand troops there in fact if you asked the intelligence Community when we had 2500 uh troops there when we had 8,000 troops there when we had 25,000 or 100,000 were we winning the intelligence communi would say no it's an eroding stalemate and an eroding St means you are losing slowly right and you know Obama didn't want to keep a bunch of troops in Afghanistan Trump didn't want to keep a bunch of troops in Afghanistan but every time the situation got bad and we were losing what happened Obama surged and Trump surged so the other thing that Biden didn't want to do is to leave to the next president a situation where inevitably things were going to get worse again and the military would come to a future president and say we got to put more people into Afghanistan at a time when like you know there are grandfathers and grandkids serving together in Afghan like it's it's it's so I think the rapidity of the collapse which was not predicted by the intelligence Community they told the president a year or two uh and there was an anticipation that as things got worse there would be uh a negotiation between the Afghan government and the Taliban so they told him that it would be about a year or two after the complete withdrawal then they said ah maybe it's a year then they said oh it could be six months then they said maybe it's a few months then it's a few weeks or a few days but of course they were saying that as we got closer and closer to what happening I never saw an assessment by the intelligence community that said that that uh the Afghan government and the security forces would completely collapse prior to the end of the withdrawal and yet that's what's happened and so then the question is did we do enough to plan for the worst case contingency and I'll just speak from the pentagon's perspective we did enormous amounts of planning about how to execute a very large scale evacuation from Afghanistan uh and we all we not only did the planning we positioned forces in the Middle East for that eventuality and as harrowing and as chaotic as the final days in Afghanistan were and they were the worst days of my professional life in terms of like how hard and horrible things were there was also a degree of Pride that I had in what our military was able to accomplish just think about this we surged 5,000 troops in a couple of days into now hostile terrain to seize an airport that was now under enemy control secured the airport to the best of our ability given that we no longer owned any of the rest of the country and proceeded to get more than 125,000 human beings safely out of that country in about two weeks that has never happened in the history of the world no other power in the history of the world would be capable of doing what our military did China won't be capable of doing it for 50 years if ever and I also so I think you know as a pentagon official just watching in awe about what our military did uh I know how much hard work went into making that happen as terrible as the events were the last point I'll make sorry I don't have strong feelings about this the last the last point I will make is the rapidity of the collapse what it demonstrated to me was that this was going to happen whenever we left yeah we were there for 20 years and it was a house of cards that collapsed like that we could have been there for another 20 years and the day after we left the same thing would have happened and so the question really is how much more American blood and treasure should we have put into this house of Cs and I think at the end of the day as as terrible as uh you know um as aspects of the out of the of the withdrawal were there was never a day afterwards where I said you know what would make all the problems we face around the world easier if we still had tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan like that I never felt that way and that's the big type of strategic question that you have to ask when you're thinking about these things yeah I mean look we could we could talk for a full hour about uh the way the Trump Administration also gutted the SIV Visa program which made it much harder for the state department to process visas for the people that had helped the US Military and then bring them into the United States because people like Stephen Miller uh don't want brown people coming into the country we could talk for an hour about the failure over the course of 20 years to deal with corruption or to create government structure structures that were viewed as legitimate by the Afghan people we could talk about the fact that there was more you know scrutiny from Mike McCall and Republicans of ending a war than there was of 20 years of failed policy so I I I I am as hard and awful as those last weeks were and as critical as uh you know I was at times and as others were at times I also supported ending the war knowing that it was going to be hard I think in any circumstance like you just said yeah I mean it's I I I I will I will second all of all of that um all right well let's talk to another uh intractable problem because last uh week we had some just awful news out of Nigeria where an extremist group uh reportedly connected with Isis and maybe a splinter of boo Haram massacre at 170 people in a village in the northeastern part of Nigeria and you know over the past decade countries in the Sahel region have dealt with a very serious threat from these Islamic extremist groups um and then more recently efforts to combat them have been bobbled by coups and political instability in countries like Burkina Faso Mali ner Etc places uh like Mali where we had you know bases drone bases serious troop installation Etc um often those coups led to the US or the French having their counterterrorism forces pushed out while the Wagner group this Russian mercenary force that we used to talk about often until Putin uh uh took out the head of it prosan um the the Wagner group would get welcomed in and so you know Colin I know I'm like at the risk of asking you to literally draw with a broad brush across the continent of Africa I'm just wondering how worried you are about the growing threat from boo Haram you know Al-Qaeda offshoots Isis offshoots in the Sahel um and how much you think the political instability that we've seen there has impacted the ability of the US the French and others to mitigate that risk well I mean I think I think your lead in uh captured a lot of the fundamental Dynamics so uh yes I mean this is this is a region the Sahel um kind of a band across uh the the the the you know upper middle part of Africa um that uh has experienced instability and fragile States for a long time so you know you can go back decades and you're talking about uh problems with corruption weak institutions food insecurity um that made increasingly worse over time due to climate change uh uh ethnic uh conflict uh resource conflict um and so yeah so I think the way that that's manifested in recent years is kind of uh in three directions one is that you've seen this kind of uh uh belt of coups uh you've had coups and mly you've had coup in Burkina Faso and Chad and nisher uh and that has uh also triggered or been a Tipping Point for the withdrawal of French counterterrorism forces who have you know France has their own baggage in the region because of their colonial uh history it's also complicated the ility of un peacekeepers and other multinational forces to operate to try to stabilize um uh any of those places it's made life tougher for us and our counterterrorism forces uh to kind of how do you how do you maintain some pres presence in in in places where there have been coups it's very difficult uh and we don't have that big of a presence uh to uh to begin with um and that all of this is essentially created freedom of action for the two