Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Indeed, we do many things to get to this morning. So the continuation of this border showdown situation, both with a number of Red States ascending National Guard troops potentially in support of Governor Greg Abbott of Texas. We also have the Republicans in the House signaling they're going to block the deal made by Republicans in the Senate. A lot of interesting politics at play here, so we'll get
into all of that. Also, RFK Junior is sparking Trump VP speculation and also talking about potentially leveraging the Libertarian Party in order to get ballot access. So a lot to get into there, and dovetails with what we're doing here at the show as well, because we've got that RFK Junior focus group coming up, which is going to be very interesting.
Donald Trump hit.
With a massive judgment in that EG and Carol, this was the defamation part. We will tell you the dollar amount, will tell you what else is coming up for him and how much of a hit it is to his net worth, what it could mean for the.
Politics as well.
A lot going on with regard to Iran and with regard to Israel. The US can't say whether we have troops in Yemen, which seems like kind of a critical point. We also have new details about that attack which killed three US service members, including who those service members are. This all comes as Israel is signaling that war now with Lebanon is imminent.
So a lot to get into this morning.
Yeah, that's right before we get to any of that, though, As Crystal mentioned, we have the RFK Junior focus group coming up.
We're really excited for it.
Had fortuitous time in considering how many moves the man appears to be making. So if you can support us breakingpoints dot com, we have an advantage for the election special going on right now.
Since we have so much work to do.
We have a big team, we have big goals and other things that you can help us out there. So Breakingpoints dot Com. As I mentioned, let's go ahead and start with that border story. We've been monitoring it over the weekend, so Ryan and I were able to bring everybody the immediate news that the Texas Governor was going to continue building fencing and wire on the border. This was after the Supreme Court ordered the Texas National Guard not to get in the way of federal authorities from
cutting said border wire. There's a standoff there between the Biden administration and the Texas governor. The Texas governor then exploiting a loophole and the decision saying well, I won't get in the way of the Feds if they want to cut the wire, but that doesn't mean that I can't build even more wire if I want to, escalating then into a major standoff nationally. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. We've got a map here,
map in red. Anybody want to wonder, No, it is not the civil war, a twenty four map.
This is actually a.
Map of all of the Republican governors and twenty five states now in the Union who are supporting the Texas quote unquote constitutional right to self defense, according to the RGA, which put out this graphic, So you've basically got every Republican state in the country except for the state of Vermont.
Vermont there well at least every Republican state with a Republican governor except for the state of Vermont that is backing the governor Abbott, as well as some of these states sending specific National Guard assets to the border to help the Texas National Guard continue to increase the amount of border fencing and wire that is there. This actually comes on top of major negotiations here in Washington over a border package. The idea, if you guys will recall
tying the border package to Ukraine aid funding. But that now appears to be going down in flames after President or former President Donald Trump and now the GOP front runner says he does not want that to pay. That is ruffling some feathers in the Senate for Republicans who wanted to try and get this negotiated.
Here's what Senator James Langford from Oklahoma.
Had to say, Why give him this in an election year? The cover of this deal that you critics say, it's still going to let a lot of people in, but he gets to take a victory lap that he's gotten something done.
Yeah, well, it's definitely not going to let a bunch of people in. It's focused on actually turning people around on it. It is interesting Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, for Israel, and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. So we actually locked arms together and said we're not going to give you money for this. We want to change in law.
And now it's interesting a few months later, when we're fining it at the end, they're like, oh, just kidding, I actually don't want to change in law because the presidential election year, we all have an oath to the Constitution and we have a commitment to say we're going to do whatever we can to be able to secure the border.
So what do you make of all this, Crystal, There's a lot going on here.
If we missed you whenever you weren't here, it was it was mildly enjoyable to have some of the civil war maps again go viral and igniting some of that discourse.
But the border deal collapse is probably the bigger headline story out of all of us, because it was probably the last chance to get anything done before the twenty twenty four election, and now they're going to basically keep it in the election, considering how the House Republicans and the Speaker are saying, this is an absolute no go for us.
Just quickly, on the Supreme Court decision that you referenced there and this sort of like you know, potential constitutional crisis, it seems like both sides have somewhat de escalated on that front and avoided the worst of what could have happened there, So that is good.
Obviously.
I think the Supreme Court very clearly decided this correctly, that it's the federal government that has authority here, and already the actions of the Texas National Guarden of Governor Abbott probably led to the death of two of three migrants, including a mother and two children, who the US authorities were unable to reach in order.
To rescue them.
So on that piece, obviously, I think the Supreme Court was correct, and I think that all of these governors around the country and the dovetails with the other piece. They love to use this as a political issue. They love to do symbolic stunts such as the you know, willingness to send their own National Guard troops down to the border. But apparently many Republicans much less interested in
actually governing when it comes to this issue. And so it's sort of adorable to see Senator Langford who thought like, hey, guys, I thought we actually cared about this. I thought we actually wanted these measures imposed here, we negotiated a deal that gets ninety percent of what we've been asking for.
And suddenly you are making it plain as day that is more important to you to have a political wedge issue, a cudgel to use against President Biden, than you are interested in actually living up to the rhetorican solutions that you claim to support. Now, for me, personally, I don't support this legislation. I think it's draconian. I don't think
it will deal with the problem. I think, you know, it's incredibly harsh and just on the enforcement side, doesn't deal with any of the root cause issues, doesn't do nearly enough to eliminate the asylum backlog that really is sort of at the center of all of this.
So I'm happy that the.
House Republicans are interested in blocking it, but it just shows you. To me, Sager, I'm very curious on your take as well, Like it's a perfect example of how fake our politics are, how much of all of what these people are saying. I'm not just talking about Republicans now, but Democrats too. It's just like political signaling. I mean, Rowe versus Wait is a perfect example. On the Democratic side, they would rather have it as an issue than solve
the problem Trump and the threat to democracy. On the Democratic side, they would rather have it as an issue than actually put forward a candidate that could defeat Donald Trump as an example, and I think it's the same thing here with the border.
These people have been running.
Around acting like it's an invasion and this is existential and this is a war on our country. And when they're actually offered a deal that could do some of what they claim they want, now we can't give Joe Biden to win an election year.
So it shows you where their priorities actually are.
I'm very conflicted because I think rhetorically it sounds good.
I will say on that drowning incident.
It is in dispute from the Texas side, and they say that it's actually the Mexican's fault that happened, but we could put that aside for because those facts of
that have yet to be completely clear. It's complicated because when we think about this as a fix to the border, it's not necessarily one, because if we look back at some of the executive actions that the Biden administration took immediately after Trump, and I'm basically channeling the case for the House Republicans here, they're like, listen on, you removed the emergency declaration of the border, you stopped using the pandemic restrictions previously, you tried to get us out of
remain in Mexico, and you've continued to embrace the asylum policy. So it's not a problem of legislation. If you simply enforce the law, then we wouldn't be continuing to have this problem. In that case, they are true. Now I'll give the democratic side of this, which is that no present of the last four four administrations has actually enforced fully immigration law because Congress has not given them the requisite resources to actually quote unquote deal with the problem
we're talking here. As you reference asylum judges, Allegedly, this Porter deal does include some asylum judges and increase in some of the backlog, but it doesn't focus on some of the problems that we have in general of people who are economic migrants taking advantage of an asylum like system.
So if I were to look at this purely from a Republican point of view, I'd be like, no, screw you, man, Like I'm not going to hold hostage a to a foreign country of which I don't particularly want for a problem.
That you created.
Some of the details to here, Crystal are that this would effectively, as I understand it, the full legislation has not been released, they would allow five thousands, so the
border would close after five thousand migrants have passed per day. Now, you can quickly do the math of what five thousand is currently and you could see that it's several hundred thousand people that would continue to be allowed in and effectively legalize illegal immigration through some sort of quasi I like bargain system without any bargaining chips on the Republican side. So the issue I think is a this still legalizes
like illegal mass migration number one. But two, Well, no, I mean, five thousand people are coming across a border that's illegal.
But yeah, but soccer it's not like five thousands come across and it's just like and you're scot.
Free and you get to go.
Most The idea is, if you hit a daily average of five thousand, they can shut down the border and completely end due process and like throw out any semblance of following our laws or international laws. Which is why I think this is an outrageous approach. So it's the polar opposite of what you're saying. The idea here is not five thousand get to go in free. It's if we hit that limit, then we're going to do away
with due process and completely shut the border. That's exactly the sort of hard line tactics that Republicans have claimed that they want. In addition, with regard to it, you know, being tied together with Ukraine and the is relate, I mean, that's as much because of the Republicans as it is because of the Democrats, they claimed, And that's what Langford was saying, Like, you guys claimed you wanted to.
Put these two together. We put it together.
We negotiated the deal, and now when you see it, you're like, Nat, it's an election here. We didn't actually want this. And lastly, with regard to executive action. I mean, you know, it is always better to actually have legislation versus these one off executive action pieces. So I think that's nonsense that they're suddenly like, no, no, we don't want to have anything to do with it.
You just handle it.
You just deal with it with your limited powers that you have as president.
And as you said, even if Joe.
Biden said, like I want to enforce the law in as draconia manner as possible, he just literally doesn't have the resources and to back up for people who you know, may not be totally in mession in the details. And this is something you know, you and I have discussed many times, and I know.
You agree with this.
A big core of the problem here is the asylum process.
There's no doubt about that.
You have three million case backlog in the asylum courts. What that means is that people around the world, at this point this has taken on a life of its own. We're not just talking about Central and South America. We're talking about people coming from really all over the globe who know that they can show up and whether or not they have a legitimate asylum claim, can say I claim asylum and it's going to be years before their case works through the system. That is really the core
of the problem. And so this deal again which I don't support because of the Drakconian measures I just spoke to. But this deal does have additional asylum judges. I doubt it's sufficient. I doubt it will get rid of this three million case backlog that really is like.
The crux of this issue.
But I think if you're not talking about that piece, then you're not serious about dealing with the problem. To me, it just reveals like they're especially the House Republicans and certainly Donald Trump, are not actually serious about dealing with the problem. They don't actually live up to this rhetoric of like, oh my god, it's an invasion. It's the
worst thing that's happening in the entire world. They like it as a political issue, and they want to hold on to those images at the border and being able to solely blame Biden and run on it for Trump for twenty twenty four.
