One serious point I'd just make, because I've been consuming a lot of the reporting from people like Layla the last couple of days and with Trump, you know, suing Ann Seltzer and ABC, you know, it's easy to shit on the media, but man, these are the people that are showing us what's happening in the world at great risk to themselves. So remind yourself that the quote unquote media isn't just podcasters and pollsters. It is people like Layla that are out on the ground telling stories that we would have no idea about if it weren't for journalists.

At great personal risk. You could run into the wrong person in in syria at any time things could happen in beirut um but uh she's a total badass and i'm really really grateful for the time because she was talking to us like 11 30 via a 3g whatsapp connection and you're like you know i'm just a pampered little shit in la and people are doing the hard work and we're grateful for them but like

my amazon arrow's not working well enough on my speed test on my internet

Where's my Postmates? All right, Ben, let's talk about the latest from Syria. So the rebel leaders there continue to do and say all the things that, you know, people in Washington and think tanks, and also, as you mentioned last week, like minorities in Syria want them to say. Jolani, the leader of HTS, who has dropped his nom de guerre, as one does, and is now going by Ahmed al-Shara, but we'll call him Jolani for ease. He said they are going to dissolve and disarm rebel factions in Syria and create a real army. The interim prime minister said they're taking applications for a police force. Jolani is taking lots of meetings with, you know, foreign delegations. According to the FT, officials from France, Germany, and the UK all have visited or will visit Damascus this week. The former HTS leaders have ditched their military uniforms in favor of civilian clothes when they're doing meetings with foreign journalists. Jelani did a big sit down with, I think, eight or nine reporters. And during that conversation said, quote, Syria is tired of wars and we want to build a state and institutions away from conflicts. He also tried to reassure minority groups. He criticized Israel for taking more territory in the Golan Heights. But the New York Times, which had a reporter in the meeting, made the point that they characterized his comments as, quote, not a tirade against Israel, but by calling the moves a violation of the 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries. So we didn't go on some like diatribe against the Zionist oppressors. He was just like, hey, we got an agreement with these guys. They're violating it.

And his family is from the Golan Heights that Israel annexed. Yeah. So he's showing some restraint there. I

think Abu Ghulani means from the Golan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in this conversation, he was also critical of Iran, less critical of Russia. It's interesting tea leaves there. That said, you know, there's recent satellite imagery that shows the Russian military packing up their equipment, withdrawing staff and equipment from its base in Syria. So who knows what that Russian presence will look like going forward. But interesting to see them leaving. But also the HTS guys being a little less hard on Russia. Jolani called on the U.S. and other countries to remove sanctions on Syria and to delist HTS as a terrorist group. Assad also made his first public statement since getting toppled and pushed out of Syria. In it, he claims that actually he only left Syria after Moscow requested that the base he was at be evacuated back to Russia. But then he goes on and talks about how brave he has been for all these years. It's quite pathetic. Ben, last week we saw, right we were recording, you and I were talking offline, I think, about how Biden's secretary of state and national security advisor were going to the Middle East. I figured one of them was going to dip into Syria for some meetings. It doesn't seem to have happened. The State Department says they've been in contact with HTS, but there's been an in-person meeting. They also haven't relaxed any sanctions. I guess just my question again to you is why not? Why not have Biden lob in a call to Jolani? Like there's this historic opportunity now to shape what's happening in Syria, to stick it to the Russians, to stick it to the Iranians. Lob in a call. Like Trump would do it. Trump would do it in a heartbeat. What is the downside? There's

no downside. And there's an absurdity to the current situation. There is currently still a U.S. $10 million rewards for justice bounty on Jelani. So what, if the U.N. official or the British official makes a citizen's arrest, we're going to give that person $10 million?

Yeah, well, those reporters in the round table just grab

them. Yeah. I mean, it's just, if you want to win on the stupidity of American foreign policy, it's that, that that still exists and someone didn't just get rid of that. And the reality is these people are, you know, we talked about this last week, so I don't harp on it, essentially, all we're doing is obstructing a transition that can take place, obstructing assistance getting in. We are designating people as terrorists who, whatever their roots, if you listen to anybody in Syria and you look at the scale, the disappearances, just saved tens of thousands of lives by emptying those prisons. these people, whatever we think about them, it doesn't mean that they're not going to do things we don't like. It doesn't mean that they don't have associations that are troubling that we may need to kind of monitor with time. But let's wipe the slate clean. Let's, you know, you have to account for changes in circumstance. And if ever there is a change in circumstance, this is it to delist HDS, to lift sanctions, and to try to make this transition work. The other thing that is painful to watch is that Syria, the biggest conflict risks it faces are from external actors. So you've got Israel still bombing things in Syria, claiming territory. You've got the Turks threatening the Kurds in the north, the US trying to broker an agreement there. Don't leave us out.

