How Ben & Jerry’s Was Silenced on Gaza - with Ben Cohen

Harvey Weinstein is complaining about Rikers. That's right. The supervillain of the Me Too movement is upset because he got punched in the face by a fellow inmate. And Harvey is correct. Hitting is wrong, even in prison. It is awful to be touched without consent. Anyways, I read about this story on Ground News, which is today's sponsor, an HMDK's favorite independent news platform. Ground News shows a breakdown of publications reporting on a story in which way they lean politically, whether it's right, left, or center. Now, it's not about eliminating bias. We all have biases, but Ground News helps you be a more conscientious consumer of the pageant of pain unfolding around us. Now, you may think, yeah, duh, CNN is slightly left, Fox is right. Why do I need this? Well, not everything is about America, folks. Ground News sources articles from all over the world. For example, there are currently 97 articles talking about Weinstein and Rikers, and a lot of the publications are international. Now, I know the Globo in Brazil leans right and Le Monde in France leans left, and I'm keeping that in mind when I read their coverage. So go to groundnews.com slash Hassan to subscribe and get 40% off the Unlimited Access Vantage plan, which breaks down to just $5 a month with my discount. Stay aware and go to groundnews.com slash Hassan today. Hey, it's Julie Louis-Dreyfus from Wiser Than Me, etc. Just popping in with a little reality check. Food waste shouldn't exist. There is no reason that our leftovers should end up in a landfill. But that's the final destination for about a third of the food we grow. Our ancestors would be confused. They used their food scraps as compost, or as animal feed, or in weird soups. All the stuff we did before garbage was invented. But composting is hard work. Living with a bucket of rotten food on your counter is gross. Most food goes in the trash because it's easy, and these days we'll take any easy we can get. But now there's something easier. Drop your scraps in a mill food recycler. It looks like a kitchen bin and an iPhone had a baby. It takes nearly anything, even meat and bones. It works automatically. You can keep filling it for weeks, and it never smells. When you finally empty it, you've got these nutrient-rich grounds. Use them in your garden. Pour them in your green bin. Or have Mill get them to a small farm so the food you don't eat can help grow the food you do, just like it should be. It's why I own a Mill, why I invest in Mill, and why I'm still obsessed with my Mill. If you want to get obsessed too, go to mill.com slash wiser to get $75 off. off. That's mill.com slash wiser for $75 off. literally embed these messages right into their products. How is this possible? I mean, I thought corporations and morality didn't mix. Did Ben and Jerry's hack capitalism with love? Well, that might depend on what happens next, because right now, Ben and Jerry's corporate parent, Magnum, is trying to silence them. So I'm just gonna sum up what happened real quick. So Ben and Jerry's were sold to Unilever in 2000, and then their agreement basically set up a firewall between Unilever and the Ben and Jerry's board so they could take whatever political position they wanted. But that changed starting in 2021 when Ben & Jerry's announced that it would end sales in the occupied West Bank. Unilever fought them on this and then fought even harder in 2024 as Ben & Jerry's tried to speak out about the genocide unfolding in Gaza. They even blocked a pro-Palestinian flavor Ben & Jerry's wanted to create. So after some legal clashes, Unilever spun off its ice cream business into the Magnum Ice Cream Company, but the underlying conflict didn't change. So Ben & Jerry's asked Magnum, please let us become an independently owned company so they could be free to say whatever they wanted. And Magnum was like, no! So, Jerry Greenfield resigned in protest, and Ben Cohen has taken the fight public with the Free Ben & Jerry's campaign and petition at freebenandjerrys.com. So that's the table stakes. And because of that, I sat down with Ben to talk about this whole drama. But my favorite part of this interview is the second half, where we talk about a passion we both share. Dunking on the military-industrial complex. We also talked about what he thinks about renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Finally, something that Trump has said that's honest. His arrest for protesting Gaza at a Senate hearing. My country is giving weapons to Israel as a gift to kill all these people in Gaza. And I asked him, as one of the OG Bernard brothers, if he thinks Bernie could have gone all the way in 2016. Absolutely. I have no doubt in my mind. And to be clear, you do not get free ice cream when you go to freebenandjerrys.com. I went and I'm very mad that I didn't get any. But Ben did bring free ice cream to this interview and lots of Oreos, which will make sense very soon. MAGA has this famous tagline that's been very popular over the past few years. You go woke, you go broke. Anytime a Disney movie comes out that flops, they go, you go woke, you go broke. Are you broke? Not near as I can tell. When we talk about corporate values, what does that mean? Well, I mean, in terms of values, you know, the values I think about happen to coincide a lot with what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. You know, care for people that are oppressed, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, feed the poor, love thy neighbor. I mean, yeah, I'm into that. it seems good i mean and and i think what's happened is that business has said well you know that's that you know maybe that's for right maybe that's when you're in church but you know we we can't have those values in business if we were going to have those values