Ben Rhodes

Benjamin J. Rhodes is an American writer, political commentator, and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting under President Barack Obama. Jake Sullivan is the co-chair of National Security Action, a political NGO. He contributes to NBC News and MSNBC regularly as a political commentator. He is also a Crooked Media contributor and co-host of the foreign policy podcast Pod Save the World.

Rhodes was born on November 14, 1977, in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. He is the son of an Episcopal father from Texas and a Jewish mother from New York. He attended the Collegiate School, graduating in 1996. Rhodes then attended Rice University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 2000 with majors in English and political science. He then moved back to New York, attending New York University and graduating in 2002 with an MFA in creative writing. His brother, David Rhodes, is a former President of CBS News.

In the summer of 1997, Rhodes volunteered with the Rudy Giuliani mayoral campaign. In the summer of 2001, he worked on the New York City Council campaign of Diana Reyna. In 2002, James Gibney, editor of Foreign Policy, introduced Rhodes to Lee Hamilton, a former member of the House of Representatives and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was looking for a speechwriter. Rhodes then spent five years as an assistant to Hamilton, helping to draft the Iraq Study Group Report and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Ben Rhodes and Aung San Suu Kyi discussed U.S. support for the NLD-led government in Myanmar in July 2016. In 2007, Rhodes began working as a speechwriter for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. Rhodes wrote Obama's 2009 Cairo speech "A New Beginning." Rhodes was the adviser who counseled Obama to withdraw support from Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, becoming a key adviser during the 2011 Arab Spring. Rhodes supported Israel in the 2012 Israel–Gaza conflict.

Rhodes was instrumental in the conversations that led to Obama reestablishing the United States' diplomatic relations with Cuba, which had been cut off since 1961. The New York Times reported that Rhodes spent "more than a year sneaking off to secret negotiations in Canada and finally at the Vatican" in advance of the official announcement in December 2014.

After leaving the Obama administration, Rhodes began working as a commentator. He began contributing to Crooked Media, NBC News, and MSNBC. In 2018, he co-founded National Security Action. In 2015-16, Rhodes defended U.S. political and military backing of Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. He later criticized the Trump administration's involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. 

He wrote of the war in Yemen, "Looking back, I wonder what we might have done differently, particularly if we'd somehow known that Obama was going to be succeeded by President Trump." Rhodes said Obama's administration was too worried about offending Turkey. He said Obama should have recognized the Armenian genocide.

In 2018, Random House published Rhodes's memoir, The World as It Is, a behind-the-scenes account of Barack Obama's presidency. Rhodes has written opinion articles for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times and The Atlantic. Rhodes was featured in the HBO documentary The Final Year, along with John Kerry, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice. The documentary portrays the events of Obama's final year in office, with a focus on his foreign policy team.