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DSR2025 at thedsrnetwork.com

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slash bye. Thank

1:36

you and enjoy the show. Hello

1:47

and

1:50

welcome to the DSR Daily.

1:52

I'm David Rothkoff, joined by

1:54

Riley Fessler. How are you doing Riley? Not

1:57

too bad. Not too bad. It's a

1:59

Monday, so that's, you know, better than

2:01

could be expected. And Minna Stein.

2:03

How are you, Minna? For a Monday,

2:05

I'm doing pretty good. Yeah.

2:07

Okay. Well, that's setting the bar lower. That's

2:09

better. That's the way to

2:11

handle it. Riley, what's the first story

2:14

you're kicking off the week with? The

2:17

Canadian election. On the

2:19

final day of campaigning, Canadian

2:21

leaders Mark Carney and Pierre Poilevere

2:24

addressed the nation somberly after a

2:26

tragic attack killed 11 people at

2:28

a Filipino festival in Vancouver. The

2:31

election, heavily influenced by Donald Trump's

2:33

tariffs and rhetoric toward Canada,

2:35

remains closely contested with Carney's liberals

2:37

holding a slight lead over

2:40

Poilevere's conservatives. Carney canceled

2:42

some campaign events out of respect for

2:44

the tragedy, while both leaders

2:46

expressed condolences to the Filipino community. As

2:49

Canadians prepare to vote, polls show

2:51

a tight race that could determine whether

2:53

the Liberals retain power outright or

2:55

require coalition support. Yeah,

2:58

and, you know, Donald Trump

3:00

couldn't stay out of it.

3:02

So this morning, Monday morning,

3:04

he sent a true social

3:07

post. Good luck

3:09

to the great people of Canada.

3:11

Elect the man who has

3:13

the strength and wisdom to cut

3:15

your taxes in half. Increase

3:17

your military power for free to

3:19

the highest level in the

3:21

world. Have your car, steel, aluminum,

3:23

lumber, energy, and all other

3:25

businesses quadruple in size with zero

3:27

tariff or taxes. If Canada

3:29

becomes the cherished 51st state of

3:31

the United States of America, no

3:34

more artificially drawn line from

3:36

many years ago, look

3:38

how beautiful this landmass would

3:40

be. Free access with no

3:43

border, all positives with no negatives.