That's what they really want.
I think some of that can be true, but I respectfully disagree, because if five thousand people are going to be crossing per day, and as you're saying, deny them due process. We're giving people due process. Before it was in Mexico and you just had to wait there. Biden administration has reversed that policy. Now you get to come to this country after one hundred and eighty days, you get a work permit. It takes years to go through the asylum process. It's not fair. It's not fair to
people who are in the US. Most of these people are prime age working males who are you know, basically working low paid jobs. Is good for big business, but I don't think it's fair to anybody is involved, including the migrants and including us. But I mean it is to me. I think it's effectively legalized mass immigration. We're gonna have hundreds thousands of people who are coming here
who are economic migrants, are not asylum secrets. The vast majority of them have their asylum claims who are dismissed at the eventual trial to stay here for years and years and years, and they're allowed to work. I mean, that's basically mass migration. I mean it's one of those where they're allowed to stay. Now, in terms of deportation, we've had and haven't had any mass deportation in this country. Actually, basically since Obama, which is an inconvenient.
Thing for Trump. Trump says that he's going to do it whenever he comes back. We'll see.
But that's imported more people than Trump, by the way, but Barden Biden has deported more.
People than Trump has.
But again, the five thousand thing, I just think it's very I don't think it's fair the way that you're framing it, because again, this is actually the most draconian part of this legislation. It's not that the five thousand people that come in they just get a free pass.
I mean what we have right.
Asylum, Yes, free pass.
Yeah, that's sober. That's how it works right now with this decent is bad five thousand that's it.
Then there's no more due process than even people who have legitimate asylum claims, which some people truly do. They don't get their chance, they don't get to make the case. And I think that is wildly unfair. But I just think it's very dishonest to frame that as like, oh, these five thousand, it's just a free pass, and you're greenlighting this many, you know, one hundred thousand migrants a month. You can already look at the number they're coming across.
The numbers are very high. I don't deny that whatsoever. So it's the polar opposite. It's that you are cutting off the number of people who get to come in and claim asylum right now.
There is no limit.
They're saying, Okay, we're going to put in this five thousand limit, which again I don't support. But if you are an immigration hardliner, I don't see how you look at that and think that that's a step backward. That is a step forward. If you are an immigration hardliner.
Well I would put it this way, and I do consider myself a relative immigration hardliner, which is I think these people should all could apply for asylum in Mexico and then if they're legitimately allowed, then they can come in. That's probably going to be less than one percent of them. Right now, we have an insane situation. All of these Somalians and people from all over the world, as you said,
who are just coming across the border. They're going to stay here for years and years, and the likelihood of their deportation is nearly zero, even if they do commit crimes. And this is exactly kind of where I get to the issue about sovereignty means that you get to have control.
Now in this you're going to have some modicum of control.
Again, I would channel the House Republicans case, which I think is fair, is that you created a problem which genuinely did not exist as badly under Trump because you remove the remain in Mexico policy, and you fought tooth and nail in the Supreme Court in order to allow this mass asylum like process allowing to the release of approximately six to eight million.
People over the last three years.
That's genuinely disorderly, and that's dramatically much more than happened under Trump. Now, Trump had a couple of things to his benefit. He had remained in Mexico, but really what saved him is the pandemic. If we're all being honest. He was allowed to use the pandemic era policy at that time and CDC guidelines to basically make it so that people were not allowed to come in and even the limited amount under remain in Mexico were able to
enter the country. The issue, I think again though, comes back to a question of politics, and I don't think that you're wrong. I don't think that you are incorrect because Trump himself actually admitted this. We could take a listen to what he said at the rally where he's like, you're damn right, I want to take credit for killing this border deal.
Let's play it.
We cannot let this happen to our country. As the leader of our party. There is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America. It's not going to happen. I noticed that, and I'll fight it all the way. I noticed a lot of the senators, a lot of the senators are trying to say respectfully, they're blaming it on me. I said, that's okay, Please blame it on me, please, because they were getting ready to pass a very bad bill. And I'll tell you
what a bad bill is. I'd rather have no bill than a bad bill. A bad bill you can't have. And that's what was happening.
So that backs up what you're saying.
I think we can be honest at least about that Trump is there like I would rather have no bill than a bad bill. And I would also say this
for people who share some of my immigration politics. If people want to go and watch Rai Han Salam and others, they warned that if you have an incompetent president who has somebody who has immigration views that are like this, and if you have bad execution, as we genuinely saw under Trump where he was unable to get a bill pass, then you end up actually having some of the worst of both worlds.
But curious for your reaction to the Trump.
Segment, yeah, I mean he just says it out in the open, right. I mean, listen, there was I can't remember who it was one of the Republican senators who early on was like, listen, Republicans, you're not going to get a better deal than this under Trump. And the reason you're not going to get a better deal is because there is no way in hell that Democrats would allow an enforcement only bill with zero provisions for Dreamers,
with no pathway to citizenship for anyone. There is no way in hell they would agree to that under Donald Trump. The only reason that any of them would agree to this, which goes directly again everything they've said that they stand for on immigration for the past number of years, is because there's a democratic president. So when you're talking about government, and again, I'm glad they're blocking this bill because I
don't support it, But if you're talking about governance. It's not is this the perfect ideal everything that I want under the sun Bill. It's you said that this is an incredibly important problem. You said that these are some of the methods that you would go about fixing it. And now that it's on the table, do you actually care about the issue or do you just want a grandstand? And clearly Trump is indicating like, no, I just want a grandstand. I want to use this as a wedge issue.
And there are other Republicans who are even more forthright about not wanting to give Biden a quote unquote win in an election year. So it's led to people like James Langford. There are others who are like, wait a second, who are sincere apparently about the issue, and now that it's here, they're confused that, oh it turned down. The rest of you people weren't actually serious when you were making these claims. You just like the issue, you like
the problem hanging out there. You like to use it to beat up the Democrats and beat up Joe Biden. And you're not actually serious, that's what you know. It appears to me. And when they remain in Mexico policy, I mean just because you made the point like Biden wanted to get rid of it, the court said he couldn't.
It's still in place, So.
It's not like, you know, that's a major like, that's a lot of the Trump era immigration policy has actually remained in place. This would provide this president, and by the way, if Trump gets elected him as well with more power more like hardcore enforcement power at the border. So if this is an important issue for you, if you're an immigration hardliner, if you believe these measures are actually going to do something, everybody that is on that
side should be supporting it. And the fact that they're not shows you they'd rather play politics.
I think it's tough, Crystal. So I would put it to you this way. This is important as to Republicans. It is healthcare to people who support Bernie Sanders. So it's like, well, this is basically this is not even Obamacare, like in terms of what it would mean for healthcare. If we're going to put it in the comparable thing, Now, should you support it because it legally might get through maybe, or like, are you going to keep fighting for basically
the best of what you can get? If you were to able to take the House, the Senate, which you know, it's very much within the realm of possibility that Republicans control those and.
Then you're not going to get a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
That's what I mean.
Okay, but I would put it this way then, I mean, does that mean you should stop fighting for you know, Medicare for all or something like in comparison, but soccer.
If public option was on the table, even though it's not my ideal solution, I would say.
Go for it.
If expanding so if expanding social Security was on the table, which you know it was at one point during Build Back Better, I wouldn't say no because I just want to have this issue to run on in the next election. I would say, no, this is going to help people, This is important to me. We should embrace it and live to fight another day and keep pushing for more of what, you know, the direction that we think we should go in.
Yeah, it's tough.
I mean, I think just because the enforcement only is on the migration and it doesn't deal with the illegal immigration side here already, it does actually set up for you know, some sort of future fight which definitely could go against Republicans in terms of speaker Mike Johnson, let's put this up there on the screen.
He threw cold water on this.
Has actually been basically saying this from the beginning, because I've been talking to some of the people who are involved, and they're like, look, the entire Senate deal is fake regardless, because Johnson is already in huge trouble right now in the Republican Caucus because of some of the spending deals
that he's cut. If he allowed some sort of a silent and immigration bill to go through the Freedom Caucus and a lot of the immigration hardliners who barely he has two or three votes, you know, that are keeping him from getting his ass thrown out. Just like Kevin McCarthy, he would have the same issue. So he tweeted out quote. President Biden falsely claimed yesterday he needs Congress to pass a new law to allow him to close the southern border.
He knows that's untrue.
As I explained to him in the letter last year and have specifically reiterated to him, he can take executive action immediately to reverse the catastrophe he has created. That's kind of what I was talking about in the previously when I was trying to channel some of the else Republican and some of the more hardline talking points that
I've seen who are out there. Anyway, I'm curious what you think, Crystal, just in terms of how this will move forward, because one thing is correct, even if you can read, you know, this is getting a lot of attention and all that immigration is the worst issue for Joe Biden, and the longer this goes on, it is
worse for him. I mean, if anything, if I were to say that Biden won the election in twenty if we were sitting here in twenty twenty four after election day, I'd be like, he won because of Roe, and he won because, yeah, basically for Roe and Trump insanity. And if I were to say that Trump won, I would say he won because of Biden's age and immigration were probably the top two things that would contribute to that.
Uh.
Yeah, I think this is the worst issue. Well, it's one of the worst issues for Joe Biden now. So I think Israel has become a really bad issue for Joe Biden for different reasons of his right, because of his own base and how opposed they are to his approach.
So there's a lot going on.
But you know, there's a lot of analysis from roles who basically are like, see how clever Joe Biden is. You know, we offered this draconian bill, and now Republicans are being exposed as not caring about the issue, which, you know, I mean, I think that is true, but I don't really think that that message is going to be successful. I don't know that people are following the ins and outs to realize that Republicans have been exposed as just wanting to shamelessly demagogue on this issue and
not actually interested in solving the problem. So I don't really agree with that analysis. And there was also there was a study that just came out. It focused on European countries, but you know, as we've discussed before, a lot of the politics globally and certainly in Europe is like downstream and connected to what is going on here as well. And he's not the first Biden is not the first center left president to try to win electorally
by basically adopting hard right positions on immigration specifically. And there was just a new political science study that came out that was like, this doesn't work. It's not successful because you are giving credence to the arguments being.
