Is Trump making America weaker?

0:00If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi, background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely ad-free. Yes, I said it, ad-free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Hell eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. This is a global production. Iran wants absolute control of the Straits of Hormors and America doesn't want to give Iran absolute control of the Straits of Hormors. Boy, that was painful to watch Iran manipulate the American electorate in that way. It's not the first time Jamie that the Iranians have held America hostage literally until the end of an administration. It's going to be a big election.

1:01We're going to find some important things out about what the Israeli people want for their future. It was pretty, pretty dicey. What Russia did this weekend. They are now in a war mode and they are prepared to put their people through enormous suffering. I mean, could this kind of pain be as painful as that was all those years ago? Hello everyone. This is the latest episode of the X-Files with me, Cristiana Mampur in London. And Jamie Rubin here in New York City. And we have two questions for you because they're really worth deep dive into. Is Trump making America weaker? Some pundits are saying by all these wars, by all the things that are going on in the Pentagon. And later on, we're going to talk about Israel and ask whether it is running out of allies. So two important issues when it comes to the Middle East and the superpower of the United States for America. So Jamie, is Trump making America weaker since the war in February?

2:06Let's just not forget that he said it would last only a little while, maybe four to six weeks. It's gone on. I don't know, count the months every week. I have to count on my fingers. But what is it now? Seven months, at least, since the end of February. What do you see in terms of where we all are as to whether this is solidifying America's authority or not? Well, I think analytically it would be hard to dispute the fact that this war hasn't gone the way the United States wanted it to in any description, whether the objective was to overthrow the government, which clearly didn't happen, whether the objective was to destroy all of Iran's missile capability, which didn't happen, whether it was to weaken the position of Iran and the region that clearly didn't happen. The biggest problem I see right now is that Iran is a country, as you know, better than anyone that is run by a group of people who are trained and live and breathe through the

3:07word resistance and war and war mentally, physically, religiously, and they are now in a war mode. And they are prepared to put their people through enormous suffering, whether that's through direct crackdowns or through suffering economically. And that makes it pretty tough to get them to bend. And they haven't bent. In fact, they've not even accepted a deal that most people thought was pretty damn good for them. And instead are in a long-term struggle with the United States and are doing terrible damage to the world economy and particularly to the ability of Middle Eastern countries to export their oil. So all in all, the United States is bogged down in a never-ending, a military situation, which requires enormous resources and is trying to force a regime that doesn't seem willing to bend to bend. And so it's analytically by any reasonable measure, not a good thing.

4:12Yes. Now, it must be said that the phase that Trump and the Americans are in right now is the maintenance and the escalation of their blockade on Iran's ports, which is really having a massive impact on Iran's economy. And may or may not end up having an impact on domestic turmoil inside the country. And may or may not end up threatening the regime again, as it did, economic pain did, back in December January with those huge, huge protests that were brutally cracked down. Now also, Jamie, I've been told, because there's a lot of different reporting. The latest, very interesting, New York Times report by Fahns Fassi Hughes, very well plugged in, is suggesting that there is a complete disconnect between the power system there, or the constituent parts are not together on this. The president, the foreign minister, who want to keep the negotiation possible and not

5:12be overwhelmed by the United States, either militarily or indeed economically, versus the very hardliners who have consolidated power in the absence of any supreme leader who can actually stamp authority, they're claiming his mantle and are saying, you know, with his authority, we have now entered the escalation phase because we don't believe that negotiations can get us what we want. On the other hand, I've spoken to a very well connected former government official myself who says, that's not entirely the whole case. Actually, if that was the case, then it would only be in one time when these Iranians, you remember, surprise the United States basically broke the ceasefire by firing on those three warships or tankers or whatever they were, and that escalated and started the war again. No, but that's continuing, that kind of move, and that actually the whole consensus is around the objective right now, and that the issues are very clear and very difficult

