Soccer Scandal & Idiot Ambassadors

Pod Save the World

The episode examines the fallout from the recent Trump-Xi summit, noting a lack of substantive trade progress despite symbolic panda loans.

Key takeaways

• The Trump-Xi summit resulted in minimal trade deliverables beyond a brief tariff reduction and panda loans to the Atlanta Zoo.
• Ambassador David Perdue's comments regarding arms sales caused significant confusion between US policy toward China and Taiwan.
• A workaround for oil exports in the Strait of Hormuz via UAE tankers is functioning but significantly increasing energy costs.
• Ethiopia faces a potential regional conflagration as the 2022 peace agreement unravels amidst ethnic tensions and proxy involvement.
• The humanitarian situation in Haiti is critical, with gang violence and a lack of US development funding threatening stability.

Main topics

• US-China Trade Relations
• Iran and Middle East Security
• Ethiopian Civil Conflict

Notable quotes

The most concrete deliverable was that the Chinese loaned us two giant pandas.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a sobering reminder of how localized instabiliti

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:11) Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, the New England Patriots officially suck. This is our NFL talk, everyone. Skip forward 30 seconds. Well, Speaker 5 (0:21) we can actually cross the streams here because in part it's because, you know, Drake may have been a flash in the pan. In part it's because your coach may have run off to some Arizona Speaker 7 (0:32) resort with a ESPN Speaker 5 (0:34) reporter. Speaker 7 (0:34) Diana, take him back. Speaker 5 (0:36) Also may be the Bob Craft karma. I noticed that the Ed Sheeran shows are canceled because of weather. So maybe like all this karma is hitting Bob Kraft. Do Speaker 7 (0:46) you see all the tweets of people being, there was like. Hey, BB Netanyahu, the Patriots offensive coordinator is in a bus. I did. So I Speaker 5 (0:54) may have sent you one. If not, I definitely thought about sending you one of those because it was pretty good. It was a good tweet. Speaker 7 (1:00) Red Sox-Yankees tonight. We're recording Tuesday, September 29th. I Speaker 5 (1:04) will Speaker 7 (1:04) be rooting for the Red Sox. Playoff baseball. I Speaker 5 (1:06) always like, as soon as the Mets are eliminated, which is every season, I always root for whoever is playing the Yankees. So I will actually be rooting for Speaker 7 (1:14) Boston. Well, famously, the Yankees do suck, as I have chanted. my entire entire life it may not be Speaker 5 (1:21) known to the pod say the world audience and i'm really dating myself here but do you remember when uh roger clemens hit mike piazza in the head with a pitch um i was at that game at yankee stadium and i vowed to never enter yankee stadium again and i have not been since then wow good for you kid it's been like you know 30 years or something. I haven't got back. You're Speaker 7 (1:41) like Mandela. Yeah. Speaker 5 (1:43) We Speaker 7 (1:44) have a great show for you guys today. We're going to recap the Trump state visit with Xi Jinping and frankly, just how little was actually accomplished. And Speaker 5 (1:52) how Speaker 7 (1:52) strange it was. Got a lease on some pandas. We're Speaker 5 (1:55) going Speaker 7 (1:55) to update you with the latest with Iran and this kind of new workaround for oil and gas producers in the Strait of Hormuz and the arrests in the UK that may or may not be linked to Iran. I don't know that we know yet. We're going to dig into... Serious concern about renewed conflict in Ethiopia. And like just the more I read about this, the more freaked out I became. And I talked to someone who said like she was worried that the crisis could engulf the entire horn of Africa, a very troubled region. You could see all these wars kind of merge together. It's a very important story that gets no attention. So we're going to cover that. We're going to talk about the scandal engulfing Manchester City and its ownership group in the United Arab Emirates. For you non-soccer fans, trust me, you'll like this one. Yeah, it's a good one. Collision of like state-backed entities in professional sports, which is very interesting. Always Speaker 5 (2:40) rich terrain. Yeah, Speaker 7 (2:42) it's coming Speaker 6 (2:42) for Speaker 7 (2:42) us. We're going to talk about some tech and AI news because you can't avoid it these days. And it's not fun to read about. And then the final segment we're calling Dumb Ambassadors, Ben. This is a little surprise for us. Oh, dumb Speaker 5 (2:53) ambassadors is always great. Speaker 7 (2:55) There's been some great coverage. I hope Greece Speaker 5 (2:56) is Speaker 7 (2:57) on the list. Oh, yeah. Okay. That one I did see. That Speaker 5 (3:00) one, you're not going to surprise me with Greece. Speaker 7 (3:02) For those, a little teaser for you guys. Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-fiance, Kim Guilfoyle. And Speaker 5 (3:07) Gavin's ex. Speaker 7 (3:08) And Gavin Newsom's ex out here in California. Strange Speaker 5 (3:10) convergence of personalities. She's the ambassador to Speaker 7 (3:12) Greece. Yeah, she is. For reasons Speaker 5 (3:15) that Speaker 7 (3:15) nobody Speaker 5 (3:15) can Speaker 7 (3:15) identify. No one knows. And she's doing some weird shit. Then you're going to hear my conversation. with Sam Vygursky. He's an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He went to Haiti for about a week back in June, did a really great write-up and report about the situation on the ground. And it just, it's a really important story, Ben, because to me, first of all, we should care about people in Haiti because it's very close to our own shores. It's a country that desperately needs some sort of help or intervention, and it has not come. In fact, it's just gotten harmed by U.S. interventions over the many decades. But also, it underscores The unbelievable cruelty and immorality of removing temporary protected status and sending 350,000 people back to a place with war zone-like violence. Speaker 5 (3:59) While you have a State Department travel warning telling Americans it's not safe to go there. So we've literally determined as a government that it is unsafe, which is the criteria to get asylum or temporary protected status in this country. And I guess because Stephen Miller once hit the quota. Speaker 7 (4:13) Yeah. And Stephen Miller's quote is like, well, it's safe for Haitians. Absolutely not. No. It's absolutely not. It's literally war zone-like levels of violence. So stick around for that, please, because it's very important. All right, Ben. So we spent a bunch of time last week previewing Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington. We're going to close the loop on it today, but it's going to be brief because, as expected, they didn't do much. There was a small reduction in tariffs, like $30 billion, I think. The two leaders extended this broader truce in the trade war for a couple months. The U.S. and China agreed to hold a dialogue about artificial intelligence. talking, they talked about talking about AI. Great. The White House also announced that, do you see this? China said, or the White House said that China is now going to call it super intelligence, not artificial intelligence. I'm not sure that, I think the Chinese kind of disputed it. But again, I think we all can agree that the branding is what matters. The most concrete deliverable was that the Chinese loaned us two giant pandas, which are now chilling at the Atlanta Zoo. There's Ping Ping, which means peace, and Fu Shuang, which means double blessings. You have to quarantine for a month. then they can get registered to vote and vote for John Ossoff down in Atlanta. But big picture, it seems like the Chinese got all the trappings of a state visit. They gave Trump vague process crap in return, which is their favorite thing to do. Just kind of give you some like make work. No actual deliverable. The one headline that did catch our attention came from these comments from the U.S. ambassador to China, David Perdue. So this clip is from Fox News Sunday. And then we added in Trump's response when he was asked about produce comments on Monday. Let's watch. There Speaker 1 (5:44) are continuing conversations about other sales. He and President Xi talk about that every time they get together. But President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point. Speaker 8 (6:00) Purdue said that you suggested to President Xi that the US would sell US military equipment. to China. Is that accurate? Did you make such a suggestion? To China? Speaker 3 (6:11) To Speaker 8 (6:11) China. You Speaker 3 (6:12) mean to Taiwan? Speaker 8 (6:13) No, to China. That's what he said. I Speaker 3 (6:15) never heard of that one. I'm going to have to ask him. You mean we're going to sell? No, they'd probably like to buy it because we do make better equipment than that. So maybe it's a good idea. But we didn't discuss it. They may have been talking about Taiwan. I think he probably was talking about Taiwan. Speaker 7 (6:31) What do you think would be most useful for the Chinese when it comes to invading Taiwan? Some U.S. amphibious assault ships? Yeah. Maybe a Virginia-class, maybe aircraft carrier, if you can afford it. Why not? If we can actually, well, I don't know that we can spare any because they're all breaking down in the med. Yeah. What do you make of this? I assumed he was kidding, but like, I don't know, it doesn't really seem like it. Speaker 5 (6:50) He was not kidding, Perdue. No. Who's not the brightest bulb, though. I mean, like, it's one of these. I mean, first of all, as you pointed out, and we're going to allow ourselves to say this on top of the show, this would be like a, you know. multi-year story if a Democratic president had an ambassador go out and say, yeah, we're going to sell some arms to China. Like, you know, we'd be the centerpiece of the next presidential campaign or something. But put that aside. Purdue is like certain about it. Trump loves selling stuff to other countries. Love selling weapons. We should add, by the way, that China committed at the last summit where