3:45

It was meant to be. This

3:47

is all in caps. America can

3:49

no longer subsidize Canada with hundreds

3:51

of billions of dollars a year

3:53

that we have been spending in

3:55

the past. It makes no sense

3:58

unless Canada is a state. And

4:01

of course, immediately people reacted

4:03

saying that the Liberal Party, which

4:05

is the Carney party, ought

4:08

to be printing this up and circulating it

4:10

widely. They won't have to because we live

4:12

in an era where you don't have to

4:14

print stuff up. Trump just,

4:16

you know, stuck a stake

4:18

through the heart of Pierre

4:20

Pois -Levre because, you know,

4:23

seriously, the people of

4:26

Canada have made it very clear they don't

4:28

want to be a state. And,

4:30

you know, him saying this is

4:32

the candidate who will support that. is

4:35

a death blow. Carney will

4:37

win. Canada will not be

4:39

a state. You heard it here

4:41

first. They know. More

4:46

than 100 people were arrested

4:48

in a DEA -led raid on

4:50

an illegal underground nightclub in Colorado

4:52

Springs where authorities found drugs,

4:54

guns, and signs of prostitution and

4:56

violent crimes. Among those

4:58

detained were undocumented immigrants, several

5:00

active duty service members, and

5:03

individuals with outstanding warrants, with

5:05

immigration authorities and the Army

5:07

launching further investigations. The

5:09

operation involving over 300 agents

5:11

was part of a broader

5:13

federal crackdown on immigration. and

5:15

crime amid claims linking the

5:17

nightclub to violent gangs. Yeah,

5:22

I mean, that's a it's

5:24

a terrible story. You

5:27

know, the linking to gangs

5:29

thing has got such a

5:31

loaded political content, you know,

5:34

component to it that you've got

5:36

to take that kind of

5:39

stuff with grain of salt doesn't

5:41

mean it's not true. but

5:44

a lot of things in this country

5:46

are being politicized. Up to and including,

5:48

by the way, the NFL

5:50

Draft, where the president

5:52

intervened in the NFL

5:54

Draft and said that the

5:56

fact that Dianne Sanders' sons,

5:58

Shaddur Sanders, had not been

6:00

drafted in the early rounds

6:03

was a huge mistake. And

6:06

this morning, Presidents idiot press

6:08

secretary said but he was

6:10

drafted later just a few

6:12

rounds after the president said

6:14

that That goes to show

6:16

you how influential the president

6:18

is There are only seven

6:20

rounds in the draft and

6:23

you know, he was I

6:25

mean, it's just ridiculous, but

6:27

my point is they try

6:29

to politicize everything everything and

6:31

so Take your news with

6:33

a grain of salt, try

6:35

to see who the headline

6:37

would benefit, and wait till

6:39

you have evidence before you draw your

6:42

conclusions. Riley. President

6:44

Putin announced a three -day ceasefire

6:46

in Ukraine starting May 8,

6:48

citing humanitarian reasons tied to Russia's

6:51

World War II victory day

6:53

celebrations. This is the

6:55

second recent promise of a temporary

6:57

pause in fighting amid increasing pressure

6:59

from U .S. President Trump, who

7:01

has expressed doubts about Putin's intentions

7:03

for peace. Ukraine has not

7:05

yet officially responded to the ceasefire announcement.

7:08

Previous attempts at a truce,

7:10

including the one -day Easter ceasefire,

7:12

failed to fully hold despite

7:14

temporarily lowering the violence. Again,

7:18

suits Putin to say this. He

7:20

may think he's giving Trump something or

7:22

making Trump look like he's having an

7:25

influence on this whole thing. But

7:27

Putin has never honored a ceasefire

7:29

in the past. Now, if Putin's really

7:31

eager to have a ceasefire, just

7:33

stop attacking your innocent neighboring country. I

7:36

mean, the one ceasefire

7:38

that matters is Russians ceasing

7:40

their fire and pulling

7:42

out and following international law.

7:45

So this is a kind

7:47

of empty gesture from a

7:49

liar who's never done these

7:52

things, followed through in these

7:54

things in the past, doesn't

7:56

honor international law, doesn't care

7:58

about peace. In fact has

8:00

sustained his entire presidency by

8:02

periodically attacking people and showing

8:04

how strong he is and

8:06

This again should be taken

8:08

with I have boulder of

8:11

salt a salt mine worth

8:13

of salt a lot of

8:15

salt minute At

8:18

least 40 people were killed

8:20

and over 1 ,200 injured

8:22

in a massive explosion in

8:24

Iran's largest port, Bandar Abbas,

8:26

with fires still flaring as

8:28

officials struggled to contain the

8:30

damage. The blast, suspected to

8:32

be caused by poorly stored

8:34

chemicals, occurred amid US -Iran nuclear

8:36

talks, but Iran's government denied

8:38

it had any military connection,

8:40

calling foreign media claims part

8:42

of enemy misinformation. The

8:45

incident highlights ongoing safety issues

8:47

in Iran's industrial infrastructure, drawing

8:49

criticism from the president of

8:51

Iran over dangerous overcrowding of

8:54

containers at the port. Yeah,

8:57

that sounds credible to me.

