Mehdi Hasan Debate on the Iran War, Immigration and the Israel Lobby

18:42AIPAC dumped millions of dollars to defeat the critical candidates. Lots of lobbies dumped millions of dollars. I'm agreeing. We said that.

18:47Francis Foster:But your claim is that the reason Democratic politicians ignore their voters' concerns about the Middle East, for example, is because of something like AIPAC. Yes. Okay, fair enough. And so how do you think this conflict will go on from here? It's very hard to know. We're in uncharted waters. I've said since 2003, both as a private individual and when I became a public figure in 2009, I've said this consistently that I was against the Iraq war, and I think it was one of the big disasters of my lifetime, but Iran would make Iraq look like a walk in the park. It would be Iraq on steroids, a much bigger country, much harder to topple, way more regional and international ramifications.

19:26And we're seeing that now. We're a couple of weeks into this war, and we're seeing the oil price spikes, economic repercussions globally, the attacks on natural gas facilities. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but the experts are saying this could have 10-year, 20-year ramifications to rebuild some of this stuff. The environmental consequences in the region, the public health consequences of causing acid rain in Tehran. Of course, the blowback. In this country, I always joke that Americans have the memory of goldfish, right? Eight seconds. It's hard to remember what happened last week, let alone last year.

19:57People in the Middle East have very long memories, right? Americans don't know who Mohammad Masadek is. Most Iranians will tell you that's the prime minister in 1953 that the US overthrew and brought back the Shah, and then the Shah led to the revolution, et cetera, et cetera. When we talk about blowback, we need to have big picture. God forbid, three years, five years, a year from now, some bomb goes off somewhere, kills a bunch of innocent Americans. We say, why, why, why do they hate us? And they're like, but Khamenei. We're like, Khamenei who? Who's he? We've forgotten about him already. I mean, this is my worry.

20:24We've seen this with every invasion. The invasion of Iraq brought about ISIS. The invasion of Southern Lebanon in 1982 brought about Hezbollah, right? These illegal wars, these wars of choice, these occupations, they lead to blowback, unintended consequence, what the CIA calls blowback. And I really worry about that when it comes to Iran. We don't know what's going to happen next. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, a New York War architect, there's the known unknowns. We know there's some bad shit coming. We don't know what it is.

20:47Francis Foster:Most people think they're informed. In reality, they're selectively informed. Modern media doesn't just tell stories. It quietly decides which ones you never hear about at all. That's why I use Ground News. It's the only app that compares how the same story is covered across the political spectrum and show you what whole audiences are not being told. The Blindspot feed is one of my favorite features. Every day, it flags upwards of 20 stories that are being ignored either by the left or the right. Follow along at ground.news.trigonometry. Take this story. A major U.S. poll found that Republican voters' confidence in Trump's economic leadership has dropped sharply during his second term.

21:25Francis Foster:That is not a minor data point. If you only read right-leaning publications, you would have missed this completely. On the other hand, look at this. The UAE drops UK from scholarship list over radicalization concerns on university campuses. That's a significant story. Yet, coverage from left-leaning outlets was almost non-existent. Ground News puts all of this in one place. Headlines, bias breakdowns, ownership, and context. So you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told. Go to ground.news slash trigonometry to get 40 % off their unlimited vantage plan. The same one we use.

21:59Francis Foster:And stop being managed by the media. Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com. Mehdi, there'd be people who go, well, look, you've mentioned Hezbollah. Iran funds Hezbollah. They fund Hamas. They effectively destabilize the region.

22:38I don't say that I agree with this, actually, but they would say, look, if we deal with Iran, long term, we're going to get a better, more prosperous, more stable Middle East. What would you say to that? I would say Benjamin Netanyahu said exactly those words in front of Congress in 2002. He said, if you invade Iraq, there'll be positive reverberations throughout the region. what happened? We got ISIS, we got Al-Qaeda in Iraq, we got seven bombings in London. Tony Blair was warned, if you invade Iraq, there will be bombings at home. The Joint Intelligence Committee told him in 2003, he ignored those warnings.

23:06We got more terrorism, more blowback, more violence, more regional instability, more refugees. That's what I fear is happening now with Iran. In terms of destabilizing the region, look, this is where we get to like, where do you start the clock? I would say, yes, of course, Hezbollah and Hamas destabilized the region. But they would argue, and many people would argue, that the destabilizing began with Iran. They are a reaction to Israel's actions. So, you know, it depends where you want, like I said, 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon. There was no Hezbollah in 1982. So look, Iran does play a role that is malign.

23:36I've never defended blindly Iran. Iran does bad things. No one's debating that. Many countries in the Middle East do bad things. We are not invading, Saudi Arabia, I think we would all agree around this table, does bad things, has done bad things. We are not invading and trying to topple Saudi Arabia or bombing their oil fields and gas facilities, and I'm glad we're not. So I don't think this war is a solution to the problem. By the way, what is the problem? Donald Trump will not tell us what the goals of this war are. It changes every day. Marco Rubio says it's degrading the Navy. First, they said it was a nuclear program that they obliterated last year in the 12-day war, apparently.

24:05Francis Foster:There's a lot of evidence that the nuclear material may well have been removed prior to the strike. But I'm saying this war was not about the nuclear program because they've done nothing to... That's actually the thing that they have said that makes sense to me. Like, I think I'm actually kind of with you in terms of, I don't understand what the goals of this thing are. If we take it that the nuclear stuff and degrading the military, that's fine, but then why are you killing their leaders? That's the bit I don't understand. Well, interestingly, they're not killing their leaders, right? They killed Khamenei, but the Israelis are doing much of the killing.

24:38They've killed the intelligence minister. They killed Ali Larajani. Now, let's just deal with what Israel wants, because what Israel wants is pretty clear to anyone watching. They want an unstable, weakened Iran that doesn't pose a threat to them. They don't care if it's a democracy. They don't care if it's a dictatorship. They don't care if it's a civil war. They just want Iran off the table, right? And therefore, they're killing people who might do a deal with Trump. They've done this before. Last year in the 12-day war, they tried to kill a guy called Ali Shamkani who survived, then they killed him now.

25:04He was a negotiator who Trump had been praising and reposting on social media. They killed him because they don't want Trump to do a deal with this guy. Why not? Because they don't want to negotiate a solution to this conflict. They want to keep going, the Israelis, until they wipe out everything they want to do. Yeah, they want to degrade Iran. They don't want Donald Trump to do one of his deals. That's the worst thing they could have done. They didn't want the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal that Obama signed, that resolved the nuclear program for at least 15 years. They were dead against that deal.

25:29Francis Foster:But so was Trump himself. Yes, and Trump pulled out of that deal. And then what happened? Enrichment went up. Then Biden came back in, said, let's try and go back into that deal. The Israelis attacked Natanz in 2021. They enriched up to 60%. Then last year, they went to Oman to negotiate. They had a meeting scheduled for Sunday. The Israelis bombed on Friday. This year, they negotiated in Geneva. The Omani foreign minister came to DC and said, a deal's on the table. Apparently, Jonathan Powell from the UK said, there was a deal to be done. Guess what happened? The US and Israel bombed the next day.

25:58There's a history of Israel in particular, but also the US bombing every time we're close to a deal. Every time there's a negotiation in place.

26:05Francis Foster:This is why we just come back to the nuclear point, because I agree with you. It's very clear that there's a difference between the interest of the United States and the war goals of the United States and the war goals and interests of Israel. And Israel's war goals and interests It's actually very clear. I'm very unclear as to what the US was. Well, if it is the nuclear program, I think we're both unclear, but if it is the nuclear program, I don't think they know. But if it is the nuclear program, this is not the way to do it. Negotiations are the way to solve Israel. Most experts say you cannot bomb away a nuclear program.

26:33It's in people's heads. It's scientific expertise. You cannot kill every scientist and academic.