Made by the other side.
Why would voters take like the watered down version of the argument versus you know, the real, genuine article in Donald Trump. No one's going to think Joe Biden is harder on the border, harder on immigrants than Donald Trump. And you're going to alienate the people in your own coalition who disagree with you on this issue, and you're going to, you know, really undermine their enthusiasm for your candidacy.
So I definitely disagree with those who are out there who think that this is like a brilliant political maneuver by Joe Biden.
I don't think so at all.
I think it's very likely to backfire and you know, not help him to win reelection.
I think that's all the way around.
I agree with that there's no way you can out immigration Donald Trump. I mean, it's just not going to.
Happen, because even in five thousand, he's going to talk about the issue all day.
It's not like the images are going to stop, right.
It's like, well, he could still say He's like, look, I'll get it to zero. It's one of those where even if he can't do it, you could say it so rhetorically, I think that immigration voters in general. I guess the only case for it would be to try and get it out of the news. But I don't see that happening either. Like we just said, it's going to be an issue, whether people like it or not. You know, that's a really interesting study. I need to
check that out. If I had to guess, it's like you said, it's that if you're centrist, you're just never going to be able to play kate voters who for whom this is the number one issue, and this is the number one issue for Republicans, Like I think it's
a you know, politically, just consider this. If you're an immigration voter, you're almost one hundred percent, or immigration hardline voter, you are almost one hundred percent voting in GOP primary, Like you are almost one hundred percent going to vote for the Republican candidate. Joe Biden is not going to cross you over now in terms of people who are upset about it and feel like it's chaotic and others.
I could maybe see the case, you know, for Biden, but you know, the left coalition point is not as an important one as well, because if you already got problems here with Israel. Now you're going to have some problems with the immigration groups and all this, and I'm skeptical as to their actual political power like nationally, but I definitely accept their political power intra coalitionally with the
Democratic Party. They could cause real issues for him if something like this went through, and for a lot of other Democratic candidates. So yeah, I think it's a bit of a wash. I think you're right, and I do think Trump will probably come out on top.
Yeah.
I mean, we've had elections before where Republicans really tried to make immigration the central issue. I think in twenty sixteen it was one of the central issues and it was obviously successful.
Donald Trump got elected in twenty eighteen. There was a big push to use this to.
Like migrant caravan, remember all that situation, and it wasn't successful in Red states. I think that in the combination of the migrant caravan thing and Kavanaugh sort of locked in Republican voters and kept them from straying from the flock, kept them energized, and perhaps blocked some upset elections in in red states across the country, but with swing voters
it was not successful. And my guests will be would be that you know, we've seen in the midterms this last time around, like they were trying to make immigration thing. They're certainly trying to make the economy thing a thing, and other issues won the day. I think, like you said, the people who are mostly voting on immigration are already Republicans.
I think they're already going to vote for Donald Trump.
I don't think Joe Biden, no matter how much of an immigration hardline liner he tries to make himself appear, at this point, I don't think there's any way in hell he's going to win any of those voters at this point. So I would be I would be very surprised if immigration ends up being the issue that wins
the day. And then the last thing I'll say about it is, you know, there are some signs that not only is the economy somewhat improving, but that voters are starting to feel a little bit better about the economy, and concerns about the economy and concerns about immigration go
hand and glove. You know, if you've got people who feel very insecure about their own finances looking for an outlet like that for what's going wrong for me, and you know, it's classic people come in the politicians like Trump are happy to come in and say it's their fault, it's the immigrants fault. They're the ones who are ruining your town, taking your job, et cetera, et cetera. People are much more open to that message when they feel
very economically insecure. So that'll be the other piece that's really important is how do people Do people continue to marginally feel a bit better about the economy as we move towards election day, or do they feel really insecure and are more open to those messages.
So that's the other thing.
I don't think those two issues are not separate, I guess is what I would say, how the economy is doing and how people feel about immigration.
No question, there's no It's not an accident that major immigration politics spike to the nineteen eighties, after the problems of the nineteen seventies and after the two thousand.
And eight financial crisis. Absolutely correct.
The only X factor I would say is some of these blue cities like New York, Chicago and others having a lot of migrants get bussed up there.
That could maybe be the only way that I.
Could see some of the dynamics change, because that's relatively new post twenty twenty two, at least at scale in terms of stressing issues. But that doesn't mean New York is going to go red. It could mean that it could go, you know, less blue than before. Maybe it actually might change the popular vote. But we'll see, and
I'm curious to see how it shakes out. So RFK Junior giving an interview recently where he confirmed some rumors that the Trump camp had actually reached out to him to serve as vice president.
Here's what he had to say.
He asked you that today, what would your response be.
I would not take that job. I'm flattered that President Trump would offer to me, but it's not something that I'm interested in him.
Did he reach out for his tea?
People from the team have reached out to me.
People from the team have reached out to me.
We are definitely going to ask, by the way, our RFK Junior focus group about this, whether this is something they want. By the way, you could support us there if you can, for our previeum member.
But what did you make of this, Crystal?
What did you make because I mean there is some high level jiu jitsu going on here.
If it's true, I don't think it'd be the worst move in the world.
Well, okay, so a few things.
First of all, I can't help but notice when whenever a politician gets to ask one of these questions, like he didn't say a hard no, right, there was a little bit of wiggle room left in there. He said, you know, I'm not interested in it.
Well that's different.
Maybe you'll get interested in it. Maybe they'll make you interested in it.
You know, it's not like, no, absolutely not, I'm running for president.
I would never do that. I think Donald Trump is atrocious. In fact, he says he's honored to be considered for the job, which you know, a real like absolutely no. I can't stand Trump and he needs to never be president again. Like no one would in that camp would be like, oh, I'm honored to be considered for vice president to Donald Trump. So I noted that. To me, that means the door's kind of open. He says this thing about people on his team breached out, and the
Trump people denied that this is the case. But you know, who's on your team can be very loosely defined. It could have been someone who's sort of like vaguely affiliated, you know, affiliated with him. But not directly on the payroll something like that. So I don't know what to make of it from the Trump perspective. I don't actually think it makes a lot of sense from the Trump perspective personally, because what does r of K Junior At this point and we'll talk about this in a moment.
He's only been able to get on one ballot. The polls that have been coming out don't show that he is taking more from Trump than Biden. It seems to be relatively split fifty to fifty. Many of the polls that include RFK Junior actually seem to.
Show Trump doing a little bit better.
And that scenario with him on the ballot, So it's not just not clear to me politically what Trump gets out of it. And he also has seemed to signal he really wants to have a woman as vice president, and you know, I think seems to be looking in that direction. So to me, it doesn't really totally add up.
It depends.
It's one of those where let's say he does go for let's say he does get on all the bout, it's gonna be very difficult. He's only gotten on one so far. He told us to get on all fifty we'll see I remain it's going to be a very very difficult uphill climb, and he's going to have to seriously hit in terms of his volunteers. It's going to cost a lot of money together out there. If we don't see that in the next couple of months, will relatively know whether it's going to happen. The second thing
that he floated was going on the libertarian ticket. Let's actually take a listen to that because that would inform some of the calculus for Trump.
Let's see what he had to say in a recent SCNN interview.
Is it possible that you will seek, as you are running as an independent, you will seek still to be the Libertarian candidate, which would assure you getting on all fifty state ballots.
Is that's something that we're looking at. We have a really good relationship with Libertarian Party. I'm going to be speaking at the California the Libertarian Party convention. I think it's next week or maybe a couple of weeks. And then we're talking about me talking speaking in New York. But you know, so that is and then we have our own political party now in the six states, which have rules that make that give us an advantage to have our own political party.
We're not going to ask you.
I ask you the question. I ask you the question.
Yeah, Well, we are talking to the Libertarian Party, and I feel very comfortable with most of the values the Libertarian Party, and you know, we, like I say, we have good relationships. I'm talking regularly to libertarian groups, so we'll continue to do those talks. I can't give you a headline news story today, Mike Climbs, Sorry, ask about something different, Okay.
I actually think this would be the best strategy for him. I just saw that the Libertarian Party is on the ballot in all of these states, especially the major and competitor one is they've done the ballot access work, etc.
It would generally make sense.
And because we've seen previously between two to three percent of the vote go libertarian, especially when Trump is on the ballot, like Joe Jorgenson previously in the twenty twenty election twenty sixteen that actually did pretty well as well. Imagine if the Kennedy name was there. If so, if
I were Trump. Historically, many these libertarian voters are people who have crossed over from the Republican ballot and or would have voted for Trump, especially if he got libertarian, I would want him on my ticket because it'd be one of those where that is a chaos factor. If he remains independent and he's not on the states that
really matter in terms of ballot then you're right. But it's one of those calculus which he doesn't have to make this decision crystal until the convention in June and July, so he's got several months to kind of marinate, and by that time we're gonna know what the ballot, access and all of that looks like. So you know, in terms of that, even though he splits equally, it's just
enough of a chaos factor. And considering how Iiden can't get Kennedy on his ticket but Trump plausibly could, then yeah, I could see it happening. But there are a lot of other reasons, Like you said, here's the truth, Like RFK Junior has many liberal positions. I don't mean in a denigrating way, but it could be problem for the Republican coalition. I think it'd probably be fine just because as a valance wise and like for some of the voters and others he might be able to bring in.
It would probably net net out. The GOP establishment would definitely have a problem with that. I don't know if Trump even particularly cares. So, yeah, there's some interesting analysis here.
I don't know.
There is no way that Trump picks a VP candidate that he is not one thousand percent sure is going to be absolutely loyal to him in.
Every cipical circumstance.
Right because even though Mike Pence, you know, licked his boots for ninety nine point nine percent of the four year term. When it came down to it and he was like, how about you subvert the constitution and rig the election for me, Mike Pence was like, no, I'm.
Not going to do that.
