Chapter 1: What is the expanding web of corruption around President Trump?
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Chapter 2: How did the UAE royal family invest in Trump's crypto venture?
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We're recording a little early today because Ben and I are going to go see a Melania duck matinee. There's the... The $12 tub of popcorn. Have you seen that? Yes.
The Melania. I was saying, I saw a Melania billboard driving in on La Brea. In your house. And I didn't see it defaced yet. Not that I incurred vandalism.
No.
I'm surprised it hasn't. There's something about the black and white color scheme that's a little triggering, too.
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Chapter 3: What role does Tulsi Gabbard play in foreign election conspiracies?
It's very spy versus spy. Yeah. They spent $35 million on the marketing.
To be fair, budgets for documentary PR is usually like that. Yeah, usually it's hundreds of millions. The funniest thing about it is that they insisted in an international release. And they won't release those numbers.
They won't release those numbers, right?
Because I get it. The MAGA diehards will turn out for any fucking piece of junk that glorifies their leader. But the idea that anybody was going to see that in Europe, it just feels like a troll.
Did you see South Africa actually barred it from its theaters?
Yeah.
yeah i noticed it had a um a better than expected uh what is it what do you call it open yeah like revenue total in the us was like eight million which again it's like it means amazon's gonna recoup i think 3.5 million they'll get like half of whatever, back 4 million, and they just wouldn't release the international tolls because they know.
Good job, international.
Good job, Jeff Bezos. We're going to talk today about some great hard-hitting investigative reporting. A lot of it is coming from Murdoch papers, and Jeff Bezos is just buying off Trump family members with...
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Chapter 4: What impact are the brutal winter conditions having on the war in Ukraine?
It's just metastasizing daily. We're going to try to figure out what the hell is going on with Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. She's popping up all over the place in very weird and troubling ways. We'll check in on the latest in Ukraine. We'll explain some dire warnings about the war in Sudan and how the proxy war there has expanded.
And then we'll talk about why Trump officials are meeting with separatist groups in Canada and why that could pose an existential threat to Canada's economic future. And then we have finally a story about France that I think will delight all the history buffs out there. And then, Ben, you did our interview today. What are folks going to hear?
Yeah, I talked to a friend of the show, Ali Vaiz, who's the international crisis group's Iran expert and just one of the smarter, more nuanced thinkers about what's going on inside of Iran.
So we talked about the dizzying run of events over the last couple of weeks, where things stand, what the negotiations are about between the United States and Iran with some of these other countries involved, what the interests of those countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar are in trying to avoid this war.
And I think very importantly, like what if there is some kind of regime change in Iran, which we still don't know will happen, who might come next? And that's something you don't hear a lot about. But Ali really breaks down a few different scenarios for how that could go.
Did you guys talk before or after the U.S. reportedly shot down this Iranian drone?
We talked kind of concurrent to that. But, you know, I mean, Ali sums it up well enough. we could be here in a week and I wouldn't be surprised if the United States has bombed Iran and removed its leadership. And I wouldn't be surprised if they are announcing that they have some framework for a deal.
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Chapter 5: How is Egypt involved in Sudan’s civil war?
We just don't know. That's the madman theory, Ben. That's the madman theory.
It's genius.
It's really genius what he's doing. See what he did? Oh, wow. So ingenious.
I know. There is some genius to framing, winging it as genius. Yes. But yeah, here we are. Okay. That's a great interview. And I could not agree more that Ali is one of the smartest people in all of the analyst space on this topic and one that doesn't, you know, he's not just a regime change only like one-trick pony like you see from some of these think tanks. FTB, cough, cough, FTB.
After the interview, our subscribers are going to hear a Q&A Ben will do with some of our members of the Pod Save the World Discord. If you want to hear that, please consider becoming a Friends of the Pod subscriber. Go to crooked.com slash friends.
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Chapter 6: Why should Americans care about the separatist movement in Alberta, Canada?