26:37Francis Foster:You can destroy the nuclear material. And then years later, they can rebuild facilities and enrich again. And then you're just mowing the lawn, as the Israelis say, go in and bomb every couple of years. But we had a JCPOA. We had a deal that was working. The IAEA said Iran was in compliance with it. Do you know how much enriched uranium they had under the JCPOA? 3.64%. You know how much they have now? 60%. You know, you want to go back to logic. Logic tells me that was a failure to get out of that deal. I mean, I also don't think there's any huge evidence that negotiations produce nuclear non-proliferation.

27:06Francis Foster:I just think this is a very difficult... Oh, come on. The entire history of the post-war era. Well, if you look at Ukraine, for example, Ukraine was forced to give away its nuclear weapons and made itself very vulnerable. And I've been on record as saying, I think that in and of itself and the fact that we haven't supported Ukraine properly will lead to more nuclear proliferation. I agree with you on that. And I think on this issue too, I don't see what the incentive would be for Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons. Well, we're in agreement, but not just Iran. So I interviewed, again, if you guys remember the Iraq war, do you remember Muhammad al-Baraday?

27:38He was the head of the IAEA. Yes. Him and Hans Blix went to the UN and said, don't invade Iraq. We can disappear. We were both against the one right, by the way. That's why I'm saying this to you, because I know you understand. He said, we can guarantee disarmament. He was the head of the nuclear watchdog, spent his life opposing nuclear proliferation. I interviewed him recently. I said, if you were in the Turkish government right now, which Israel is saying is next, would you try and get nukes? And he said, yes. I was astonished. This is a man who's devoted his life because, as you say, everyone now has an incentive to get nukes.

28:03Why would you not?

28:04Francis Foster:My point was even broader than that, Mehdi, which is that I think everyone always has the incentive to get nukes. And that's where I don't think negotiating with Iran. Hold on. Let me finish the point, though. I don't think that's in that situation. I don't think Iran has any interest in that. Iran is very clearly the reason the Gulf Arab states and Israel all want Iran degraded and all supported this conflict, by the way, and are still still encouraging it, the Gulf states, especially internally, the people at the top, the people on the street may not, is because Iran wants to dominate the region.

28:40Francis Foster:It's a perfectly legitimate thing for Iran to want to do. But that being the case, the fact that they fund proxies to facilitate that process, of course they'd want nuclear weapons. And I don't think they'd negotiate them away. Well, they already did negotiate them away. According to US intelligence, they suspended whatever nuclear weapons research they were doing in 2003 after the fall of Saddam because they didn't want Bush to invade them. There was also a fatwa from the late Ayatollah Khamenei saying that nuclear weapons are haram, forbidden under Islamic law, which is ironic. people are now saying, I hear supporters of Khamenei saying, that was a mistake.

29:11He should have actually got nuclear weapons. But under him, they did enrich more uranium. But they didn't build weapons. Enriching uranium is their right under the NPT. Every country has the right to enrich uranium. No, not to 60%. That was a bargaining.

29:20Francis Foster:But they did. That was a bargaining chip. Why did they enrich to 60 %? Because they're saying, if you keep pushing us, if you keep... Israel attacked them, so they went to 60%. They only went to... You say Iran wants to dominate. This is why it's so important for your viewers to understand the timelines here. I know in the West, we're kind of brainwashed by some of our media and politicians to believe that Iran is this Hitler country. And again, I'm not saying that. But I didn't say you said that. I said some in our media and politicians, brainwashed over the years. Trigonometry is a great show.

29:48It hasn't been here for decades. I'm talking about the last 30, 40 years. Have been told Iran is the great, you know, just like Iranians say the great Satan, Iran is also the great rogue state in the Middle East. Actually, when you look at it, Iran is the country that is actually now being bombed, was attacked from 1980 to 1988 by our ally Saddam Hussein, attacked with chemical weapons, lost half a million people, had their planes shot down by the United States of America. And then they agreed to a negotiated deal with the American government in good faith and with the EU, by the way. The JCPO was with the US and the EU.

30:19Iran stuck to that deal. Trump tore it up. Trump violated that deal by pulling out of it. As I said, they then began to increase enrichment only after the deal was done. So I don't accept your premise when you say, of course, they want to get nuclear weapons and enrich. No, they signed the JCPO, which it says in the first paragraph, we will never get nuclear weapons. That's what they signed on.

30:34Francis Foster:But they then took that money and used it to fund their procterics. Okay, but now you're moving the goalposts. I just want to stick with your nuclear point. No, no, you made a very strong point about nuclear. They have incentive to get nuclear weapons. I'm saying there's no evidence of that. It's the exact reverse. The incentive is clear. You're saying... Now they have an incentive for sure. They just got attacked. They always did. Well, of course. If you want to be the dominant... Strategically, yes. But the irony is they didn't. That's the irony. If they did, they'd be fine. Ayatollah Khamenei would be alive, chilling with Kim Jong-un right now if he had got nukes like Kim Jong-un did.

31:02Let's just be very real about that. There's a reason why Pakistan and North Korea, which destabilized their region much more than some would say Iran, are fine because they have nukes. We're in complete agreement. But Iran didn't get nukes. This is a great irony here. They didn't get nukes. They got attacked. The leader got killed. And now I'm hearing you say it's because they wanted to get nukes. It's the exact opposite. If they had gotten nukes, they didn't have a much safer place. Instead, he put out a fatwa saying no nukes. He signed up to the JCPOA, which many Iranian hardliners were against.

31:27Kam and I signed on to a deal that people in his own country said we shouldn't sign on to. They then stuck to the deal, according to the IEA. Trump then tore up the deal. They then marginally increased enrichment to 20%. They then got attacked by Israel in 2021, increased to 60%. And then last year got attacked during negotiations. And again, this year got attacked during negotiations. And one last point, the Gulf countries, it's just not true. The Omani foreign minister just wrote a piece for The Economist magazine, Oman got bombed by Iran. And even he's saying, it's very rational for Iran to do what it's doing.

31:54This is an Israeli war that America has been dragged into. America needs to be independent from Israel. The Qataris, I've spoken to very senior Qataris privately, who of course are mad that Iran bombing their gas fields, but they know who they blame. They know who started the war. It was Israel and the United States. And they're reaching out to the US, telling the US, stop this. So maybe the Saudis, maybe the Emiratis wanted this war, but not all of the Gulf countries. That's just not true. Fine. So it's really interesting that you're talking about, you know, the bombing of facilities, gas facilities, etc.

32:23Because one of the worries for me, Mehdi, is how this is going to affect ordinary Americans. And I don't actually think that we've been focused on that enough. So let's talk about the Strait of Hormuz. Let's talk about why it's so important. Let's talk about why shutting it down is not potentially catastrophic, is catastrophic for the global economy, but for Americans and Brits and the West in particular? It's a disaster. So we just ran a piece by Elan Goldenberg, who was a senior official on foreign policy under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He conducted war games for the United States government on what would happen if they attacked Iran because they were doing the JCPO.

32:58They had to have a backup in case it all goes pear-shaped. If we go to war, it's Obama time. He says the worst case scenario of the war games is what's happening right now. That's kind of scary when you hear someone who's in government saying that. He wrote that piece for us and he said, look, the Strait of Hormones was always going to be the Iranian leverage. It was always going to be the choke point. When Donald Trump comes out and says, we didn't know they would do this. We didn't know they would attack the Gulf countries. I mean, it's idiocy of the highest order. It's like COVID all over again.

33:22He mishandled a major national crisis because he was incompetent, not just ideologically doing the wrong thing. And again, we have these people like Hexth and Trump who are completely out of their depth running this war and saying stupid things like, well, we didn't know about the Strait of Hormuz. I just saw reporting the other day that the Brits and the Poles and the Germans all have mind-sweeping carriers that could have been of use. The Brits pulled ours out. I don't know where the German one is. But meanwhile, Trump is just attacking all the allies. So we don't need anyone from NATO. We don't need you.