6:12to sort out. Iran wants absolute control of the Straits of Hormors, and America doesn't want to give Iran absolute control of the Straits of Hormors. So I don't know, Jamie, before we go into making America stronger or weaker, I know these two are not particularly friendly nations, as we know, but they do need to actually sit down and discuss. I mean, the idea that the Pakistani military chief is the negotiator has not produced a huge amount of good results right now. Absolutely. Look, I don't think the absence of a good mediator is the problem. I think it's the parties themselves. I could be wrong, but I think President Trump would go back to the MOU. Would go back to a plan that was put forward several weeks ago in which the Iranians were going to be able to sell their oil. The implacade would be lifted, the Strait of Hormuz would be permitted to be used by all countries, and some arrangement would be made that would give them some influence more

7:16than they had before. I think the President would go back to that. So I think it's the Iranians who aren't willing to go back to that. They are now putting forward certain demands, and they are not willing to go back to it under pressure, and they seem to think that they can make President Trump bend because of the midterm elections. And I think they've misread that too. So this is a classic case of both parties misreading the other intentions. If they think that President Trump is going to stop the war on terms better than the MOU, I think they're probably wrong. The MOU was a pretty good deal for the Iranians, and they chose for whatever reason whether it was a renegade operation or whether it was a consensus. I don't know. I don't think we'll know for a long time. They chose to challenge it, and the United States chose to pull back from it, and we're back into a sort of a midway between war and peace, which brings the world economic pain. And meanwhile, the allies of Iran are getting stronger.

8:17The Iraqi militia probably attacked Saudi pipeline, which makes it hard for Saudi Arabia to export its oil. The Iranian-alligned Houthis have made some gains in the Red Sea that make it harder for that route to be used, all of which says that the Arab oil export market is in deep, deep, deep trouble. And that was something the Iranians are trying to impose on the Arabs and the world in the hopes of getting some better deal. And as I say, and you've got to keep saying it, the Iranian government is also facing close to untenable economic meltdown. Now, regarding Trump and the White House and the advisors, let's just take one of the latest pieces of news that came out, it turns out that people in his own administration, whether it's intelligence, whether it's other Secretary of State, Vice President, have warned him, Trump, that this could actually go on to the end of his terms, such are the

9:18issues, and such is the entrenchment of the Iranians to actually win what they want, which is not necessarily money I'm told, but it is controlled or the straight of hormones, and the ability to, I don't know what control apart from money, but nonetheless, that is what I'm told. And it's not the first time, Jamie, that the Iranians have held America hostage literally, remember, in 7980, with the actual hostages in Tehran, until the end of an administration. In that case, it was the end of the Carter administration. They made the Democrats pay the Iranians. And on the day of Ronald Reagan, the Republicans, inauguration, the Iranians released all the hostages who they'd been holding for 444 days. So what do you think? I mean, could this kind of be as painful as that was all those years ago? Boy, that was painful to watch Iran manipulate the American electorate in that way.

10:20I think we'll never know what would have happened. The hostages have not been taken, whether Reagan would have won anyway. But we know that they made Jimmy Carter pay a heavy, heavy, heavy price for his support for the Shah. And that showed their ability to use their powers, such as they are to interfere in our election, electoral process. Are they doing it again? Probably. But I'm not sure that there are any better at assessing what the results will be, and whether it will be better or worse for them, because I don't think they understand the international situation that Donald Trump would face if he suddenly were decide to capitulate. I don't think they are thinking clearly that after the midterms or even in the next administration that some new government is going to come in and want to make a better deal. This is one of the problems with Iran over the years. They've constantly been trying to get the best possible deal for their nuclear program, for this program, for that program, for this international negotiation, and sometimes

11:20they end up negotiating themselves into a corner, and they're worse off. Clearly nobody is better off right now. Iran is not better off. It can't export any oil. It's under blockade. Yes, they've got a new control theory over the straight of Hormuz. But meanwhile, their economy is imploding. So people can negotiate themselves into a corner and paint themselves into a corner, and Iran has a habit of doing that. So let's talk about the big issue, because we started by asking, is this whole thing, is Trump, is Hegseth in the Pentagon, making America weaker? It is still the superpower. It is still the most capable military in the world, although there are these ammunition shortages, which is quite dangerous. But nonetheless, it has done a number of successful things in just this last year, whether you agree or not, it managed to go in and lift an unwanted dictator from Venezuela. They managed to, whether you believe it's legal or not, they managed to wipe out several,

