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About this Episode
New reporting suggests President Trump knew of all the risks of going to war with Iran, but decided to do it anyway; Ali digs into new polling that shows Americans have serious doubts about the fairness of our elections; Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes reacts to the Trump administration’s new investigation into his state’s 2020 election results; and, as the war between Russia and Ukraine enters its fifth year, Ali reconnects with a former Ukrainian refugee he met in Poland at the start of the current war, in 2022.
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Hosts & Guests
Transcript
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It is Sunday, March 15th.
At least 13 U.S. troops have been killed,
and 140 have been injured as the U.S.
led war of choice with Iran enters its third week.
The Pentagon has released the identities of the six U.S.
service members who died in a plane crash over Iraq.
They are Major John Klinner, 33 of Alabama,
Captain Ariana Savino, 31 of Washington.
Technical Sergeant Ashley Pruitt, 34
of Connecticut,
Captain Seth Koval, 38 of Indiana,
Captain Curtis Angst, 30 of Ohio,
and Technical Sergeant Tyler Simmons, 28 of Ohio.
Starting to another theater of this war,
the Strait of Hormuz, that narrow, shallow waterways
through which one-fifth of the world's oil passes,
it's been effectively closed to U.S.
and Allied tankers by Iran.
More than a dozen oil tankers have been hit by Iranians
in the United States.
President Trump on Saturday suggested,
quote, many countries will be sending warships
in conjunction with the United States of America
to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and safe.
He called on China, France, Japan,
South Korea, and the United Kingdom to essentially
overwhelm Iran's ability to fire at tankers,
as if to say,
the United States is the only country
that has ever been killed in the United States.
He called on China, France, Japan, South Korea,
and the United Kingdom to essentially
overwhelm Iran's ability to fire at tankers,
as if to say,
they're not going to shoot at all of us.
Now, if this plan sounds a bit improvisational,
it may be because it is.
Reporting from a variety of sources,
paints a picture of a ramshackle war-planning effort
by the Trump administration
from the economic devastation in the Strait of Hormuz
to the unsurprising resiliency of the Iranian regime
to the thousands of unwitting expatriate workers
who were suddenly stranded in the region.
The Strait of Hormuz was always going to be an issue.
New reporting from the Wall Street Journal reveals
that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General Dan Kane, said,
quote, in several briefings,
the US officials had long believed
Iran would deploy missiles, drones,
and mines, missiles, and drones
to close the world's most vital shipping lane,
according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
End quote.
But the sources told the journal
that Trump, quote, told his team
that Tehran would likely capitulate
before closing the Strait,
and even if Iran tried,
the US military could handle it.
End quote.
That's not what happened.
So the administration pivoted,
with Trump suggesting the US Navy
should provide escorts for tankers instead.
But earlier this week, Reuters reported
that shipping companies took the president's word
and contacted the Navy,
and were told that Hormuz escorts
were not possible for now.
US oil futures have shot up 47%
since the current war began,
and gasoline now averages about $3.70
a gallon in the US,
up 26% in the last month.
Every day, and it goes up every single day,
because ultimately, it will go up
as much as oil went up.
47%.
CNN reported this week that the Pentagon
and National Security Council significantly underestimated
Iran's willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz,
which prompted the Secretary of Defense,
Pete Hegseth, to attack the network directly
in a press briefing on Friday
while dismissing the closed waterways
as something we don't need to worry about.
Fake news from CNN.
Reports that the Trump administration
underestimated the Iran war's impact
on the Strait of Hormuz.
Patently ridiculous, of course.
For decades, Iran has threatened
shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
This is always what they do.
Hold the Strait hostage.
CNN doesn't think we thought of that.
It's a fundamentally
unserious report.
The sooner David Ellison takes over that network,
the better.
Just put all the war stuff aside for a second.
That is a cabinet secretary.
The defense secretary
celebrating a political billionaire ally
of his administration taking over
an independent news network
simply for reporting on what sources are saying.
The Wall Street Journal reported
that the president keeps a very small circle of advisers
to consult on major foreign policy decisions,
including the Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
and the Vice President, JD Vance.
But that tightly sealed brain trust
may have meant that the rest of the government
was caught flat-footed when the war began.
A former U.S. diplomat told Politico
quote, it seems like they woke up on Saturday morning
and decided that they were going to start a war.
Another unplanned element, regime change.