33:50He's doing all caps, late night, insane, deranged posts on Truth Social. He doesn't know how to run a war. He doesn't know how to keep allies on board. Again, I'm going to have to go home and take a shower after praising George Bush. But even George Bush, a war criminal who should be in The Hague, created a coalition of the willing with a bunch of countries. Not the big countries, but some, what was it called? New Europe, Rumsfeld called it. this guy can't even build together a coalition. He didn't even tell his allies before he decided, as you say, to create massive economic chaos for everyone in the world.

34:16And we're speaking on a day, Francis, where the Treasury Secretary just announced, we may unsanction Iranian oil. Isn't that, I don't say hilarious, because it's such a tragic war and people are dying, but bizarre that three weeks into this war, the result of this war is Iran's oil is unsanctioned. That's insane. But let's go back to the Strait of Hormuz. Can you explain for people who are listening, who, you know, they've got families, they've got jobs. Why is it so important? And why is closing it so disastrous? So it's where the majority of that region's oil and gas goes out of the region, goes out to China and India, into the Indian Ocean.

34:50It's very narrow. I think it's 25 miles at its narrowest point. It means that the Iranians can shut it down with like one guy on a boat, right? With like a rocket launcher. It doesn't require a massive Iranian military presence. There was a moment the other day where Hegseth said, we're run by such incompetence. Peter Hegseth, the defense secretary said, no, no, it is open. You can go through with the ship as long as you don't get attacked. Well, you will, so it's not open. The whole point is all these planners, military planners are saying, you can't open it up as long as Iran is a country in that region.

35:18They will always have that leverage to shut it down because it doesn't require much on their part to take out one tanker and then which country, which company is going to go into that place. So there's two lanes, literally it's two lanes straight forward, one going that way, one going that way. It's very easy to shut down. So this was always the Iranians' key leverage point. and apparently Trump didn't know about this, didn't think it through. He posted the other day calling it the Strait of Hormuz spelled S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T. That's the President of the United States. So we're in a very disastrous position.

35:44The Iranians can hold out. We don't know how long the Iranians can hold out, but the longer they do, us at home here in the US, you guys in the UK are going to feel the pain. You know, 104, 110,$120 barrels of oil. Who knows how high it's going to go and the repercussions for a country, this country where affordability was the big political issue at the last election, inflation. Well, you should be very excited about this, Mehdi, surely. Because remember, you asked me at the beginning why I'm on the left. I believe in justice. I don't want people to suffer just to win my political argument.

36:10Francis Foster:I was kidding, obviously, but I meant politically. The Democrats, I think, are on course to win the House and the Senate. Maybe the Senate, definitely the House. Yeah. And you imagine, I mean, it's clear, I think whatever you support the conflict or the President Trump or you don't, I think it's very clear this is the biggest gamble of his political career. 100%. And if it doesn't go the way he wants, I mean, the Republicans surely would lose the presidency in the next election. A counter-argument, Bush and Blair were re-elected after. The real counter-argument is, there's three years to go, Francis, and Trump years are like dog years.

36:44Francis is him, but it's fine. I know we're dressed the same. It's all right, it's all right. Because I'm so...

36:51Francis Foster:You did that politician thing where you tried to name people by name, but you got us confused. It's because I was thinking about the next three years as I said it. And the point I was making when I confused you both, was it's three years to go of Donald Trump. Three years is, we've just had a year. It feels like 10 years. The idea that anyone can know what will happen in the US a year from now, let alone three years from now, insane. Anyone who tells you they know what America will look like in 2020 is a liar or a fool. It's just too much change. Too much happens here. So anything could happen between now and then.

37:18That's why people who say it's going to be Vance or Rubio. No, it might be neither of them. It might be Trump again if he doesn't want to leave. Do you think that's a realistic possibility? Yes, 100%. You think there's a possibility? 100%. Not that 100 % that he will stay, but 100 % there's a possibility. That he would try. That he would try. Let me say this because I know I'm not alone. At some point, your body just stops bouncing back the way it used to. You train hard, you travel, you push yourself, and suddenly recovery takes longer. You wake up stiff, joints complain, skin, hair, nails, things don't look or feel quite right anymore.

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39:48Francis Foster:the reason I wonder about that is to me that's kind of terrifying it is but then I talked to we talked to people all over the political spectrum but we have a lot of friends who are on the right and they all say if that were to happen I'd be on the street opposing it so so again I have a longer memory than most in 2019 I wrote a piece for the intercept saying Donald Trump loses next election he will not accept the results he will try and stay in office he will start a riot I wrote that piece in May 2019 people laughed at me I was not an American at the time They said, you're a Brit. You don't understand American politics.

40:17Secret Service will march him out. His party will never accept it. January 6th happened. He still doesn't accept the result. He's still trying to fiddle with that result and the next result. Donald Trump should be taken seriously and literally. I do take him seriously and literally. When he says again and again, should we suspend elections? Will this be the last time you ever have to vote? Should I stay on for a third term? He's not just joking. I'm not saying he isn't joking, but he's not just joking. In that weird head of his, there's stuff whirring. You're a close Ukraine watcher. Remember when Zelensky came to the Oval Office, and not the time he got braided, but the other time.

40:48And a journalist said, why haven't you had elections in Ukraine? And Zelensky said, how can I have elections? We're in the middle of a war. And Trump jumped in immediately. Oh, if you're in a war, you don't have to have elections. I'll have to remember that. And people chuckled. And I'm thinking, that's Donald Trump's brain work in there. He's thinking, there's a war, maybe we don't have to have elections. And you've got people like Steve Bannon, who I do take seriously, making it very clear that they're working on a plan to try and keep him in office in 20. That doesn't mean they're going to succeed.

41:11That doesn't mean he's going to do it. But to pretend when he shows world leaders merch Trump 2028, that we shouldn't take this guy who already tried to stay on in office, already incited an insurrection. Yeah, we should take that seriously. This is a party that doesn't believe in democracy anymore. But we're talking about democracy and I'm looking at the Democrats. I'm not someone who's on the left or the right. And I'm looking at the Dems and I don't see any candidates. I don't see any particular ideas. I don't see any challenge, if I'm being honest, Mehdi. What am I missing? It's a good question.

41:38I mean, look, I've been very critical of the Democratic Party for my own position on the left. Look, there's not great candidates. I agree with that. There are candidates. It depends who they're up against. If you're up against a Rubio or a Newsom, then yeah, sorry, a Rubio or a Vance, then Gavin Newsom or a Jamie Pritzker or whatever it is could do a decent job and easily be competitive. I don't rate those Republican candidates. But yes, do I wish there was a more dynamic Democrat? Yes. Do I wish there was a more charismatic Democrat? Yes. Do I wish there was a more populist Democrat? Yes. Do I wish Bernie was 20 years younger?

42:06Yes. Will AOC run? We don't know. It'll be interesting to see. I think there will be about 30 people running. I think it's going to be, do you remember the 2016 elections where the Republicans had to have a kiddie table debate the night before because there were too many candidates like Lindsey Graham and the losers. They went the night before. I think they're going to have a Democratic version of that because it's going to be, I think everyone on their dog is going to run this time. But you look at Gavin Newsom and people are going, oh, you know, this guy's the next candidate. Look, you look at California.

42:30It's a shit shot.

42:31Francis Foster:He's got great hair though. Yeah. He looks the part. Donald Trump would make him a running man if he was a Republican because he always goes for visuals. Yeah, look, I'm not disagreeing with you. I think there are Democrats, but look, again, three years to go. I'm of the Donald Rumsfeld known, unknown, unknown, unknown. There could be someone none of us have even thought about who emerges. You know, Barack Obama was elected in 04 as a senator and then ran for president in 08 and won. There's a guy, John Ossoff in Georgia, who's about to be in a very tight Georgia Senate race. He's Jewish. He's young.