Bad actors that you talk about one are kind of jihadist groups that are either associated with uh the Islamic State or with Al-Qaeda uh and we saw examples of that in the book ofam story that that that that you mentioned uh but you've also seen openings for Vagner mercenaries to come in and essentially take over security roles for that the French uh no longer serve in a way that doesn't hold governments accountable for human rights at all and the result has been not to really weaken the jihadist but to create kind of gross human rights violations against civilians in a in in a bunch of these uh places is and then meanwhile you also have this layer of great power competition and the fact that China is particularly interested in deepening relationships with uh Coastal West Africa uh to establish bases and Facilities uh to project power into the into the uh Atlantic uh in ways that are quite concerning for the United States so that's not great um uh and the conditions are certainly worsening so you know to the question how much do I ask I worry about it I I worry about it I think one thing though is that not all hottest groups are the same in the sense that not all of I mean I I don't like any of them and they're terrible threats to local populations but some of the groups prioritize the so-called near enemy and others prioritize the far enemy the far Enemy being the United States right um and for the most part these groups in the Sahel are are local insurgents and militia groups that are focused mostly on uh local territory local criminality destabilizing local regimes that does not mean that couldn't metastasize at some point into groups that more directly threaten uh the US Homeland and I know that our intelligence Community watches that like a hawk but I would not rank these groups at the top of that list currently I would be more worried about groups in Somalia or AF uh you know Yemen or so Syria a handful of other places um maybe zoom out for just a second Tommy in the in the sense that I do think that in general we have to start thinking about Africa differently and obviously this particular story makes us think about Africa in the way we've thought about it for a long time which is essentially it's a it's a it's a continent full of failed and and fragile States humanitarian disasters terrorism like we think through that narrow lens and the secure relationship yeah 100% it is also rapidly emerging as you know one of the most populous uh uh places in the world it's got the most demographic dynamism uh in the world at a time when populations are shrinking in Europe and in much of Asia to include uh in China uh and there's a lot of economic dynamism too and so that means there are there's enormous energy people energy and dynamism in the region that I think the United States has to figure out a way to engage that instead of thinking just about counterterrorism and seeing everything through that lens we really have to focus on inclusive development uh on engaging uh uh young people and unlocking uh creativity and entrepreneurism across Africa by the way that can be good for American businesses and other things too like this isn't just this isn't charity uh uh right but really thinking about Africa as a place for strategic opportunity and in doing that we can also generate more resources to address some of these endemic problems and we can compete with Russia and China so I think is instead of kind of starting with the security stuff and then gradually working our way to the other issues I would encourage us kind of intellectually to try to flip the switch and think about it more as an opportunity and I think this is is actually one of the things that vice president Harris has led on uh in the in the Biden Harris Administration is really trying to think about Africa uh differently yeah I I I totally agree with that I mean I think that obviously it's worrisome when you know you have these counterterrorism platforms and they get driven out and you think what's the impact of that but I do think okay uh since 911 has the threat from you know Islamic extremist groups and alqaeda and Isis has it gotten is it Greater or smaller and I think like if if we're not like our strategies are successful in Africa um a an approach that is more people focused more economic focused like you discussed maybe is uh a better a better path than just blowing Stu up everywhere in perpetuity um place I want to talk with you about is just the situation Israel Gaza the occupied territories um last Israel-Hamas War week uh an American woman named aenor AG was shot and killed at a protest in the West Bank uh local media and Witnesses said she was shot in the head by an IDF sniper the IDF seems to have essentially confirmed that they were responsible Al though I think they're suggesting that the shooting was accidental even if that description of it doesn't necessarily make sense with the facts as we know it um she was a recent graduate of the University of Washington she was in the West Bank with uh the international solidarity movement a pro Palestinian group on Tuesday Secretary of State Tony blinkin called for quote fundamental changes to the way Israeli Security Forces operate in the West Bank here's a clip from Tony's remarks I think what we saw this uh investigation is it seems to show what eyewitnesses have said and made clear that her killing was both unprovoked and unjustified uh no one no one should be shot and killed for attending a protest no one should have to put their life at risk just for freely expressing their views um in our judgment Israeli Security Forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank including changes to their Rules of Engagement that that's one of a series of worrisome incidents in the West Bank recently that includes uh you know three Israelis were shot recently uh major military raids you know sort of the list goes on and on and then in Gaza uh at least 19 people have died and dozens were wounded after an Israeli strike on a humanitarian Zone in southern Gaza a witness told CBS news that 20 to 40 tents were destroyed the IDF said it was going after some Hamas uh officials um but you know sort of again in Gaza just steady state awful um and you know col we 11 months into this War uh it seems like hope for a ceasefire and hostage release deal is starting to fade axios reported that the US now questions whether Hamas would ever agree to a deal after their brutal execution of six hostages and uh demands that Israel release more Palestinian prisoners they seem to be upping their demands in these talks meanwhile a lot of Israelis blame Netanyahu for scuttling a deal after he introduced some 11th Hour demands including that Israel retained military control of the buffer region between Gaza and Netanyahu which is called the the Philadelphia Corridor um here's another Quick Clip of Netanyahu explaining his thinking we said as far as Gaza is concerned three War goals the first war goal was to destroy hamas's military and governing capabilities the second was to free our hostages and the third was to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel and all three of those goals all three of them go through Israel's control of the Philadelphia Corridor and it's obvious why you want to destroy hamas's military and governing capabilities you can't let Hamas rearm it's obvious so you have to control the corridor you can't let them have by the way it's not only to prevent them from terrorizing us ATT in US is also to prevent Hamas or any other terrorist organization from terrorizing the people of Gaza Gaza cannot have a future if Gaza remains porous and you can enable rearmament of terrorists through the Philadelphia Corridor so call sorry for the long long wind up there I mean we we know that Netanyahu wants