business we we we wouldn't be able to stay in business we'd go broke and it's just not freaking true it's a lie I mean, and Ben and Jerry's proved it. I mean, Ben and Jerry's has had these humanistic, caring values. I mean, the same values that, you know, that we want in anybody. Just you're talking about basic virtue. That's all I'm talking about. Right. And the reality is that business is the most powerful force in our society. And if business wanted to, it could have those values and it would be a really beautiful society. What do you say to people that push back on this philosophical notion that the very idea of capitalism, of companies that have to deliver returns quarter to quarter for investors, just fundamentally bumps up against the virtues of integrity, honesty, empathy, care for the weak, the impoverished, the poor? What do you say to those people that say, these are just oil and water? This is a paradox that you cannot resolve. we've we've heard that story it's it's a lie i mean i i understand that you know maybe maybe it's easier to uh run a business where all you care about is the financial bottom line how much money is left over at the end of the month or the year but in terms of meaning and in terms of joy in terms of doing that business. If you factor in social concerns into your day-to-day business activities, it's a much more meaningful, joyful experience. It's very motivating to employees and it's very motivating to customers. I mean, Ben and Jerry's, you know, taking these stands for justice ends up creating this simpatico relationship with our customers that's the strongest bond that a company could ever make with their customers. I mean, usually, people are buying products from corporations in spite of the values of the corporation. I mean, they're kind of buying it because they need it, but they're kind of holding their nose because you know they don't really want to be supporting that that corporation that cares only about one thing and when they have a chance to buy a product from a corporation whose values they agree with man they are overjoyed and they just want to keep on buying that stuff there was this lightning rod 2020 moment in the wake of george floyd's murder it was this very powerful moment and in the year since that, there's been this huge pushback, the rollback of DEI, again, this go woke, go broke kind of talking point agenda. In the six years since that moment, have you now become more cynical to a lot of the language that some of these companies have used? Because it certainly has made me more cynical. Well, I tell you, I was, you know, I mean, of course, the death of the murder of George Floyd was a horrible and saddening thing. But when all those corporations started making these statements soon after that, that we're going to hire more non-white people, we're going to, banks were saying, we're going to make sure we loan to more non-white people. we're going to make sure that our suppliers are not just white people and and they came up with you know actual numbers objective numbers that you could hit we're committing so much money to this we're going to have so much of a percentage of our our workforce diverse I was really kind of overjoyed I was feeling like wow they've corporations have finally gotten a conscience They finally have decided to use their power to improve the way life is conducted here and to, you know, especially for people that have been discriminated against and oppressed. and and you know and then uh you know trump comes into power and he says dei bad and all these guys just jettison all those programs uh has that type of political polarization made having a strong social stance harder because now it's everything's a political issue i mean we got a new m&m well who'd the m&m vote for it's like we're recasting cinderella all right well which party is cinderella and you know do you find it to be difficult to navigate you have certainly ran a successful business through every version of partisanship blue or red is this particular moment more polarized than ever? Or has it always been that way? I don't, I mean, I think that the country is probably more polarized than ever. You know, a big reason being that, you know, every other president has sought to bring the country together and the current president is seeking to divide it. So, you know, it's a rather influential office and I think he's being quite successful in dividing the country. But in terms of Ben and Jerry's being able to be Ben and Jerry's and Ben and Jerry's values, I mean, there's no doubt that the Magnum Corporation, I think, is kind of falling in line with what Trump wants. So back in 2000, Ben & Jerry's was bought by Unilever. And you did something unprecedented. You created a legal framework that essentially it guaranteed you and your independent board of directors to take whatever political stance you wanted. Is that true? Yes. How'd you do that? Well, so what happened was that Ben & Jerry's was a publicly held corporation at the time. Yeah. Unilever wanted to buy it. Jerry and I did not want it sold, but we didn't own controlling shares. And so against our wishes and despite our efforts to keep it independent, the company Unilever wanted to buy it. And there were other companies that also wanted to buy it. And Jerry and I were incredibly resistant. So Unilever says, well, why are you resistant? And we said, well, because we think that if the company is purchased by, you know, another company that doesn't have the same social values, that our social mission is going to get destroyed. And they said, well, let's just write it into the acquisition agreement. that the social mission will live on. And we're trying to figure out, well, how do you write that in? Because the social mission needs to evolve as the country evolves, as the situation evolves. And the