In Trump's initial announcement of strikes,
he urged the Iranian people to rise up
and the Islamic Guard to drop their weapons.
In the days after,
he pivoted to pursuing something, quote,
like with Delci in Venezuela,
referring to Nicolas Maduro's vice president,
Delci Rodriguez,
who now runs that country,
despite Trump's promise to rid Venezuela
of its socialist leaders.
Instead, Iran elevated much taba Khameini,
the son of the slain Ayatollah,
and despite killings of dozens of leaders,
the Iranian regime's infrastructure
manages to sustain.
So it's fair to say that it has not been
like with Delci in Venezuela.
For more on this now,
Susanne Maloney, she's the vice president and director
of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
Susanne, thank you for being with us.
Susanne, by the way, is also
the author of an important book called
the Iranian Revolution at 40.
Susanne, again, I don't know,
I don't know that the administration
sort of claims they've had some sort of plans
since last June, since the 12-day war with Iran.
And I can't imagine that they didn't think about
the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,
because this whole thing is unfolding
suggests some sort of lack of planning.
Ali, I think that's exactly right.
They would have been aware that
Iran has threatened the Strait of Hormuz
on multiple occasions throughout
the history of this regime.
But they don't seem to have
made the contingency plans that
would have enabled them to react quickly
to that attempt to close the Strait.
And obviously, we're seeing the impact
on the global economy.
So you had some interesting point here
that the energy secretary said
they had this war last year
and Iran always saber rattles
and they didn't close the Strait of Hormuz.
So they seem to be in some conclusion
drawn in the administration that they wouldn't.
But that 12-day war last year
was not existential to the Iranian regime.
To some degree Donald Trump has said
he wants regime change.
Here he sort of changes his view every now and then.
But at this point it's existential.
So they are likely to be taking more serious moves now
than they did last June.
Absolutely. I think that's a key distinction.
The Iranian certainly understood
that this was not going to be a short war
and that it was going to be aimed not
at just decapitating their nuclear infrastructure
but really decapitating the regime.
And we saw that in the president's early comments.
And he's repeated that on several occasions
since this time.
So the Iranians were not just prepared
for the U.S. attack.
They were prepared to ensure that
they could outlast the United States
and that even though they were really outgunned
in terms of the American and Israeli ability
to degrade Iran's military infrastructure,
they understood that they could fight asymmetrically
and they could threaten the global economy
by simply threatening,
not even necessarily inserting minds
or taking other actions.
They could drive oil prices up
and that that would have a galvanizing effect
on their neighbors and on the world.
This is a good point because Donald Trump has told
oil shippers to be courageous and go through.
A little hard because this we're talking about minds.
We're talking about missiles.
It's not a matter of being brave.
It's whether or not you want your oil tanker
to go to the bottom of the sea.
A lot of it is just the fear of doing it.
The Iranians say the straights open.
Pete Hanks had actually said the straights open
but for the fact that the Iranians
are shooting tankers and setting them on fire.
Well, and this is exactly the problem
that normally the traffic is about 130 to 140 tankers
that go through the Gulf on a daily basis.
I think yesterday they were only two.
And so even if the Iranians were to simply back off
or if we don't see any further hostile actions,
which is highly unlikely,
both insurance companies and shipping companies
are going to be very, very cautious
about how they approach this.
It will take weeks before the United States
can actually have the kind of force in the region
that would enable us to escort tankers
and we wouldn't be able to escort anywhere near
the number that are already backed up waiting
or anything like the normal traffic
that goes through the Gulf.
So this really is both a short-term crunch
but also a long-term problem
unless we find a way to come to some kind of
understanding with the Iranians.
So we talk a lot about the straight-of-war moves
but on the other side of the Gulf,
on the northwestern side, there's this Carg Island,
which is sort of oil central for Iran.
The U.S. hit that island.
Strangely did not hit oil infrastructure.
It hit military infrastructure on the island.
But the threat seems to have been
weak, we can ruin Iran's oil infrastructure.
Talk to me about that.
At some point does Iran run out of
ability to use the straight-of-war moves
as a choke point?
Well, if the United States didn't
back-take and hold Carg Island,
it would be a severe blow to the Iranian economy.
They wouldn't be able to export any oil
and they would have to shut in production
at their fields which are very old
and it could compromise future production
from those fields.