Trump is not going to risk having someone with even a tiny sliver of a shred of backbone and independent thought and listen, maybe rf K Junior would just go along to get along with whatever he wanted him to do. That's possible. I have no idea, but Trump doesn't know that doesn't know either. There's no demonstrated record of, you know,
absolute fealty. There's no demonstrated record of like defending the most insane and outrageous things that Trump has ever done, and so there is no doubt in my mind that whoever Donald Trump chooses is going to be someone who has a consistent record of absolutely slavish devotion to Donald J.
Trump.
On the libertarian piece, this is starting to get some Cornell West vibes. And I say that with respect to Cornell West, who as an intellectual I obviously and you know, a thinker, an activist I have a deep respect for. But in terms of the way that he's run his campaign, you know, rf K Junior, now he started in the Democratic primary, then he jumps out and he's an independent. Now in some states he's formed his own party now with a libertarian ticket. And it's like, this is getting
really messy. And the other thing is I don't know the backstory of why Cornell West, you know, dropped from being a Green Party candidate. But Green Party, Libertarian Party, these aren't just names on a ballot or like theoretical you know ideas. These are actual parties with actual structures
and their own actual internal politics. And there will certainly be people and we've seen you know, some of this commentary online who are libertarians who have been activists within the Libertarian party who are like, who is this guy?
He's not a libertarian.
You know.
Here's ten positions that he has taken, including his you know, devotion to Israel, unconditional support for Israel. Many of them have issue with that do not fit with the Libertarian Party with my values, and no, even though maybe he could get a higher percentage electorally, like, what does that matter if we don't have a candidate who actually reflects
Libertarian Party values consistently down the line. I think that's an issue for him as well as you can't just like be like, guess what, guys, I'm gonna be the Libertarian Party nominee.
They have their own process and their own politics as well.
I was really interested to see Dave Smith.
He's probably the most prominent libertarian that I know of who hosts the podcast frequently a guest on Rogan, he says, I've admired many aspects of the RFK Junior campaign. His opposition to COVID, tyranny, vax mandates, the Ukraine War, and the deep State has been nothing short of heroic. However, his support for the war in Gaza is disqualifying. We are the anti war, non interventionist party and that is
non negotiable period. He will not be our nominee. I will do everything in my power to see to that.
Somebody like Scott Horton also comes to mind, who we've had here on the show, very prominent anti war libertarian, and I will say that is one area where RFK Junior would have trouble with libertarians on Israel specifically because so much, especially of the modern electoral libertarian movement, can be traced back to the Ron Paul two thousand and eight twenty twelve campaigns, which were so foundational in the Iraq War and an opposition to the global war on terror.
So if we consider it that way, especially if we get embroiled in a bigger Middle East conflict, it would be incredibly difficult to have.
You know, let's be real, it's not a large.
Group of people of people who vote libertarian, and within that there's a critical mass who being anti war is like the most important thing to them, almost in many cases more important to them than any of the economic policies, by the way, which I respect and I have that's a lot of friends I have on the libertarian anti war kind of side, is because I think that they see this so critically for the future of the US and just how much it ruined America in the post Iraq War, post two.
Thousand and one period.
So, now that I consider it that way, and especially some of Dave's commentary on that, it really could be a problem for him if he did.
Try to get that way.
Yeah, I think so.
And you know, I am really interested to see some of the thoughts of the focus group that we have been in paneled for. What is it like a week from now, We're gonna be lead talking to them. We'll get their thoughts on all of this, you know, potential Libertarian Party, potential Trump VP, et cetera. But you know, the difficulties in getting ballot access.
It's not rfk's fault.
This was intentionally, especially post Ross Perrot, both of the parties, whatever states they controlled, they decided to make this basically impossible to accomplish. And it's outrageous. It's an offense to democracy. It shouldn't be that way.
You know.
I'm not an RFK junior supporter, but he should be on the ballot in all fifty states of the series campaign. He's raised serious money. I mean, as a real operation, it should be possible for him to get on the ballot. In all fifty states, so that voters, if they want to avail themselves of that choice, have that option available
to them. But because of the you know, dominance of the two party system, the way they basically collaborated to shut out any and all other voices, it's going to be very difficult for him.
And I doubt I don't know.
I'm not privy to like internal Libertarian party discussions, and I don't know any activists in the Libertarian Party, etc. Really, but I sort of doubt that that's going to be a real solution for him in the end.
Either.
Yeah, it could be very much but yeah, and as you said, I completely agree with you in terms of ballot access and all that. By the way, if anybody in the state of the Virginia wants to contact me, I will sign it in order to get him on the ballot. But it's a very very difficult climb upwards in order to try and make that happen.
Let's move on to Trump.
This is a big, big story, not just for reasons that the media wants you to care about, but for Trump personally and how we can inform some of the stakes that will inform his needing to win the presidency in twenty twenty four.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
You guys might have been following the second of case involving the defamation or allegedly, I guess now proven of eging Carol, eging Carol, if we'll all remember, had accused Trump of sexuals assault in a previous defamation case in which she alleged that he had defamed her in her comments whenever he denied it. The jury did not find necessarily that the quote unquote sexual assault, arny that had happened, but they did find that defamation had occurred.
I'm just phrasing it. Well, let don't.
Correct you on that soccer.
They actually did find that sexual assault, not rape occurred. Okay, that was there were three options available to them, and this was a civil trial, so the standard is different. It's a preponderance of evidence, are more likely than not. There were three options that he raped her, that he sexually assaulted her, or that there was inappropriate touching, and they decided yanimously that there was sexual assault.
Thank you for correcting me, because that has been incredibly confusing. Major Trump defense has been. The jury did not find the actual allegation. And then when I had read in terms of the sexual assault and or harassment, what the jury had found, it didn't make any sense because of the connection there, as you said, to the actual defamations, Like you can't necessarily find somebody guilty of defamation if
you didn't find that the underlying claim had any merit whatsoever. Anyway, as we pointed out, it happened in the first case, Trump immediately came out and allegedly, according to Ejen Carroll, to famed her. So she immediately then filed another defamation case against Trump. This one the jury award, now, as we showed everybody, is some eighty three million dollars, which is an extraordinary sum of damages to be awarded to
Egene Carroll in this trial. Now, the reason that matters is because it challenges Trump's own personal financial decisions and some of the legal problems that he's found himself in. When we connected to the fraud trial that previously happened in the state of New York, which accused him of artificially inflating the asset values of his properties.
Let's go ahe and put this up there on the screen.
They show here from the New York Times quote is that the jury's decision to award eighty three million to Ejene Carroll has come at a very opportune time for the former president. Mister Trump and his family business are currently bracing for the judge in that case to impose a punishment in the coming weeks that could also reach hundreds of millions of dollars. As we relate back to
that New York case. The enterprise that they say here is that Trump isn't going to be taken down by a bunch of criminal cases, but the enterprise that is Trump is going to be picked apart by these civil cases, and at some point there is a risk of collapse, collapse being connected to his own personal financial situation, and that actually does seem to be a genuinely existential threat crystal in a way that some of these legal charges and others are not in that the other legal fees
and other problems that Trump has, and all these criminal cases and all that these are ones where he could fundraise off of and of which people can pay his bills, supporters and others. This is a well established, kind of established way whenever political opponents and political supporters and another that are under or under trial or have to pay
legal expenses. The RNC and others can chip in, but this is one that genuinely impacts his own personal fortune and he can't get the same level of bailout that
he would need necessarily. And then even if did, just imagine a scenario where he'd have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to pay off personal defamation lawsuits and business problems, which kind of undercuts so much of the foundational case for why he was the person in the first place to host The Apprentice and build the image in the brand that he did that eventually carried him into the presidency.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, can Trump before a eighty three.
Million dollar suit without I'm sure it hurts, But is it you gonna make or break him?
I don't think so.
When you add another potentially three hundred million dollars, which is what they're asking for in the civil fraud case with regard to his business, I mean probably he can still stomach that, but it's real money, even for a billionaire like Donald Trump. And he said before he has, you know, over four hundred million dollars cash on hand, which is you know, sufficient to cover those expenses, but just barely.
I'm not one of.
These, you know people who think, oh, Donald Trump really isn't actually rich, it's like all a scam and a fraud and a house of cars or whatever. He has plenty of property, has plenty of assets. He is genuinely a very very wealthy person and very likely a legitimate billionaire. But we are talking about sums of money at this
point that are extremely consequential for him. I don't think there's any doubt about that, you know, with regard to Egen Carroll and this particular you know, finding of defamation coming on top of the finding that he did again, this is a civil trial, so the evidence is different. He's not going to prison for this, but in the civil trial finding that he did sexually assault Egen Carroll, those you know decades ago.
You just have to there's two pieces.
Number One, it's one of the first times that Donald Trump has ever been found like things have ever gone against him in terms of accountability. We're so used to him operating in a political sphere where there are just no consequences for the many things that he does that are like totally outside of what any other politician could get away with.
So it's always a lesson.
For me to remember as we watch these criminal cases unfold and develop, that the results for him in the courtroom have been very different than the results for him in the political sphere. So that's number one. Number two, it kind of cuts in the other direction. If any other candidate, if this was Joe Biden and a jury found unanimously that he had sexually assaulted Tara Reid or some other female accuser, whenever, this would be one of the biggest stories in the country. I mean, it would
be incredibly consequential. And yet because it's Donald Trump, it's like kind of a blip. I mean not to say he doesn't get any coverage, but it's certainly not the number one story in the country.
It's not the number one.
Political story in the country. And that is kind of remarkable.
Oh, absolutely agree, Crystal.
And the thing is it both highlights the problems for Trump in the courtroom and also his political ability to survive something that anybody else would never get away with, Like you said, with Biden, I mean, even if we consider just some of the previous things that happened with Biden or in terms of media treatment and ane of that, But if we had an actual case that went through it just would it would be completely different in the
way we think about it. I was fascinated to see this, which MAGA folks have been attacking Nikki Haley on Haley appears to be trying to make a bid for these voters in the Republican Party who don't like Trump and who are very concerned kind of by a behavior, kind of more normy politics, by supporting actually the Egen Carol verdict.
Here's what she had to say.