way that we ended up doing it was to form this independent board of directors for Ben and Jerry's that has legal authority in perpetuity over the social mission, over product specifications, over the quality of our ice cream, the use of the trademark, how the company is marketed. So it sounds like, hey, as long as the ice cream stays good, the money keeps coming in, you can hold whatever position you want. And Ben, I got to give it to you man you went hard in the paint for decades standing 10 toes down on a lot of issues over the years ben and jerry's supported black lives matter refugee rights marriage equality criminal justice reform voting rights but then you crossed the line you said the p word the palestine word you said it and your corporate overlords were not too happy about that uh well what happened yeah what happened you know the the board was feeling for you know years that uh having our ice cream sold in the occupied palestinian territories in the west bank went against the values of the company, essentially supporting the mistreatment of people who lived in the occupied territories and that the occupation itself was illegal. And so there was a bunch of studies and work done on it. There were visits to the area by our people from the company And eventually there was a decision that was where the board of Ben and Jerry's and the management of Ben and Jerry's and Unilever all agreed that Ben and Jerry's would pull its products out of the West Bank. and what happened what i'm told happened is that when we announced that the the head of israel called the head of unilever and said you know if if you don't make this right if you don't get those products back here we're going to kick out all the unilever businesses and they had you know like 20 different brands 20 different types of products they were selling there and so unilever unilaterally went against the board of directors and sold the rights to Ben and Jerry's to an Israeli so that the ice cream would be available in the West Bank, although only in Hebrew. And, you know, that was a major, you know, usurpation of the power of the board. and uh there was you know a bunch of negotiations that proceeded and they broke down and and eventually the board had no choice but to sue unilever which is you know not your everyday thing that a uh you know a subsidiary of a corporation sues the corporation and And so that, you know, after that point, Unilever started muzzling Ben and Jerry's on a whole range of issues. And, you know, when we tried to call for a ceasefire when they ended up with this war in Gaza, they wouldn't allow us to do that. When we wanted to support the students that were protesting, they wouldn't allow that. and we wanted to support people's right to free speech and freedom of the press. There was that woman who wrote an op-ed in a college newspaper, and she got kicked out of college for that or deported or something. We wanted to support her, and we were prevented from doing that, and that's illegal, the terms of the agreement. Is it true that they stopped you from celebrating Black History Month? Well, they, yes, it is true. There was a post that we wanted to put up supporting Black History Month and they would not allow that. And this is the same company that I was so proud of the statement that they made after the death of George Floyd, which is, we must dismantle white supremacy. I mean, I felt like that was the – that's the – so our company made that statement. But then – I had nothing to do with it, and I was overjoyed because it was the company itself that took that position. And then, you know, there was this huge change and Unilever prevented us from putting up this post in support of Black History Month. It was pretty strange. But Elmo celebrates Black History Month. Exactly. It's kind of ridiculous. I think it was Trumpism. I mean, I think, what, at the time Trump was down on Black History Month. He wouldn't, you know, he wouldn't, you know, he's trying to get all the information about how the U.S. was involved in slavery. Yeah. Trying to get that information out of the museums, out of the college, out of the high school textbooks. Right. Public school textbooks. So that's what it was part of. Last year, you were arrested after interrupting an RFK junior Senate hearing to protest Israel's Gaza blockade. I'm going to show you the footage. Take me through what's going on and why you did it and how you feel. Let's take a look. Ben, why are you getting arrested? Move down the hallway. Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S. Keep going down. Keep going down the hallway. They need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food to starving kids. Now that you're not being dragged down the hallway of a government building and zip ties, what were you trying to tell the American people? What's going on here? Well, what was going on for me was that I'm sitting home reading these newspaper articles or whatever you read online, however you get your news these days, about how my country is giving weapons to Israel as a gift that are being used to kill all these people in Gaza. And, you know, I mean, I keep on reading about that, and it's driving me a little crazy. And then, well, it's driving me very crazy. And then I see this other article in the newspaper about how there's another outbreak of lead poisoning in, you know, I don't remember where it was. Maybe it was Milwaukee. And, you know, lead poisoning is an issue that drives me up a wall because it's very preventable. we know what causes it and we know how to fix it and you know lead poisoning is cannot be cured it's a lifelong thing a kid gets lead poisoning and their brain is affected for the rest of their lives. And instead of using our money to get rid of lead, we end up buying these bombs to kill more people. And so, you