12:24well, the top leadership in Iran, by militarily, essentially, well, killing them in those bombing raids. And they've managed to extract two pilots who did go down in Iran in the early days of the war. And it's a point to certain highly difficult and proficiencies that the American military still can do. But on the big picture, for instance, David French, he probably read his op-ed, he's a former military officer himself, and he is really quite interesting on these military matters. He says it's difficult to fathom the damage President Trump is doing to America's national security. He's making our nation more vulnerable than it's ever been at any time since the cloudiest days of the Cold War. Partly because of these wars, Jamie, but partly also, and we'll get into this, because of Hegseth, presumably at Trump's behest, completely overhauling the Pentagon to basically remove and fire and deny promotion and otherwise generally preclude some of the really important

13:31military officers and choose those for ideological reasons, loyalty reasons, et cetera. Where do you think, do you agree with that criticism? Well, look, let's start with the first question. When I left office with President Biden at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, I was worried mostly about the China-Russia axis. It seemed to me that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the central issue of our time where Russia was invading its neighbor. We're hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake, where the future of Europe's security was at stake, and where the willingness of Russia to invade its neighbor put a really damper on the idea that the world was getting a safer place. With China supporting Russia dramatically and nearly completely short of just providing actual full-fledged weapon systems, this threat of a China-Russia nexus, an alliance

14:34that was, in fact, was the thing that worried me most. That means the security of Europe and the security of Asia. What has happened in the Middle East has done damage to our posture in Europe and Asia. There's just no question about it. It's just physically a fact that we are less able to keep our ships and our air forces and our military forces at an appropriate state of readiness in Asia and Europe because of the war in Iran. Because of the fact that we are now having so much of our military resources focused on Iran, which was clearly a war of choice that we didn't need to operate after destroying or mostly destroying their nuclear facilities in a short campaign, we could have left things there and then gone and known that the nuclear problem was resolved for a time, turned to negotiations and tried to move on. But instead we got into this war that we've talked about that is seemingly endless and that takes away from our ability to serve our national security in Asia and Europe by

15:41physically removing the ability to have enough missiles, enough equipment, enough ships, enough planes in those two crucial theaters. So on that level, it's just indisputable that we're in a worse position. And enough allies, I mean you touched on the actual alliances are weakened as well. So David French goes on to write, touching on what you just said, as long as Iran a long standing ally of Russia that's closely linked to its neighbor through the Kaspian Sea remains in the fight, it can continue to deplete our interceptors to the point where it might take years to bring our stocks back to acceptable levels, even if we ramp up production at immense cost. That is something that's been debated for the last several weeks since I can't remember who it was, but those reporters who broke the news that actually America is running out of crucial interceptor missiles and some of the defensive ammunition that it needs and that launched both Trump and Pete Hegseth to start, well mostly Pete Hegseth at the

16:42Pentagon to start kind of a witch hunt to try to ferret out the civilians and the military officers, whether it was administering polygraphs or interrogations or whatever, who might have leaked that information. And we haven't heard the results of that, but it's important information to have out there. I'm sure the Pentagon doesn't want it to be out there, but it's definitely very important for it to be known so that something presumably can be done about it. And just to say Jamie, this weekend and we'll go into it more in the Q&A episode later this week and why and what it means, but focusing more on Ukraine for Thursday's Q&A episode. But it was pretty, pretty dicey. What Russia did this weekend, there was an annual conference, national security conference going on in Ukraine, happened to be the former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a big, big defender of Ukraine, the current national security adviser, Jonathan Powell and many other dignitaries who were there, just as they had traveled by special train from

17:44Ukraine into neighboring Poland, Russian drone, I believe, attacked a very closely parked train in nearby there. Now, was it on purpose? Were they targeting the VIPs? Was it a message? But many people are going to go away and take away the fact that Putin is flexing his muscles again. And this is incredibly, incredibly dangerous, don't you think? Absolutely. Look, whether that was planned or not planned if that drone had hit the train filled with the world's dignitaries, I think we would have been in a real crisis if they had all been potentially injured or killed. It would have been a real crisis and it would have been a real dangerous moment because anger would have entered the picture and personal relationships would have entered the picture and countries as we've seen going back in history, incidents like that can cause great or greater wars. That's how World War I started, really, was the assassination of a crown prince.