We're bombing Syria. We're

bombing Syria with ISIS. mean, at a certain point, it's just you got to what you'd like to see is these external forces withdrawing from Syria, making agreements to not target each other's proxies and to kind of let a transition actually take place. And, you know, all the U.S. talking points are we want to, you know, transition into Syria, own Syrian lead. Well, they can't own it and lead it if they're sanctioned and designated and multiple countries are fighting in their territory. So again, there's reason to be careful. There's reason to preserve some enthusiasm. There's reason to say if we see a return to any kind of extremism, there's designations that can come back. But I'd be wiping the side clean. These guys, just compare how these guys are acting to how the Taliban acted when they got into Kabul. It's night and day. And so we have to allow for that.

Yeah. And let's just then. So obviously this is going to be Trump's problem pretty soon. He weighed in on the situation in Syria during a press conference on money. Let's listen to a clip.

Now that one

of the sides has been essentially wiped out but nobody knows who the other side is but i do you know who it is turkey okay turkey is the one behind it he's a very smart guy they've wanted it for thousands of years and he got it and those people that went in are controlled by Turkey. And that's okay. It's another way to fight. But no, I don't think that I wanna have our soldiers killed, but I don't think that will happen now anyway, because the one side's been decimated.

Like he's like, Turkey. You like talk to like a kid who learned about something for the first time and is excited to show off to the teacher about

it. I assume he's getting intelligence briefings. Yeah. And it is an entirely overly simplistic thing to just say, Turkey. Turkey. I mean, yes, Turkey has a lot of influence in HDS. They support them in Idlib. They have ambitions to have influence in Syria. But if you think that's all that happened, when you're watching the scenes out of Syria, these guys are Syrian and they clearly want to govern Syria. And this is what's coming, like a very simplistic view of the world as this kind of chessboard between some big powers and not a lot of nuance in the understanding of different factions instead of Syria.

Yeah, he was excited that he knew the answer. He was excited that he knew that Turkey shared a border with Syria. But also, it was weird the way he framed it. He's like, yeah, I don't want U.S. soldiers dying in Syria, but now I don't think they will because Turkey is controlling this faction and I don't think they'll attack us. I don't know. It just made me once again feel like I don't really know what he's going to do with U.S. troops in Syria or how he's thinking about this. Obviously has this kind of like nationalist, America first, bring them all home, not our problem mentality towards almost everything, including Syria, because he tweeted as much the other day. But I don't know. There was a little ambiguity there, I thought.

Well, I think he's

always shaped by something that

happened before that involves him, right? And he wanted to take these troops out of Syria the first time, and there's a lot of uproar in the Republican Party, and he didn't. The challenge is right now, those US troops are kind of the last thing standing between Turkey and what could be a massacre of Kurdish forces that have helped us fight ISIS. And so what he needs to be doing is negotiating with Turkey to have a place for the Kurds inside of Syria. And there's been these negotiations between HDS and the Kurds about how could the Kurds have some autonomy within a new Syria and how could they feel comfortable being a part of like a new governance structure? And that should involve diplomacy with Turkey. Yeah, we don't want the US and Turkey to get in a shooting war over northern Syria. That should require diplomacy. It's just, do we think Trump is going to do that? And we don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. So I wonder if some advisors would be like, sir, you have an unbelievable opportunity to like permanently take a whack at the Iranians and the Russians and keep them down and solidify, you know, our power in the Middle East, sir, beat your chest, sir, sir, sir. We'll see if we'll take it. Ben, you know, we wonder. Good use of sir, by the way. Thank you. We talked in the last couple episodes about Assad and our hope that he's living somewhere really horrible in Moscow. That's probably not the case. The Financial Times reported that Assad's central bank airlifted $250 million in cash to Moscow in 2018 and 2019. They said that Assad's extended family bought at least 20 luxury apartments in Moscow during that time using a complex set of companies and loan arrangements. And as recently as May 2022, Assad's maternal cousin and sort of a member of the Syrian intelligence established a property company in Moscow established by some other relatives. So that's probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the money that Assad has eluded from the country and repositioned in Russia. Now, the question I guess is whether Putin says, oh, that's actually mine. Yeah. Or let's live off it. But yeah,

I just don't know if you're betting on the over under and for how long Assad is around, I'd be taking the under because he's not going to be able to go anywhere else other than Russia, pretty much. And what use is he to the Russians? I mean, that's the thing. I mean, sure, they took him in like, you know, the U.S. took in the Shah or something. But I can't imagine what use he is because he has no popular support in Syria. So it's not like he could rebuild a base to return to Syria and restore Russian influence. He's the most loathed human being in Syria. So, you know, he's just going to be cooling his heels, I guess, in Moscow or wherever the hell.