to retain control of the buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt but I know what did you make of that argument that you know if you have this porous border if you have these smuggling tunnels that that you know that will allow Hamas just to rearm well look you don't have to take my word for it I mean the Minister of Defense as you mentioned Galant uh uh is skeptical of this argument uh and the leaders of mad and shenet who have been in charge of negotiating the hostage deal um have been pretty critical um of you know basically accusing the prime minister's office of of moving the goalpost on the negotiations by adding the Philadelphia cordor in I think us negotiators believe that this can be negotiated uh in the sense that there can be some solution that doesn't probably achieve the prime minister's maximalist Ambitions but nevertheless improves the ability to monitor uh and control the Border um but doesn't uh Le you know doesn't give the sense that there's an enduring IDF presence uh along the border between Gaza and Egypt in a way that I think just is a non-starter I think though that what this speaks to is that and I think what this is why uh there's growing skepticism is you know on the one hand there's this question about what is there any deal that Hamas would say yes to um because if you figure that the hostages are their only leverage uh are they ever willing to give them up I think that's a a valid question but on the other hand I also think that um that you know prime minister nanyo has let Hamas off the hook because the narrative now is that there was basically a deal a deal that the Israelis agreed to and that Hamas basically agreed to and then at the last minute the Israelis changed the terms uh at the request of the of the Prime Minister and this generated complaints by the way from the ministry of defense and the Israeli Defense Forces and mad and from shinb uh and I know created a lot of frustration in uh Washington as well and I think it would I think that's an indication that there and certainly among the protesters who some of whom blame the failure to cut that deal for the uh the death of the of the six Israeli hostages now obviously the moral culpability for that rest first and foremost with Hamas who murdered these people but uh had you had a deal in place uh uh prior to it happening at least some of these folks might still be alive and and free so this is a very raw emotional issue for the for uh for the Israeli people so it's just horrible I and and and honestly I think because the political Dynamics are such that it's not clear what leverage points could get Hamas to yes but also on the Israeli side it's not clear to me that prime minister Netanyahu is willing to cut a deal that will collapse his government and pretty much any deal that gives provides any concessions or accom on anything and remember he set the goal so high and almost impossibly maximalist that anything that is short of that I think he's worried that smri and Ben gavier will Bolt from his Coalition and as a result the government will collapse and he's prioritizing that above other things in in in some analysts uh view but it does speak to and you mentioned the West Bank at the at the beginning it does speak to a broader Dynamic which is even before October 7th uh settlers in the West Bank were acting and uh with a degree of impunity we had not seen in recent years and engaging in escalating uh levels of violence and I remember getting reports from the US SEC security coordinator uh in Israel who's a uh US general uh noting that settler violence was going up and up and up and up uh and you would get this this this spiral where there would be Violence by either Palestinian militants or settlers that would set off kind of uh this action reaction spiral and one of the most troubling things was not just the violence was happening but increasingly looked like the IDF was letting it happen that they were siding with the settlers and just kind of standing aside and so you've just seen and that's obviously all gotten worse given the raw emotions that Surface after October 7th and the nature of the current Israeli government and so I think there is just this sense that things in the West Bank are starting to spin out of control uh in a way that is not ultimately going to make either Israelis or Palestinians more uh secure and what at the root what both of these challenges have is that there are real political challenges uh that that have to be sorted through um you know obviously in Gaza on the M side but in Israel on the on on on the Israeli side as well yeah I mean that's sort of like the the last question I wanted to ask you which is you know you mentioned that Netanyahu has this maximalist goal which is to defeat Hamas Crush Hamas basically make it render it no longer to exist um you worked at the Pentagon with the best military planners on the planet backed by the most powerful military in the world the biggest the most sophisticated the most expensive um and your job was to go into rooms with you know the Joint Chiefs of Staff and try to figure out Military plans to defeat groups like Hamas do you think that that is an achievable mission to defeat them military militarily absent the political accommodations that that you mentioned before uh no and and and honestly we we learned that the hard way in our own experience es uh in Iraq and Afghanistan and I I think that not a lot of people remember but one of the early even as even as he was uh embracing Israel and its need for security after October 7th one of the things that President Biden said right away was don't repeat the mistakes we made after 911 right yeah and then they did yeah uh so I I think at the end of the day and look you don't have to you don't have to believe me or you I mean this is what senior commanders in the IDF are saying this is what minister glant is saying this is what the mad and shinbe guys are saying you cannot destroy Hamas as a movement and an idea militarily you can't what so you have to set a different goal which is the degradation of Hamas such that October 7th doesn't happen again and people can probably debate where that threshold is I think I think the folks I speak with in the US government believe that threshold has been achieved yeah yeah uh obviously there are people in Israel may have a have a different view so if your achievable military objective has been met then the question is what makes Israel safer over the long term and I don't think it makes Israel safer for Gaza to be completely destroyed ungovernable never rebuilt it will just be a hot bed for regenerating Hamas or something else that's even worse uh because that's where we've seen everywhere else uh in in in the world there has to be reconstruction there has to be humanitarian assistance there has to be a political Horizon for a two-state outcome even if it won't materialize overnight uh and there has to be an Embrace of that entire ecosystem by the international uh Community not just the United States and and our friends in Europe and elsewhere but by uh moderate states in the region as well we kind of know what the broad Strokes look like the challenge Tommy is that the politics yep on both sides of this conflict make it really hard to see how we get there anytime soon yeah need the political will uh Colin thank you so much that was such a fascinating just tour around the globe uh I am so grateful for you doing the show and uh you know let's go watch this debate let's go feel anxious for a few hours yeah sounds great thanks Tommy thanks for having me appreciate it okay we're going to take a quick break but before we do I just want to make sure you know about uh a brand new crooked Empire City & VSA show called Empire City The Untold origin story of the NYPD