18:47Oh, Stu Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Yeah. Exactly. So, look, there's nothing about Ukraine that's encouraging. There's no sign that Vladimir Putin understands he can't win this war. There's no sign that Ukraine is going to give up and therefore there's every indication that the war will continue at its current pace or worse for the foreseeable future. And there's no real negotiation in sight that will change that. And I think that a lot of the discussion and a lot of the analysis sort of fails to come to grips to that with that because it's not new. But sometimes the truth is not that exciting. It's boring. The boring truth is that this war is stuck in a situation where Ukraine will not give up and Russia doesn't realize it can't win. And until one of those two things changes, I don't think much is going to happen. And all of that is a way of saying that Europe is dangerous, more dangerous than it was a

19:48couple of years ago. And meanwhile, the accounts about not just the president, but the vice president asking all these questions about where the weapons are and where it has been. It's clear that they've been depleting stocks from all of the European and Asian and other theaters to make it possible to operate in the Middle East. And that means Europe is less safe. Asia is less safe. And we have Russia and China willing to threaten wars, whether that's in Ukraine, a real war or a threatened war in Taiwan. And that's not a good way to have deterrence. You know when that terrible time when Zelensky came to the White House and was given a thorough going over by Vice President Vans and Trump, and it was pretty awful. And at one point, he said, which enraged them, you know, in his not brilliant English on this technical matter, he basically said that you will, and I'm paraphrasing, one day feel the pain.

20:48Yes, you have this fabulous Atlantic ocean fortress between the dangers that we face and yourself. But one day you might feel it in a different way. I feel that what he said then is coming to bear, whether it's the pain of the war that they chose with Iran, whether it's the pain of not being able to get what they want out of the European theater. I think that Zelensky was probably right, even though America is so far away. It's by far and away the strongest military. But I think that he was quite right, that actually things do, boo, brang. And again, given that the midterms are not that long way to two months away, why do the midterms matter? Who is it who's being elected? And what might it change? Right. I think the midterms matter mostly as a sign of whether President Trump's policies are supported by the country.

21:49President Trump in this particular case has made himself the center of the Republican platform. But he's not on the ballot. On the ballot are the Democratic senators and Republican senators, the Democratic congressmen, the Republican congressmen. Right now the Republicans control every level of government. They have a conservative majority in the Supreme Court. They have a majority in the House of Representatives, a majority in the Senate, and obviously the presidency. But if that changes as a result of opposition to Donald Trump's policies, which is what this will be, a referendum on President Trump, certainly if the Democrats get their way it will be because they have not really put forward an alternative that is dramatically clear to the public, but opposition to Trump has grown substantially, both within the Republican Party and among independence and Democrats. If the Democrats take back one or two houses of Congress, government changes. Now to be clear, the President still has the power in foreign policy, most of the powers

22:50that he now has. But what will change is the climate, and the Democrats will be in a position to challenge President's policies with real legal power, with the power of the purse, to spend money with the power of subpoenas to cause investigations. All of the things that haven't happened to many people's surprise, all of the controversial policies of Donald Trump have not really been investigated by Congress. If it's only really been investigated by journalists and talked about by outside countries and experts. But if Congress were really to dig into some of these big questions that are out there, I think that will change the country's politics and maybe set the stage for a new outcome come two years later. Okay, that's for US elections and all the bits and bobs that go into determining who wins, who loses. We're going to talk in a moment, Jamie, about elections coming up in Israel. And again, really, really important because of the same kind of forever warm mentality that

23:51the current government in Israel appears. Evening, bias remorse, buy a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I didn't have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no. No, no buyers remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com. It is to be wanting to continue an anyway stuck in, mired in since October 7th. So Jamie, there are elections coming up in Israel. I believe the date is October 27th. And it's the kind of thing that Benjamin Netanyahu, I think, has been trying to put off for a while because he does not want this moment of accountability for many, many