I absolutely trust the jury and I think that they made their decision based on the evidence. It cracks that people trying to over analyze. I just tell the truth as I see it. I think there have been politics played with prosecutors that have brought on some of these cases. I think there's been politics played even with the judges. But I do think American juries still get it right. They listen to the evidence, they make the decision based on the evidence, and I do still trust any American
that sits on a jury. I trust that they're making the right decision. But this goes to a bigger thing, John, We've got a whole other year of this, So what we watched was Donald Trump throw a temper tantrum the night of the New Hampshire primary because forty three percent of Republicans didn't vote for him. Then I see him throw a temper tantrum in this courtroom. The reality is are we going to have a country in disarray and a world on fire and deal with more temper tantrums?
So I was fascinated by those Commons Crystal, because that's a great pitch for the general election. But when you're running in a primary where people see Trump as the messiah who has not come since Reagan, what are you doing? They don't believe. They think that the media is rigged. They think that the court system and all that is rigged. They don't know any of the details about eging.
Carroll and all that.
They're like, they're out to get him, they're trying to bankrupt him. He's fighting for us and all that. So I just don't get her strategy. It's one of this, like which primary running in Lady.
Well, to me, it's an indication that she's basically accepted she's not going to be.
The Republican nomination, and so she's pitching.
For whatever her other future career prospects may be because earlier in the primary, she was much more careful about how she presed her criticism of Donald Trump and you know, keeping the kid gloves on and never going too far, and you know, being very sort of like vague in her concerns and complaints about him. So not just with this, but we've seen other indications that she's now going sort of like all in Chris Christy never Trump anti Trump lane.
She doesn't have a path to the Republican nomination barring Trump, like dying or being thrown in prison. So I think this is more about her positioning herself for I don't know, media, career board position, whatever she thinks maybe the next step for her personally.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I mean, it's just one of those where this was also like a major red line, you know for a lot of Trump Maga folks. I saw Jason Miller works with the Trump campaign being like, this is it. She will have no place.
Who knows.
It could all be talk, she could be a VP, but I personally I doubt it. If you're going to be talking this way.
Going what were the T shirts she was selling his T shirts? Like Trump said, what they were banned from the Maga movement or something like that, and then she was selling t shirts that said banned. It just feels like I may be wrong about the language, but is that what it was banned?
I would here permanently barred Nikki Haley for permanently barre best woman win.
Yeah, permanently permanently barred because Trump said they would permanently barred anyone who supported her from the Maga movement, and so she leaned into it. I mean again, like in an earlier phase, she wouldn't have done that when she actually thought it was an active possibility that she might be the Republican nominee. Now I think it's just sort of like a yolo moment, and let me position myself
for whatever other career I'm looking forward to. That's not going to be president, and it's not going to be a Republican presidential Dominie.
Well, I hear Boeing still needs some help, Nikki, so because he's had such a good velo last time. Just to highlight what you said as well, let's put the Bloomberg tear sheet, guys, please up on the screen. Is that they say that the cash stock pile that they currently have is some four hundred and fifty million. Genuinely is at risk here if both of these verdicts go against Trump from the eighty three million to the initial
three or four hundred million. And that's one of those two where you know you highlight it correctly, where look, four hundred million dollars hurts. No matter how much of a billionaire billionaire you are, period, he could be worth ten billion, that's still a substantial chunk of your net worth. It also kind of misunderstands financially billionaires. I mean, most of these people do not have a lot of cash on hand. In fact, that's usually not very tax efficient
for them. They try to keep it as tied up in tax advantage assets like real estate, stock and others, and have very little cash on hand. Then they borrow against those ass So even if it did force him, like you were saying, to liquidate a portion of his portfolio, that's still very difficult.
That's not all that easy. You got to sell it, you.
Got to find a buyer, you gotta have you know, equity guys and all that come in and all this. So this could significantly complicate his life no matter what if.
This happens, absolutely, And there's another layer with this civil fraud trial, which what I read said they're expecting a verdict as soon as this week in terms of you know, he's already been found that he committed fraud. Now it's a question of how much money he's going to have to pay. So he's not going to get off scott
free with this one. There's going to be some kind of penalty, and along with that judgment, it is possible that he'll be forced to liquidate his assets in New York, which are really central to his brand, you know, you think about like Trump Tower, and some of his most
iconic properties are in the state of New York. And the other thing, Soccer, I'm sure you have noticed with super rich people too, is that even when they have like millions and millions of dollars in the bank and tons of property and assets and stockholdings and whatever, they can still feel poor somehow, even, you know, and they take a hit to their bottom line or their cash d windows or whatever. So I think these judgments, I think they bite, you know, I don't think that they're nothing.
He clearly in the courtroom with Egen Carroll was very agitated, very unhappy, very upset. Couldn't sort of like keep that to himself. It was incredibly clear. And so we'll see what happens with this civil fraud judgment. But you know, for me, the bottom line with all of these things, as I said before, is that the outcomes for Trump in the courtroom very different from the outcomes for Trump politically. His normal tactics and tricks and maneuvers and whatever aren't
working with these judges aren't working with these juries. And for all of the sense, this man is invincible and teflon don and every ball, every bounces, always bounces his way. That has not been the case in the you know, in the sport setting thus far.
So we'll see what happens from here.
Yep, good flag. All right, let's get to it. Ron.
We're getting new details this morning about that deadly attack that killed three US service members in Jordan on the border there with Syria, including who those service members were.
This is unbelievably tragic. Put this up on the screen.
Three young black soldiers, all based out of the state of Georgia, are now dead because of those attacks.
We read you a little bit about them.
Three American soldiers killed in a drone attack at a US base in Jordan this weekend were Army reservists from a Georgia based engineer unit. William Rivers, Kennedy Leyden Sanders, and Brianna Alexandria Moffett were killed in that January twenty eighth attack when an unmanned aerial system crashed into the container units they were using for housing on the base. At least now these numbers have gone up. At least forty additional US troops were injured that according to Pentagon officials.
This comes, of course, on top of the two Navy Seals who were dead after attempting to intercept weapons that Iran was allegedly.
Sending to Yemen, the.
Service members who were done in a training exercise, and quite a number of US service members who have suffered also traumatic brain injuries and other injuries in additional of these similar style attacks.
And as we covered.
Yesterday, Sager, we've had something like more than one hundred and sixty of these attacks on our service members in the region. And one of the big questions that we immediately had yesterday was how the hell did this happen?
How did our air.
Defenses fail to the point where this suicide drone attack was able to succeed. We're now getting some answers, at least, this is the official answer coming from the US government, as told by the Wall Street Journal. We can put this up on the screen. They say the US failed to stop a deadly attack on an American military outpost Jordan when the enemy drone approached its target at the same time that a US drone was also returning to
the base. This, again, according to US officials, the return of that US drone led to some confusion over whether the incoming drone was friend or foe. Officials have concluded so far, though they cautioned the inquiry into the attack was in an early stage. So what do you make of these revelations and the details that they are providing US so far?
Soccer, Well, there are a couple of terrifying options. Number one is that it's not true and they're hiding the truth from US. I would not dismiss that possibility. There's been a lot of discussion Crystal about whether this really did occur in Jordan or not, because they could have complicated had legal complication problems if this did occur in.
Syria and others.
But I'll put that to the side, and let's just at least, you know, let's try and take the Pentagon
at their word. If we take them at their word, then our billion dollar weapons systems are you know, air defense systems that we spend hundreds of millions of dollars that allegedly are keeping safe all of our thousands, tens of thousands of American service members who are currently in the Middle East, if they are able to fail because a US drone is in proximity, and that's all it takes to allow an Iranian drone in there, and that could kill three American service members while they are sleeping,
on top of wounding some thirty four others, with eight
in critical condition. That's pretty terrifying. That's actually was my immediate kind of response to this, is that we are not nearly as prepared for twenty first century conflict as the Pentagon and the media and everybody wants you to thinkne The drone warfare, specifically the asymmetric warfare that we've seen pioneered by the Ukrainians and the Russians in the Ukrainian War of the last two years, has accelerated this to the point where you have groups like the Huthis
that can cause multi billion dollars worth of damage and shut down the Red Sea if they want to with very little sophisticated technology. You can have the greatest navy on Earth, which we do, with the greatest weapon systems and all that, and you can't stop same here with US Suicide drone is that sometimes, or even suicide drone and all that, it just means one way drone, Just so everybody's clear. Some people don't like the terminology, but whatever we want to call it, it doesn't cost that
much money. We're talking in the thousands of dollars, and we have hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment that have been bamboozled and that failed on this occasion, and now you have the lives of our people at risk. I'm honestly terrified of what this means for what a future US conflict is going to look like where our service members are there, because the signs are everywhere from
the Hoho Thies to this. But don't forget either, those Patriot missiles that missed, those ballistic missiles that were launched from inside of a rock that landed on top of a US base. That was actually the biggest flag to me, because that is supposed to be the most conventional type military technology we've been preparing for.
And if that's able.
To penetrate a US air defense system, I mean, come on, they always tell us like, don't worry North Korean missiles never going to make it here. You watch all this going on, I don't believe you. I don't believe it at all, especially because none of it's been really battle tested yet.
And there's some real parallels with the sense of complacency that Israel had before October seventh as well. I mean, they had really relied on this super high tech you know, multimillion dollar fence surveillance. We've got the automatic machine guns pointed in at the Gaza Strip. And the very first thing that reportedly Hamas militants did is they used effectively, like cheap off the shelf drones to disable all that tech.
It didn't take that much and leave them completely exposed and allow the horizon atrocities that occurred on October seventh to occur. So I think that's a very important, you know, part of this story and has a lot of implications for current warfare and the future of warfare and the pain that a ragtag gorilla group can inflict even on
the greatest superpower in the entire world. So there's that piece of it, and then immediately, of course, there's the huge quot questions, which we talked about yesterday, of what happens now, because the idea that Israel's assault on Gaza was going to just remain in the Gaza strip is
now over. It's been over, but no one can pretend anymore when you have over one hundred and sixty attacks on our service members throughound the region, which once again begs the question, what the hell are they even doing? They're sitting as sitting ducks to start with. I mean, there is no reason why these three young Army reservists
should be dead now and their families grieving. There is absolutely no reason that they should have been there in the first place, let alone the way that the Biden policy of unconditional support for Israel has incredibly predictably led to this very result. Sadly, it was only a matter of time before there were direct losses and casualties as
a result of that policy. You have, obviously what's happening in the Red Sea with our strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and the fact that you know, our policymakers they claim this isn't a war.