So it is an existential issue for the Iranians,
which is I think why there is some concern
about actually seizing it,
that it would be the kind of nuclear move
from the United States,
because the Iranians themselves
would be forced to respond in kind.
They would likely target Saudi
and Emirati oil infrastructure
as they've done in the past.
In 2019, after President Trump ordered the assassination
of the Kud's force commander,
Qasim Salamani,
the Iranians threatened similar things.
They had taken those steps after he had,
they had taken similar steps
to target Saudi oil infrastructure
after President Trump re-imposed
maximum pressure and left
the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018.
Which means that the pressure on oil prices
could make $100 a barrel of oil
seem like a discount.
Suzanne, thanks as always.
Suzanne Maloney is Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy
at the Brookings Institution.
All right, coming up, we're headed to the big board
to see where voters stand on election security
and their confidence in elections
ahead of the midterms.
More Valshi after the break.
All right, we're in the primary season.
As you know, Tuesday night,
we've got the primaries in Illinois.
We'll be bringing that to you live.
From the Marist Institute for Public Opinion
about how Americans feel about the fairness
and accuracy of elections.
As you can see here, the question was,
are you confident that elections this November
will be fair and accurate?
69% of people say that they are confident.
I'm a little worried about that.
I feel like this numbers should be 100.
But whatever, 69% of people say they're confident
that their state or local government
will run fair and accurate elections in November.
31% say they have little to no confidence
that the 2026 elections will be free and fair.
Let's take a look at how that breaks down by party.
This party is actually really interesting.
It's actually very similar.
About 72% of Democrats think that
the elections will be fair and accurate
and about 70% of Republicans.
So there's a 30% group of people
who are very worried about the fairness and accuracy
of their elections.
If you're worried about elections,
what do you think the biggest threats are right now?
57% of Republicans think voter fraud is the biggest issue
which makes sense because Donald Trump's been carrying on
about voter fraud for a long time.
So they think that's the biggest issue.
For Republicans, the second biggest issue
is misleading information.
Among Democrats, the biggest issue, voter suppression.
41% of Democrats say voter suppression is the biggest issue.
Followed again by misleading information
and then voter fraud.
Interestingly enough, similar percentages
of Republicans and Democrats
are worried about foreign interference.
It's just about eight or nine percent.
Not a big deal, although it's something
that Donald Trump carries on about a lot as well.
Seven percent are worried about problems
at polling places. I'm going to have this discussion
in just a moment with my next guest.
All right, let's take a look at which concerns you more.
The questions are making sure that everyone
who wants to vote can vote
or making sure that no one votes
who is not eligible to vote.
58% of Americans think this is the biggest issue.
How to make sure everybody who is able to vote can vote.
42% think making sure that no one votes
who isn't eligible.
But again, the party split here is remarkable
of the people who care most about having everyone
who's eligible to vote.
Vote 86% are Democrats.
Only 29% of Republicans care about that question,
which is kind of weird.
Take a look at this one, making sure that no one
who is not eligible to vote.
14% of Democrats are concerned about that.
70% of Republicans.
This is a big deal because Republicans are the ones
who are very concerned that there's this rampant voting
by people who are either non-citizens
or not able to vote.
I will remind you that the percentage of non-citizens
who are eligible who registered a vote in this country
is 0.0005%.
Okay, leave it at that.
Coming up, I'm going to talk about real world election security
with somebody who knows a lot about this.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrien Font
has a standing by.
He's going to join me to talk about the new chapter
of the big lie that's being visited on his state
by the Trump administration
and what he's doing to protect the midterms from meddling.
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Joining me now is Adrian Fontez,
Arizona Secretary of State.
He's also the former,
and this is really important.
We always tell people who people are,
but this is really important.
He's the former county recorder
of Maricopa County,
which was, and now he's again
at the center of the Trump administration's
so-called investigations.
I only bring this up because
I was covering your election as Secretary of State,
and you were widely lauded
by people across partisan lines
for running fair elections,
which Arizona's take,
I mean, they call Americans
take it seriously,
but Arizona's take it very seriously.
The idea that they were,
they were allegations of improper elections,
and they said, no, actually,
this Fontez guy knew how to do it.
And now you're back again
with the same Trump administration
asking the same kind of questions about your state.
Well, first, thanks for having a second.
I learned from the best.