24:52reasons. And especially at a time when he is very much lower in the polls and he would like to be and the opposition that is trying to beat him is ahead of him in the polls. Particularly one of them is a very, very senior former leader of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, who's taken issue with quite a lot of Netanyahu's military policies since October 7th. And again, the 27th of October is when the pedal hits the metal. And it comes at a time when Israel is under unprecedented international scrutiny. The occupied West Bank, just to explain for anybody who might not know, although I think this has been such an issue that everybody does know. Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank after winning that territory in the war back then. The Six Day War that the Arabs launched against Israel. Israel counteroffended and won that territory. In real life, these things are meant to be negotiated and meant to be dealt with, but it

25:55kept the territory. And therefore it is called occupied territory. And over the last more than two years now, nearly three years since October 7th, the incidents of settler violence aided in a better or at least not stopped by a lot in the Israeli military, in the Israeli police forces has led to a really, really bad state of, and it's even a former prime minister who told me, Jamie, that what Israel is doing in the occupied West Bank is basically ethnic cleansing and can even, you know, amount to some war crimes there. So we've had sanctions put on by the UK. They're targeting settlers and settlements and goods that are made from those areas. We've got France and Canada. And notably, Jamie, the United States hasn't said one way or another whether they agree with this move by their allies. What do you make of that? Just on the sanctioned thing? Yeah, I think it's interesting and it's surprising to the extent that the United States normally

26:58supports Israel and almost everything it does. Settlements are the one thing which has always been a bit of a red line. If you remember Donald Trump's famous Abraham Accords were premised on the idea that Israel would not take over the West Bank, would not take, make it part of Israel. And effectively what Israel has been doing in the years since is doing that without saying so and trying to basically drive the Palestinians out. So I don't think this policy is supported by the United States. A very, very pro-Israel ambassador, you know, Huckabee who really has shown, he'd say, and do almost anything the Israeli government wanted has even engaged because some of the Palestinians are also Americans who are under threat from these Israeli settlers. And so this is a policy that even a pro-Israel, fully pro-Israel government like Trump can't support. Look, elections matter. They matter in the United States.

27:59They're going to matter in Israel. It's going to be a big election. We're going to find some important things out about what the Israeli people want for their future. And, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu has tried to avoid this for a long time because let's face it, it was his government that was in power on October 7th when the greatest security failure occurred in modern Israeli history when the border was left undefended in the South because they thought for whatever reason their electronic fence was going to solve all the problems. They moved the troops out, put them in the West Bank to deal with their policies there. And the Palestinian Amas terrorist group came through and killed whatever the number is precisely but somewhere in the range of more than 1,200 and murdered. Yeah. And that failure has never really faced a political test. You would have thought by now there would have been some investigation, some commission, some examination of this great failure. Many of the senior Israeli security officials resigned as matters of principle because they

29:03know they failed. Prime Minister Netanyahu has just blamed everyone else but himself, not taken any responsibility as best as I can tell. And so this election is not just about the horrible policies in the West Bank. It's also about the policies of Israel before, during and after October 7th, that have led to a situation I've never seen before where the country of Israel is the most isolated, the most viewed negatively by people and governments and institutions around the world. In my whole lifetime, I've never seen anything like this where the Democratic Party is split down the middle between those who are fed up with supporting Israel in its current form and those who want to support Israel but are just holding their nose about Netanyahu. Meanwhile the Republicans are having their own questions about America's support for Israel. And the country that's the most supportive of Israel. So all over the world this election will be followed very, very closely.

30:04It's really, really important and I have no way of predicting what will happen. So with Europe pretty much breaking with Israel over this and doing this whole sanctioned things with the United States being very, I think, you know, carefully and strategically not saying and not weighing in and not criticizing as you think that they would in the past, even how could be the ambassador who you've spoken about has said that some of these Israeli settlers have a terrorist because of what they're doing to especially Palestinian Americans and their property on the occupied West Bank. And the very, very extreme far right ministers are saying basically they want to quote bury the idea of a Palestinian state and that is why the occupied West Bank is so important that this is the center of the decades-long international commitment to a two-state solution using the West Bank and Gaza as a Palestinian state. So they just want to end that possibility.

