Ben Rhodes

“When you normalize war, and you normalize a kind of conduct in war that doesn’t really look at civilian harm, you end up in the kind of world wars that led us to write those international laws in the first place.”

-Ben Rhodes, episode 467 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

For eight years, Ben Rhodes worked as a speechwriter and Deputy National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama. A decade after leaving the White House, Rhodes has become increasingly critical of the foreign policy establishment he once worked within.

We begin with his recent essay Let the Illusions Die (2:48), Trump’s war in Iran (6:35), and what Rhodes took away from the Obama administration’s wars and interventions in Afghanistan and Libya (8:47). Then, we revisit his early years writing speeches for President Obama (30:35), his work during the 2008 campaign around race and identity (31:35), and the contradictions he came to see after years of working in American foreign policy (39:00).

On the back-half, Rhodes reflects on the Biden administration’s handling of Gaza (42:30), why he stayed quiet despite believing in early 2023 that Biden should not seek reelection (49:25), and his views on the midterms and the future of the Democratic Party (55:00). To close, he reflects on witnessing the September 11th attacks as a college student in New York City—and the life as a fiction writer he left behind in their aftermath (1:11:50) writing his new book, All We Say (1:17:52), and what history teaches us about reforming systems that no longer work (1:22:07).