know, everybody has their breaking point. And I saw these things and I said, you know, I want to chain myself to the White House fence. And, you know, the people I work with said, well, you can't do that anymore. You know, the White House fence has been militarized and you can't even get to the White House fence because they have a fence before it and they have guys with big machine guns walking in between. And they said, you know, we think- You wanted to do a hunger protest. You were going to, I mean, chain yourself to the fence and- Yeah. And they said, well, but we think we can maybe get you into a hearing and you can make some kind of statement. And I said, you think that's really going to be effective? And they said, yeah. And I had my doubts. And it ended up being kind of one of the more effective things I've ever done. So all this activism and the positions you took in regards to Gaza, it obviously did not fly too well with Unilever. But eventually Unilever spun off and sold you to another corporate daddy called Magnum. How did that happen? Well, what they did was they spun off their entire ice cream division. They have an ice cream division that comprises about 100 brands of ice cream around the world. Here in the US, it's Popsicle, Good Humor, Klondike, Breyers, Talenti, Yasso, and Ben and Jerry's. And Unilever decided that, you know, for one reason or another, they decided to get rid of their whole ice cream operation. I think originally they were trying to sell it to another conglomerate or some private equity group, and they weren't able to do that. So they decided to spin it off into its own separate publicly held corporation so as soon as it gets sold to magnum this other conglomerate jerry resigns i mean you guys you're jordan and pippin baby you're magic and kareem well not quite i would say hey if it was an eating contest we would you two you two were goaded don't ever don't ever hold yourself small king okay all right you two were goaded so he he's he steps down what was that like why did jerry step away what was it specifically about magnum and the pressure in regards to this issue that made it too much for him well i want to be clear that uh jerry and i have not split up we're still the best of friends and um we we both came to understand that there was no way that the social mission of Ben and Jerry's was going to survive under the ownership of the Magnum Corporation. And Jerry decided to resign in protest and I decided to stay on and fight. I mean, you kept the fight going and you've taken the fight both public and online with the website freebenandjerrys.com you've been there yeah well come again well well look ben i have i have a couple complaints all right first of all i went to the website and i thought i was gonna get free ben and jerry's and i didn't it's a different type of free ben and jerry's it is a different so look i think the cause is important i think the clickbait is wrong because a lot of people are gonna go to the website and they're gonna think they're gonna get free Ben and Jerry's. So we got to have another tab or sub link to get free Ben and Jerry's. But what is freebenandjerrys.com? What's the goal of the website? Well, so when Unilever announced, and this was like two years ago, that they wanted to spin off their whole ice cream division, Jerry and I went to them and said, hey, there's been all these conflicts between Unilever and the board of Ben and Jerry's. And why don't you just separate out Ben and Jerry's so that it can be sold to socially conscious investors that actually support the mission and, you know, and have Ben and Jerry's be able to thrive and have the other businesses be able to thrive. and Unilever said, no, we're not willing to do that. And so Jerry and I were very public about calling for socially conscious investors to make an offer for Ben and Jerry's and some of them attempted to do that but Unilever refused to engage with them and then the company got split off into the Magnum Corporation. So is the goal for freebenandjerrys.com, is the goals, if there's enough public momentum and movement behind this, is this an awareness play? Are you guys basically asking, almost like the way musicians during those old record label contracts, are you asking, hey, let me go independent? I don't want to be a part of the old record label. Will you let me spin off and do our own thing? Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. And then how does the public come into play here if your dad doesn't own a private equity company? The reality is that the fate of Ben and Jerry's is in the public's hands. If enough people get involved and they make their voice heard, they stand up, they participate in the actions that are on the website, They sign the letters, they sign the petitions, they bomb Magnum's social media with, you know, statements about freeing Ben and Jerry's. Magnum is going to end up having to give in and sell it. And, you know, and what's really happening from a, you know, financial investor point of view is that this brand that they've got, Ben and Jerry's, this very powerful brand, which has been built on this values led business model. It's the very thing that Magnum is in the process of destroying. They're destroying that values-led business model. They're therefore destroying the brand. They're ripping the heart out of Ben and Jerry's, and it'll become less valuable. Did you know the average employer has to sort through 250 resumes per job opening? I mean, that's insane. That would take so long. I mean, usually it'd just be a problem for HR. But we don't have HR at $186K. So how are we going to get through all those resumes? That's like 250 resumes that I'm not going to even read. personality. Candidates can tell you in their own voice why they're interested in your job. Cut through the standard and get to the stand outs with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Husson. That is ZipRecruiter.com slash Husson. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. I want to turn to a passion that you and I share, dunking on the military industrial complex. I'm going to share a video that you recently posted on your IG. Here the Pentagon budget 50 Oreos trillion Yo Ben the up guy I here to talk about the federal discretionary budget here how much the federal government spends on education renewable energy child care helping homeless people world hunger why don't we just take some oreos off this pentagon stat that's enough to fully fund schools that serve eight million kids take another one off That's enough to convert one million homes to solar energy. Take two off, that provides universal pre-K education. One Oreo. End homelessness. Two Oreos takes care of all the people that don't have enough to eat. Take a look at this. China spends that much on their military. Russia, that much. Iran, North Korea. Even after we take all those Oreos off, we still have more than enough to protect ourselves. I mean, that's quaint. Trump's already said he wants a $1.5 trillion budget. That's the amazing thing. President Trump calling for a massive investment in America's defense, writing on Truth Social, quote, For the good of our country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our military budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 trillion, but rather $1.5 trillion. What really amazes me about that is the callousness of that mentality that, I mean, first the country is saying, hey, we're broke. We ain't got no money. We're in debt. And then he's saying, well, I can figure out a way to squeeze out another 500 billion. And what I want to spend it on is the Department of War. and what where where does that i mean what kind of mentality is that i mean you've got people that are starving around the world you've got people that are dying of preventable diseases you got people in our country that can't afford child care you got people in our country who can't afford health care and the first thing he thinks about is let's build more weapons and kill more people. You seem to be up in arms, pun intended. So we will go side stage and we will update that diagram. I want us to kick off a fun little game show that we do here on Hasselman Hajj Doesn't Know. It's called Know Your Empire. You ready? All right. I'll try to get them right. Let's do it. How many military bases does the United States currently have in other countries? about 800 military bases around the world that's that's what the u.s has do you know how many the country who has the next highest number i have no idea five well clearly clearly those bases are not to defend the united states well what are they for they're to uh dominate the world. They're to control the world through military force. How many countries does the United States currently have troops stationed in? What is it? It's over 100, isn't it? Approximately 175. Now, Netflix is currently streaming in 190 countries. So that's almost all of Netflix's territories. How many countries is the United States in active armed conflict with uh well at least 10 i think the answer right now is four to six now i don't know if you're on signal with pete hexeth or cash patel who's the head of the fbi yeah but it's four to six from what we've guessed iran venezuela syria somalia maybe iraq in nigeria like i just found out about nigeria a month ago i was like we have beef with nigeria and and niger too i think i mean uh what do you count when you say armed conflict what what is that including places that we bomb or or drone assassinate that kind of thing well well to me a bomb or drone is kind of the same so whether whether whether you kill brown people with the playstation controller or there's a human doing it i think it's the same right but that's just me maybe i'm getting caught up in some answers. I think my number of 10 is better than your number of four to six, but whatever. What do you think of the name change from the Department of Defense to now this thing called the Department of War? Finally, something that Trump has said that's honest. It is not the Department of Defense. It is the Department of War. Dude, I agree. It's not set up to defend the US. I'm actually pro this weird level of demented transparency. just say it for what it is pop the white head when you like when you have a zit just say what it is the u.s recently started a new war with iran i don't know if you've heard now iran is part of the axis of evil now as we know evil is bad are iran and russia are enemies because they're more evil than our allies any country that doesn't do what we want them to do that's an enemy that is the official policy if you read the actual u.s policy the national security posture and strategy all that crap any country that develops economically or militarily must be considered to be an enemy, and we must do what we can to keep that country down. We need to sanction the country. We need to develop military plans to take over the country. I mean, the U.S. is currently developing plans to have a war with China, which is so freaking absurd. Wait, so we're mad at them because, not because they directly did anything bad to us, but because they're more successful? We don't like their form of government. We don't like the idea that they're economically successful. And we believe that it's a zero-sum game, that we need to control the entire world. And, you know, China is getting to be powerful. And if we let them become too powerful, then we won't control the entire world. I mean, I think what China wants and what just about every country wants in the world, in the UN, is a multipolar world where the power does not reside just in one country, but where countries are treated