When I got into the Maricopa County recorder's office
in 2016, it was filled with a lot of professionals
who wanted to do really, really well
by their voters.
And frankly, every county office
that I've ever had any exposure to
wants the same thing.
These are good civil servants.
They just are neighbors,
and they bring on more neighbors
to do the job.
And that's how it still is
across the entire country.
And I think the hyperbole,
the crazy story,
telling the nonsensical mythologies
that we've been packed with,
and really also sort of the shortcomings
in funding that we see from policymakers
have moved us in a direction
where we don't really see
the great work that is continuing to happen.
So I'm really glad that you said that right up front
because American elections
are run by Americans.
Yeah.
They're not run by other people.
Unheralded people.
Yeah.
And there's the unsung heroes out there.
Yeah.
These county clerks, county recorders.
But not just those folks,
like you folks out there in TV land, right?
Or YouTube land or wherever you're watching on,
you're the ones who go and become the poll workers.
You're the ones who register voters.
You're the ones who do the actual work
of American elections.
You are who we depend on
to do the work that we do.
And now that I'm the chief election officer
for a whole state,
particularly a state that's still in the eye of the storm,
we still run good elections.
And I'm still super proud of the folks that we have.
And we have differences of opinion here
and there on certain policies.
And that's okay.
The bottom line is almost all of American elections
all the way through have always been done really, really well.
Yeah.
And you need to give credit where credit is due
to those folks out there who are doing it,
their veterans, their retired teachers,
their people who care about America and American voters.
And the interesting thing is it doesn't matter
that they have politics,
because everybody's got politics.
But generally speaking,
with the exception of 2020,
in which some weird people were getting involved in this stuff,
the people who go out to work on elections.
And in some cases,
they're volunteers and subcases, they're paid.
They might like a political party,
but what they really want
is this great American experiment to continue with fair elections.
And let's be really clear,
most of the folks that made those allegations
never were really directly involved in any kind of election stuff.
They were involved in campaign stuff.
Those are two very different animals.
And really let's remind ourselves,
when you get a Republican and a Democrat sitting there together,
checking in voters or looking at voter registration stuff,
and signature verification,
they're checking on another.
And this built into our system.
So what I'm sick and tired of is the fact that we've still got people
out there who are trying to erode the trust
that we have in each other as Americans.
That's what election denialism is about.
It's about dividing us in the function
that really is the most uniting of all of the things
that we do as Americans.
So we're going to keep fighting to push against
that nonsensical narrative
that we don't care about one another.
That really BS, I'd use a different word,
but I think we're on TV.
That really is tearing us apart
at the very place where we need to be.
And just one last point on this,
we are responsible for our elections
and we have never failed.
Ali, we did not cancel elections for the Civil War,
for the Spanish flu, for COVID, for World War II.
We have never, ever, ever failed
to deliver good elections for all Americans
and we will not fail this time.
I got one minute, but it's important.
You mentioned something about funding.
Elections don't feel like bridges in the Hoover Dam,
but they actually cost some money.
If you want fair elections,
you actually have to fund fair elections.
Well, and it's the basics, too.
And this is long-term funding.
We don't start planning elections
a couple of weeks before November.
This is a 365-day year, four-year, two-year cycle,
that we have to plan for all the time.
And so really, this is a plea to folks out there
who know policymakers.
Get them to help fund our elections across the board.
They're more complex than they've ever been.
The enemies are all over the place now
and we really need to communicate with voters well
about the robustness and sort of the grit of American elections
that we're going to continue to benefit from as a free society.
Secretary of State, Adrian Font has always
good to have you on the show.
Thank you for joining us.
All right, coming up as a new war rages in the Middle East.
The war in Ukraine enters its fifth year.
As you know, I've spent quite a bit of time in Ukraine
and the neighboring countries meeting civilians, lawmakers,
and soldiers whose lives are still in limbo.
There's one connection I made that will stick with me
for a long time.
You might remember Nastya Spott.
I met her as a teenage refugee in Poland just one month
into the war.
Since then, she's grown up.
She's persevered.
She's prospered.
And she served her country on the front lines.
My reunion with my friend, the incredible Nastya Spott, is ahead.
Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee declared on Monday
in the course of an Islamophobic rant online
that pluralism is a lie.
I want to take this seriously, not the Islamophobia part of it
because I'm not going to engage with him on that.