8:59

Again, this seems to be

9:01

a theme of this particular

9:03

episode, which is how much

9:05

of the news is what

9:07

people say it is. But

9:09

this is sounds to me

9:11

a little bit more like

9:13

the explosion the devastating explosion

9:15

that took place in the

9:17

port of Beirut a while

9:19

back You know the ports

9:21

where you bring together large

9:23

amounts of chemicals large amounts

9:25

of things that could possibly

9:27

detonate and Where the facilities

9:30

are, you know, sometimes not

9:32

managed as they should be

9:34

can result in this kind

9:36

of thing There's another big

9:38

story today, by the way,

9:40

that's just sort of breaking

9:42

as we are doing this

9:44

podcast, but a massive power

9:46

outage struck Spain and France

9:48

and Portugal, and

9:50

maybe some small part of

9:52

France was back on by

9:54

the time we did this,

9:56

but got a message from

9:58

our friend, David Sandelow, who

10:00

hosts the energy... a climate

10:02

and AI podcast that we

10:04

do. And

10:06

he said, we're sitting here in no power

10:08

and don't know when it's going to come

10:10

back on. I think he's

10:12

actually on the board of an energy company. It's

10:14

pain. So if he doesn't know what it's

10:16

going to come back on, neither

10:18

does anybody else. Do we know

10:20

why this has happened? No. But

10:24

it is apparently proving

10:26

to be a giant disruption

10:28

in Southwestern

10:31

Europe. Riley?

10:36

Catholic Cardinals have set May 7th as

10:39

the start date for the conclave

10:41

to elect a successor to Pope Francis,

10:43

allowing extra time for informal meetings

10:45

to build consensus. While

10:47

many Cardinals support continuing Francis'

10:50

pastoral focus, conservatives aim

10:52

to steer the Church back to

10:54

traditional doctrines, creating underlying attentions. Just

10:56

by differing views, Cardinals from around

10:58

the world expressed hope for unity

11:00

as they prepare to choose the

11:02

next pope. If you

11:04

can't wait till May 7th, this is a

11:06

good time to catch up on the

11:09

Conclave. Very good movie of the past year.

11:12

John Lithgow, Ray Fiends,

11:14

Stanley Tucci. Some

11:19

people say it's a little

11:21

bit more a political version

11:23

of what goes on in

11:25

these things, but others said

11:27

it was possibly accurate. Of

11:30

course, we don't

11:32

know what's going to

11:34

happen here, but

11:36

Pope Francis picked, I

11:38

think, 70 % of

11:40

the cardinals that

11:42

are attending the meeting,

11:44

maybe 80%. So

11:46

his influence over the

11:48

outcome will be

11:51

significant. There's

11:53

some talk about whether you

11:55

know, they'll go back

11:57

to having an Italian Pope

11:59

My sense is that

12:01

you know, the fastest growing

12:04

region of the world

12:06

for the church is Africa

12:08

Asia is also important

12:10

branching out as they did

12:12

with Francis to Latin

12:14

America making it more of

12:16

a global enterprise seems probably

12:21

in the interest of the church. But

12:23

I can tell you with a

12:26

high degree of confidence here that I

12:28

don't really know anything about the

12:30

inner workings of the Catholic Church. And

12:32

so this is just speculation

12:35

based on what I've read in

12:37

the newspaper. But Riley, in

12:39

minute, perhaps you are more expert

12:41

in the workings of the

12:43

College of Cardinals. I know less

12:45

than both of you because

12:47

I haven't even seen Conclave. So

12:49

I don't know anything. Yeah,

12:51

I was going to say all of

12:53

my education is from watching concave

12:55

Yeah, when I was a kid there

12:58

was a There was a movie

13:00

that was sort of before my time

13:02

when I was a kid But

13:04

I saw it once when I was

13:06

like in high school was called

13:08

like the red shoes or something like

13:10

that The shoes of the fish,

13:12

I don't know but anyway the point

13:14

is it was about the becoming

13:16

Pope And there was, you

13:18

know, it was sort of like

13:20

Conclave because it was kind of like

13:22

the intrigue of becoming Pope. And

13:25

I was watching it and, you

13:27

know, I was like, wow, that's cool.