Yeah. Some parody account of RT announced that he was starting a podcast. That was very funny. That's it for the Ben and I on Syria. But later in the interview, you're going to hear me and Layila talk a lot more about this. We also talk about the search for Austin Tice, the U.S. journalist who's been missing in Syria since 2012. And his parents, Austin Tice's parents request to the Israelis and then Yahoo to stop bombing parts of Damascus where they think that Austin Tice might be held. They're worried that like the Israeli could

be killing. Yeah, no, they could. They're bombing military facilities. And that is if he's alive, that's a place that he could very well be held. Oh, my God. All right. Let's check in on

Trump's national security nominees, Ben. So the Hill had a good piece about Tulsi Gabbard's struggles to woo senators on Capitol Hill as she tries to secure votes to become the director of national intelligence. One source described her as, quote, a little shallow, and an anonymous Republican senator described her meanings as BS sessions. These are people who ostensibly may support her. Tulsi, she had a challenging path for this job, given her fondness for Assad and her total lack of qualifications for the job. But we'll see if Trump could kind of bully her the votes. On Monday, he not at all subtly suggested that he would support primary challengers for senators who oppose his people. I assume she's among the list of folks he would fight for that way. Pete Hegseth, the nominee to be Secretary of Defense, he seemed to be in very big trouble until the MAGA base started intimidating Republican senators. New York Times had a great story about the pressure campaign against Iowa Republican Joni Ernst. She's a combat veteran. She's a survivor of sexual assault who dared to suggest that Pete Hegseth's lack of experience and the allegations of sexual assault and basically near-continent drunkenness might be a problem for him as Secretary of Defense. But, you know, seems like Pete's very much on track to get confirmed now. The crew over at Morning Joe did a segment where they looked at some of what Pete Hegseth wrote in his book about the military. Let's listen, Ben.

Hegseth writes, America will decline and die. A national divorce will ensue. Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back. The military and police, both bastions of freedom loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice. It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war. In another section, Hegseth writes that our present moment is much like the 11th century we do not want to fight but like our fellow christians 1 000 years ago we must arm yourself metaphorically intellectually physically our fight is not with guns yet A

little Civil War crusade, huh? Yeah. Excited? This is clearly the most problematic of the nominees. I mean, if I were to focus on one out of all of them, it would definitely be Hexf. It is the most important of the agencies. And let's be clear, Trump is going to do a lot of things that are going to trigger a lot of us. Two of the kind of existential things are the transformation politicization of the U.S. military and the transformation politicization of the Justice Department. Those are different order threats than even a weirdo like Tulsi Gabbard being DNI. And so having a guy that has had, you know, these credible claims of sexual assault, credible allegations of being drunk all the time, is writing openly about civil war, defended war criminals. These are just the things we all know about. This is not the person you want leading a nearly trillion dollar enterprise that is in the chain of command, that has to respond on a dime to international crises at a time of great power conflict that is in the nuclear chain of command. It's just totally irresponsible to even be entertaining this. And the fact that somebody like Joni Ernst, who clearly didn't want to support XF, and, you know, her, if she withdrew support, it might have been existential to his nomination. Well, that Steve Bannon and some people can, you know, go

on. Charlie Kirk, his little right wing podcaster

types. Just scream on podcasts and all of a sudden like she's in line should be terrifying to people. And they

target her, right? While a bunch of male senators hide behind her. Yeah. Right. She's a combat veteran. She's a sexual assault survivor. And these fucking cowards hide behind her being kind of the public face of concern about things you should be concerned about. Like this guy has incredible sexual assault allegations. He's drunk all the time. He has no relevant experience. He's never managed an organization of more than like 10 people. And he's going to run the Department of Defense and oversee what, 3 million, nearly 3 million employees. Yeah.

And this is what Bannon does understand is that the reason they want to get him in is to prove that they call all the shots, that the Senate Republicans, John Thune, the Senate majority leader, are meaningless, that they're just rubber stamps for Trump. So this is a proxy for how the Senate Republican caucus will operate in national security and politics generally.

And Bannon says that.

