Hey, I'm Ben Rhodes and you are listening to Crooked Conversations.

I recently published a book called The World As It Is about my time in the Obama White

House.

I was there for all eight years and on this series of Crooked Conversations, I wanted to take

a deeper dive and look at the backstory to some of the issues that I deal with in my book

and I have been very lucky to be joined by some of the people who were there with me over

the course of that time in the Obama White House.

So over these episodes, we've heard about what it was like to write speeches for President

Obama.

We've looked at the Russian intervention in the 2016 election and we will also be looking

at Benghazi and how the consolation of Republican politics and right-wing media ultimately helped

lead to Donald Trump in the world that we're living in today.

But today we're going to cover the US approach to negotiating with Cuba and the historic

normalization between the United States and Cuba and our relations and President Obama's

historic 2016 trip to Havana.

I'm here with Burned at Mehan and this is very exciting to me because Burned at was closer

to me than anybody else who I worked with in the White House.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Okay, so I'm here with Burned at Mehan.

This is very exciting to me.

Hi Burned at.

Hi Ben.

...