13:29

These cardinals, they're like princes. It's

13:32

like, I'd like to be one of those. I

13:34

think that would be really cool

13:36

to become Pope. And then I

13:38

was like, there

13:40

are no Jewish boys from New Jersey

13:42

becoming Pope. This

13:45

is probably not a realistic aspiration

13:47

But I got caught up in

13:49

it a minute, I mean in

13:51

a watching conclave it does that

13:53

to you. Well, I Yeah, I

13:55

will say I will say there

13:58

is a documentary slash drama film

14:00

that came out in 2013 called

14:02

the Jewish Cardinal Which is about

14:04

so I have a shot. I'm

14:06

that's what I'm saying He was

14:08

the son of a Polish Jewish

14:11

immigrant who maintained his Jewish cultural

14:13

identity while

14:15

being a Catholic cardinal. So

14:18

there's hope for you

14:20

in this community. know,

14:22

at Jesus, Jewish. I

14:25

mean, I imagine a lot of

14:27

Jesus' followers, you know, like the

14:29

apostles, must have been Jewish to start out

14:32

with. So don't I have a

14:34

shot? I think so. That

14:36

sounds right. But this movie

14:38

is actually very good if you wanted to watch

14:40

it. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Sounds,

14:44

sounds, sounds right. Well, you know,

14:46

in the middle, in the Renaissance period,

14:49

you know, you got to be

14:51

poked by like paying off a big

14:53

chunk of money. And a lot

14:55

of the people who were popes were

14:57

like dating their sisters and having

14:59

all sorts of horrible shit go down.

15:02

All you have to do is

15:04

watch the Borgias, a mediocre historical TV

15:06

series, but I watch all the

15:08

historical TV series. I mean, if it's

15:10

a historic, like if they're costumes,

15:12

I watch it. I watch it alone

15:15

because my wife has got it,

15:17

you know after a career of doing

15:19

opera She has a deep allergy

15:21

to costume dramas, but You know there

15:23

were some bad popes there, so

15:25

you know the rules have changed over

15:28

time I think we can elevate

15:30

this discussion a bit by noting that

15:32

Pope Francis You know elevated the

15:34

church made it more pastoral made it

15:36

more about taking care of and lifting

15:40

up the disenfranchised in

15:42

society seems to me more

15:44

in keeping with the

15:46

general thrust of the message

15:49

of Jesus. So, you

15:51

know, in a world in

15:53

which there's a lot of bad

15:56

news, he sort of seemed

15:58

to be nudging things in a

16:00

positive direction, imperfectly, but in

16:02

a positive direction. Anyway,

16:04

that's it. It's Monday. We're off.

16:06

The week has begun. I

16:09

don't know what's going to happen this week, but

16:11

I'll tell you one thing, and I say this

16:14

with a high degree of confidence. Although

16:16

we begin this week in

16:18

April, which was a sort of

16:20

rainy, cold month, we're

16:22

going to end this week in May. And

16:25

I guarantee you, within

16:27

weeks, one of

16:29

you guys is going to be complaining about how

16:31

hot it is here. It's going

16:33

to be me already because my building AC

16:35

isn't on yet, so I'm sitting here

16:37

melting away. So wait a minute,

16:40

you're the walls in your building are

16:42

full of dead rats and the building has

16:44

no AC At least they're dead and

16:46

not alive now. So, you know, we're moving

16:48

in the right direction Yeah, but we'll

16:50

get a see in the next couple weeks,

16:52

but right now I've got my tower

16:55

fan sitting behind me just blasting me over

16:57

there all day Somebody's got a fight

16:59

like if you're out there listening and you

17:01

know of a good apartment in Washington

17:03

for Riley, please contact us On

17:05

the discord or something you

17:07

know help this guy out the

17:09

stories are breaking my heart

17:11

anyway We will in keeping with

17:14

the prior story light a

17:16

candle for you Riley and We'll

17:18

be back tomorrow, and there'll

17:20

be all sorts of cool podcasts

17:22

from us later in the

17:24

week because that's we do we're

17:26

cool So that's why you

17:28

should be a member of the

17:30

DSR network sign up join

17:32

us be cool yourself Anyway Until

17:35

then, thank you Riley. Thank you men.

17:37

I thank everybody for listening. Have a great

17:39

week. Bye. Bye