31:04I had Prime Minister Ahud al-Mard on my program on CNN regarding some of this and another big bombshell. I don't know whether you, you know, whether it affected you as it did me, but there was the most incredible report in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. It was by the author of a new book and the author is a journalist called Schlomi Eldar and he's got a call through as well, but I know Schlomi, we've spoken many times before on various issues and Schlomi has said, according to what has been written in Haaretz, that there were warnings. And remember the very beginning, Jamie, right in the aftermath, people were saying, oh, Egypt warned them, the, you know, some of these Arab neighbors of Israel warned them that something was afoot. Well now this latest is absolutely naming the president, the powerful president and leader of the UAE known as MbZ, who apparently called Netanyahu himself several days before

32:07and said something major is going to happen. So picking up all sorts of intelligence and the article says that Netanyahu's listened, he was calm and he said, we have it under control. So as you can imagine, Netanyahu completely and utterly denies this. He's already started apparently, he's instructed his lawyers to begin suing for defamation, the actual newspaper and they're saying, you know, he received no warning. But Prime Minister, former Prime Minister, who would all vote, who remember was in the liquid member, i.e. the current party of Netanyahu, who he's no longer liquid, but he was. So he's from that side of the fence. He basically said that he believes it and he has reason to believe it, that these warnings were delivered. And of course he wouldn't tell me, he said, one day I might have to say it in court. And remember that he's also very upset that Netanyahu has not faced what every other Israeli Prime Minister has faced after any major war and that's an internal reckoning.

33:11He himself did after the 2006 war against Hezbollah and he was heavily criticized for that, for Israel's role in that and the result of it. And they're all really angry that Netanyahu has held himself aside and won't, won't you know, submit to this using all sorts of wear at war or this or that excuses. Okay, you were in, you know, in, I think you were in the State Department right after October 7th. What can you say about these warnings? Yeah, it's a tricky subject because it's led to a lot of conspiracy theories which unfortunately surround these big events, whether it's 9-11 or October 7th. You know, people actually believing that, you know, this is all planned and that they wanted this to happen so they could launch the war and all those crazy ideas. Here's my best understanding of what happened is that Israel believed that it had a technical solution to the problem of the border with Gaza and they falsely believed, wrongly believed,

34:15stupidly believed that Hamas was satisfied with its position there being in control of Gaza, that they were content with money from various parts of Arab world and that they were content with their control of Gaza. And that was a judgment that they made, not based on any secret fact, but a judgment, a political judgment. And so when they began to get warnings of operations that were being trained or planned and there was apparently some very big, you know, training exercises along these lines of large numbers of people gathering near the border or putting together buses or, you know, whatever it was that allowed them to get through the fence. They thought it was a bluff. Yeah, they thought it was a bluff. They didn't believe it. They had the weakest military personnel there. They had a technical fence and electronic fence and they thought that they could solve the problem through a technical solution and so they arrogantly and stupidly and tragically

35:21believed their own policies were working when they weren't working, when they didn't realize that Hamas had never given up, that Hamas wasn't satisfied with Gaza, that the electronic fence wasn't going to stop a determined group of people who could figure out a way through it and then they left virtually undefended large areas of southern Israel where the slotters took place. But I don't believe it was a failure of, you know, I don't think they had a warning that on this day, you know, 10,000 people are coming across in these five places. I think what they had was indications that Hamas was considering such an attack. They had indications that training had taken place for it and they probably had people who were telling them that this really going to take place really, really soon. And instead of investigating, examining, beefing up their defenses, taking troops from the West Bank and moving them down to the South as a precaution, they arrogantly decided

36:22no, they had it under control. That's my assessment of what happened. And then they were tragically wrong and should pay a heavy political price for it and somehow the leadership has not done so. And yet you probably won't be surprised to have read that Netanyahu, just like Trump and even Putin, are doubling down on the war front, right? Some people think that he's going to revert to his tried and trusted and true for him election policies of the past, which is to somehow gin up some kind of scare, scare or something that he can then, you know, be seen to come to the rescue of. So I think that's what we need to potentially watch out for. And by any judgment of whether Israel is more or less secure during his prime ministership, it's pretty easy to argue that they were less secure because of October 7th. And that attempt to divert attention from that has been going on all along.