43:00He's centrist. He's not on my side of the political spectrum. He's very charismatic. He could be the candidate if he wins in Georgia. He could change things around. We don't know. Do you think when you look at people like Zoram Amdani, do you think... I wish he was born in the US so he could run for president. Go on. Do you think that could be the future of the Democrat Party, that kind of very left-wing, progressive politics? Or do you think that in order for the Dems to win, they need to be more pragmatic and they need to attack the centre? I don't know what the centre is anymore, to be honest, in the crazy world we live in now.

43:31And I know you guys are based in the UK where there's five parties now fighting for dominance. I think the old ways of thinking about politics are gone. What does a centre mean in the age of Trump? I think what matters is, are you anti-establishment or are you pro-establishment? I don't think it matters. I think left and right is less relevant than are you anti-establishment or pro-establishment? Are you a populist or are you not a populist? I think that's what Mamdani proved in New York. Mamdani got a bunch of Trump voters. So did AOC. There's Ocasio-Cortez Trump voters. They exist. There are Trump Mamdani voters.

44:02Why? Not because they agree with his socialist policies, but because they see him as an outsider. They see him as someone who takes on the establishment. They see him as someone who speaks his mind and doesn't talk like a consultant with boring talking points. That is going to be the person who emerges and is really going to occupy the ground, center or left, come 2028, if that person exists. I think Americans are fed up with politicians. They're fed up. We talked about moneyed interests earlier. They're fed up with money in politics. They're fed up with foreign wars. We didn't talk about the fact that this Iran war is the most unpopular war of my lifetime.

44:29I've never seen a war in the US where the public doesn't get behind it. Once troops are committed, they're behind it, even if they're skeptical like Iraq. Nope, not this time. They are consistently anti-war, the American public. Consistently anti-war, consistently anti-billionaire, consistently anti-establishment and anti-DC. Who is the candidate in either party who's going to monopolize? Trump did a great fake con job of being, I'm going to be the outside guy, even though he gives tax cuts to billionaires, enriches himself. But he played the part to some people of being, I'm the guy who's going to go shake things up and burn it down.

44:56Who's actually going to do that? And who's going to do it on the left?

44:59Francis Foster:Well, there's a couple of points I want to jump in. I mean, one of them is the anti-war thing. It's an interesting point about the broader sweep of the entire country. The Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of this war. We agree. And the Democrats are overwhelmingly against it. And I imagine that's partly to do with the person who is doing it. I think a lot of Republicans support it. Oh, they would be opposed to if Kamala Harris was bombing Iran. Likewise, a lot of Democrats would probably support it if it was being done. 100 % Chuck Schumer would be behind this war if it was a Democratic president.

45:27So I don't think that's a reflection on the war as much as it is... But the public, you're talking about politicians, I'm talking about the public as a whole, whether Republican or Democrat are tired of this war. No, no. I know the polling shows Republicans are behind Trump, but I think that's because it's Trump. That's what I'm saying.

45:41Francis Foster:But I don't think they support war. I think there's a general principle... I also think a lot of Democratic voters are against it because it's Trump's war. Agreed, but I also don't think they would be enthusiastically for it, the voters. I think voters across the board. I've not met enthusiastically pro-war people in this country outside of media green rooms. I have I mean we've met people who just go you know you support your country at a time of war I support the president there are lots of people like that there's polling that shows that a significant minority of Republicans would bomb Agrabah if given the chance from Aladdin so yeah there's a poll that shows that as long as they're trying to develop nuclear weapons we're all in fact well and we agree that Iran wasn't developing nuclear weapons I'm kidding but I think France's point about the center versus not the center I guess if you take something that we have explored quite a lot on our show which is the cultural dimension of all these conversations, you could see at the last election, some of this was talked endlessly about the trans ad that Trump ran, etc.

46:37Francis Foster:I guess the question is, is the Democrat Party going to move away from that or more lean into that? I mean, Mamdani, I think, actually really didn't go into that at all and tried to stay on the economic issue as much as possible. I'm not sure that's quite true, but yes, he definitely led with economic issues, but he was super anti-ice, which used to be an unpopular position in the Democratic Party. Now everyone finally gets behind abolish ice. Well, some do. The leadership don't. The public is now getting behind abolish ice. By the way, both of you say you're centrist, but I noticed, I couldn't help but notice, both of you say Democrat Party, which is a Republican phrase.

47:10Is it? Democratic Party is what it's called by the Democrats. Oh, is it? Democrat Party is like a smear used by Republicans. This is just an ignorance. Just FYI for you. It's just an ignorance. Good to know. I just wanted to let you know that is something in right-wing circles that is used to bring... That's interesting. It's an ignorance thing on our part. Fair enough. I was just flagged because I'm hyper attuned to this stuff. I was like, why are they saying the Democrat Party? All right, the Democratic Party. Look, I do think Mamdani ran definitely on it. Populist platform, economic issues first, and that is the way forward.

47:37But he didn't shirk away. You know Tom Homan was the guy who runs the border stuff? Mamdani was caught on camera screaming at him at a protest in Albany during the campaign. People said, this is going to destroy Mamdani. He looks like a crazy, mad leftist Muslim. Didn't hurt him, actually. It put him ahead of the curve on where public opinion has gone on ICE, which is very anti-ICE. So I do think you can walk and chew gum at the same time. I think the problem in the Democratic Party is they don't know what they believe. And when you look at the polling, to go back to your point, Francis, not Constantine, to go back to your point, the polling shows that people think the Republicans are extreme now, but the criticism of the Democratic Party is no longer that they're extreme left.

48:12That's not the criticism. When you ask Americans, what is the number one objection you have to Democratic Party? They're weak. They look weak. That is what American people tell pollsters. And they're right. They are weak. Anytime Trump does something, they either roll over or they write a sternly worded letter. They don't know how to fight. Mamdani showed that you can fight. Some people, the people who are standing out in the democratic race, you asked about presidential candidates. There's a guy called Ruben Gallego, senator from Arizona, very centrist, border hawk, Latino, ex-military veteran.

48:37He's going to run for president too. He has a great line right now. He says, Donald Trump ran on exposing pedophiles and stopping wars. He's protecting pedophiles and starting wars. That's your bumper sticker, Democrats. Just run with that. He has been very anti-ice too, even though he's in a border state. So I do think, why do I like Gallego right now? Not because he and I are on the same part of the spectrum, because he's fighting, because he's standing up, because he's taking strong stances. He doesn't look weak. That is the problem for the Democratic Party. They've looked weak for so long.

49:03And I also think as well, it's like, let's be honest, we live in the age of populism. Yes. I think in order to be elected, you have to be a populist. You have to have a populist message. I agree. And I don't see that from the Democratic Party. You see, I got it right, Mehdi. But not just the whole party, the leadership of the party, surely. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeff, these people are useless. They should be gone. I don't know why the hell they're there. But I say there are others. There are Ruben Gallegos. There are AOCs. There are Mamdani's. There are Ro Khanna's. There are people who are taking a more popular stance.

49:30Whether they win the nomination is, who knows? The Democratic Party, you know, the Israelis used to always say about the Palestinians in a very derogatory way. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. That was their lie. It's just false. But I would say that by the Democrats. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. There is a moment now for this party, but they just won't take it because they've got losers as leaders. and they always go towards this, quote, fake center ground. Look at the people they put up. Joe Biden in 2020 was the candidate. He only won because of COVID.

49:56Let's just be very honest about that. Had there not been a pandemic, Trump would have been reelected. In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated by Donald Trump. You know, this is a problem. They put up these people who are not the right people and then they say, oh, we've got to try the centrist playbook again. We've got to be pragmatic when it hasn't worked. And what does work is populism. It's populism and it's also economics because when you see the average person and they go to the supermarket and they're thinking, everything seems to be going up apart from my wages. And there's an anger and a frustration to that.

50:26They also see billions being spent in overseas wars. And the question that a lot of people would ask, fairly enough, in my opinion, is why is the money being spent over there? It should be spent here or whatever else. That's what Trump ran on. That was MAGA, right? America first. And I think you'll see a lot of Democrats now borrowing that language. The smart ones are saying exactly what you just said, Francis. Why are we spending that? I think they just asked for$200 billion. Trump has just asked for for the war. That's insane. $200 billion, you could just give a free community college to every American with that money.