But the underlying claim that pluralism is a lie,
because if you believe pluralism is a lie,
you don't just misunderstand American politics,
you actually misunderstand America.
What it is at its foundation,
at the level of its operating system.
So let's talk about what pluralism actually is
and more importantly what it's not.
Pluralism is not tolerance.
And that distinction matters enormously
because it's where this conversation usually goes wrong.
Tolerance is a posture of sufferance.
Tolerance implies a majority that's doing the tolerating
and a minority that should be grateful for it.
Tolerance says we permit you to exist here.
Tolerance is conditional and can be withdrawn.
At its core, Tolerance still locates power in one group
and extends as a kind of a grace the right of others to be present.
Pluralism is something structurally different.
Pluralism says there is no default group
from which permission flows.
Pluralism holds that a society is constituted of its many parts,
not by one part that generously accommodates the others.
Pluralism doesn't ask minorities to be grateful.
It asks society to recognize that it's made up of minorities
that the majority itself is a coalition,
temporary and contingent, not a permanent ethnic or religious state.
This is not a liberal talking point.
It's constitutional fact.
Look at the architecture.
Many of the founders of this country were slave owners.
Many of them were deeply imperfect and flawed
and yet they built something structurally unprecedented
when they wrote the first amendment.
Not just freedom of speech.
Not just freedom of assembly.
They wrote an explicit prohibition on the state establishment of religion
and they paired it immediately with the free exercise clause.
The government cannot pick a religion
and it cannot stop you from practicing yours.
This is pluralist architecture and didn't appear from nowhere, by the way.
In 1785, four years before the Constitution was ratified,
James Madison wrote his memorial and remonstrance
against religious assessments.
It was a direct response to a bill that was introduced
in the Virginia House of Delegates by Patrick Henry
that proposed using public funds to support Christian teachers.
Madison didn't just oppose the bill on practical grounds.
He argued that civil authority has no jurisdiction in America
over religious beliefs that to compel any citizen to support one religion
even their own religion through state power
is a violation of the most fundamental human right.
He called it a dangerous precedent, precedent in 1785.
He said it would both corrupt government and religion
and that argument became the intellectual backbone of the establishment clause.
Now look at Article 6 of the Constitution itself.
It's okay if you don't know Article 6.
It's often overlooked and almost never quoted.
But it states plainly that no religious tests shall ever be required
as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Ever, not for any office.
This is not a suggestion.
It's an absolute prohibition written into the original document
before the Bill of Rights was even added.
And when Madison sat down to explain the logic of the entire constitutional design,
he was explicit.
In Federalist 51, he argued that the protection against tyranny
comes from the multiplicity of interests, the many factions, no single one dominant.
He called it a multiplicity of sex.
His solution to religious conflict was not to pick a winner.
It was to ensure that there were so many
that no one could oppress the others.
That's pluralism written by the architect of the Constitution.
In his own hand, pluralism was not an accident.
It was not a pragmatic compromise among Protestant sects.
It was a deliberate departure from the model of every European nation state
that the founders had ever known.
Because every European nation state they knew was at its foundation
an ethnic and religious project.
England had the Church of England.
The crown and the faith were fused by law.
France, despite its revolution, was a Catholic civilization state.
The lay citet that eventually emerged was not pluralism.
It was just a different kind of imposition.
It was a state-enforced secularism that defined itself as being against religion
and in practice it fell hardest on Islam and Judaism in ways
that it rarely applied to Catholicism.
Germany's post-war democracy is admirable at hard one,
but Germany spent the better part of its modern history
asking what it meant to be German in ethnic terms.
And that question produced catastrophic answers.
America did something different, not perfectly, not consistently.
The history of Native peoples, of enslaved Africans, of Chinese exclusion,
of Japanese internment, all of that is real.
All of it is a betrayal of our founding architecture.
But the architecture itself was different.
The promise embedded in the text was different.
The promise was not you can live here if you assimilate into our dominant culture.
The promise was that there is no dominant culture enshrined in law.
The promise of America was pluralism,
which brings us back to Ogles and why his claim is not just wrong.
It's precisely backwards.
When he says pluralism is a lie, he's not defending America.
He's describing a different country.
One organized around the preservation of a particular religion,
a particular culture, a particular ethnic continuity.
He is describing a Christian nationalist state,
one that has more in common with the European ethnic nation state model,
that the founders explicitly rejected than with anything in the American constitutional tradition.
