Ben Rhodes
speaker
126 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 15 Aug
Ben Rhodes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, it it would require essentially the United States to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to sustain this kind of uh force uh deployment.
It it would require it would cause grave harm to the global economy because so long as we're blockading Iran and they're blockading the strait, there are these shortages that are to continue to grow, not just of of oil and gas, but of fertilizer and helium and so the prices of everything uh would
go up.
And like it it would also require the United States to let down its guard everywhere else in the world.
I mean, to sustain this kind of massive military deployment i around Iran.
We've already moved munitions and defensive weaponry from places like South Korea, from Europe.
You know, so if you're China, Russia, um you're thinking, well, the United States is going to sit there in a pointless forever war.
accomplishing nothing, uh doing grave damage to its own uh reputation.
Yeah, I mean, I've been a part of these dinners.
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I've been part of these speeches.
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And I'll be honest with you, Jen, I always found the whole thing a bit uncomfortable because, you know, you are kind of projecting an official Washington that is, you know, kind of clubby and hard to read for the American people.
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It was always this kind of strange dinner.
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It was simultaneously the kind of political junkies award ceremony, right?
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They get to see people give speeches.
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They get to see people dress up.
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But also the kind of thing that might make people a little bit cynical about all these people in Washington are kind of chummy.
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Now, the bin Laden night was truly unique because –
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We all who were read into that operation decided to go because if we all didn't go, it might suggest something was up if the national security apparatus didn't turn up at a dinner like that.
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So that I remember being a kind of strange night where you're kind of trying to play like it's normal and nothing's happening the next day.
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This, though, is even stranger in a way because, as you talked about with Chris,
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Showing 41–60 of 126 · page 3 of 7
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