Can Germany’s Far Right Be Stopped?

Tommy Vietor (0:11)

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vietor.

Ben Rhodes (0:13)

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Tommy Vietor (0:14)

Ben, you are wise to escape Los Angeles. We don't have to disclose where you are. Ben's overseas at the moment. You can disclose if you want. But it's like, it's literally like a rainforest here right now. It's going to be 100 degrees on Wednesday, and the dew point is basically where it is in a rainforest. That's how miserably humid it is in Los Angeles.

Ben Rhodes (0:31)

When I left, it was like pouring like it was a tropical climate too.

Tommy Vietor (0:36)

So that was fun.

Ben Rhodes (0:37)

You had pouring rain and scorching heat. There's no climate change or anything. But that's not normal in Los Angeles.

Tommy Vietor (0:43)

I don't remember El Nino sucking this bad. Is it always a huge nightmare, apparently?

Ben Rhodes (0:48)

Well, this is supposed to be the mega El Nino, right? This is supposed to be worse than all the other ones, so buckle up.

Tommy Vietor (0:53)

It's not as fun as it was in New York.

Ben Rhodes (0:54)

You move out to LA as a New Yorker and everybody's like, and I'm like, I miss New York, and everybody's like, oh, but the weather will be great. And now we can't even say that.

Tommy Vietor (1:02)

Here we are. Well, Boohoo, LA, us, our first world problems. We got some additional, some problems for the other parts of the first world that we're going to talk through today, starting with some regional elections in Germany that have rocked Europe. Frankly, rocked a lot more places than Europe. We're also going to talk about the Trump emissary, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, their trip to Russia and Ukraine. We'll talk about the scary resurgence of ultra-nationalist fervor and celebration of genocide in Serbia. Some major news updates from Israel, including a policy change by the UK.

We'll talk about the latest in the war with Iran, and then finally, another massive corruption scandal swirling around far right British MP Nigel Farage, lots of UK-focused stuff, Ben. Then you just did our interview, Ben. What are we talking about there?

Ben Rhodes (1:49)

So, yeah, I took to Lawrence Wright, he's really one of my favorite writers, and he wrote The Looming Tower, which is the definitive book that was about to lead into 9-11, the failures of the US government and Al-Qaeda and its intentions. So we talked about, and he's written a new introduction for that book, by the way, so if people want to check it out, they should.

We talk about essentially how to make sense of the failures. There's no other way to put it, the last 25 years. How did the US get it so wrong? Some of his concerns that actually, given all the destruction of the US government and the direction of intelligence agencies to focus on weird Trump priorities, that we actually might be complacent, we might be kind of going through the cycle again where we're letting our guard down.

Tommy Vietor (2:30)

You don't think Al-Qaeda is plotting in the Fulton County, Georgia elections office? That's not what we're searching for.

Ben Rhodes (2:36)

Yeah, or the Immigration Enforcement Division.

And then really interesting conversations about how do we learn, how do we see the world and understand it better so that we don't make the kinds of mistakes that we made after 9-11. Some of the unanswered questions about the 9-11 attacks, including the potential Saudi involvement that has always been something that bugged Lawrence Wright as well as other people. And just kind of how 9-11 changed his life and changed the country. So it's a good reflective conversation. I think that as we head up to this anniversary, it's worth checking out.

Tommy Vietor (3:14)

Absolutely. Looming Tower is truly one of the best books. Also I think it's one of the things that Hugh Hewitt always quizzes you on if you go on his show. So make sure you read that before you go on that podcast. All right, Ben, let's start with the weekend's elections in Germany, which were historic for all the wrong reasons, all the worst reasons really. The alternative for Germany party or the AfD won 43.8 percent of Sunday's vote in the Saxony on halt regional elections. So the AfD now holds 39 of that state's 83 regional assembly seats, which is not a full majority but it's damn close. In the past, other German political parties have refused to go into coalition with the AfD to keep them out of government, to prevent them from governing. That's the so-called firewall policy. That may happen again here, but the AfD is going to try to convince three members of the conservative CDU party to defect. CDU was Angela Merkel's party, now Friedrich Merz's party.