Welcome back to PotSafe the World. This is Tommy Vittor. Ben Rhodes is here in studio.

As always, later on you will hear my conversation with Khaled El-Gindi. We talked about the upcoming

Israeli elections, the ongoing protests weekly really in Gaza, and frankly just about Palestinian

politics. Ben and I have talked a lot about Bebe Netanyahu and Israeli politics and it was really

interesting and important I think to hear from a Palestinian perspective. Ben and I are going to talk

through Trump's decision to cut off A to three countries in Central America, Turkey, and an interesting

election in Slovakia. Then we are going to talk about some big news out of Algeria. How often do you

get to say that Ben? And six months after Jamal Kishoggi's brutal murder in Saudi Arabia, how different

are things or are they not? So let's start with President Trump threatening to cut off $500 million

worth of funding to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, supposedly in retaliation for these

governments, quote, arranging caravans. That's not accurate. He also threatened to seal the US

Mexico border, which is just so ludicrous in self-defeating and stupid that it's like hard to believe

you actually do it. But hey, hope springs eternal for this moron. But the funding for these northern

and tribal countries is intended to reduce violence, unemployment, and poverty, and thus encourage

people not to leave the country and try to migrate to the US. So it seems like Trump will

me making the immigration problem he's seeking to solve worse. So I guess there's two pieces

of this like first there's the process which per usual I guess the announcement wasn't

vetted. It caught everyone in his own administration by surprise. But then there's the substance which,

again, per usual, Trump doesn't understand. So the money we provide doesn't go to these

governments that goes mostly to nonprofit groups who administer programs that I think we helped

design. So Ben, I know you worked a lot on this Obama increased funding for these countries.

Do you think those programs are effective? And what did you make a Trump's decision here?

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