50:54Just insane numbers. And I think that's only going to get worse over the coming years. And look, my thing is Republicans are evil geniuses, right? They know what they're doing. I wrote a book about debating and persuasion. One of the first chapters in the book is you don't win people over by giving them facts, statistics, policy papers, polls. That's not how you convince people. You go to people's hearts, right? You get their emotional heartstrings and you poll them. The Republicans are masters of that. They appeal to are dark demons. They're like, you need to hate that person. You need to be mad at that person.

51:19The migrant, the Mexican, the trans kid, right? It works. It's evil genius. It works. The problem for the Democrats or the Labour Party in the UK is they don't have a positive version of that. They don't have a way of actually inspiring people with the same emotional messaging, nor do they have a way of channeling people's anger in the right direction. People are angry, but don't channel that anger towards the undocumented migrant who's not the reason your wages haven't gone up, who's not the reason that, you know, you've been lost your job, even though that's what you're told, channel it at the people who actually are screwing you over, the people who are getting massive tax cuts from Donald Trump, the people who are not paying their taxes, avoiding taxes, stashing their money offshore, the people who are running big tech companies and screwing over your kids with ridiculous algorithms and nonsense.

51:58Channel the anger that way, and I think you'll win. Look, it's a good point, but also as well, we have to admit that there have been fundamental failings on the left. For instance, the border, having an open border. There's no open border, Francis. Where's the open border? Well, Trump has closed it, but before there was an open border. It wasn't. What's your definition of an open border? Well, you saw...

52:16Francis Foster:Millions of illegals coming in. That doesn't mean it's open. That just means they managed to come in illegally. That just means the border wasn't as secure as you wanted it to be. Well, hold on a second. Open border means I could just walk into America. Nobody could do that. Well, hold on. If millions of people are able to walk into my house and I say, I've got an open door policy to my house, you go, that's not an open door policy. It just means people got in. I mean, come on. No, I'm being very serious. If you want to use your house analogy, if you opened your house door and said, everyone come in, no, I'm not going to stop you, then fine, that is an open door policy.

52:45If people come into your house in the window in the middle of the night while you're calling the police...

52:50Francis Foster:That you left open. Well, did they leave open? Well, clearly, because the moment Donald Trump was elected, he closed the window. Well, he closed it completely, which is ridiculous because now you can't even claim asylum, which is a legal right. Joe Biden actually deported more people than Trump did in his first term. He actually detained and deported... We're not talking about deportations. Hold on, let's just focus on the open... Yes. ...medic. Let's just... We're having a great discussion and we're really... Sorry, you triggered me with open border. Clearly. But actually, I think we should talk about the issue.

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54:30Francis Foster:Go to wildalaskan.com slash trig for$35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's wildalaskan.com slash trig for$35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Under the Democrats, unlike under both Labour and Conservatives in our country. Numbers went up. It's not just that numbers went up. I always give the stat. I came to Britain in 1996. 1996, when I came to Britain, 55 ,000 people a year net were coming in legally. More people now come into Britain illegally every year. Now, to me, you can argue about language, but when you have that and in this country, in the United States, literally millions of people coming in illegally, and you can see that when there's a change of administration that stops, you can disagree with ICE, you know, at the extremes.

55:23Francis Foster:And I think probably all of us do. But that, to describe that as an open border policy, I think it's quite reasonable, don't you? No, because open borders suggest anyone can walk into America. And they did. Millions of people did. And millions of people didn't. Millions of people got detained. Millions of people got mistreated in camps. I mean, Joe Biden was not some dove on the border. Biden and Harris put together the most draconian border security legislation, which, by the way, Trump told Republicans not to vote for because he wanted more people to come in so he could win the election. But they put together, I'm on the left.

55:50I was criticizing Biden and Harris for being hawks on certain things. For example, child separation, for example, putting children, you know, all of this stuff. They borrowed a lot of Trump policies. For the first year of their administration, they kept the same rule that Trump used under the pandemic to just kick people out, which was a nonsense rule. Did a lot of people come in? Of course they did. Record numbers came in. But again, why? Was it just because of an open border or was it because of push factors, not just pull factors? What was going on in Central America in 2021 and 2022? The actual crises that drove people out, not just economic migrants, but yes, refugees as well.

56:20Francis Foster:This is what you're triggering me with all respect, because I walk around the United States. It's called trigonometry. That's why we're having this discussion. I mean, as I walk around the cities of the United States, and we travel here regularly, I'm shocked by the number of homeless people, right? And you could say, well, look, the push factors, you know, the people who don't have somewhere to live, so that's why they're coming into your house. No, they're coming into your house because you've left the door open. And that's what was happening under the Democratic Party. So that's not quite true.

56:48So let's look at the numbers. When Biden left office, right, in 2024, there were fewer people coming in than in Donald Trump's last year of office in the first term. That's just a fact. Go look at the numbers. The trends were down. You've got to look at trends. Clearly, there was a peak. I'm not disputing that. Okay. In 21, 22, huge peak. I was at MSNBC. We covered it all the time. Just stick with that point. But the point is, if it was an open border, why didn't they stay up, up, up? Why did it come down?

57:08Francis Foster:Well, because they realized it's a problem and they were trying to deal with it. Then we agree there wasn't an open border. No, there was an open border. Okay, for one year, they were really bad at border security. Yes, let's concede that. Okay, so remember how we started this conversation. Francis, actually, I think you guys were agreeing a lot, but he said the left had failings, right? And one of those failings was the failure to enforce the border. And you've just conceded that, I mean, in your telling, it's one year. I would argue it's a longer thing. And it's interesting to me because I wrote about this in my book, actually, that the democratic politicians and left-wing politicians in our country talked about the importance of border security and managing immigration well and carefully for decades.

57:49Francis Foster:And then there was this moment, which meant, you know, let me present the argument and you tell me what you think about it. My sense is there was a cultural view that immigration good, illegal immigration isn't illegal immigration. It's all asylum seeking. There is nobody who's trying to get in illegally. Everyone is trying to just find their way to a better life. And there was a cultural shift, which a lot of people call woke, where that was perceived as the morally right thing to do. And that's why across Europe and the United States, people in power, not just left-wing, by the way, but across the political spectrum, did leave the, I mean, you argue with the quibble with the word open, failed to have the border policies that the people of their countries repeatedly voted for.

58:33Francis Foster:And that is one of the reasons Francis, I think, is arguing the left got the kicking that it did. Well, can I untangle those two things? One is the electoral thing, which is a much more complicated issue. I don't know if we have time to talk about why did they get the kick in different places. There's incumbency, there's inflation. We've talked about many things. Populism agreed. Clearly, immigration played a role. I'm on the left. When you say the left failed, you might not like this to know true Scotsman fallacy. The left hasn't been in power. Right? And Tony Blair was not the left. Gordon Brown was not the left.

59:04David Cameron and George Osborne were not the left.

59:05Francis Foster:You can't play this game. I can, because I criticize them from the left. If you tell me that there was an open border, I would say Tony Blair spent his whole life being hawkish on border. He gave asylum seekers vouchers. I spent most of the 2000s attacking Blair for being cruel to asylum seekers. Gordon Brown talked about British jobs for British workers. People say you sound like Nick Griffin if you remember 2010. And then, for example, here in the US, Biden and Harris were way to the right of me on the border. Kamala Harris said, do not come. She went to the center of America and said, do not come.

59:31Doesn't sound like someone with their door open to me. But they did leave the door open. That's a separate argument. In practice, they left the door open. Okay, so in practice, people got in. I've never disputed that. Your argument was you left, you opened the door, said come in. There's no evidence of that.

