Franklin Foer & Anne Applebaum on The Globe in 2025!

The Al Franken Podcast

Government, Progressive, Politics, Senate, Liberal, Senator, Minnesota, Franken, News, Saturday Night Live, Comedy, Snl

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As we approach the end of 2025, we take a look back at what happened around the world in Trump’s first year back in office. We're joined by two of the best foreign policy writers we know: Franklin Foer and Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic!

We discuss the EIGHT wars and conflicts that Trump has single handedly ended, while also examining the ongoing conflicts in The Middle East, Ukraine, Venezuela, and more.

Anne and Frank explain why Trump's Middle East peace plan isn't holding up and why we all should have been skeptical of it from the start. We also look at why the administration's plan for peace between Russia and Ukraine looks like it was written by the Russians themselves. And, of course, we discuss Trump's blatant corruption in both of those theatres.

Anne also shares her heartbreaking firsthand account of what the USAID cuts have done to the rest of the world. It highlights the shortsightedness of the entire first year of Trump’s second term.

READ Franklin's work in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/franklin-foer/

READ Anne's work in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/anne-applebaum/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change.
0:08.9	Ann Applebaum and Franklin Ford, both brilliant journalists for the Atlantic.
0:13.7	Join me today to talk about what happened around the world in 2025.
0:19.8	It didn't actually turn out the way Donald Trump said it would. He said he was going to
0:25.2	end the war in Ukraine on day one, and of course, looks like he won't get it done in year one.
0:34.1	As we taped the conversation, more was coming out about the oil tanker we seized off of Venezuela.
0:41.6	Trump says it's the biggest tanker that's ever been seized.
0:47.1	When I first heard about it, I thought, wow, that could transport a lot of cocaine.
0:53.2	Well, it wasn't cocaine.
0:54.9	It was carrying oil, Venezuelan oil.
0:58.6	But it turns out the tanker had a federal judge's order against it
1:04.0	because it has a history of illegally carrying Iranian oil,
1:08.7	which finances Iranian terrorist activities around the world.
1:13.3	While we on the Al Franken podcast are steadfastly against Iranian terrorist activities,
1:20.5	but subsequent to my discussion with Anne and Frank, the Trump administration announced
1:25.8	that it had sanctioned six more crude oil tankers
1:29.8	with Venezuelan oil that will be headed.
1:33.8	They say to China, I guess through the Panama Canal.
1:38.1	Hmm.
1:40.1	I see.
1:41.2	This is Trump's plan to drive Venezuela into even deeper poverty and overthrow Maduro.
1:48.5	This is about regime change so that Trump and his pals and the oil business can get a piece of that action.
	...

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