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Chapter 1: How is President Trump's visit to the NBA Finals being received in New York?
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What is that? Oh, yeah, it's a World Cup holder. Like the soccer tournament World Cup?
Holder for the world.
Fits every car, holds every cup. It has a Carvana logo? Carvana made it. They buy and sell cars, so they made a car cup holder. So, uh, got any good cups lately? Used to. Just couldn't figure out where in the world to put them. The World Cup Holder. Brought to you by Carvana. Proud sponsors of the World Cup Holder.
Sign up today to win yours at cup-holder2026.com. Not authorized or endorsed by FIFA. Not a real product. For parody and fair use purposes only. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we'll talk about the biggest outbreak of violence in the Middle East since the so-called ceasefire went into effect.
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Chapter 2: What triggered Trump's abrupt exit from the Meet the Press interview?
Yeah Dated Cold War terminology. It's a global South War. Yeah, we're not aligned with the Soviets anymore. I don't know why it's a go on that tangent do you think he's just convinced himself that Iran doesn't count as a real war I
Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's claims about voter fraud in California?
What's the alternative? He's not telling the truth. Yeah. Like, I do think he's trying to make us believe this. Like, no, the real wars are the ones where you send troops overseas and they're deployed on the ground and they occupy country. And by the way, Vietnam was 19 years. Has it been 19 years, folks? No, this is a little excursion, as he calls it, when we all think he means incursion still.
Right. Yeah. So I do think that's like their attempt at selling this. It's pretty tough, though, given the outside's economic costs, given the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, there's just, you know, there's a big space between no war and Vietnam, right?
Chapter 4: What insights does Roger Bennett provide about the upcoming World Cup?
It's like, wow, we're so grateful you didn't launch another Vietnam. Well, that's not the standard, right? It would be worse if this war had been going on as long as the Vietnam War. There's also something, he's done it before, but... He is so glib when he talks about people who died. He's like, oh, this is not a big war. It's not a big conflict. You lost thousands in these other conflicts.
We've only lost 13. And he adds a perfunctory, and any death is unacceptable. But to hear an American president refer to the deaths as being minimal in this way, as if that is acceptable or that makes it OK, it's still jarring. Yeah, and it's not just the fuel prices either. Like fertilizer prices, it's actually hitting farmers pretty hard.
His only real message for farmers is like, just wait till it's over. Right. It'll get better. It'll get so much better.
Just wait till it's over.
By the way, that's also, of course, not true, right? Like prices aren't going to suddenly drop if there's an agreement. Maybe there's some like immediate effect, but like the ramifications of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are going to last for a very long time. So, Tommy, what did you make of the Wall Street Journal report on how Trump failed to rein in Netanyahu over these latest strikes?
The New York Times had kind of the opposite take, which is that the eventual halt to the fighting on Monday left Netanyahu appearing as beholden to Trump as ever. So I think the context people need to understand is that the Israelis also have an election coming up. It will probably be sometime between now and October 27th is when it will get scheduled. And so for Trump, we know he has a midterm.
A bad result will make his life complicated because of investigations and Democrats being in power. But for Netanyahu, staying in power is existential because that could be the only way he stays out of jail because there's all these corruption allegations and investigations. And so... But politically, Americans and Israelis feel very differently about the war.
Americans are like, this is dumb, why are we doing this? We heard that super cut of him saying there would be no wars. They're like, end it, gas prices are high, end it. The Israelis feel like this is not going well, we have not won, Netanyahu looks weak. And Netanyahu is actually getting attacked from the left and from the right for not finishing the war.
And so he's in a tough place politically. And so Iran firing ballistic missiles directly at Israel because of something Israel did in Lebanon exacerbates that problem for Netanyahu further. So now Netanyahu is in a very tough political situation. He wants the Trump peace talks to fail, but he can't be completely overt in his meddling with those peace talks.
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Chapter 5: How are recent conflicts in the Middle East affecting U.S. politics?
I hold all the cards in this war and I call all the shots. Well, he's saying he calls all the shots and a call to the reporter before he calls the other guy who's the head of state. To say, stop shooting. Get the sequencing wrong, sir. Bibi said, I thought this was captured, the situation. Israel has a full right to self-defense and we are exercising it.
I say this with appreciation and respect for my good conversations with President Trump. And so he just does the praise piece, but then he does whatever he wants. And maybe he's being limited in some ways and not in others. But if the U.S. cannot constrain Israel, from escalating in Lebanon, how can there be a deal between Iran and the US in which Israel at any moment can break the ceasefire?