He says it because he knows it. I listen all the time. And one of the things that, you know, there's that Utah guy that was in the right place on Gates. I don't even know his name, the new Utah senator, Republican senator. So this is the guy who was elected to replace Romney. I mentioned this guy for the simple reason that, you know, this guy doesn't come up for election until two years after Donald Trump's term ends, you know, like Trump is not forever. And if these Republicans, you know, are willing to basically risk the entire United States military and the Pentagon and trillion dollar budget, because they're afraid of being criticized on Charlie Kirk's podcast. Why are you in public office? And we've said this before, but, but you have real power here as Senate Republicans. And, and it's on them. It's on the Republicans to see how much they're going to allow Trump to crash the car, drive the car drunk, quite literally, in the excess case, versus whether they have any institutional prerogative. So watch that. Of all the nominations, I'd like to think that Cash Patel would be raising these concerns, but it doesn't seem to be. Cash

seems to be coasting through. Yeah. Let's get to Cash. John Curtis is the new incoming Republican from Utah. I did Google it. I apologize. Household

name.

Adios, Mitt Romney. Yeah, so we've been watching Cash. Like you said, he's been named to lead the FBI. As you said, it doesn't seem like he's facing any real headwinds. The New York Times dug into some of the lies he told about Benghazi. They are as follows. Patel has repeatedly said, both verbally on podcasts and in print in a book he wrote, that he was, quote, leading the prosecution's efforts at Maine Justice in Washington. So leading the prosecution of the Benghazi suspects. However, that's not true. He was a prosecutor in the counterterrorism section of DOJ. He did work on the Benghazi investigation, but only in support of the prosecutors who were leading that prosecution at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office. The Times also notes that Patel left DOJ six months before the first Benghazi case went to trial. It's tough to lead that effort if you're not there. He also reportedly lied about being asked to join the trial team. Cash has complained that Obama's DOJ only prosecuted one guy and, you know, it took a pass on the others for political reasons. The Times says, in fact, the prosecutors had filed sealed complaints against over a dozen militants that were just kept secret. And then weirdly, Cash has said on podcasts that the military had, quote, rolled up 19 attackers when even today, the U.S. government has only been able to capture two of them. And I think they prosecuted one at least, maybe both, just because it's very tough to operate in Eastern Libya. So we could keep going about all the kind of fabrications here. But like this at a minimum raises questions about his credibility. Yeah. And

when you hear things like that, I don't know what's more alarming, Tommy. Is it more alarming that he just makes stuff up or that he might actually believe these things that he says that aren't true? Because he seems like one of those guys that may actually talk himself into grandeur. Either way, you're putting this person who's not at all qualified in charge of the entire law enforcement apparatus in the United States of America. And it doesn't seem to be raising any red flags. And, you know, just because Pete Hegseth, there's alcohol and women involved, it seems like that's more easier to report on. But but the kind of complete lack of qualification to see seemingly some of the more normie Republicans like Tom Tillis from North Carolina, who's up in a couple of years being like, oh, you know, he's going to reform the FBI. Like, what does that even mean? Reform it to do what? How? Yeah. You know, there's nothing here about making the FBI more effective in prosecuting, you know, counterterrorism or counterintelligence or counternarcotics. It's wholly about making the FBI an extension of Donald Trump's political interest. There's no other reason to select Kash Patel. But that one, you know, like I said, I think Hegseth, there's a chance he's not confirmed. Kash Patel, it seems like that ship is getting ready to sail.

It's sailing, that's for sure. Also, listeners know, we try to keep an eye on current and future foreign corruption opportunities by the Trump regime. It is a full-time job. Along those lines, last week, Eric Trump announced a new Trump Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. During his first term, Trump said he would avoid foreign deals such as this to avoid conflicts of interest. This time, apparently, that no longer matters. There's also plans for two Trump developments in Riyadh. They're eyeing a project in Abu Dhabi. This is all in partnership with this real estate company called Dar Global, which Reuters reports is the international arm of Saudi Arabia's Dar El Arkan real estate development company. So again, our Gulf listeners are probably wondering, who do I bribe? Is it Jared Kushner? Is it Steve Whitcoff? Is it Tiffany Trump's father-in Is it Don Jr.? Is it Eric? Do I just buy the Trump crypto or do I buy the DJT stock? And the truth is- All they both. I don't know anymore, Ben. It sounds like the Trump org is trying to get back the Trump hotel in DC and lease that back so they can do the rent's 50 hotel rooms grift again. I don't have great advice for all our listeners in the UAE now.

It's just going to cost a lot. Did you see Eric Trump in the UAE a few days ago for some crypto conference? And he's literally there hawking Trump family cryptocurrencies. Hawk to

a coin.

Of course they're going to invest in that. Do you think that the missing piece in the Jetta skyline is a Trump Tower? Honestly, yes.