nothing really happened in China. to buy all these Boeing planes that they still have not bought, right? So they figured out the same thing the Gulf did. You just promise to do a bunch of stuff that you're never going to do. Trump celebrates it. I mean, what I think is interesting and alarming here is that one of these two men is not telling the truth, right? So either Donald Trump is actually talking to Xi Jinping about selling them weapons, which they spent a lot of time spying on, right? Or actually, like, let's pause on the fact and foreshadowing our final segment here. Their ambassador to China, which is probably the single most important ambassadorial post in the world, is such a dumb fucking moron that he mixed up Taiwan and China. And, you know, there's Speaker 7 (8:22) a Speaker 5 (8:22) lot of talk about arms sales. Yeah, not a good outcome either way. We do talk about arms sales in the bilat with the Chinese president, but it's arms sales to Taiwan. Neither of those answers are particularly comforting. Especially Speaker 7 (8:34) at a time when the U.S. is holding up this $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan. I'm sure the Taiwanese read this headline. You got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me. Yeah, Speaker 5 (8:41) you're already holding this back. I mean, and this matters because if we do hold back that $14 billion arms sale at a time of the U.S. on the back foot without munitions to spare, even for ourselves. We can spare it to Israel, but that's another story. This is like the window when China might do something in Taiwan. 2027, 2028, the last years of the Trump administration, the U.S. is isolated. It's running out of munitions. We're no longer supplying arms to Taiwan that are meant to deter an invasion. and we can decide whether we're trying to sell China arms or not. We apparently forgot which side we're trying Speaker 7 (9:25) to arm here. We won't be selling them interceptor missiles because we're out of those. Yeah, Speaker 5 (9:29) we're out of a lot of this stuff. A lot of that Speaker 7 (9:30) stuff. Just on the panda point, it's funny that it's Speaker 5 (9:33) a Speaker 7 (9:33) loan. They Speaker 5 (9:34) don't Speaker 7 (9:34) give us the pandas. They loan them. It's the third pair of pandas to come over here in two years. I think in 2024, the Atlanta Zoo had to return four pandas to Giants. So then a couple of them arrived in San Diego in 2024. This is a tradition that dates back to Mao. I think the first panda that the Chinese ever loaned us was named Ping Ping. So that's fun. I like pandas, I guess. They're cute looking. Speaker 5 (9:58) Yeah, I like pandas. I remember when they used to be at the National Zoo in D.C., they got yanked. Real bummer. Yeah, they took them back. I will say from the summit in general, it bears emphasis that it is an astonishingly thin gruel that— came out of now two summits between Trump and Xi, where Trump just wanted, as we talked about, kind of the protocol piece. But there were a couple of interesting things underneath the hood. Like one is, did you see they basically extended the negotiations around some of these trade irritants and terrorists for two months, like kind of noticeably until after the midterm elections? Speaker 6 (10:35) Yeah, Speaker 7 (10:35) strange. Speaker 5 (10:36) And so, you know, that could be the Chinese just kind of wanting to see what they're dealing with, I think, on the back end of the midterm elections. That could be the Chinese just kind of squeezing, you know, Trump a bit. That could be the Chinese just kind of, you know, playing for time. But they are the ones who appear to have the leverage because, you know, as we've talked about, they demonstrated they have this choke point of these rare earth materials. And that is much more damaging to the U.S. economy than Trump's kind of episodic tariff tantrums with the Chinese. But I think that there's a common thread, you know, to Iran, which we'll talk about, to China, of these other countries, like really watching the midterm elections. And it raises an interesting question about if Trump gets shellacked and there Speaker 6 (11:27) are Democrats in control of Congress, like how does the rest of the world react to that? Yeah, Speaker 7 (11:31) they know he's a lame duck. Speaker 5 (11:32) Then they know he's Speaker 7 (11:33) a Speaker 5 (11:33) lame duck. And so that I thought was a really interesting. outcome. The two months is not a subtle period of time. Speaker 7 (11:40) No, not at all. Good point. Speaker 7 (11:47) Pod Save the World is brought to you by Built. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out Built. Becoming a Built member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. 