Jefferson understood this danger clearly.
In 1802, writing to the Danbury Baptist Association,
he described the First Amendment as building a wall of separation between church and state.
Not a suggestion, a wall.
He was not being metaphorical.
He was describing a structural boundary,
one that protected religious communities from the government
as much as it protected the government from being captured by religion.
The people who waive the Constitution,
the hardest are often the least familiar with what it actually does.
The First Amendment does not protect Christianity.
It protects Christianity equally with every other faith,
and it does so by protecting no faith as the official faith of the United States.
The moment you make America a Christian nation in law,
you have dismantled the establishment clause.
You have replaced pluralism with establishment.
You have built not the city on a hill,
but something much closer to the theocratic European states that the pilgrims fled.
Here's what pluralism is actually produced.
The greatest periods of American economic dynamism,
scientific innovation and cultural output
have coincided with the expansion of pluralism, not its contraction.
The mid-twentieth century research universities
that produced the technology the world now runs on
were built in part by Jewish scientists fleeing European ethnic nationalism.
The medical and engineering infrastructure of this country today
depends heavily on immigrants from South Asia, from East Asia,
and the Middle East.
And if you want to understand who actually built the pluralistic architecture of this country,
look at black Americans, not as beneficiaries of someone else's tolerance,
but as the people who for two centuries held America to its own founding text,
the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment,
the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.
These were not gifts from the majority.
There were demands that the constitutional promise meant what it said
every single expansion of American pluralism has had black Americans at its center.
None of this happened despite pluralism.
It happened specifically because of pluralism.
Because when you don't mandate a single cultural operating system,
you get a full range of human ingenuity operating in the same space
at the same time under the same rules.
This is not a weakness.
This is compounding interest on human capital.
pluralism is not a lie. It is the most honest thing about America.
It is the honest acknowledgement that this nation was never,
not in 1785, not in 1789, not in 1802, and not now,
a single people with a single faith and a single culture.
It was always many people's, many faiths and many cultures.
Negotiating a shared civic lie, life under a set of rules that protected that multiplicity.
Madison knew it, Jefferson knew it, they built it into the documents on purpose.
That negotiation is hard. It's sometimes ugly.
It produces conflict, as all honest things do.
But the answer to hard pluralism is not to abandon pluralism.
The answer is to keep doing it.
The constitutional civic democratic work of building a country big enough to hold all of it.
That's what America was designed to be in.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is not defending America.
They are defending something else.
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There are increasing concerns about the consequences the war with Iran will have for the war in Ukraine.
That war is now in its fifth year and on a tangible level, a new war is requiring a significant amount of military assets.
Ammunition, equipment, and intelligence, which is dwindling global supplies at a time when Ukraine is still in dire need.
Also, it's sort of hard to imagine how the United States peace efforts could possibly succeed given America's own actions.
The United States, an aggressor power in a war, convincing a non-ally, Russia, and aggressor power in a different war to cease and desist.
It seems highly unlikely, especially when you consider that the US and Russia are aiding each other's enemies.
Russia has repeatedly stated it will not move from Putin's demand to completely seize for Ukrainian regions.
You see them here in green.
Luhansk and Donetsk collectively known as the Donbass region, along with Zaporitsia and Kershon.
And you can see on this map that demand includes territory, which Russia actually does not control.
The areas in red, Russia controls, the areas in green, Russia is demanding, but remain under Ukrainian control right now.
I want to draw your attention to the small town of Shakhtarsk, which is roughly 50 miles from the front and 30 miles west of the Donetsk region border.
Up until 2024, Shakhtarsk was called Pershotravisk.
That name was changed by a Ukrainian government intending to distance the country from its Russian and Soviet past when it was ruled from Moscow.
Shakhtarsk is the former Pershotravisk.
It's the hometown of my friend Anastasia Spont, Nastya for short.
I met Nastya and Warsaw Poland in March of 2022, less than a month into the war.
She was a guest on this show, joining me from a hotel balcony overlooking one of the presidential palace's court yards.
She was 15 years old at the time.
Nastya had fled her hometown and her home country with her mother and her sisters, leaving behind her grandparents and her father Victor, who served as a chaplain in the military.
Yet, under the most trying and desperate of times, this young Ukrainian refugee showed unbelievable courage and compassion and was focused on helping other Ukrainian refugees.