37:24That was the responsibility of the Israeli government to defend its territory, its primary responsibility. And the fact that that's never been investigated and no one has been held to account for the failures is one of the things that obviously Prime Minister Olmert and others are furious about. Right, well, two elections coming up in two incredibly important places and they'll be here before we even know it. So I do think it's important to keep a really close eye on it and to keep talking about these issues. And in a moment, it'll be our recommendations. Hey, man, you hungry? Let's order delivery. Yeah, I was thinking. Italian burgers. Oh. Game night just got tense. Two bros on different sides of the fence. Burgers were pasta tonight. Why can't we have food without the fire? With wonder, you can combine 20 restaurants in one delivery.

38:26So no one has to settle. Use code MealTime for 50% off your first wonder order, terms apply CWunder.com slash new customer. OK, so we're back with our recommendations. I want to go first this time. To be honest with you, it's a September 11th kind of recommendation, but it's still going on. So I want to keep recommending it. Does anybody remember come from away? It was that amazing Broadway play that was produced several years ago in the aftermath of 9-11, focusing on Gander Newfoundland in Canada, when all these US planes had to be grounded, diverted, none could fly into American airspace on the day of 9-11 and for, I don't know how long afterwards, because of the danger and what had just happened with the terrorist strikes. Gander, Newfoundland took in thousands and thousands of strangers and passengers who were headed towards the United States, people going home, tourists, business people.

39:27And it's not a huge place and it doesn't have a massive infrastructure, but it opened up schools and warehouses and all these places and people took people into their own houses with food and blankets and hot cups of tea and just general fabulous neighborliness. They made a play out of it called Come From Away. But the reason I'm recommending it is because now on this 25th anniversary around the world, there are new productions of it. So if you're in Canada or in the United States or in the UK or wherever you might be, go and see one of these productions called Come From Away. It's so heartwarming, it's so beautiful to think how this community just pulled out all their generosity, pulled out all the stops for all these people. And it's just that, I mean, it's a bit biblical, right? Reach out your hand to the stranger in need. It's like welcome to those, you know, even foreigners in distress. And I think it stands in such contrast to so many of the government policies we see

40:27around the world these days, which are significantly opposite. They don't want foreigners, they don't want to reach out their hands, they don't want anybody even in distress. So I just do think that Come From Away is a remarkable reminder of generosity and shared humanity. Good one. My recommendation is a bit different. It's a documentary, Dr. Drama about Charles DeGal called Resistance. As I thought it was brilliant, I had the unusual experience of trying to follow it in French because the subtitles were in Dutch because I was in Amsterdam and not in English. And my French is good, but not that good. But the problem, the reason why I could follow it is because I had read DeGal's memoirs. And what's so great about it is that DeGal represented the French desire for freedom, even as most of his people were succumbing to Hitler's Germany and the government had capitulated.

41:28And he represented not the Patan government's weakness, but the French flame of freedom. And he wasn't a particularly easy man to deal with. In fact, he was extremely difficult. And I thought the actor played that extremely well. The Winston Churchill figure played it extremely well. And it was heartwarming to see what can happen in times of trouble when people can stand up for principles. The truth is I think they exaggerated and made the Americans not look so good a little worse than they should have given the role of the United States in World War II. And they made these French forces in the desert a little more heroic, perhaps, than they ought to have been. But nevertheless, you've got a real feel for what high level politics is about in a time of war when you have men of principle who are fighting for the lives of their country. And it's worth remembering what that's like when we are in a situation we are in now where we are in these more voluntary war situations that aren't about the lives of our country,

42:33except in the case of Iran, it's about their country. But certainly not in the United States. And we're making these decisions and forgetting what wartime really is like. And I thought the film really made that, brought that home of how heroic people can be if they make principle decisions and stick by their principles and are brave. And unfortunately, that isn't what we see a lot nowadays. Just to say, I took Darryus to see it and our son and he was unbelievably moved by it. It was great to see him. I mean, he loves history, but hadn't known this part. And frankly, the Battle of Beyr Hakeem in Libya was as dramatic as that. And the French did hold out and save the English. They gave them 15 days of time to pull back. And it was incredible. Thank you for listening and watching to this episode of The X Files. And remember, you can always listen for free on Global Player. You can watch us on YouTube as well by searching Christiana Manipur presents The X Files

43:37and subscribing to our YouTube channel. Jamie and I will be back on Thursday, as we said, with the Q&A episode where we'll be answering all your questions. So bye bye for now. Goodbye from New York City.