I don't know what a war is if it's not.
You know, a repeated sustained military engagement, which is apparently what they're planning here, in spite of the fact that they have admitted Joe Biden himself admits we know this is not going to work. Then you add to this, this is insane. This is a good catch from Ken Klippenstein. Put this up on the screen. I don't know even what to say about this. But the Pentagon is saying there are no US troops in Yemen, but the White House is saying there are US troops in Yemen.
Who's right? Who knows?
Why can't they agree on this what should be like a basic fact that the American people should be well aware of, especially given now our attack on the Hoothies. I mean, is it ignorance that's terrifying? Is it lies that's also terrifying?
What do you make of this? Saber?
The fact that they can't even agree on something as basic as where our US service members are even located at this point.
They at let's be clear they are absolutely on ground and Yemen, because that was a slip up, and this gets to I cover the Pentagon, and I know all their tricks. One of the things that they would do is to avoid saying that we had troops on the ground in a certain place. The threshold would be usually mandatory reporting if troops are there for a certain number of days. It can be ninety, it can be one
hundred and eighty. There's certain various different thresholds one hundred and eighty going back all the way to the Vietnam.
So what do you do.
You send some troops for one hundred and seventy nine days, you pull them out one hundred and seventy nine day. So when you do that, you don't have to report it to Congress. The other way to get around it is to tend contractors. Is to hire contractors and send them in on various danger missions, but to support them with the US military and basically just play an accounting gimmick where technically you don't have US service members who are on the ground, but you have a combined force
let's say that's below said threshold. You can have at some point between four to five thousand people on the ground in Syria, and technically, according to Congress, there's only two hundred and fifty there. I literally watched it happen
whenever we were in the whole counter isis thing. So when they're claiming they don't have troops on the ground here, the technical definitions for all of this become so like nitty gritty for the way that they can deny it that in the spirit of it, they are almost certainly not telling the truth. And you know, if you think about it, we are currently conducting military operations inside of Yemen.
It would be insane to think that there were at least some US troops, some US connected assets that are there on the ground. We've seen throughout all of our military campaigns. It's very difficult to do everything solely from the air. Maybe they're connected assets, allies, whatever. So I
absolutely believe that Ken is telling us the truth. I think the White House probably just slipped up and tell and accidentally revealing it in their notes locations, because when it comes to the spirit of it, let's just be very clear, there's absolutely shenanigans that are going on behind the scenes, and this is how they always.
Get away with it.
Yeah, And I mean there's so many issues here. Obviously, there's the fact that you know, they did not seek approval from Congress, and this is unconstitutional. Is a number of members on both the right and the left have indicated their concerns. There's a plan for an ongoing military campaign the US. The administration you know, swears all this isn't an active war and we're not looking for escalation.
I mean, just turn it around.
If we had some country repeatedly bombing us and with boots on the ground in our country, I'm pretty sure we would see that as an act of war. There would not be any ambiguity about like, oh, well, we didn't technically get the congressional authorization. No, if we were being repeatedly bombed in a sustained military campaign, which by.
The way, has caused deaths in.
Yemen, and we had boots on the ground of a foreign government in our country, you better believe that we would understand quite clearly that these were acts of war and that we were at war with this other government. So let's keep that in mind for one thing. But you know, to get back to where we started with these three US service members and the attack by these
militias that receive funding and training from Iran. As we discussed yesterday, you know, the instant reaction from all the most psychopathic neo cons on the Republican side of the aisle was time to go to war with Iran and let's bomb the hell out of them.
You know, we've got to strike back, etc. Etc. And the media class does the.
Snow favors either, because that's always the direction that they push in as well, even though the heart of the problem here, the core of the issue is our unconditional support for Israel and our unwillingness to push for a ceasefire. When there was a you've period six days of a ceasefire, these attacks stopped, and our service members and our country were much much safer. So here is a reporter pushing John Kirby, spokesperson John Kirby, or strikes on Iran. Let's take a listen to his response.
Is the president currently actively considering potential attacks inside Iran.
We are not looking for a war with Iran, We are not seeking in conflict with the regime in the military way, and as I said in the opening, we're not looking to escalate here. This attack over the weekend was escalatory, make no mistake about it, and it requires a response, Make no mistake about that. I will not get ahead of the president's decision making.
You're not saying either way whether striking inside Iran is or isn't.
We are not thinking for a war with Iran, MJ. I am not going to speak to the president's decisions.
So hopefully that is accurate.
Hopefully they are not looking to escalate, and hopefully they don't want war with the Run and critically are going to do what it takes to avoid a war with the Run. But the most important thing they could possibly do, in addition to whatever the retaliatory response is, is to push for and secure a ceasefire. That would be the best path to de escalation. Is that if that is
in fact what they want. And by the way, Soccer, there was actually an Axios report that had administration officials acknowledging that that was the case, that all of these attacks and tensions, et cetera stem from Israel's assault on Gozen are.
Support of it.
So it's not like they don't understand the nature of what we're facing in the region right now.
Yeah, Look, it's all obvious and it just gets to the games that are played, and I don't want to forget the three people who are killed here, you know, in the beginning, And that's why it really bothers me. I mean, even let's consider this this base where this happened, Crystal.
You know how it was in Jordan. It was on the border with Syria.
For a reason, to support all of these black ops that are going on side of Syria. The justification for the troops there is that they're fighting isis this is laughable.
It's twenty twenty three. Why are they there?
Why are these army reservists somehow being called up for duty and sent there in support?
What what are they doing?
No one will tell you the answer to that question because it is so outrageous and nonsensical. And instead it comes to this of like, all, you're gonna bomb Iron or not? Is that not on the table. It's like, look, even if we bomb Iraq and Syria, and I guarantee you we could take out the specific unit or whatever that has done this, it didn't happen in a vacuum. We tried very hard in Iraq. We tried to kill our way out of the insurgent problem.
Didn't work.
It only worked whenever we tried to try and deal with the political problems that we're fueling the insurgency. And frankly, even that had very limited success, required a lot of time, material, money, troop debts and all of that, and we eventually ended up pulling out. But the limited amount that we ever have made any progress in the country was commitment and to try to deal both with fighting insurgents but to
deal with the political problems that are underneath there. It is very obvious where all of this stems from, and it is also obvious though the Biden administration doesn't want to deal with it. Okay, but then you were signing us up for a continued tit for tat thing like this, and this, unfortunately, could just be opening salvo. Three troops killed here, who knows how many killing a response?
What does the response look like.
Let's hope it's not a disaster and that people don't die in the initial response, and then what because then if people do, then we're going to be responding to the response. That's exactly how these things play out, going all the way back to Gulf of Tonking and others.
It doesn't happen just immediately.
It's a slow thing that you can't even necessarily recognize in real time where the turning points were. But if I were to guess, I think to who the action was probably it. I mean, that just really is what put the military operations outside the theater. And what bugs me again is that Israel is not paying for any of this. Israel is not doing any of this, but they're the ones who are responsible.
We have somehow.
You know, we're all paying a global Israel tax on our shipping, on our military deployment for what like this is not something that is in our.
Overall strategic interest.
And you know, I wish we could look those three, the families of those three people in the face and give them a better explanation for why they were in harm's way in the first places.
It is so sad, It is so tragic, and it really also underscores the fact that all of these neocons who are constantly hungry for war, it won't be them. They're not going to be the ones right who are sleeping at a barracks and have a suicide drone kill them in their sleep. It's not going to be their sons and daughters it's not going to be their loved ones.
We all know who this burden would fall on. And the political class has next to no connection or care ultimately for their lives, for their dreams, for their aspirations, and it's utterly disgusting. There is also a very ominous uh situation brewing conflict at the Rafa border in the Gaza Strip, and this has become a really critical area because for a variety of reasons. I mean, for one thing, it is the critical border crossing that the Gaza Strip
shares with Egypt. For another reason, you know, after Northern Gaza, after everybody was basically forced down of there, the million plus people who lived in Northern Gaza force the south. Many of them went to Kanyunis. Then Kanyunis came under heavy bombardment. Many of them now fled to the Rafa area. So you have over a million Palestinians living in this area.
It's packed densely.
If you look at the photos, it's just tent after tent after tent. And now the Israelis are saying, oh, if we actually want to come close to accomplishing our supposed military objectives of getting comas in the Gaza strip while we're to have to attack the Rafa area.
That's the next piece of the puzzle.
Well, Egypt is really pushing back in an aggressive manner on the budding Israeli plans for this part of the Gaza strip. Let's put this up on the screen. So this is from Middle East Monitor. The headline here is Egypt told Palestinian factions of decision to prevent Israel from invading Rafa. Let me read from the report because this
is very consequential. In form, Palestinian sources reported Sunday, Egypt told the Palestinian factions of its firm decision not to allow the Israeli occupation to invade the Palestinian Egyptian border zone at Rafa. The sources pointed out Egypt had stressed that quote, any attack on the Egyptian Palestinian border is
an attack on Egyptian national security. Palsainian resistant factions praise the Egyptian decision and considered it a safeguard of borders and sovereignty, noting Egypt is firm against the displacement project. That is the you know, the idea floated by many cabinet ministers pushed aggressively by many cabinet ministers to push Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip entirely and into Egypt.
A few days ago, the head of egypt State Information Service said the Israeli endeavor to control the Philadelphia cord or that's this border region in the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt is expected to threaten Egypt Israel relations and Sogeri comes amid reports that some sort of operational plan and activity in the Rafa region is imminent. Also reports that Israel is saying they want to, you know,
take greater security control over this crossing. And I don't think it's an accident that this more aggressive posture from the Egyptians of basically saying hell, no, we're not going to allow it, We're not going to be party to This also comes on the heels of the ICJ decision that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide, which further puts pressure on Egypt to be no party to that whatsoever.
Yeah, it's a big problem for them.
