Foreign Policy and American Hubris with Ben Rhodes

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Comedy Central

Comedy, News Commentary, Politics, News

4.5 • 10.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

As the war with Iran grinds on without clear objectives or an exit strategy, Jon is joined by Ben Rhodes, national security analyst and author of the upcoming book "All We Say.” Together, they assess the current state of the war and its regional fallout, examine how American foreign policy has shaped both the world and our politics since 9/11, and consider what a fundamentally different approach to foreign policy could achieve. Plus, Jon takes listener questions on betting, 86-ing, and pumping gas! This episode is brought to you by: BOMBAS - Head over to https://Bombas.com/WEEKLY and use code WEEKLY for 20% off your first purchase. MAGIC SPOON - https://magicspoon.com/tws MINT MOBILE - Shop plans at https://MintMobile.com/TWS. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more: > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Producer – Gillian Spear Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is John Stewart, and I will be your
0:14.6	host and guide on this week's episode. It is Tuesday, May 12th. We won the war in Iran.
0:21.6	It is over.
0:22.7	The only slight hiccup is, apparently Iran believes they also won the war in Iran.
0:28.1	And so we're a little bit of a stalemate as we're trying to figure out who is correct in that environment.
0:34.6	And it does get incredibly confusing to some extent. So we thought today,
0:40.8	rather than speculate, rather we want to unravel the past a little bit in terms of how has
0:47.0	America gotten here where we feel as though we need to intervene in every different area of
0:54.0	the world, whether through covert coups or bombing raids or sanctions
0:59.9	or all these other methodologies to control the world, none of which seem to do that at all.
1:06.8	They just seem to sow an increased level of chaos.
1:10.4	So we thought, well, who knows about that kind of stuff?
1:13.2	Maybe somebody who's been in the room when those interventions are being discussed.
1:18.0	And that's who we're going to talk to today.
1:23.7	The author of the upcoming book, All We Say, Writer, political, commentator national security analyst, currently co-hosts and Pod Save the World Contributor, MS now.
1:32.5	Ben Rhodes.
1:33.8	What's happening, man?
1:34.9	Hey, John.
1:35.4	Good to see you.
1:36.3	Good to see you.
1:37.0	Now, you're a speechwriter for President Obama.
1:41.1	You're a deputy national security advisor to President Obama, in this current moment
	...

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