as equals. That was the idea of the United Nations. And the US has essentially thrown that out the window and said that we want a world where might makes right, and we're going to be the mightiest country there is, and we're going to call the shots. And we don't want to cooperate with other nations. Well, so if the UN is calling for equality, what is the purpose of NATO? The purpose of NATO was to protect the Western Europe from the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was that group of Soviet countries. And when the Soviet Union dissolved, there was no longer a need for the Warsaw Pact. It lost its purpose. And NATO should have been disbanded at that time. but it still exists now right it does and and it's what just a nuclear war trip wire if so if russia just fucks around and invades any of those nato countries it's basically a green light to blow up the world uh i guess i i mean i i think i think the way those countries uh in europe look at it is that there used to be the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had invaded them and taken them over. And they're concerned that Russia is going to try to do the same thing. But clearly, it's not strong enough to do that. It's not capable of doing it. I don't particularly think they they want to do that i mean they've got their hands full trying to run their own country i mean this nato and russia thing that issue got you in some particularly hot water especially with liberals ben and jerry's tweeted we call on president biden to de-escalate tension and work for peace rather than prepare for war i thought that was a pretty benign tweet yeah i mean We got a lot of kind of these are a lot of Elmo approved pieces of language. Deescalate. Elmo tells us to deescalate tension in fights. Deescalate tension. Great. Work for peace. That seems cool. Rather, instead, preparing for war. And liberals weren't happy with this tweet. They accused you of being an appeaser who loves Putin. how'd that make you feel uh i'm i'm not pro putin i'm not pro trump i'm pro not solving your problems through war and uh you know that how did it make me feel you know it's okay people can accuse me of whatever they want to accuse me of i mean that it kind of goes with the territory. I mean, if you're going to take a stand on something, other people are going to be opposed to it. So unless, based on this NATO agreement, unless we're going to have a nuclear war with Russia, aren't we going to eventually get to the point where we have to have some sort of settled agreement? I think so, yeah. So that's what the tweet was saying. I think you should have reworded the tweet. Here's what you should have said. look, a bunch of people are going to die and that's not good. And then after a bunch of people die, there ends up being a peace agreement. So let's just skip over act one and two, and let's just get to the peace agreement. I'm with you. I'm part of an organization called the Eisenhower Media Network, which is a bunch of former mid to high level military officers. And at the very beginning of the war in Ukraine, we took out a full page ad in the New York Times and called for a ceasefire. So instead of having a ceasefire then, what we had was a war that's, what is it now in its fourth year that's killed and destroyed, I don't know how many people and how many homes and villages. And eventually there's going to be some negotiated peace. Let's talk about something else that gives me nightmares and prevents me from going to sleep at night, nuclear weapons. You had another video that demonstrated the insanity of America's nuclear arsenal. Let's take a look. Let me show you something. Here's one BB. That represents the nuclear bomb that we dropped on Hiroshima. And now what I'd like to do is demonstrate the size of our current nuclear arsenal. that was 50 000 bbs enough to kill everybody on earth that's fucking crazy you know what's fucking crazy ben i saw that video first thing in the morning before i had to drop my kids off at school fucked up my day bro well you can use that information to change it and make your day better okay well your boy had to take five milligrams of xanax just to get through the day but in all seriousness how many dollars does the u.s military spend on nuclear weapons per minute. Isn't it something like $125,000? Yes, it's approximately $100,000. Yeah, and that's just nuclear weapons. What if instead of spending less on nuclear missiles, we spent more on defending ourselves from nuclear missiles? Allow me to show you a video from Pete Hegseth, big upping the Golden Dome Initiative. We need that support in Congress and they're there. We appreciate their support and work in getting that one big beautiful bill to the president's desk for signature. Because with that signature came a massive $25 billion down payment on the Golden Dome for America. A revolutionary shield of space-based weapons and sensors. A vigilant constellation of next generation sensors and satellites that will see every threat from every corner of the globe. Paired with a network of space-based interceptors ready to neutralize any ballistic missile, any hypersonic weapon, any drone long before it threatens our homeland. That's how we establish complete and total orbital supremacy. What's your response to this whole orbital supremacy thing? I mean, it's not white supremacy, but this sounds pretty badass. It impressed me as a snake oil salesman, a medicine show. What made you call bullshit on this? Because for me, it was the Comic Sans MS font at the bottom. That's the part that really got me. I can't take – we didn't do the captioning there. That was the Department of Defense. Let me tell you something. DOD, if you're watching this, the rest of the world is laughing at us. There's plenty of font options. You can't go with that. But what did you think of