I mean, it's a giant mess because of the tunnel network that is currently concentrated mostly under the Rafa crossing, but more importantly because they pushed all of the humanitarian The entire humanitarian situation is now consolidated there. So how exactly are you going to move people out of said region? Where are they supposed to go? It would only it would honestly probably be even worse in some cases, just because it's so much more concentrated, and because the defenses
and other things. In many cases, you could consider this like not a last stand per se, but at least the last stand in infrastructure for a lot of Hamas, because it's the last kind of area that they have pretty good command and controls. Very likely also where all of the Israeli hostages are raising questions there about how you're going to you know, get these people to save them, if that's sustensibly even the goal. So I think it's
a nightmare situation. And it's actually probably outside of Lebanon, which we're about to talk to. This is this sleeper area where you could see major international tension. Egypt has long kind of been ignored throughout this entire thing. I know, there's a lot of questions like why won't the Egypt take them? Well, first of all, a lot of the Palestinian leadership and others don't want to leave the Gaza Strip because they fear they won't be able to return.
Second is that Egypt has its own domestic political considerations. They hate the Muslim Brotherhood and they hate anything that even smells of Islamism. So they have their own, you know, domestic political considerations as to why they're kind of behaving
this way. But in terms of national pride, small d democratic, you know, input on the Egyptian governments such as it exists, the Palestinian issue is a hot one and if they see you know, troops firing and bombs on Egyptian territory and others, that's going to be considered, you know, a breach of sovereignty, and there definitely could be you know, a major crisis that erupts here. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a sleeper issue as the Israeli war continues.
Yeah, that is absolutely correct, And it's worth recalling that the status of this border, this was part of what was negotiated during the Oslo Accords, So this is sort of long standing, you know, settled agreements in terms of how this whole thing is supposed to function. You know, Egypt, I think you're right to lay out their own domestic political concerns, not to mention that they are in a lot of economic trouble and have a high debt burden.
Et cetera.
So having an influx of a refugee population would be very challenging for them there. But I mean there is also the fact that they do not want to be party to an ethnic cleansing, and the Egyptian sort of like the Arab street, as I say, in Egypt, is really sort of the beating heart of you know, support
for Palestine and of broader regional Arab sentiment. So you know, they don't want any part of this, and I think they're feeling increasing pressure because I also think that South Africa has sort of shamed some of these countries of why weren't you all the ones that brought this case to the ICJ, Why haven't you done anything, You've set back, You've done absolutely nothing, And so I think that has also put pressure on a lot of these governments to
at least posture like they are more in support of the Palestinian cause, like they're actually willing to do something on behalf of Palestinians, not just put out like strongly worded statements. That is not the only trouble brewing in this region. So obviously Netnah, who has every incentive to keep this war going forever, He has every incentive and
so does his war cabinet to expand this war. And they have been teasing for a while a more aggressive approach with regard to Lebanon and Hezbela, and it looks like that day may fast be approaching. Let's put this up on the screen. According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israeli troops will quote very soon go into action near
the country's northern border with Lebanon. Galant told troops and near that border with the besieged Gaza strip that others were being deployed to Israel's north quote they will go into action very soon. He added, Reservists would be gradually released to prepare and come ready for future operations. Now obvious, there's already been fire exchange, there's been sort of back
and forth skirmishes with Hesbela are long disper region. But Sager, they seem to be indicating that a broader offensive and opening up an entirely new front officially in this war.
That this could be coming in your days.
Oh yeah, I mean they're saying it very openly.
I believe the Defense Minister whenever he says that you will be in action sometime soon. And I think that that is Look, even the most pro Israel people, Barry Wiss, for example, who is just in Israel. She put out some tweet and after her visit and all of that, and she said, even here in Israel, it's a matter of if, not where it's going to happen. It's not
a matter of if, it's a matter of when. In terms of Lebanon, and it will be ten times what we have seen in Gaza for the Israelis in terms of the price that they would pay for the domestic populus.
In particular, this would.
Really bring the war home in a way that not even October seventh necessarily did, because we're talking about conventional war, not terrorism. Day by day missiles and others that can penetrate the Iron Dome and put hundreds of thousands of people and really at risk in terms of in terms
of where they're sleeping. There's already been the largest internal resettlement in the history of the State of Israel, evacuating the northern border but many Israeli towns, cities and others would very much be within the range of Hezbola missiles and rockets. It would require the remobilization of the IDF, which, let's be honest as not exactly colored themselves in glory
from a tactical military perspective in their conduct with Gaza. Well, Hamas is nothing compared to the battle test of guys in Hesbola who've been fighting in Syria now for like a decade.
I mean, these are people who are there.
You could compare it like to the Japanese military in the nineteen forties, which had you know, honed their skills, their military leadership and others for a previous decade in China and Manchuria and elsewhere. I mean, these were people who are very battle tested, very battle hard, and well equipped and supplied in a way that Hamas not was not did not even come close.
And I'm not.
Sure that I think we can all just you know, say very clearly that if Gaza bled out to the who thies and to killing American service member in Jordan, then we should multiply the same ten the same ten factors should apply for Bahrain, for our troops in Jordan, Syria, Iraq. For what that would look like. I think it would turn things up to a whole other level. The other important point thing we should note is that Hesbol is a much more strategic ally to the Iranians than Hamas was.
Hamas is like a convenient thing that's out there. They fund them, but it's not like they're not like blood brothers in the same way. Hesbol as a whole other story in terms of the way that the Iranian regime and Hesbol have been, you know, kind of handing glove now for decades, especially with Nasrala their leaders. So if this is going to happen, it's going to be a full blown regional war. I don't think we should go away from that. And they're the ones who are saying,
I don't know why. We're the ones who are obviously since we already with Gaza, are the ones who are paying the outer prize that we're not doing anything about this, but apparently we're not. If they're willing to say it openly, then they don't care. They either not listening or they just don't care what we have to say, probably.
Both, And they've been saying it openly from the beginning. I mean, how many comments do we talk about where you have Goland and others were saying, hey, we could turn Beirut into Gaza Strip, you know, I mean, and look at what has happened in gods of what an ominous, horrifying thing that is to say at this point, I also think it's really important to keep the big picture in mind here. Hespela had nothing to do with October seventh. They weren't connected to that at all. So, you know,
the logic of this is insane. There is no logic to it outside of net Yahoo and his you know, yo have Goland and the rest of the ministers in the War cabinet, their own desire to save their political skin, especially because the reality is their goals in the Gaza Strip, their stated goals in the Gaza Strip of eliminating Hamas, which was not the real goal, but their stated goals of eliminating Hamas was never possible even by their own
standards and by their own metrics, they have really dramatically failed. They have not been able to kill any of the top leadership in the Gaza Strip. They have not been able to with their military secure the release of the hostages. The only time hostages were released were because of diplomatic negotiations. In fact, the military methods are contrary to keeping the hostages safe and being able to return them home. They
have not even destroyed a majority of the tunnels. Eighty percent of the tunnel network is still operational and still fine. So what they have been able to do, which is consistent with some of the real GIG goals, is to create conditions of absolute hell and horror and destruction of complete civilian life on the ground in the Gaza Strip as a sort of warning and a potential deterrent and a method of hopefully pushing Palestinians completely out of the
Gaza Strip. And you know, Egypt is now taking a hard line against that. The US claims to be against that as well. But as i'll you know, go through a report in a moment that describes how many of the cabinet ministers in the Israeli government they don't care what we say. They're still out there aggressively advocating for exactly that ethnic lansing plan, which has been part of
the aspirational goal from the beginning. So the only logic here for expanding this front is to give Netanyahu's some sort of military victory, to keep the war going for as long as possible so that he can try to cling to power. That's what's going on here. And you know, to your point saga about how the US, you know, we we've claim from the beginning, Oh, we don't want to spill over into a broader conflict.
How's that going for you?
How many fronts are being engaged on at this point, you know, And the total insanity of the fact that these people, Biden and others are admitting that they know our foreign policy is basically stupid and insane, but they can't help themselves from pursuing the stupid and insane foreign policy anyway.
Yeah, you're right, and you know a lot of this.
Look, I would hope for a cease fire deal that may or may not be in progress right now. We're trying to monitor it live. Let's put this up there on the screen. So as of yesterday, it seemed like there was a maybe it's that negotiators are closing in on a hostage deal. It would height halt fighting in Gaza for weeks. Some of the details, Crystal are I mean, I'm still curious if you want to break it down, like, yeah, what is exactly real and not?
Because there's so much conflicting information.
Right well, the context of your comments and why you're sort of self peddling it is because we also got comments from Netanyahu this morning basically pouring water on the contours of the deal that has been outlined in.
Various press reports.
So put the actually the next piece on the screen from Axios, which had more detail about what supposedly this potential deal could contain. They say Katari and Egyptian mediators to present Hamas with a framework this week for negotiations over a three phase deal. The first phase would include a six week pause and fighting release of roughly forty Israeli hostages in exchange for Israel freeing the numbers I
saw were hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. If you read into this report, they have more details on what these phases would theoretically be. The way that it's presented here by this reporter is effectively like this is being brought to
Hamas as a potential framework. My understanding is this is based on some you know, discussions BIA mediators with Hamas about what might be acceptable to them as well as part of a deal, so it's not like they're just have no idea whether this would be potentially a fruitful direction.
To engage in with Hamas.
They have some idea that potentially they could agree to this as well. The first phase is that six weeks ceasefire release of a set number of Palestinian prisoners exchange for Hamas being thirty five to forty Israeli hostages. This would include women, older men, so men over the age of sixty and those who have serious medical conditions. Then the second two phases, they haven't fully agreed on the details.
The idea would be they'd sort of lock in stone the idea for the first phase, who would be released, how many Palestinian prisoners, how long it would how long it would go for. They'd have a rough idea of the second two phases that's phase two and three, but wouldn't fully lock that in until they were in initial
phase one. But they say the second phase is expected to include the release of Israeli soldiers and civilian men under the age of sixty from captivity in Gaza, so basically like military age men and actual soldiers would be released for additional Palestinian prisoners in the third phase, you would include the release of bodies of hostages, hostages who have been killed which are being held by Hamas. For each stage, they say, a different key would be determined
for the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released. The duration of the second and third stages has not yet been defined, and that would be determined in the negotiations, but the ideas it would be several more weeks of pause and fighting in addition to the original six week ceasefire, which is why you're hearing reports that this would be
a roughly two month ceasefire. Now, after having said all of that, we have comments from Natyahuo this morning basically saying no, we're not going to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. We are not going to remove Israeli IDF forces from the Gaza strip. So whether these negotiations are still possible, whether they're ongoing, we just can't say at this point whether this is a real direction or not.