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Speaking of free, by the way, Tommy, thank you to the thousands of people that signed up for my sub stack. I've been cranking them out. I've got a piece on Iran, a piece on ICE, working on something on Epstein. So again, it's free. I just want to share more writing so you can check me out there. Check out Ben's sub stack. It's called... Notes on the Stories We Tell. It's a very literary title.
You did kind of a pose for me there. Yeah, I did. I did a kind of literary pose. You did sort of a vibe. I'm trying to give a vibe. If people have different title ideas too, let me know. No, I like the title.
Chapter 7: What recent developments have occurred in Iran following the protests?
I kind of like it though. All right. Let's start with some great reporting then. So this is Bombshell Scoop. from the Wall Street Journal about Trump and the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. The journal reported that days before the inauguration last year, an investment fund overseen by a member of the UAE's royal family secretly purchased 49% of the Trump family's crypto business.
World Liberty Financial. This was for a cool $500 million. When this deal happened, World Liberty had no products to sell. And the way this deal was structured, it actually didn't give the new investors any access to what at the time was their only source of revenue. So they paid $500 million for nothing. Totally on the up and up here. The Trump family got an upfront payment of $187 million.
The Witkoff family got $31 million. That's Trump's golf buddy turned chief diplomat, Steve Witkoff. His son is the CEO of World Liberty. And the Wall Street Journal report really does make it seem like the deal was negotiated by Steve Witkoff and Eric Trump during a trip to the UAE shortly after Steve was named to this kind of roving envoy role. But remember, Ben,
This is actually the second shockingly brazen corruption scandal regarding the UAE or UAE-backed investment firm in the Trump family. So last year, this Emirati state-backed investment fund called MGX announced they were making a $2 billion investment into the crypto company Binance.
Chapter 8: What unusual story involves a World War I artillery shell?
But they made the investment with the Trump family's new stablecoin, which is called USD1. USD one stable coins are a type of crypto that's pegged to the US dollar. That deal instantly made USD one one of the biggest stable coins in the world in terms of like market cap and circulation. And it could earn the Trump family about $80 million a year in passive interest. So must be nice.
On the Emirati side, the World Liberty Investment was led by a guy named Sheikh Tanun Bin Zayed Al-Nayan. He's the UAE's national security advisor. He's the brother of the president. He's a big shot who manages, I think, a $1.3 trillion portfolio of businesses. Must be nice. Must be nice, man. Not long after all these crypto investments and meetings with the Trump administration and Tanun,
the trump administration agreed to let the uae purchase 500 000 of the most advanced ai chips in the world uh produced by nvidia about a fifth of those chips went to an emirati-backed firm called g42 which is chaired by shake to noon the biden administration had blocked the export of those chips to the uae because the uae the emiratis do a lot of business with the chinese including like state-backed entities like huawei and there was concern that those chips could make their way to the chinese military but i guess trump just backdoor doesn't care
um trump was asked about this quid pro quo on monday here's his response ben well i don't know about it i know that crypto is a big thing and they like it a lot of people like it the people behind me like it uh my sons are handling that my family is handling it and uh i guess they get investments from different people but i'm not i have
All I can handle right now with Iran and with Russia and Ukraine and with all the things we're doing. So I don't know. I don't know. So funny. Other than, you know, I'm a big crypto person. I'm the one that probably helped crypto more than anybody because I believe in it. And the reason I believe in it is because if we don't do it, Scott, I think we can say then China is going to do it.
Who cares? We don't do crypto. Then China is going to do it. Oh, no. China does the fake money.
Isn't Bitcoin in the shitter now, too, by the way?
Yeah, it's tanking today. I mean, I just... This is like the most staggeringly corrupt thing I've ever heard of. And his response was like, I don't know.
Yeah. I like... The corruption is very obvious. We don't have to spend too much time on it. But you made the point. Biden had strict export controls on these chips going to the UAE. Now, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any transition of technology. But usually what you do is you just kind of you open the spigot a little bit, you know,
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