it is a truly truly excellent show we've been working on this show for years uh Empire City Unearthed the shocking and and largely hidden history of one of the world's largest police forces it is hosted by a peid award-winning journalist chenjerai Kika he is a incredibly smart historian journalist who digs into the early days of the New York City Police Department uh the show actually starts in 1930s before the NYPD came into existence they talk about how police were actually kidnapping free black people and selling them into slavery um the first two episodes are out now check out Empire City wherever you get your podcast and you can listen early and adree by joining Wonder Plus in the wondery app on Apple podcast but trust me download Empire City subscribe you will love this show also uh last night's presidential debate which I haven't seen yet reminded me of the stakes of this election year um you know we got to figure out which of these people is going to get the nuclear codes and so that's where you guys come in so we set this ambitious goal of getting 75,000 signups for vot Save America's organizer R volunteer Drive we're at 62,000 we want to get get the 75,000 by national voter registration day on September 17th so you can help by going to votesaveamerica.com 2024 and in less than 5 minutes you can take meaningful actions to help Democrats win up and down the ballot again votesaveamerica.com 2024 this message has been paid for by votes save America you can learn more at votesaveamerica.com and this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or Vera Bergengruen interview candidates committee joining me today is Vera Bergen gruin she is an excellent reporter for Time Magazine who covers foreign policy National Security uh right-wing despots across South and Central America uh really some of the best stuff I've read recently so thank you so much for joining the show thanks so much for having me so I I was like half kidding there I mean you very recently interviewed some of the most controversial and frankly interesting uh leaders in Central and South America and I'm very excited to talk with you about those two uh and those conversations and and what it tells us about kind of the political winds around the world at this moment and the appeal of right-wing populism in particular so let's just start in Argentina um with a leader named Javier M we've talked about him on the show before for those who don't remember he's been described as an anarcho capitalist he's a TV personality who ran for president threatening to blow the economy up or promising to rather um he used to bring a chainsaw to events because he said he was going to use it on the government there were rumors that he had hired mediums to talk to the dead including some of his own pets he has said that some of his dogs are his closest advisers I'm now just stealing all the fun color from your reporting so I'm going to shut up but can you just tell us about melee and how a guy who uh frankly at times sounds and looks a little crazy won the presidency with I think 56% of the vote yeah so you know just from Context uh I'm from Uruguay which is the country right next to Argentina and I've been pitching stories about Argentina my whole you know the decade I've been in journalism and no one's ever interested it's been in the same economic crisis for a decade right but this really really colorful character shows up and suddenly you know people can get enough um and he you know he's the thing to know about mle is he's a true ideologue you know you see him he's truly I mean he is a character you know he's out there he's got uh when we put him on the time cover the biggest comments were really about his hair he looks like a wolverine meets like a Tolkien character Vibe and he um you know he he's really really just not you can tell he's not a politician but he's really just you know an incredibly colorful character he um like you said he he compete with a chainsaw he can't seem to really control his emotions he he sobs on camera he's you know he's just a very again just a very memorable character who came uh on the scene as a pundit as an economics analyst and uh I think what that really Drew people to him because he again he there's no filter he we know I you know we're now kind of used to pundits so become I guess politicians or presidents but over there you know it gave him credibility the fact that he was just kind of he says he doesn't comb his hair because the Invisible Hand of the market does it for him right but when you meet you know it seems like an act and I thought it was much of it was an act but you know meeting him and meeting people around him and spending a long time reporting this profile you know ke is again like a true ideologue an economist who came on with these ideas that sound really Common Sense on the surface he's saying we're going to you know end government subsidies we're going to cut governments in half no more money for all these bloated uh you know welfare systems which you know it's true Argentina does have and we're going to get out of this economic crisis it's going to be you know it's going to be very painful and he won telling argentine's you know you're going to you think it's bad now it's going to get so much worse before it gets better but it just I think tells you how desperate argentines are um you know I've got family there if you if anyone knows argentine's I mean it's been more than 20 years and before then um just really really really dire economic crisis for a country that is very wealth you know has a lot of natural resources and feels like it it's you know it's it its Destiny is not to be this way so I think uh people just were really feeling like they were hitting rock bottom and the other person running was the economy Minister and they looked at these two and said you know what screw it we're going to go with this guy it's so interesting I mean you kind of uh you answered a bit of my next question which was you know Boris Johnson over in the UK would sort of like you know mess up his hair and go out and do this kind of like oish you know routine and it was clear enact because this is a guy who went to some of the best schools in the country and grew up privileged Etc just performing but and I read in your piece that melee had hired his actually changed the law to hire his sister to become his top media adviser I think you said a couple years earlier she was selling cakes on Instagram and now she's the the the gateway to the presidency which made me wonder is this a performance is this an act is someone who's putting on a show that he knows kind of matches the the burn it all down times but sounds like your impression was this guy's a True Believer he is definitely a True Believer in himself uh to the extent that even you know he again he he's a theorist an economic theorist so I think he would be willing to drag the country down even further I mean I don't believe this a lot of people kind of say this just to prove his economic theories right right and so I think he he is a True Believer in in his own kind of ideologies um and he is I mean he's he's he's one for drama I'm not saying it isn't an act whatsoever I mean a couple of months ago uh I think right around the time the story came out he booked a stadium filled it with supporters and like did a whole rock act I'm not sure if you saw this it kind of made every headline you ever see about M almost all of them have this slant to them because it's so outlandish he's sang like you know 1980s Argentine Rock and so clearly he loves it um and it's not that he isn't doing that in a self-aware way but I don't think it's an act in the sense that he is doing it because he is completely convinced it's going to help him politically it's because he you know