And so like any ways in which the US cannot constrain Israel is proof that a deal will not be upheld by our side. And so we're just in this place where everyone's testing each other and
If the idea of success is getting Benjamin Netanyahu to only bomb outside of Beirut and not Beirut proper, and that's Donald Trump exerting his power, I don't know how that ends with Iran having confidence that we can maintain a ceasefire. This is the rub. Iran has, I think, very successfully made a peace deal contingent on the war ending on all the fronts.
So in Iran itself, but also in Lebanon and southern Lebanon. Whereas the Israelis are like, no, these are different conflicts with different timelines. And we want to keep prosecuting this fight against Hezbollah because people in northern Israel are still under threat from drone attacks. And I think that's going to, again, come into conflict here.
And from the other side, right, Iran has an interest in making this a larger conflict in which they can use the Hezbollah-Israel conflict as a part of their negotiation. And so they can prolong it there and then walk away from the table saying they're blaming Israel, right? Like everybody is using the leverage that they have.
Reportedly, the argument that Trump made to Netanyahu, too, was don't retaliate because I think I'm a few days away from a deal. And then if we don't get the deal, then maybe I'll lead the strikes next time with you. So he really does. That's another one where, like, I think he genuinely believes, or at least his team keeps leading him on, like, we're so close. We're on the one-yard line.
We're so close to a deal, and it just never actually happens. Yeah, I mean, I just, I'll believe it when I see it. And I think, and yeah, I was going to hate the deal that's on the table, reportedly. We don't have to go through all the details, but it's a lot of sanctions relief and unfrozen assets. And so, yeah, again, it just seems like they're on very different pages here, Bibi and Trump.
Well, even if it's this like mini deal where it's just reopening the Strait and you don't even get into a ton of sanctions relief somehow, that doesn't really do anything about Israel and Lebanon. No, or solve the nuclear issue. Yeah, of course.
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Chapter 6: How does the World Cup impact global politics and culture?
Okay. Reminds me of when... Everything else was on purpose but that. When I went to Michigan and interviewed Bernie and then like about 12 minutes in he's like this. That was a tough... Remember that, Austin?
Wrap it up.
That was a gut punch. That was a gut punch. You're either crooked or you're stupid. Actually, that's a great slogan for our subscriber push from now on. Please consider subscribing to Friend of the Pod because you're either crooked or you're stupid. Crooked.com slash friends. That was, he was very mad there. He really was like, you're crooked.
He was like, the part of the, I'm gonna put the whole goddamn system on trial. You're crooked, they're crooked. CNN, NBC, ABC. Is there anyone else left? Schwarzenegger was worse at Reprentice than I was. He yells at Kristen Welker like she's the election administrator. My elections, what are you talking about? But did you, when they came back, I watched the Meet the Press version.
And when Welker comes back after the interview, she said, I spoke to the president again. And he said he'd happily come on again in the future. So- He called her. So it's all a show. He loves her. Also, she's such a nice, calm, measured person. The idea that you would flip out on Kristen Welker, that is so funny. He's such a baby. He flipped out because she said, do you have the evidence?
Where's the evidence? It's like, no. In his mind, it's just like, well, that's what my people told me. And I saw it on the TV. And I saw it in the truths that I reposted, that I retruthed. And so he has no fucking idea. He's like, all you have to do is look. If everyone would just look at what I looked at, you'd know that it was crooked. I think it's, you're asking for evidence.
You know, I don't have that. Fuck you. I'm making it up on television. You know that. So mad about the rain as if she's making it rain. He also did the, cause it was too long. We didn't play it, but he did the whole thing again on where on January 6th, the FBI agents, the FBI was standing outside, sending people in to the, to, to the Capitol. It's like you were fucking president dog.
They only pleaded guilty because they were threatened with jail time. What are you talking about? They're on video beating up cops. Yeah. Everyone has knocked down this dumb conspiracy that the FBI somehow set up the January 6th rioters. The FBI that was under the control of Donald Trump. On the slush fund, we'll start there, then we can get to the fraud in California.
We talked last episode about Todd Blanch telling Congress that the administration would not be moving forward with the idea, even though Trump says still he loves it. And then Senate Republicans... Blocked the bipartisan attempts to actually ban the slush fund just in case Trump changes his mind. Now the House is going to give it a go.
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