We will pray for your father and I'm sure he's going to be fine.
Thank you for supporting us.
Thank you. It's very important not for me, this important for my family and my friends.
We pray to Grayfu, Grayfu, Habad and many volunteers who support Ukraine because if not these people, I don't live in the street or train station, so thank you.
You're going to put those train stations. You've been going there and helping people, giving food.
I guess that must make you feel better at least.
Yeah, it makes people better because I know that I'm not alone and I hope that's everything.
You're not alone.
Thank you.
You're not alone for sure. Thank you for being with us.
Thank you.
Okay.
You'll get through this.
Yeah.
Nastya, along with her sisters and mother, were able to return to Ukraine several months later and they got the chance to briefly reunite with her father Victor during a short reprieve from his service on the front lines.
I next spoke with Nastya in August of 2022, six months into the war by which time her father was back on the front.
She called me sometimes, but they're really, really bad connection when I meet him.
Uh, she, my dad told me so terrified of stuff was going on day in front line and I just touched cry and when I, when I first met my dad like for seven, six months, I'm just cry and dad started to tell me stories how they hide and his car was destroyed.
So, and since God, I'm reading Rachel God because he saved my dad.
As the months stretched into a year, Nastya was forced to grow up as a child of war.
In February, 2023, a year into the full scale invasion, I met Nastya again.
We reunited in person in partial Travis, as it was still known.
That was her hometown in Ukraine.
I met with her family.
We shared a special lunch, something which Nastya said was extra special since her family was rarely able to all gather around a table together anymore because of the war.
The sound of air raid sirens were constant, a danger which I always noticed, but which Nastya had been forced to accept as routine and part of her normal new life.
The first time when I started like in March February, it was really dangerous.
We see a lot of anxiety, I'm cry and just don't understand what's going on.
And now it just, it's part of life.
It's like war, war change happens in like your minds.
I'm grow up in just one day, one night like wake up for you and you just grow up.
And you just understand that your, a lot of people now not leave, just exist.
And people just try to survive.
Even my friends, we walk, we see silence, but we just, we just not see this as so dark as it is because we tried to enjoy life.
I didn't have time to be a kid.
My friend Nastya Spot is now 19 years old and while she may have lost her childhood in some ways to this war, she has never lost her positive outlook.
She's been living in the United Kingdom, focusing on her education.
Last fall, Nastya started college at the University of Sheffield, she studying politics and international relations.
Last summer, the last time she was in Ukraine, she served as a military translator, assisting a group of British journalists near the front.
My friend who was once so afraid of her father being at the front lines is now following in his footsteps, continuing to serve her country and her people.
Anyway, she can join me now is my friend Nastya Spot. Nastya, it's great to see you again.
I think it's good afternoon. I'm really, really happy to talk to you. It's been a while.
It's been a long time since we met and I want to ask you, one of the things you said to me on that balcony in Poland, you had already started.
We just dazed into the war and you were already thinking about how you can best help your country and you said you want to get an education because that way you can help your country and now you're there.
I mean, you were your high school kid at the time and now you're studying in university.
Yeah, my life is quite shifted, but I'm really grateful that I have a opportunity to continue my childhood dream to get an education and pursue my career in the field that I always wanted to do.
And I know this field is quite challenging, especially with the current circumstance, but the politics was a passion of mine since regimented early childhood.
So I feel like it's a portion of me in the sense.
Tell me about that. Why was politics a passion of yours then? And of course, even as a kid, I mean things change when you were 15.
The whole world changed like politics is now a passion of everybody's.
Yeah, it's true, but I feel like because of my upbringing and lived in a family where I always was involved in Gothic.
My dad went to the frontline when I was eight.
I remember at home when we had our first revolution in Ukraine, the revolution that I remember was 2014.
I remember being monitoring to be 20 for seven and I've been always involved in that.
And when the conflict started involved in Ukraine and it was my experience and I've seen my dad going to the frontline and how he's back and the people he talks to, I think it influenced me.
And I was like, this is my moment. This is something that I want to do.
And I don't want other people to feel something that I felt in my childhood.
And especially as I mentioned, like when I was 15, I kind of lost my childhood in the sense that I've been involved in the war in an active conflict.
I remember when I met you, I wondered how you were as optimistic as you are.