he's feeling the agulation of the public and uh and to be honest one of the most interesting things is he hasn't lost a huge amount of public support even though he's been a president for you know uh more than half a year and things haven't really improved so I think uh people still are kind of willing to give him the benefit of the doubt uh but that public Persona he has um maybe it's again an indication of where Argentina's at but it's it's only kind of helping him because people kind of think someone that wild must be a genius we'll see oh God yeah no you know probably Trump gets some credit for that they think uh he's so crazy he might just work on the international stage so he's unpredictable but I mean you're right like Melee promised to do all these big things he wants to said he'd eliminate the Central Bank SL spending get inflation under control the list goes on and on but as you pointed out in your story um his party actually has very little power in the legislature which means they can't do the big structural reforms that are probably needed to really get uh Argentina out of you know DB I think it owes what $44 million or billion dollars I think to the IMF um and so really good politicians in a situation like that are able to blame their political opponents for obstructionism sometimes and reap a political benefit but more often than not um if problems don't get solved voters stay pissed off and they end up punishing the people in power but it sounds like you think so far he's not getting punished for lingering inflation for example that's what it seems at the moment I think partly again people don't really have many more options and even when you speak to people who don't support him they're still kind of you know they don't have any he's he's plan you know Z like there's nothing they've tried everything else um so I think that's partly why there's another interesting part to it which is for the again as I mentioned you know I've been pitching Argentino stories for a very long time um it's the same crisis but for the first time in a long time Argentina is kind of on the international stage they see like him meeting with Elon Musk and Elon Musk is saying I would love to come invest in your country and to argentine's that is just like crack you know like any public International a claim uh is important so I think that's a big part of it I do think that a lot of people who are you know again things haven't really in some ways they've improved on the on a spreadsheet but they you know in order to get there it's really you know tanked other parts of the economy people are so really hurting uh you know when I was in Argentina in April I went to a public university around the time there was a big fight about funding and the students were having classes in the dark and the hallways were dark and hospitals were you know uh student hospitals were kind of operating you know with little uh generators because he had cut Public Funding um pensioners are really feeling it so people are really pissed off and there's a lot of protests and yet at the same time it's still kind of balanced out I think by um not only the fact that they're willing to let him kind of feel it out and and give him more time uh but also because I think there's a lot of international you know just interest and a lot of and a lot of international validation of him as some kind of economic genius and seeing people on social media and on you know again mainly right-wing people but just kind of saying oh we wish we had a Malay we'd love to have aay that's really for I mean The Stereotype of Argentine is you know quite an arrogant people I can say that as a Uruguayan but I think a lot of that is kind of uh helping to keep his popular support because even though they're not seeing it yet uh there's a lot of public again Global attention and they like that no that's interesting yeah I mean Elon Musk I think wants access to Argentina's lithium for batteries for Teslas down the road but you're right I mean look i m is on the cover of time I mean I'm sure that's a fascinating thing for people in in Argentina he's speaking at CPAC he's giving bro hugs to Donald Trump as they kind of walk on and off the stage so yeah he's got this this profile that um you didn't necessarily get from the the past leaders um but the other leader you spoke with recently is a guy named na bu he's the president pres of El Salvador um you landed I believe his first interview with a foreign reporter in 3 years so congrats that's very cool um I think big picture of what people need to understand about bu is he is wildly popular um he's M he's I think the most popular leader in the Western Hemisphere if not the world um but he's also done some stupid things like in my opinion at least like using treasury funds to buy Bitcoin you tweet about buying the dip probably not something one should do with uh uh the state funds um he's also done some very authoritarian things like storming into Parliament surrounded by armed members of the military demanding that the parliament vote on bills um and there was this statistic from your story that really shocked me which was that one in every 57 Salvadorans is now incarcerated one in every 57 people is now incarcerated so can you just start by telling us a bit about who na buuk is and the context in El Salvador that led to his political rise in popularity yeah that was a that was a great summary um but you know again kind of speaking of you know how was the last time that a lot of average Americans knew the name of a Central American leader um he is uh he you know his Fame uh because of what is what he's done last you just mentioned far exceeds you know it's a country of six million people and so um I think uh the secret to that is his background as a publicist he used to run a political Ad Agency he's a millennial he became president in 2019 when he was 37 when is pretty wild um and you know now he's 42 he just won a second term and he you know anyone who really you know he can see him on the cover of time you can kind of follow him on social media he is incredibly good he's very very slick he's very good at projecting a certain thing on social media he's wearing you know jeans and leather jackets and a backwards baseball cap and you know she speaks in these like tight like you know like um longsleeve shirts instead of wearing a suit and it's like a particular look in a particular irreverent kind of vibe which really um is is meant to more than just be popular or seeming young and you know interesting uh domestically is really projected outward at at getting attention uh globally and so he won kind of by by projecting this image of a fresh start for El Salvador you know they had this Absolut brutal Civil War um since then they've been just completely torn apart with the by these gangs uh you know just almost everybody in the country was just completely under the thumb of these very vicious gangs and he he comes from a very wealthy family as I mentioned he was kind of like an ad man uh and he comes in and and instead of you know subscribing to one of the two political parties which were all tied up with either corruption or the Civil War or just kind of these like old Cold War revolutionary slogans which are very outdated he creates his own party he you know knew colors knew everything you know Twitter challenges Tik Tok and uh you know and he's genuinely popular this isn't like a Putin he's genuinely wildly wildly popular you know he dared me in our interview to go find someone with a negative opinion and it was actually difficult and you know to be fair I didn't you know I was there for a week but it is genuinely difficult anyone who asks Salvadorian in the US is likely finding the same thing uh and he you know like I said just won a second term