Pod Save the World

Trump cuts a diesel deal with Putin, the Houthis hit Saudi Arabia’s main airport, and Kimberly Guilfoyle resigns after demanding ice at 4am in Mykonos.Tommy and Ben dig into Trump’s announcement of a diesel fuel deal and “energy ceasefire” with Russia that caught Ukraine and the Europeans completely off guard, and will pump $4 billion into Vladimir Putin’s war machine. The Houthis launch a deadly strike on Saudi Arabia’s international airport in Riyadh that leads the CEOs of major oil companies to cancel their trips to “Davos in the Desert”. Ship attacks in the Strait of Hormuz have nearly doubled in the past two weeks, Iran is reportedly reading war stories to kindergartners and training civilians to fire anti-aircraft missiles, and the guys explain why none of this looks like a country preparing to make a deal. In India, the Cockroach movement is back in the streets after 130 million names were purged from the voter rolls. New reporting exposes details about Erik Prince’s mercenaries conducting drone strikes in Congo and collecting mining taxes. And finally, Kimberly Guilfoyle resigns as ambassador to Greece after a State Department investigation, a $100,000 Amex bill, and an incident involving a 4am demand for ice while drunk in Mykonos. At the end of the show, Tommy speaks to Dr. Lesley Anne Warner, a visiting scholar with the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to get more context on why the current fighting in Ethiopia and conflicts in Sudan and Yemen could all spill over into each other.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [email protected]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

The Trump/Xi summit produces two pandas and not much else, violence in Ethiopia could have massive regional consequences, and Manchester City is found guilty of nearly a decade of cheating.Tommy and Ben close the loop on Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington and how Trump walked away with only vague commitments. On Iran, Trump is reportedly planning to resume bombing after the midterms, and a workaround in the Strait of Hormuz is getting oil flowing again, but it may make Trump less likely to cut a deal. A potential plot at a UK base used by US bombers to strike Iran ends with five British men arrested. The guys do a deep dive into Ethiopia, where a peace deal from 2022 is unraveling and the risk of a conflict that could merge with the wars in Sudan and Somalia is very real. Manchester City is found guilty on 115 charges of breaking Premier League financial rules for nearly a decade — and the story highlights the complications of state-owned entities with unlimited money buying their way into sports. OpenAI pauses its latest model because it kept lying, and a previous model hacked an Australian healthcare website. And finally, we take a tour of Trump's ambassador corps: Charles Kushner ignoring France's foreign ministry, Kimberly Guilfoyle steering contracts to her boyfriend's clients in Greece, and the US ambassador to Belgium picking a fight over circumcision. At the end of the show, Tommy speaks to Sam Vigersky, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, about the dangerous on-the-ground reality in Haiti and how the Trump administration is making it worse.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.To watch this episode with subtitles, click here and turn on closed captions (CC).You can request a transcript by emailing [email protected]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

The Houthis seize control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Trump rolls a grenade into Northern Ireland's politics, and a Russian oligarch funds Don Jr.'s wedding.Tommy and Ben break down some of the most alarming expansions of the Iran war: Houthi rebels have captured roughly 80 miles of Yemen's Red Sea coastline, Iranian-backed militants have blown up a Saudi pipeline in Iraq, and Iran's targeting has improved thanks to Chinese satellite imagery. An exclusive first look at a new Eurasia Group poll finds the Iran war's approval sitting at 34% nationally, with disapproval among independents jumping 13 points. Then Trump visits his Irish golf course on the taxpayer's dime and casually upends decades of US policy on Northern Ireland in an impromptu press conference. This week also brings multiple stories of brazen grift: ProPublica reports that a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for portions of Don Jr.'s Bahamas wedding, and The New Yorker does a deep dive on how much Jared Kushner’s diplomacy is colored by his personal financial motives. And finally, a Russian drone strikes a Ukrainian train station minutes after trains carrying the national security advisors of the UK, France, Germany, and Italy passed through. At the end of the show, Tommy speaks to Hamza Chaudhry from the Future of Life Institute about the crazy last week in AI, how to judge tech leaders’ calls for a slowdown in development, and what to expect from Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [email protected]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.