And then when I got to Ukraine and I went to Eastern Ukraine, I met your family and I met your father.
And I stood in that moment. It's like, oh, I get it. Having met your father, how is he doing?
He's great, right? He came a couple of weeks ago, no, a couple of days ago to UK.
He retired from the army because of his house problem.
They became quite silly, especially when he was like in a frontline for quite a long time.
Well, I'm really, really happy that he's back and now he's with our family.
And it's finally, it feels nice to reunite, but now I'm in Chefffield.
So it kind of, it feels, I wanted to go home. I want to go talk, so didn't see my family, but I'll pull this sort of a wolf.
Does this, I mean, are you, are you puzzled that we're talking five years later?
I don't know that either of us thought this would still be going on, but it's still going on.
What are your hopes and views about what happens now in Ukraine?
The last time I've been in Ukraine, it was six months ago.
At that moment, I felt unsafe.
This frontline is getting closer and closer.
And in Ukraine, I get really transformative experience in terms of experience,
the frontline and everything.
And I went to the frontline and it was not that far.
It literally took 40 minutes in the car to get there.
I've been praying all the way along.
And when I came from the frontline to Shaktask, then I heard explosions.
And I'm still remains optimistic, but as far as I know, the situation, even in my hometown,
is quite, is quite tricky and quite dangerous.
I'm praying that everything would play out in the best outcome possible, but it's hard.
You know quite well that I don't know any Ukrainian in the few words.
I know you've taught me.
When they told me that the name of your hometown had changed, I thought to myself,
now you're just joking with me, right?
I could hardly pronounce the old one and it's changed.
Tell me a little bit about the story behind that.
You see, I don't know.
So when I found out that it changed the name, I found it too hilarious
because I still don't understand why they did this.
I know you don't want it to get rid of all these Soviet and Russian roots.
And I completely understand this and I support that.
But at the same time, I found it hilarious because Feshetraminsk is the first of May
on Ukrainian language.
And then they changed it to Shukhtaksky.
And Shukhtaksky from Ukrainian translates like the sea town of people who works in minds
because other town is popular by minds.
So even it took me a while to learn how to pronounce my own town.
So you know, I'm not alone.
Tell me, I mean, you're showing a picture of you with a bulletproof vest and gear on.
My parents, I've been doing this for a long time.
My parents still get worried when I go into a war zone.
But I guess with your parents' case, your father existed in a war zone.
How does that feel to you to be at the front lines?
It felt because I run that with two British John at least.
I've been liking that if I had an experience to assist them.
And also was my father and some other people, some other crew.
And to be fair, my dad was like, you would never go to the front line.
And it took me one week every night, presentation, why I should to go to the front line.
I didn't convince him my father because I wanted to experience what is like.
And when we went there together and I saw everything, he was like, okay, I'm gonna stay there.
And then she was like, maybe you're gonna, maybe would you like to join Ukrainian army?
And I was like, perhaps not right now.
Perhaps I'm gonna go to politics.
But yeah, it was really interesting.
It was really informative.
Yeah, well, you've had a formative few years.
It's great to see you, my friend.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
You have to say it in Ukrainian for me.
The last thing you said when we were in the same place together,
you said, may you have peaceful skies?
What is the expression in Ukrainian?
But I'm gonna never.
That's it.
I'm still not gonna try and say it.
But thank you for that.
Not to disappoint for us.
We will stay in close touch with you, my friend.
Thank you.
Thank you, take care.
That was a nice reunion.
That does it for me.
Thank you for watching.
Catching back your every Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern.
This Tuesday, as you know, I'm handling the big board for primary nights.
And we have a primary night on Tuesday.
It's Illinois.
There's a number of interesting races there, including the Senate race,
where we've talked to the three leading candidates this weekend.
Also, after the primary, regardless of whether you're following it or not,
join Stephanie Rule in me the following day on YouTube,
3 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, for it's happening with Velshi and Rule.
You can send your questions in.
We'll answer them live on air.
You can email us at VelshiRule at ms.now.
Life's busy.
Don't let banking slow you down.
Whether you're paying bills, setting savings goals,
or just splitting the check.
Atlantic Union Bank makes managing your money easier.
With helpful people and user-friendly tools,
we make sure banking with us fits you.
Call, visit us online, or drop into an Atlantic Union Bank branch today.
Atlantic Union Bank.
Anyway, you bank.