uh we can discuss more all the different things he's done but I think the most important thing as I pointed out in my article is you know it sounds cliche but is his past as a publicist is the fact that everything he does is uh one of his friends told me he already always sees everything like a movie reel like a trailer you know he he he has that eye so it's important to understand from Bitcoin to the war on the gangs everything he does he's kind of image first you know results later oriented yeah I mean I do think the Bitcoin thing is an interesting example because he was this big vocal adopter of Bitcoin and it wasn't just tweeting about how he was going to buy the dip and use treasury funds to purchase Bitcoins it was about essentially trying to create this image of el salv as like the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender I think he talked about building a Bitcoin city that was powered by volcano energy right it's like nonsense it was [ __ ] nonsense happened yeah and I don't believe I mean I think you reported on this but I don't believe Bitcoin adoption is uh really happening in El Salvador right you know it's it's interesting um when I spoke with him I expected him to kind of bluff a bit more he straight up just kind of admitted he said it hasn't had the adoption we hoped um you know but it was again was always pointed I mean his advisers openly just told me they say it would they call the great rebranding they were saying it was a complete PR move we needed people to think of El Salvador or NASA's place of like migrants and and violence we needed them to think of something different and so it was never really meant to be adopted you know to really change Sal ladorian economic situation but he announced it at this you know Miami Bitcoin conference in 2021 and salvadorians just found out about it the next day like on Twitter or in the newspaper like you know there was no anouncement for the Salvadorian public and then they kind of had to backtrack and kind of say okay it's going to make remittances easier you know uh a good third of the Salvadorian population lives outside the country that's going to make certain things better for the public everyone got I think $30 in a digital wallet to spend it was you know chaos from the start but they needed to kind of at least pretend that it was really going to help a Salvador but the way that it was really going to help a Salvador in their view was by rebranding it and by making people think of it as a cool I mean I remember I'm not sure about you uh when I first heard about this like the last country I really expected to adopt but be the first one to adopt good was El Salvador oh yeah um and yeah it was it was so so was very obvious you know that it was kind of for for tourists for foreigners for for him to have something to talk about that changed the narrative and um and that I mean if that was the goal they have been successful you know it is it is you know there's all these Crypt Bros all over El Salvador you know buying houses and investing money and uh making it more expensive for everyday people but it's uh you know it it's worked in that sense but yeah yeah the uh the online crypto Community is a bunch of suckers and uh bu got people like Jack dorsy and you know others to to tweet about it so good for him I guess but you know you're right like he acts like buy acts like kind of a troll he likes to talk [ __ ] on Twitter I think he used to does he still call himself a dictator in his Twitter bio no longer now he is the philosopher king quote un oh sorry that's that's much better um he's moved on yeah thank God good for him we had to grow up we all have to do it eventually but you know it's kind of this broy obnoxious image was that the vibe you got in person you know in person so we we I think an important thing is that we did the interview in Spanish uh I'm again I'm from South America so it was interesting uh in Spanish he's this happens to be with a lot of uh leaders but he's he's he's slightly different because the the tar youo he speaks in the way that he usually speaks to salvadorians or to other people in the region and not to his Twitter audience where uh he mainly speaks in English He tweets and Tik toks all the time in English and so he he C switches based on his audience and I actually asked him about that so um but you know he he's a he's a very interesting guy he's you know he's very slender very well dressed you know uh you know was wearing all you know this all dark Ensemble and uh one of the things I find very interesting again he doesn't really speak to journalists so uh you know I could tell that he for him that was a big deal he obviously wanted to be on the cover of time uh even B couldn't resist uh that but uh you know he doesn't really speak much to journalists but he receives a lot of people the same chair that I was sitting in and if you ever watch some videos of him it's really kind of entertaining to me he has this very slow moving kind of self assured body language and it makes anyone sitting in front of him look really overeager so you see mle you see uh don Jr was like really like jittery super excited to meet him you know so he has this kind of very swave very slow kind of you know you are in my turf kind of vibe and uh same with you know with journalists but you know very polite um when we were speaking kind of spok in numbers so everything he told me he always backed it up with some data point because he said of course I'm going to lie of course I'm going to get cast everything in the best light you can check you can check so he seemed very self-conscious I think and uh and also I think that yeah again that's why he hasn't spoken I think to journalists he's again a fairly young leader and I think uh in a different way from from La uh pretty sensitive to criticism yeah so I I I definitely take on board your points about his experience as sort of an ad man and an Image Maker it's clearly been unbelievably effective especially to a western audience but I think like the broader story in El Salvador is something we've seen before which is a country dealing with a horrific security situation in citizens who are willing to trade at least in the short term uh rights and civil liberties for security which leads to that unbelievable arrest rate that you talked about which I think one in 157 people in the country in prison um in in the long term in the short term that approach can work in the long term it almost always ends badly um is there any sense that that frustration is starting to build I mean I can't imagine what it would be like if my if I myself or my son or my daughter were thrown into jail having done nothing just getting swept up in one of these uh raids on quote unquote gangs that you know seemingly just sweep up innocent people too yeah absolutely um I think honestly what's happening in Salvador is one of the most one of the most complex situations I've had to cover recently because it is very very difficult gold as an outsider to cover um because you know truly none of us will ever understand what it was like to live under the gangs and I know we say that a lot but you know it's truly impo like it is no one wants to go back to that and they are willing to sacrifice a lot uh to to not do that um and so there's two parts to that there's the fact that you know uh several people kind of told me so what if bu made deals with the gangs if he you know some money goes missing you know that's always been the state of our country um at least now it's kind of you know it has a different image to it um and you know again like I think he has you know over 95 94% approval rating it's you know and again it's it's real it's you know this is not you can tell uh and it's something that I think uh as you as you alluded