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Selectquote.com slash world. They shop, you save. Speaker 7 (14:29) So speaking of Iran, the war just kind of is dragging on in this frozen kind of on again, off again state. Last week, we played for you the clip of Trump threatening to annihilate Iran in his speech to the U.N. That was an uplifting moment in U.N. history. At the same time, though, the Qataris were mediating these indirect talks between Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the son-in-law and the idiot golf buddy, and then Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Arachi. Iran reportedly proposed a seven-day ceasefire that included fighting stops everywhere, including Lebanon. America unfreezes billions in Iranian assets, lifts oil sanctions, and calls off the blockade. And then on day seven, the Strait of Hormuz would reopen for business, and then nuclear talks would resume. Trump, not surprisingly, said that was an unacceptable proposal. According to the Wall Street Journal, he has told his aides that he will probably resume bombing after the midterms. And I would like to see Democrats saying, Please release your secret plan to resume the war after the midterms and calling on all Republicans to denounce it. Axios reported that Trump was willing to give Iran sanctions relief and unfreeze frozen Iranian assets in return for steps in the nuclear program. Trump denied that. But again, like that's always been the deal that's on the table. So it's like, I don't get what everyone's denying at this point or what's on the table. One area, though, where conditions have improved for Trump is the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. So the U.S. embargo. seemingly has choked off Iran's exports of oil, which will cause them increasing problems over time if their entire industry gets shut down. At the same time, the U.S. military, along with these countries in the Gulf, have kind of worked out a system to get oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz and out such that the level is close to pre-war levels, although not fully at it. So it sounds like the Emiratis piloted a system where they have a fleet of tankers. They load it up at their ports. They shuttle the oil out, and then they unload the oil from their tankers into the international tankers at sea. So they basically take the back-and-forth risk of passing through the Strait of Hormuz, but also the process adds significant cost. I've seen estimates between $15 and $30 per barrel, so it's a lot of money. And it's not without risk, right? The Iranians take a shot and they hit one of these tankers. That's a huge deal. But the Strait is no longer fully choked off by Iran, which is significant. But Trump seems kind of just disinterested in all of this. Ben, this clip is from Monday in the Oval Office where he was asked about the war. Let's watch real quick. Speaker 1 (16:53) Has your team still been to the war today? Yeah, they have. They have their mediators? Speaker 3 (16:59) Yeah. Speaker 1 (16:59) Anything else you can share about a movement of Speaker 3 (17:02) your own? We're going to win. As far as I'm concerned, it's going to be one way or the other. It's going to go pretty quickly. Give Speaker 5 (17:11) that guy an Adderall. Do you think that's a 5-milligram edible or a 10-milligram? He took Speaker 7 (17:16) the wrong pill. Yeah, Speaker 5 (17:17) yeah, yeah. He took the Xanax. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 7 (17:18) yeah. He thought it was the Addy. I think the question, like, being serious for a second. Does this kind of oil work around that the Gulf countries have figured out with CENTCOM? Does this make Trump more or less likely to seek a deal? Does it increase or decrease the risk of the Iranians doing something escalatory? I think with the Iranians, I feel like it makes escalation more likely, but it's hard for me to gauge the Trump piece. Yeah, Speaker 5 (17:45) like we're all reading the tea leaves here. And so, you know, with the disclaimer that we, you know, who knows, right? Speaker 5 (17:52) There is clearly more oil and gas getting to that straight. Here's the problem with that, though. The costs are... like very significant. You mentioned the cost to just the shipping, but there's also the cost of the U.S. maintaining this blockade of Iran, maintaining all this presence. They're not disclosing. And at times there's like, you know, we have to escort some of these tankers. And so this is not like some great solution, right? I mean, sure, it's better than nothing getting destroyed, but essentially we've gone from the straping open before the war to like a massive U.S. military presence and blockade of Iran and occasional escorting of tanker ships. to go through a laborious process that already adds to the price of energy because it just costs money. It's like a mini no-fly zone over Speaker 7 (18:37) the Strait of Hormuz, right? Because I think what's happening is American air assets are flying and prepared to shoot down any missiles or drones when these ships go through, which, as you said, that's pretty intensive. That's pretty intensive, right? Speaker 5 (18:51) And so we're paying billions and billions and billions of dollars just to do this. Second, to your point, I mean, the Iranians are more likely to escalate, I think. I mean, everything that we've seen out of the Iranians in this war is that they're not particularly inclined to de-escalate. The hardliners are in