Right exactly.
That's that's really the TLDR is like in this morning President Natagna, who is like, no, I won't release anybody.
I won't.
I mean, I just think that the schizophrenic nature of the negotiations, and all of this just highlights the problems inside of Israel is that Natanyahu's got an extreme right wing coalition. They're the only people who are protecting him as long as he advances their aims. They don't want to see spire. They want war with Lebanon. They literally said it as we open here. There's also he can't
help but highlight this. Israeli anti war pretic protesters have been cracked down dramatically on to the point of being arrested in others. For days now, there has been a protest to stop humanitarian aid that was actually going into Gaza, that is being openly allowed by the government and even visited by them. So here is a news report from inside of Israel on English Israeli news channel that spotlights some of this.
Let's take a listen.
We're going to interview some of them that we can try and find to talk to some of them who came out. But there are members from all different sides of Israeli political spectrum.
They say they're from the.
Right, there are people from the left, they're religious, they're secular, all some of our families of hostages, but all coming out for the simple goal of saying trying to stop humanitarian aid. So, Shoshana, do you want to join me and tell us a little bit about why you came out here today, why it's important for you to come here and protest.
Why do you think they need to stop this aid?
Well, all the hay that's going in is going straight to Hamas, is just supporting, supporting the terrorists. I don't see any reason to support terrorism. Nobody wants that. We just want our hostages home. We want to stop Kamas. I don't understand why that's a problem.
That's really the argument that she's making. It's pretty clear.
Also, I wonder where that lady's from, though, by the way, Korea a kind of curious accent.
I love the way that that news presenter to portrays this like some oh, heartwarming coming together of all factions of Israeli society to starve the children of Gaza. Even the Israeli government does not claim that all the aid is going through Hamas. They have said, and I don't even think that this is accurate. But at most ten percent of the aid is being intercepted by Hamas.
At most ten percent.
We're not talking about missiles, we're talking about basic food stuffs, water for you know, maybe formula, milk, flour, sugar, things you know that are absolutely essential at a time when the majority of the people in the Gaza Strip are literally starving. Every single person there is in a food hunger crisis, the worst by far in the world, and all sectors of Israeli society coming together to block any of this aid to get it to the starving children
of the Gaza Strip. But just to give you a little bit of a sense of the flavor of these protests, we have some video we can show you where they're talking about, how they're thinking about what they're doing, which is insane. And then we have a video that will show you as well of Defense Minister Yoav Galant who's visiting some of the IDF reservists in uniform, who are telling them how much they support these efforts to block the aid.
And by the way, they also say, hey, don't be.
Scared about resettling the Gaza Strip, which is you know, another subject of much conversation with the Israeli domestic audience. So here you can see a little bit of video of some of the protesters, you know, walking up to the protests. They say, the trucks you see here before, you're full of flower bags and sugar. When you mix this up with fertilizer, you get explosives, which are used
for the rocket warheads and the rocket fuel. What you're looking at is not humanitarian aid, it is military munitions. What we call flower or sugar to them, it's explosives. Now this is the reserves. He says, don't be afraid of occupation.
No aid and no nothing.
We are now going to block the trucks containing aid. So you know, getting a very clear picture of some of the sentiment from the soldiers charged with this military operation in the Gaza strip and you have Golan, you know, hearing this directly from them. Soccer, what did you make of those videos? And also the idea that flower and sugar to starving Palestinians that's actually rocket fuel, it's actually explosives.
That's how they think about flower and sugar as their children are literally starving to.
Get to dot.
You know, I thought I'd seen a lot growing up during the Iraq War, and it turns out I didn't see shit. And that's that's like a pretty crazy thing to think about. Like I grew up thinking that Donald Rumsfeld was the actual devil, and that George W. Bush and all these other people were some of the worst people who would ever lived and had since Robert mcnamaraan of the other people who got us in to Vietnam.
But this is I mean, listen, If anything, it just confirms that history certainly does repeat itself, and then a lot of the you know, the things within the human character are easily replicable, and that you should never take that for granted whenever you enter a new age.
So yeah, that's that's just the only way I could look at it. It's just crazy. I think.
What's crazy to me in general, the way these reelis have conducted themselves is I just don't understand how they don't know that we live in a social media age and that the age of translation and others, every single thing you say is going to go viral and the world and the critics and all them will see it. So, I mean, sure it hasn't had an impact in terms of US policy, but that can't be the only thing
that you care about. You know, people are going to remember this has changed dramatically changing politics here in the United States. So I don't know, maybe they just don't care, which is a crazy thing in my opinion. For a nation that literally relies on foreign direct investment and military aid from a global superpower, you should probably care how you're perceived in that country.
But they're completely used to acting with impunity and there being no consequences. I mean, when was the last time that there were really significant consequences.
This is the.
Result, I mean, that brazen nature of you know, all the IDF soldier tiktoks and the rhetoric from every level of government up to and including bb Net and Yahoo. I think it's a direct outgrowth of the fact that the Biden administration from the beginning said we don't care what you do, no red lines, do what you need to do. We'll ship you the weapons, we'll expedite the weapons, we'll click occasionally leak to the pross about how set we are, but we're not going to do anything about it.
So of course they act with impunity and they let
it all hang out. Speaking of which, this report from Haratz about this Gaza resettlement conference which just occurred in Israel and was attended by many Lacud party members, senior Lacud party members, and government cabinet ministers is really something You should really read all of it because the comments that were made, the brazen nature of them, the fact that you know, some of the most insane psychos on the far right, I mean, they're hailed as heroes for
these comments. So I mean that gives you another idea of why the comments are made, Why this is all publicized, It's because it's popular among plenty of secks of Israeli society. This is bolstering the images of people like Smotrich and Bengevie every time that they thumb their nose at the US and they say, we don't care that you don't want us to do ethnic cleansing. This is our plan and this is what we want to do. So put this up on the screen. From Haretz, the headline here
the people of Israel will settle Gaza. Netnahu's ministers at far right conference endorse expulsion of Palestinians. Keep this up for a second because they have one of the quotes in here that was completely insane. They say voluntary immigration is at times the situation you impose until they give their consent. That was according to Netnahu's communications minister, who said this on stage to cheers and applause, exposing the true message of the conference for the victory of Israel
the transfer or expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. In this report they talk about how there were many different ideas for how Gaza could be resettled. There was something for every potential settler here to get behind. One offered a once in a lifetime opportunity to take part in the rebuilding of the Jewish city of Gaza as a green, technological city, open to all and uniting all sections of Israeli society. Ethnic cleansing using like liberal lefty language is
really quite something to behold. They have a list of all of the ministers and Lakud party members who were there.
It was very well attended. Many people in.
Power were there cheering on the idea of ethnic cleansing and resettlement.
They said.
The biggest response came for videos of soldiers in Gaza calling for the strip to be resettled, shouting out that there are no innocens or photographing themselves with banners for the settlements that were previously dismantled.
Ben Gevier called.
For the execution of terrorists, encouragement of what he terms emigration for gossens. He says, we have already seen and understood that running away brings war. If we don't want another October seventh, we must return home and control the territory, as well as propose a torah and holocic. I don't know that word logic encouraging emigration for gossens and the death penalty for terrorists.
So this is.
Totally contrary to US government policy, supposedly anyway, official government policy. You'll recall Sagre that we felt compelled to at least put out some sort of a statement condemning the language of these ministers in the past, clearly without taking further action. This has not deterred them whatsoever. And it also, of course comes after the ICJ specifically cited some very similar
comments that were made as plausibly inciting genocide. Clearly they do not care, because the text of what they were saying and what was.
Being cheered on here is absolutely wild.
Yeah, if you read this, and you also couple it with some interesting comments that Galant actually made today about security control over the West Bank, it seems that within the you know, within the allowable options, the best option quote unquote that seems to be politically realistic. Is just a return to the status quo, which is not something that the US has ostensibly supports, which was Israeli security control over Gaza and no future government Palestinian state, et cetera,
which Netanyahu is ruled out. That seems to be the best one under option. The other option it's this one. So this just again raises questions for the United States, where we've put sanctions in place on people Israeli settlers, specifically taking action against settlers or who have been supporting settlers and who have been attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
Because it's contra to overall US policy. I'm wondering where is the simultaneous US sanction and action on this part if we do believe ostensibly and what the sustainable quote unquote solution should look like afterwards. And you know, if something like this is just so brazen and so obvious, you know, at a certain point you either endorse it or you don't.
So they need to make it clear.
Yeah, and these people know what they want. Yeah, there's no like a day after, what are we going to do? We're still thinking about, We're still figuring no They have maps of exactly where and when and how they would they would resettle Gaza and come in and you know, reinvade that land. They know exactly what they want to do, and that in and of itself is a very powerful thing, especially when you look at the Gaza Strip today and
you realize it is uninhabitable. I mean, the northern part of the Gazza Strip in particular has been utterly destroyed. The civil villion infrastructure, from universities to hospitals, to schools, to residential houses and apartment I mean it is decimated. So that's step one is make it unlivable. Push them south, Push them south, push them south. Now you've got over a million Palestinians in Gaza, sheltering in Ratha right on the border, just one step further into the Egyptian desert.
And these folks at this conference completely get their way and their goal of what they want to see for the Gaza Strip.
All right, guys, that's it for us today, Crystal.
We were hoping that you're going to be back here in the studio on Thursday.
Things are looking good on that front. Again.
Thank you to everybody for the well wishes. If you want to acknowledge them.
Crystal, Yes, I very much appreciate that everything is going good here, so fingers crossed. I'll be back in studio with you guys on Thursday.
There you go in the Meanwhile, we've got the RFK Junior Focus Group work that's coming up.
You can take advantage if you want.
Breakingpoints dot com great counterpoint show for everybody tomorrow, and we will see you all on Thursday