59:41Francis Foster:My argument is the fact that people at one point were not able to come in, and then they were, is evidence of a shift in policy. Is that a fair claim? I don't know about its policy, because the Biden administration did copy a lot of Trump policies. For example, they got rid of Remain in Mexico, whereby Trump took people and said, you've got to go to Mexico and make a claim. You can't do it here. He got rid of that. People said, oh, because of that, the numbers went up. I don't agree with that. I think the numbers were coming. But why did the numbers go up? I told you, because there were push and pull factors.

1:00:07A, the economy was opening up. Let me finish sentence. The economy was opening up after COVID. The US economy, despite Trump's claims, was amazing on Biden's watch in terms of growth and jobs, record jobs growth. So when you have record jobs growth, people come for work. You need people from abroad, legal immigration. And number two, there was a lot going on in the Northern Triangle, in a lot of these Central American countries, a lot of crises, some crises that we've caused, were people coming in. So there were many, many factors. Was it also liberal bias? Maybe. But this idea that, you know, the left, you said the woke, you know, want to have virtue signals to be, you know, everyone's an asylum seeker.

1:00:41I didn't say virtue signal. Okay. But the implication being they want to look good by saying everyone's an asylum seeker, no one's illegal.

1:00:46Francis Foster:No, no, that wasn't my implication. Feel free to answer once I just address this. It's not an implication thing. I think it's a change of worldview that happened. People changed how they thought about this issue. On the ground, maybe. I wish it changed in government. This is what's amusing me, listening to you guys. I wish these people existed in power. They don't. Joe Biden wasn't that person. Hillary Clinton wasn't that person. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown weren't those people. Keir Starmer is not that person. Keir Starmer and Shibana Mahmood are to the right of David Cameron in many ways on this issue.

1:01:14Francis Foster:They talk like they are. Well, talking's bad because it has effects on the public and on our discourse. So when we, I wish these people existed, that you're telling me exist. Yes, there are people on the left who I know and I'm part of who did take a much more open border stance, who did say, actually, a lot of these people are asylum seekers and you shouldn't demonize them all. I'm not sure I saw that in policy or in government. I wish, maybe I missed it, but I didn't see Joe Biden make the case emotionally for refugees and asylum seekers during his administration. But I'm just a little confused here, Mehdi, because you, look, your point about push factors, I think it's true.

1:01:45Francis Foster:More people want to leave countries when there's economic problems, etc. etc. But you can't deny that policy shifts change the number of people who will come through a door depending on whether that door is ajar or open or closed. But if the alternative policy, as Francis said, was will Trump shut the border? Do I agree with that? No, that's ridiculous. Do I believe in building a wall? No, we have to allow migration into this country because we need it for the economy. And we have to allow asylum seekers in this country because it's the legal thing to do. It's our obligations under multiple international conventions and US law.

1:02:17He's blocked all of that. Would you agree that people should have a right to asylum in the US?

1:02:20Francis Foster:I think my view on asylum is very simple. And this was true for Ukrainian people in my family, which is that you should apply for asylum in the area that you're in. And then if you're approved, you get to travel to the country. We shouldn't have people crossing. So you would change all international law and US law? Absolutely. But right now, we haven't changed that. So under our current legal obligations, people should have a right to claim asylum. The solution to asylum is actually very simple, which is you set up asylum processing centers near the countries where there's war and conflict and so on.

1:02:49Francis Foster:And then you filter out the people you want to come. So I don't necessarily fully disagree with you. What's interesting is a lot of these solutions require people with good faith, good intentions, competence, funds. Half the problems of the immigration system in this country, if you talk to immigration lawyers as I do, they're not all open borders advocates. They're saying, why do we not have enough judges to process the claims? Why is there a backlog? Why do people disappear into America when they arrive? Because there's no court hearing. There's no court date. Why is there no fully funded system of lawyers and judges?

1:03:17It would cost a trivial percentage of what we spend on ICE. So it's linked because if you deal with that, then you deal, because you said policy and election. So I'm coming to that. One of the reasons why immigration has worked for the right is because it looks like chaos. And it is chaos. It is chaos. But it's manufactured chaos. So when Biden and Harris put a bill together, not one I agreed with, but a draconian bill to really shut down asylum claims and immigration at the border, Republicans voted against it for political reasons because there's an election coming up. So they don't actually care about solving the issue at the border.

1:03:43a bigger conversation. It goes back 20 years. Marco Rubio, who's Secretary of State right now, who's now a hardcore hawk because he works for Trump, he was a guy in favor of amnesty, right? Marco Rubio, whose grandfather was deported, he was in favor of an amnesty for migrants' country. Today, MAGA would destroy him if he dared say that. But that was part of the solution. What do we do about 15 million people in this country? You can't just deport them all. This is a totally separate point.

1:04:03Francis Foster:I think the way, sorry, I'm talking for Francis Loi, but I just want to - That's why I called you Francis. That's right. I want to get to the bottom of this. Across Europe and the entire Western world, there was a gigantic shift within our lifetimes from what I would consider sensible immigration policy, which is you welcome in the people that you've looked at, you've looked at your background, you think they're going to be a positive addition to your country. You do it in numbers that are manageable. You give people an opportunity to integrate. You do it in a way that is not disruptive to the existing population of the country, that people don't feel unsettled, the infrastructure is not under pressure.

1:04:41Francis Foster:That's what we had for the entirety of my lifetime. And everybody agreed. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree. Well, that was my experience. And then suddenly at some point, whatever happened, that changed and you got to a position where lots and lots of people effectively advocated for or tacitly supported a policy whereby we didn't enforce the border in the way that we used to, and we allowed mass flows of immigration from all over the world. So you're mixing together different things. Here's where you're 100 % wrong. You can't enforce a border if you're in the EU. Let us not forget that what you're talking about, the period, forgive me, when did you move to the UK?

1:05:171996. Okay, so early 2000s, you will remember, Tony Blair's prime minister, huge debate about Eastern Europeans.

1:05:23Francis Foster:Well, he failed to introduce transitional controls, which is why we got a million people instead of 13 ,000. But it was still part of an EU debate. You accept we were in the EU. There was free movement, right? So there was free movement within the EU. You can have a debate about what the deals he should have done with the French and others. But the EU was the issue. It wasn't people from Iraq, Syria at the time. I mean, they were there, but they weren't the big issue. And then we voted for Brexit. Apparently, the British public did this mad thing where they voted for Brexit. And what happened?

1:05:47Numbers went up from other parts of the world. As you know, you know better than me you're living there. So this is a problem with these kind of populists on the right who kind of sell you a bill of goods is Brexit vote didn't solve the problem of immigration. No, it didn't. Because you can't be King Canute and just say we're not going to ignore the state of the world. You mentioned like massive flows. First of all, massive compared to who? Compared to the developing world? They take the bulk of the refugees in this world.

1:06:09Francis Foster:Compared to the entire history of our country. And I'm saying you have to take a global perspective and say these numbers are minuscule compared to what a Turkey or an Iran or an Afghanistan or a Pakistan has had to deal with. The vast majority of refugees live in the developing world. A few of them managed to get into Europe and then we lose our minds. And by the way, a lot of these people who are coming in, where were they coming in from? Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya. Hmm, do we have anything to do with those countries? I think we do. So I do think those of us who said, you know what, we do have a moral responsibility, we helped fuck up a lot of these countries.

1:06:39Let's just be very honest about that, either directly or indirectly. It's funny that you have Richard Tice and Farage now backing this war in Iran and saying, we stand with the Persian people. Apparently, and you can fact check this, I read this a second, I don't live in the UK, so I read this online. the second or third highest number of people on the small boats coming across are Iranians. So the irony of them saying that we support Iran, while also being the people who turn away people fleeing the regime in Iran, is not lost on me. But the problem is, Mehdi, is a public perception of the Democratic Party.

1:07:10Yeah. And they saw what happened. And I agree with you, they think it's weak. Yeah. And they saw what happened under Biden, and they're thinking to themselves, I don't want to go back to that. I don't want that to happen again. and that's going to be their real challenge. Because look, as someone who's half Venezuelan, I saw, I walk around the streets of New York and then you see what's happening with some Venezuelan. A minority of Venezuelan people, Tren de Aragua, et cetera. People will quite rightly ask, why are these people here? Why didn't we get rid of them under Biden? So it's interesting you should say that.