charge. They're calling the shots. They're going to want to demonstrate that they have some capacity to impose a cost. That could be on trying to hit tankers. That could be on trying to target U.S. vessels. That could be reopening some of the attacks on the Gulf that we've seen. That could be through, you know, continued proxy attacks like we've seen from the Houthis on Saudi Arabia that is— had its own costs on energy. So the baseline point is that this kind of semi on-again, off-again, frozen conflict is not a solution. Because also part of the disruption of the closing of the Strait or even just the, you know, mucking up of the Strait is that you can't like kind of plan against that. Like an example I'd give is the Qataris, they can't, they're not like resuming their LNG production, their liquefied national. natural gas production, in part because they're just worried about it getting hit again. And they're worried about like, well, if we resume all these, you know, we start drilling and the field is resumed, the gas field, can we get that stuff out, right? And so this is like a band-aid that is, you know, slowing the bleeding, but it's still... like the problem. And I think Speaker 7 (20:13) only for oil and gas, right? Because a lot of ships that CENTCOM is not going to protect. Speaker 5 (20:16) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Standard ship. Trump only cares about oil and gas. And then to your point, the big question is this post midterms question where it's the same two paths that are available for Trump. Like he can either just start bombing them again because he wants to try to win the war that he's kind of already lost in many ways that we've discussed. Or he could kind of take the deal that everybody knows has been the deal, which is Iran gets a bunch of money and the strait opens and there's some nominal nuclear concession that is, you know, maybe the dust is diluted or something. That dust going. And that's, you know, part of, I think, what is worrying to me, Tommy, is... A lot of this depends on Trump's post-midterms psychology. And I was surprised. I was in New York last week around the UN General Assembly. And some of the people I talked to from other countries, I don't know if they listened to Tucker Carlson or what, but there's some people that were seriously concerned about Trump doing this nuclear option, quite literally, of nuking. Mount Pickaxe or whatever it's called. And while I dismiss that as insane, and I don't think that will happen, like a Trump who gets humiliated in the midterms and, you know, is getting humiliated by Iran. We have to think about the psychology of lame duck Trump. I hope that's the psychology of a man that just wants to build ballrooms and arches, but not a man who wants to nuke Pickaxe Mountain. I Speaker 7 (21:45) hope you're right, too. But I do think he's sort of the psychology of a man who would like some people to think he might nuke it as leverage. Yeah, Speaker 5 (21:52) yeah, yeah. You know, Speaker 7 (21:52) and like Tucker being worried about that didn't come out of nowhere. It Speaker 5 (21:55) didn't come out. He's clearly hearing something. I still think the most likely outcome is at some point, and who knows when, the same deal that's been on the table. It's like we slink away. They give us some of the dust. Trump says he got the greatest nuclear deal ever and Iranians get a bunch of money and Speaker 7 (22:12) that's Speaker 5 (22:13) it. Speaker 7 (22:13) Everything sucks. NBC reported that two weeks ago, an Iranian cruise missile hit a non-commissioned commercial ship in the Strait and wounded eight Marines. So that puts it between like 19 dead. Some reporting says more dead, up to 22. And then 861 U.S. service members wounded. Over in Yemen, we've talked about that conflict. The WHO says... 838 people have died, 3,000 are wounded, and 180,000 have been displaced in the fighting against the Houthis. There's also a horrible case of cholera, so just another example of how the longer this drags out, the worse the war gets. One other potentially Iran-related thing was this incident at a Royal Air Force base in the UK over the weekend. So this is just such a weird story. Very strange Speaker 5 (22:54) story. Speaker 7 (22:55) This RAF base, RAF Fairford in southern England, has been used by the US Air Force as a forward operating base for a long time. And initially, remember, the Brits said no to the U.S. when it comes to using their bases for the war in Iran. But then Keir Starmer reversed course and said defensive operations were allowed. So U.S. bombers have been flying out of there to strike Iranians. Speaker 5 (23:17) Defensive bombers. Defensive bombing. Speaker 7 (23:20) That's Speaker 5 (23:20) the Speaker 7 (23:20) most Keir Starmer thing that's ever happened. It's like, I love these military euphemisms, too. So the gist of what happened over the weekend is early mornings, like Sunday morning, there's a witness. called the police and said there was a large group of hooded and masked men operating three vans near the base. The cops came. They arrested five men. They're all