that? You know, it's a physical and mathematical impossibility. It can't be done. Why? You know people talk about it as hitting a bullet with a bullet You know the number of interceptors that it would require is unrealistic It's a beautiful idea. It's a beautiful fantasy. But an invisible shield that will protect us from any and all threats, it just doesn't exist. And it never will exist because it's a physical impossibility. I mean, you know, this is just a replay of Star Wars. Not the George Lucas movie. You're talking about the pitch that Ronald Reagan made in the 1980s. Right. He made the same pitch. I'm going to come up with an invisible shield that's going to protect us from any and all possible threats. When you saw Ronald Reagan make the Star Wars pitch in the 80s, you weren't buying it? No, I wasn't. You know, I mean. You didn't see the video? if you'd Austin play, Ben, the video, you didn't see this. U S spy satellites would watch the world below the first response. Space-based kinetic energy weapons fire high speed projectiles from hypervelocity guns. Earth-based nuclear powered X-ray lasers fire their radioactive rays. Chemical lasers fire beams that burn through the shell of the onrushing missile. The surviving warheads enter the atmosphere above the United States, are attacked by laser-equipped planes. Earth-based lasers and AVM rockets eliminate the last warheads. Kinetic energy weapons, chemical lasers, particle beams. You can't beat that. It's make-believe that it's beautifully produced. That's what orbital supremacy looks like. It looks like Tron. And I'm saying that as someone who stars in Tron Aries. I'm in six scenes and it's streaming now on Disney+. Take that, Putin. How do you make sense of the very real reality that no matter which political party is in power, defense spending year to year is always going up. It's not going down. It's not defense spending. It's war spending. And yes, you're absolutely right. Both parties are equally to blame for what I think is destroying the soul and the spirit of America. uh you know america is not about taking taking care of people who need help it's not about providing health care for people who need health care it's not about providing food for people who need food it's about killing huge numbers of people i i mean i'm i'm not exaggerating i i mean the the weapons that we have are designed to kill literally millions of people and the the mentality is that well and that's not enough we need more uh and and you know i mean you can kind of understand it that it's gotten simplified to the extent that uh what people have come to understand And what they've been told is that if we spend more money on the military, we'll be safer. But it's not true. I mean, you know, like Trump, he doesn't think about, well, what weapons do we need actually to be safer? He thinks about, I'd like to have a trillion dollar military budget. And so he raises it to that level and then says, you guys figure out how to spend it, what to buy with it. And then he says, well, a trillion, that's pretty good. But I want the next one to be one and a half trillion. And I don't know what it's going to pay for, but you guys figure it out. But the reality is that it makes us all less safe. It makes us all less secure because that money could be spent on things that would really make us more safe, more secure. Things that would make us healthier, things that would allow us to have child care for our kids, things that would allow us to buy houses, things that would allow us to feed people that don't have enough to eat. You know, I mean, you walk around, you say, oh, there's such a homelessness problem. It's horrible. You know, nothing could be done about it. I mean, you could end homelessness for $40 billion a year, which is chicken feed compared to a trillion dollar Pentagon budget soon to be, well, if he gets his way, $1.5 trillion. Are Americans basically just not allowed to vote for decreasing the defense budget or as you call it, the war budget? I think that's true. You know, none of the major party candidates are talking about that because they're deathly afraid if they talk about reducing the Pentagon budget, their political opponent is going to call them weak on defense. and uh and that's you know that's going to make it hard for them to get elected that's a charge that uh you know the the problem is that the it's it's kind of a complex issue and people are busy you know trying to fix the hole in the roof and and pick the kids up from daycare and they don't have the ability to analyze this stuff. And so some guy says, well, we need to spend more money to be safer or else that guy's going to come in and kill us. I mean, I guess. Three years after Ben and Jerry started, in 1981, Bernie Sanders became the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. you and Jerry scooped ice cream at the victory party. You were the original Bernie bros and have been huge supporters of Bernie Sanders throughout his entire career. What is it about Vermont that makes you care about your fellow American citizens? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think that for one thing, Vermont is a very, very small state uh and people people know each other i mean it's not like people are in the way it's like people you know you like running into a person because it doesn't happen that often and uh and and also there's there's kind of a farm and rural mentality which is that you help your neighbor that you know i mean there there aren't that many people around you see you see someone in trouble you help them out do you think i mean the other thing about vermont is that the biggest things in vermont are natural things mountains uh the lake trees whereas you know you end up like in a city like here and the biggest things are man-made so you have more of a sense of yourself as a human being not being the biggest thing but being a small part of a of a natural world that's beautiful man do you think that if the dnc had supported bernie sanders more in 2016 there was a possibility that he could have been president absolutely i i have no doubt in my mind I mean, what was amazing to me was I was receiving emails from the Bernie campaign and I was receiving emails from the Trump campaign. And they were very similar. You signed up for both listservs. Yeah. They were very similar. I mean, you know, we need to be saved from all those corporations that are screwing us. We need to be saved from the ultra wealthy that are screwing us. um i'm for you the little guy uh you know it's just that one of them was honest and the other one was just kind of pandering do you think the democratic party learned its lesson in 2016 2020 no 24 no i've i've kind of given up on the democratic party i you know i think it's just calcified uh i i think i think mostly it's it's you know there there are some there are some notable exceptions but i think to a to a large extent it's a lot of uh old white men that uh that are that are just caring too much about their own position and and getting reelected and not not trying to change the country uh in a way that that you know kind of revives the spirit of america that that uh you know they're not looking to you know i mean they're fiddling around the edges. They're not making any of the major changes in terms of how our economy is structured, how the whole federal budget is structured in order to prioritize the benefit of regular everyday people as opposed to prioritizing the benefit of corporations and the ultra ultra wealthy and uh weapons manufacturers so listen man you've been fighting the good fight for 50 years are you hopeful or do you feel hopeless about the future you know i guess i guess if you're continuing to fight you must feel hopeful uh you know i mean what what choice do you have uh you can you know you're confronted with injustice you can either ignore it you can complain about it or you can try to do something about it and you know i i understand that certainly me myself i'm not going to be able to to solve the problem but there's a heck of a lot of other people that are also working on it uh you're working on it and you know uh pete seager told me this story uh that he came you know he was walking along and he he comes he sees this playground off in the distance and he gets closer to it and he sees what's going on is that there's this giant seesaw and there's lots of people running around and he gets closer and he sees that, you know, the seesaw is, you know, one side is down. There's this giant rock on it and the other side is up and there's all these people with teaspoons running around, taking a teaspoon of sand from this big pile of sand, climbing up this ladder and dumping it in the bucket as the part of the seesaw that's up. And, you know, he's watching this going on and and he's noticing that there's holes in the bucket and that the sand is is running out and so he he pulls one of these guys aside and he says stop stop you gotta you gotta see what's going on here and you know he gets the guy to stop the guy was sweating he wipes his head and and pete says don't you see there's holes in the bucket and the sand is running out and you're never going to get that thing to flip and the guy says oh no you don't understand there's more of us with teaspoons all the time and one of these days where there's going to be more coming in faster than it's running out and all of a sudden the whole thing is going to flip and so you know i'm a guy with a teaspoon and there's more of us and you're you're racing up to fill up that bucket yeah doing what i can i mean what do you otherwise you just accept it say well yeah it's really fucked up we're killing gloves because of people we could be feeding we could be helping we could be making the world a much better place but we're not and well i'm just gonna go back home and i don't know smoke some dope ben i appreciate you taking your spoon filling it up with sand climbing up that thing and filling up that goddamn bucket. And I hope we all help you fill up that bucket. It'd be great to be climbing up that ladder with you, Hassan. Hey, man. FreeBenandJerrys.com. All right. Free Ben! Yo! Ben Cohen, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Hassan! Hassan! Hassan! Let's do a demonstration. Let's use some Oreos and do a demonstration. These gold ones on top, that's the half a trillion dollars that Trump wants to add to the Department of War budget. these little orange ones that's the 150 billion that he's already added because he likes big numbers like that you could take 11 of these oreos that is enough to provide medicaid insurance for everybody in the country homeless people you could take care of them for two oreos okay for another two oreos lead poisoning is irreversible we could get rid of it for three oreo people that are literally starving to death. You could take care of all of them for this many. You have a shit ton of Oreos. Here's how much China spends, Russia spends, Iran spends. Wait, they're just half of an Oreo? Yeah, 10 billion. Wait, what about Kim Jong-un? Oh yeah, they got a half Oreo too. The dude in the White House, he could use his Oreos to actually help people. This is great sponsored content for Oreo. Hashtag fuck raping. Have you subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet? You can listen completely ad-free and get access to exclusive bonus content you won't hear anywhere else. Like my discussion with Malala on how therapy changed her life or my convo with Mel Robbins on how her let them theory applies to parenting. Tap subscribe on Apple Podcasts or head to LemonadaPremium.com to sign up on any app. That's LemonadaPremium.com.