1:07:43The funny thing about the American public, we talked about this earlier, eight second memories. When Trump was, when Biden was in office, they were super anti-immigration. I agree, look at the polling, it was definitely a problem. Right now, look at the polling right now, a year into Trump. They're more pro-immigration than the American public's been for decades. Support for immigration is now, I think, near record highs. Why? Because Trump went the other extreme. And now they're not thinking about the Biden era. They're looking at ICE agents shooting people in the street. They're hearing horrific stories of their friend's grandmother being pulled from her garden while gardening by masked agents of the state.

1:08:13So actually, the Democrats are in a very, very strong position on this issue now. Because Trump has been so typically fascistically extreme, that actually the immigration issue is now. I know you mentioned earlier, like talk about the border, not interior. It's actually all about the interior now. It's all about ICE. It's all about, you know, Stephen Miller and his white supremacist rhetoric and this, you know, this plan to make America white again. The White House put out a post, one of these memes, the Department of Homeland Security, saying 100 million deportations. Think about it, that's insane.

1:08:38100 million deported. US citizens are getting deported. People like me are getting deported. People who were born here are getting deported. That's just insane. So that's turned the American public actually against what the administration is doing. and actually made them much more positive about immigration. And as the economy tanks further, I think you'll see a lot of businesses also remembering the virtues and values of immigration. So look, there is a problem. I don't deny that. But when we talk about the public, we also have to accept that the media plays a big role in this. A lot of what the people think about immigration.

1:09:05My favourite poll when I lived in the UK, there was polling done in the UK, I think by Gallup, that if you ask people in the UK, do you think immigration is a national problem? Yes, it is. Do you think immigration is a problem in your community? No. Why is that? because in their community and their lived experiences, they're not seeing gang members on their streets. They don't have immigrants causing them problems, but they hear from the Daily Express and the Daily Mail and Tory politicians and now reform politicians that it's a huge problem nationally. Same thing in the US. You ask Americans what proportion of the country is migrant or Muslim.

1:09:35They give you massive percentages because they think that immigrants have taken over the country. You're in the US. Ask Republicans. I'm sure you're interviewing prominent Republicans. Ask them about Muslims in the UK. They think Muslims run the UK. They think London has fallen to an Islamic caliphate. right? This is the kind of insane rhetoric that Elon Musk pumps with his algorithms. So I do think a lot, when you talk to me about public opinion, I think public opinion is something you should change. You know, I don't think politicians should just blindly follow public opinion. They should lead.

1:09:59And one of the things Donald Trump was able to do is get his entire base to switch their views on Russia, switch their view on tariffs and free trade. That's what Democrats should aspire to do. Try and change people's hearts and minds.

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1:11:46Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your bags and come on through. Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort Inn, it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song Book direct at choicehiltales.com I agree with you. But the problem is, for me, is going to be are they going to put together a coherent package to actually make that happen? And are they going to prioritise economics? Because to me, if you want to win this election, you focus on economics. Particularly - It's very hard for me to say what you focus on three years out.

1:12:30We don't know what the biggest issue - I mean, in 2017, if you had said to me, Trump's unpopular, Democrats just lost with Clinton, and what should they focus on in 2020? And if I'd said to you, they should focus on a virus from China, you would have said, don't be silly.

1:12:41Francis Foster:Yeah, well, I remember we had a guest on the show, actually very much to your point about how Joe Biden won because of COVID. We asked him who's on course to win before COVID happened. And he said, if nothing changes and it will, then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I agree with you. Matty, before we go to Substack and ask you questions, we always ask the same question to all our guests at the end, but I want to ask you about one other thing before we do that. In the time, we've been here for a couple of weeks now. In the time that we've been here, there have been four, I don't know if you necessarily described them as, I think they were four terrorist attacks committed by what we understand to be an Islamist.

1:13:17Francis Foster:Do you see that as part of, you talked about blowback. Do you see that as part of the blowback or is there another reason this seems to be happening with increasing regularity in the United States? Yeah, it's a good question. It's very worrying. It's one of the things that keeps me up at night. I think the more we see that, the more we're going to see real fractured relations in communities. Islamophobia right now is already off the charts in the Republican body. They're looking for any excuse. I don't know if you've seen the tweets from Andy Ogle saying Muslims are not part of American society.

1:13:43I didn't see that now. This is a Republican congressman who said Muslims are not welcome in America. And there's another one he keeps tweeting. There's a guy called Randy Fine. He said if I had to choose between dogs and Muslims, I'd choose dogs. So there's some real, I mean, if you talk to Muslims who lived here after 9-11, I didn't, I moved here in 2015. But if you talk to Muslims in my wife's family, friends of mine, they will say the Islamophobia now is much worse than after 9-11. After 9-11, George Bush went to a mosque and said, Islam's peace. Donald Trump would never do that. And so in a climate of Islamophobia, of course, Muslims, any self-identified Muslim who carries out an act of terror against a synagogue or against a university or whatever it is, is of course, it's going to be a morally wrong and a criminal act, but it's going to be a real disaster for community relations, for the political debate, for some of these culture war issues we talked about.

1:14:27I don't know what is motivating all these people. It's very hard to say. The guy who attacked the synagogue in Michigan recently. There's reporting that his two brothers were killed. Their kids were killed.

1:14:37Francis Foster:They were two Hezbollah people. That's what some people say. Not. We don't have a confirmation. Different media outlets. Some say Hezbollah. Some say no. We don't know. But clearly he may have been. It sounds like he was pissed about what happened in Lebanon. That doesn't justify what he did, but that sounds like that. There was another attack that same day or week in Virginia on a college campus from a guy who had been linked to ISIS, who had been released from prison. Again, don't know. People say he was mentally ill. Muslims, we always joke that we don't get to be mentally ill, right? It's only the white mass shooter he gets to be mentally ill.

1:15:06Muslims, we never have any mental illness in our community. We're just all Islamists. But look, this is a country with a lot of violence, right? Gun violence is a thing of norm. Mass shooters are. So the night we went to war with Iran, there was an attack on an Austin bar. It was a mass shooting. That also is believed, some people are reporting.

1:15:22Francis Foster:Well, he was wearing a T-shirt saying property of Islam. And he had a flag, an Iranian flag, whatever. So there's some links. But when that story first came out, most people just shrugged and said, oh, another mass shooting in a bar. It's just normal in this country. And then you throw in the political or religious angle, then it becomes a big news story. Well, I think, to be fair, and actually, I mean, your point about mental ill, I haven't heard a Muslim be described as someone who had real mental illness. No, there's a famous family guy meme. Yeah, I'm familiar with it. But on the other hand, I also think that if you have a white guy and there's any connection to white supremacy, that also gets amplified, right?

1:15:56Francis Foster:Sometimes. So when a mass shooter... If you look at the studies, actually, Not really. It's like eight to one ratio of like how much we talk about the motivations and religion of a Muslim shooter versus a white shooter. There's been a lot of studies done. Well, the point I was going to make is if someone is wearing a T-shirt saying property of Islam, or if someone is a member of ISIS, or if someone expresses allegiance to... I'm agreeing with you. It's bad for Muslims and Islam. Let me just finish. So if someone expresses those views, it would be natural for us to talk about that. Likewise, if someone expressed white supremacist beliefs while committing a shooting, like the guy in New Zealand or whatever.

1:16:34Francis Foster:Or the people who attacked the Capitol, who Donald Trump pardoned on day one. Many of them wore Camp Auschwitz t-shirts, carried Confederate flags. Right. And people focused on that. And Trump pardoned them. Well, hold on. But you're derailing my argument. I'm not a Trump advocate. I apologize. So my point is, the reason I asked you about this is, this is obviously something that we have had to deal with in Europe extensively. Yes. And it feels to me, I don't think it's being talked about in this way here in the US, but it feels to me like it's coming to the US. Do you agree? I worry that you may be right.

