Welcome back to Pot Teve the World. This is Tommy Vittor. Thank you all for tuning in.

We have an intense show today. There's a lot of heavy topics, but trust me, it ends well.

Over the weekend there was news about the United States moving an aircraft carrier to the

Middle East to deal with some threats out of Iran. So we talked through that in great

detail. We talked about the ceasefire, thank God, after some fighting in Gaza between

Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. We talked about North Korea and updates there

with Kim Jong Un firing various projectiles into the ether. The situation in Venezuela,

the ongoing trade war with China and then President Trump inviting a hardcore authoritarian,

fascist leader named Victor Orban to the White House. We closed it out with a story from

Ben about the time he tried to meet the Queen of England. I'll let him fill in the details.

It was probably not how if you dreamed of your moment to meet the Queen of England,

you would have scripted it, but holy shit, it's a funny story. And if you want to see

my face turned several shades of red, check out the stream on YouTube, the crooked media

channel, it's all up there. And then after the conversation with Ben, we patch in Dexter

Filkin's, he's an unbelievable writer for the New Yorker. He wrote a long, fascinating

profile on John Bolton and we talked about that piece. So Pac-Show excited for you guys

to hear this one. And without further ado, here's a conversation with Ben Rhodes.

So Ben, late Sunday night, the White House announced that an aircraft carrier strike group

in a bomber task force were being deployed to the Middle East in response to indications

that Iran was planning to attack US forces in the region. Axiose, I believe later reported

that the warning was based on intelligence passed along by the Israelis. So we don't

know a lot of specifics here. We do know that Iran has a long history giving Shiite

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