to you know basically they done away with due process they just they had these massive kind of sweeps Mass arrests you know uh kids as young as 12 uh can now be tried as adults uh they have these Mass Trials of me S8 100 people were you know where that that's kind of where they decide their fate uh they buil these absolutely massive Mass prisons which are now you know kind of become aspirational to many in the region because there's you know such an insecurity crisis but uh all of the things that we kind of look at and imagine you know if my family member had to go through that that would be awful um so many people I spoke with who have family members in in jail including people who they know are innocent still as a whole kind of say kind of almost think it's a worthwhile cost and that's a hard I think to cover from a western OA perspective sometimes but you know it is it's absolutely true and so um I I to answer your question that front how long can it hold um that's a really interesting question because obviously they've tried this before it's called manoda or Iron Fist and then this thing happened in the early 2000s where they went to Super muda like super Iron Fist and each president tried to up the other to be tough but they never really were able to hold it for long um and the the question here is of course bu changed the Constitution uh or reinterpreted as his adviser told me call uh reinterpreted the Constitution um to be able to run for a second term which most Scholars and most people there know is unconstitutional so he's he's you know but people broadly supported him uh the question is what happens when he's out of office you know uh there's some rumors is that he's one out of many brothers could it be could it be basically kind of like a dynasty that emerges because you know his previous I think three predecessors are all in jail or under indictment of the country he knows what happens everyone knows what happens to Central America leader a strong man when they get out of office he can't be there anymore so I think the sense I got was from most people that he's likely he said he told me and this was big news in in in the region that he's not going to seek a third term um he's going to be 47 when he leaves seems pretty unlikely to me he's going to go willingly uh but again you know they're they're kind of when you when you have that much support from the public and that much broad backing and they are asking you to continue doing what you're doing it's kind of hard to imagine they'll suddenly release a lot of these people and you know go back to non-emergency State uh so that is a rambling answer but it's a really I mean a truly fascinating that's happening there no look I think it's such important context it's very easy for me to sit in you know Los Angeles and you know criticize his record on civil liberties when I didn't have to live through the violence that these people had to live through and I think you're right about bu I mean you have to expect he'll try to cling to power unless I know maybe he'll like uh go work for inre and horowits or one of those crypto VCS up in Silicon Valley I could see him fitting right in there um but just like bigger picture I mean I'm curious what your takeaway has been from all your reporting on the region talking to these two you know leaders who are both kind of like right-wing part of the CPAC crowd they're all friends with Don Jr and Matt Gates and kind of like the worst people in American political life um but you know if you pressed me to like offer a takeaway having watched elections over the past couple years I would think that it was voters are so mad and they are happy to punish any incumbent and reward a lot of newcomers from across the political Spectrum but it does seem like these right-wing populists have done particularly well as you know sort of evidenced by these two but I'm curious what your like takeaway has been yeah I mean it's been really again not to keep Haring on it but as someone who who covers the region and and closely watches the region and always finds it at the very very bottom of the list after every continent when it comes to interest um characters like M and buele and the really extreme radical measures they're implementing are suddenly again they're almost household names especially right-wing circles and I spent a lot of time also covering kind of the US rightwing so for me these two things converged and um I think it's because they are both they were both elected by people in economic or security really dire straights like incredibly desperate population willing to do anything obviously that is not the case um in the countries their fanboy always live in in the US or in Europe but they have a mandate to just tear everything up and not in a Donald Trump way like seriously like really tear apart the government completely change everything and that is a fever dream for these Maga guys like it's fascinating like there's this clip of U Malay uh with uh I think posted on the wall and he's tearing them off just yelling you know all of them are names of Ministries like Ministry of women Ministry SE yeah and he's just yelling a a out out and like that that clip is just circulates in every right-wing space I'm ever in because that is the dream of a lot of these guys like and it doesn't matter that it would never work it's it's what it's it's just the theatricality of it and the idea of it is so appealing and so these guys get a rockstar welcome at at CPAC at all these different places same with buele it's like you know of course just lock all the gang members in jail like why can't we do that and a surprising number of you know not only National there's now a US elab caucus um I'm told Matt Gates is Scouting For A a house on the Salvadorian Coast he are Bros now um but you know the point being they they're they're basically using these countries as a foil to really show what they would love for you know in their in their mind for the us to do um and they love talking about it uh without really much of a thought of what it's like to live through the consequences of the decisions for the citizens of these countries but um so you know that good exactly as you said it's kind of people wanting to go over someone new but that's not really U you know that's just cyclical but I think what's happening with these two people in particular is that they are the most like dramatic exaggerated expression of what a lot of these people would love to see in their own countries even though again it would never work and uh and it's it's it's so colorful and it's so made for the Tik Tok era that um again you go to any of these comment sections you you you hear not only National but state and local lawmakers and they're all you know buele and M are constantly evoked uh because they would they like to tie themselves to these um especially B to kind of a popular guy was doing these things and um again they they don't really have to deal with the The Fallout or how difficult uh any of that would be in their own context right yeah and a slightly uh I mean like if you're going to look at the track record it's it's going better than say Liz truss the Tory party leader who also is trying out the CPAC circuit and um you know probably not getting the same reception the M Gates of it all it's really setting I'm sure he's sure he's burning up the Tinder down there um but because you uh also cover the US rightwing that gets me to my last question which is last week uh the Department of Justice unsealed this indictment accusing two employees of a Russian government funded Network called RT uh it accused them for covertly funding a bunch of right-wing media personalities for for the people who spend uh way too much time on the internet like I do you will be familiar with [ __ ] like Tim P Benny Johnson Dave ruin uh Lauren Southern just kind of like the worst propagandists for you know tpusa or you know Benny Johnson used to plagiarize Tumblr and put it up on on BuzzFeed etc etc so those uh personalities got paid tons of money hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce content for a company called tenant uh and surprise surprise that content tended to align with Russia's narrative on a bunch of issues including that Ukraine is evil Etc um first question you got any of that sweet sweet Russian cash and then second were you surprised by how Brazen this effort was and also maybe what a waste of money it might have been given how in frequently these clips seem to have been viewed I mean it's absolutely fascinating I mean about the cash the thing that struck me the very first thing was just I mean it was massive amounts of money massive um you know and and they're pretending you know I I work in journalism they're pretending that they were used by Russia had no idea that someone was paying them $400,000 I think dollars a month to make four videos um you know could possibly be something sketchy or you know using them for their you know whatever their clout um I I again i' I've covered influence operations especially Russia for for a long time as well and it's been interesting to see I'm not sure if they've gotten sloppy again this is actually a lot of money so they're not this is not them just trying to like pay like Macedonian teenagers right to to do operate a troll Farm um it's kind of going with this and the other thing that I just find L funny I'm not sure i' be curious on your thoughts on this this is how long we spent for the last two years or so hyperventilating about Ai and these very sophisticated algorithms that are going to cause chaos and all they really needed to do was pay a bunch of uh you know guys who were very happy to be used uh it's it's pretty pretty funny how we just keep going back to the very Basics uh when it comes to these things um in terms of Effectiveness uh it is kind of curious because they could easily have probably gotten this far without paying them nearly as much money because these are already viewpoints that they were happy to is pal and you know uh I'm curious whether you know all these sever all these guys have pretty large followings I'm wondering if maybe they were ill informed about their their reach but uh but you know I think ultimately the the point and this has always been the Russia's uh kind of tactic is less to be effective and more just to make people distrust uh anything they read or hear so you know we' you know since 2016 every time we see someone parting Russian talking points even if sometimes it's just somebody's legit skepticism about the war in Ukraine or something else immediately called a Russian plant you're being paid by the Kremlin and so having a bunch of guys actually come out to have been paid by the Kremlin it just it it really helps Russia either way right it just makes people distrust basically any journalist quote unquote journalist or all these people that they hear yeah it's such an interesting debate because I I think the worst thing we could do is make them seem 10 ft tall and like they're controlling our media when in reality they were paying some pathetic little goober in a beanie to make a couple videos that no one ever watched that basically seem to have Jed with his views in the first place although there there was one you know there's one clip where he is calling Ukraine evil and saying they're the greatest threat to Western Security that you kind of wondered uh you know and the who in the Russian intelligence Services might have drafted that one up for him but I guess time will tell but so on the one hand like I I I think they pissed away a lot of money here on the other hand it did make me wonder what other influence operations we maybe haven't caught and aren't seeing and how it might impact our politics it also reminded me of 2016 where I I could be remembering this wrong but I think there was an example of basically the Russian troll Farms were spinning up both sides of a the policing debate like they were getting black lives matter groups angry and also blue lives matter groups and trying to like send them to the same location in Texas somewhere and seeing if they'll like fight it out so they're just kind of like you know pouring gasoline on our own internal Discord in ways that I I know you don't need to be intelligence operative to do you just need to have a Twitter account Twitter blue or something yeah and I think you're complet my my first thought all the time is just this is just one you know and this is the very high-profile one this is a huge amount of money it was always going to come out but there is so much going on and again if you look at different regions of the world um you know there's so much I mean one of the reasons it didn't really work here is because we've got a very very busy thriving media ecosystem in the United States uh so it was never but what if you know you're paying someone to Latin America as we discussed dur in a small country in Europe um I've covered a lot of Russian efforts in uh Chinese efforts in uh in Latin America and it's just you know there's there's a vacuum and they just fill it in like RT Spanish is incredibly popular I remember doing some reporting on Assange like long 2018 or so long time ago and the only articles in Spanish I could find about some stuff that involved Ecuador that was actually important to the you know to the country was Russian funded Outlets uh in you know there's where there isn't a lot of support or money for journalism they just kind of step in and so uh I think obviously this it was kind of cartoonish we like to think they didn't you know mislead a huge amount of people uh and again this was I I'm just still sted by the amount of money which was you know I don't think great you know return investment but in uh just you know I think the the main thing people should just take away from this is you know this is obviously not the only one uh this is a very Brazen one but there are so you know this just it's all over and especially in in countes that don't we're never going to find out exactly you know where the where the impact is much larger because they're kind of stepping into this vacuum right yeah a really good way to the phras it just be be skeptical uh if you find something that so perfectly comports with your views uh maybe check it twice that's a good way to go yeah and if someone has one Russian talking point right it's one thing uh for me it's always I'm like okay that's five in a row that's that's yeah yeah right it's or if some um if some account that used to only tweet in Mandarin has started yelling at you about the nine dash line maybe you know scroll up and and that that um Vera thank you so much for joining the show where can people find your work and follow you they should everyone should read your interviews with M and bu because they're just fascinating stories but where where should they be looking yeah you can find me on Twitter uh ver and Bergen that's where all my S goes and you know you can go to uh you know my author page on on times website but yeah I uh obviously uh biased but I think those two interviews uh especially for people who don't have much of a idea what's going on in South America I think are they kind of compliment each other to really show what's going on so they really do truly excellent well listen thank you again and hope to talk again soon thanks so much thanks again to Colin thanks again to Vera for joining the show uh thanks again to all of you who make it to the outro each week I love you for doing so and uh Ben will be back next week excited to talk to him and talk to you then