1:17:08Francis Foster:Why is that? I mean, I don't want to make it all about blowback because it's not, but you can't, I mean, correlation is not causation, but I was a MSNBC anchor for three and a half years. I can count on, I did two weekly shows. Sometimes I used to do a nightly show. I can count on one hand, fingers on one hand, how many times I talked about ISIS or Al-Qaeda. not because I was ignoring the story. It wasn't a big story. It went away. We would stop talking about it. We were only talking about the far right and white supremacists because the FBI said that was the biggest threat to the homeland. We'd just seen an insurrection.

1:17:37We kept arresting nutjobs who wanted to, you know, militia members who wanted to blow shit up, who thought COVID was a way of this government taking over America, all of this stuff, right? So I think people got complacent, certainly in my community, thinking, oh, nobody thinks Muslims are terrorists anymore. There aren't any Muslim terrorists anymore. Now, as you say, there does seem to be an uptick. Is that to do with Donald Trump becoming president? Is that to do with the war in Gaza, the genocide in Gaza? I know we haven't talked about it today, but US intelligence warned Biden in year one of the genocide that this will be a generational recruiting event for Islamist and jihadist groups around the world.

1:18:07This will be a threat to the United States. Obviously, I don't need to be an intelligence member to say that. It's just common sense. If people spend two years watching a Gaza genocide, some people, some more unhinged people, some more extreme people will say, I want to take revenge. I want to blow shit up.

1:18:20Francis Foster:Well, why is that? I mean, I don't see the same being done by Russians or Ukrainians. who've also had to deal with various things who might blame Americans for something or whatever. Why is that? I'm not sure that's a good analogy. For example, Ukraine. I mean, why would a Ukrainian feel they need to go blow themselves up in Russia when they have an army that's fighting Russia and killing Russians? They might say, oh, America, you know, didn't give us the help they need. Or the Russians say, we're at war with you. Why doesn't that happen? I think the analogy between America not supporting Ukraine as much as Ukraine, even though America has basically kept Ukraine alive, is not the same as America.

1:18:54arming and funding a genocide in Gaza for two and a half years on our phones.

1:18:59Francis Foster:Take the Russian example. The narrative in Russia, I know this because I have family and I follow what's happening in Russia. The narrative in Russia is we're at war with America. Yeah, I don't see Russians blowing themselves up or throwing nail bombs or shooting people in bars up and down America. I think because they think that they can do the damage they're doing in Ukraine. I mean, this is the difference. And you could say the same thing about Jewish people and Israel. Well, they have an army that's bombing Gaza. Look, this is not, I'm not saying some crazy theory. This is something that has been testified to by history.

1:19:26Take Sri Lanka, for example. The people who invented suicide bombings were not Muslim. The Tamil Tigers perfected it as a mass weapon, right? That was people who believed they were under occupation by Sinhalese, right? So this is, and Robert Pape, who was an expert on suicide terrorism, has talked about this. There's a clear link between foreign occupations and foreign wars and suicide terrorism, in particular suicide terrorism. But look, is there a problem where certain Muslim groups are exploiting political conflicts? Yes, I've spent 20 years opposing jihadists and Islamists and pointing out that there is no justification in Islam for this kind of violence.

1:19:57But explaining something is not the same as justifying it. I don't justify what they do. I think it's irreprehensible. But I understand how they work and the mindsets and how they, and this guy in Michigan is an example of that. I don't agree what he did. He's probably mentally unbalanced. But people say, well, what would you do if you lost your family? Well, I wouldn't go attack a synagogue. But that's people act in an unhinged way after tragedies happen in their lives. That's not to justify it. Is it going to get worse? I hope not. But again, violence begets violence. We've seen that in Palestine.

1:20:27We've seen that with Hamas. Who knows what's going to come out of Gaza?

1:20:30Francis Foster:But isn't that the exact logic that justifies America bombing the shit out of Afghanistan after 9-11? It doesn't justify it, but it explains it. It does. So if you ask me, why did America bomb Afghanistan? I wouldn't say it's for the Bible or Christianity. I would say they did it because they got attacked and they wanted to attack back and make a show of force and do whatever they want to do. It doesn't mean I justify it and agree with the war in Afghanistan, but I understand it. What we refuse to do with our opponents and our enemies, especially the Muslim ones, is try and understand the mindset.

1:20:57We don't try and understand why Iran's doing what it's doing, why Hamas is doing what it's doing, why Hezbollah's doing. You don't have to agree with it, but they're not all crazy people. They actually have their own strategy. But some people say, oh, they were just messianic people. You did say, Constantine, so I'm going to bring this up because I watched you on Rogan. You did say on Rogan, oh, well, my Iranian guests tell me there's a 12-ish Shia Islam and they're messianic and they want to bring about the end of the world. That's not true. I'm a Shia Muslim. I'm telling you, Shia Muslim is not messianic.

1:21:21I mean, it is messianic in that we expect a Messiah to come just like Christians, a Mahdi. But there's no evidence that Shias in Iran are trying to bring about the end of the world and that's why they want nuclear weapons. So that kind of thinking is not helpful.

1:21:32Francis Foster:I was quoting specific people. Yeah, they're wrong. I'm telling you. They're wrong. I'm only quoting them. And I think I made it clear that some people say that I'm not, I mean, I think we had this conversation with someone else the other day. I'm not convinced of this idea that they want nuclear weapons and the first nuclear weapon they get, they're going to drop it on television. I'm not convinced about that. I think there are some people... By the way, Israel has nukes. Remind, we haven't said that in this whole conversation. Israel illegally has nukes. You keep throwing stuff in that's not related.

1:22:01It is relevant. Come on, we spent an hour, half of the talk talking about Iran's nuclear program.

1:22:05Francis Foster:I forgot to point out to the viewers, Israel has nukes. Mehdi, when we had Yossi Cohen, who was the former head of Mossad, I literally made a joke which exposed the fact that Israel has nukes. Of course, Israel, everyone knows Israel has nukes. No one denies it here, right? But what we've done here is we've derailed the conversation we're actually having. The point I was making is I suspect Iran wants nuclear weapons for the same reason that any country would want them as we talked about earlier. Anyway, appreciate you coming on. Thank you for having me. Thanks for the conversation. Thanks for the time.

1:22:34Apologies for confusing you both. You look so similar. You're more offended by that. I don't know who's more offended by that. We're both offended by that. Final question is always the same, Matty. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I think if we're going to talk about war and conflict and World War III and the future of the world, I think we've got to talk more about AI. There's a study that came out of King's a couple of months ago that said when AI was asked to resolve various conflicts, in nine out of ten cases, it said, use nukes. I mean, it's more effective.

1:23:02It's a tower machine would think.

1:23:03Francis Foster:I mean, I grew up watching Terminator 2, so I worry about Skynet all the time. Yeah, no, I think AI is insane. And I think... In war especially. Well, and actually, before you get to the nuclear thing, I mean, they are already talking about the next phase is autonomous drones. And I think it's terrifying. And the school in Iran, there's a lot of reporting that suggests that was hit because of AI. Really? The Minars school. It was right next to a military base, wasn't it? But it's the AI that didn't have whatever, didn't do the sufficient checking. I'm not sure, but that's what's been reported.

1:23:32Francis Foster:Historically speaking, civilian objects next to military facilities always get hit in war, tragically. There are a lot of American schools on a lot of American military bases. We wouldn't allow anyone to attack us. No, no, no. Well, obviously, it's terrible that it happens. But AI is doing, and in Gaza, something we didn't talk about, AI was used to kill a lot of innocent Palestinians with a 10 % error rate. The Israelis admit this. It's like one in 10 of the AI attacks they accepted was maybe not a minute. But he did it. Mehdi, thank you very much. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where we ask Mehdi your questions.

1:24:05How do you reconcile the progressive left simultaneous alliance with transgender ideology and with Islam? How are these compatible?

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